It's not all about Andew Tate
Tate is a product of a culture that normalises misogyny and men's violence against women
So the news is in: men’s violence against women and girls (not that the headlines add in the “men’s” aspect) is a national emergency.
Reports in the BBC and the Guardian and all the other big titles are reporting warnings from police chiefs that two million women are estimated to be victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”. (The Guardian does put men in its first para but the report itself says: “We estimate that at least one in every 12 women will be a victim of VAWG every year … and one in 20 adults in England and Wales will be a perpetrator of VAWG every year.” Adults? You mean men - so say it. But that’s an aside).
Shocked? No, me neither. But it’s a relief to have men’s violence against women and girls called what it is. It is an emergency. It is an epidemic, and it’s getting worse.
One aspect of the report focuses on non-fatal strangulation, a newly-created offence designed to try and tackle the rise of women and girls being choked by men and boys, often during sex, without their consent. As Louisa Rolfe, the national lead for domestic abuse and an assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan police, explained, “All the academic research will tell you that the difference between non-fatal strangulation and fatal strangulation is millibars of pressure.”
A few years ago, I reported on the rise of the “sex game gone wrong” defence. I am still haunted by the case of a 16-year-old girl who was strangled by a man the night she met him. He got culpable homicide (Scottish law’s equivalent of manslaughter). She died.
Can you tell I’m angry?
Another aspect of the report focuses on the rise of misogynistic influencers such as Andrew Tate, and how boys and young men are groomed and radicalised by online rhetoric which teaches them that women are inferior, objects to be used and abused.
In fact, Tate leads the BBC coverage, his face on the news site’s home page.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Tate is in part responsible – he and his merry band in the man-o-sphere (although please read my report from Jan 2023 on how it’s not as simple as all misogynists loving Tate). He clearly has huge influence over young men and boys, and his messaging is taking hold in a growing cohort who feel feminism has gone too far, that women are deserving of violence, and that men are inherently superior.
You know from my past writing how this fits into fascistic ideas about the natural order, that men are naturally superior and women are naturally inferior, that men are pinned to war (Tate’s project is called The War Room) and women are pinned to reproduction. We absolutely need to call out his influence, his rhetoric, and encourage young men and boys to seek out healthier role models (although don’t come at me with hand-wringing crap that boys don’t have role models – men rule the world, if the men in power and wealth are bad role models, that is on men to fix).
Can you tell I’m angry?
OK, so Tate is part of the problem. But the constant blaming of Tate for the rise of misogyny is making me increasingly uneasy. Not because I want to diminish his role or responsibility. But because if all this *waves hands manically at young men increasingly hating women* is Tate’s fault, it lets everyone else off the hook.
And they should not be let off the hook.
Tate is a product of a world that has normalised and glamorised and sexualised men’s violence against women and girls. His success, his influence, has not happened in a vacuum. His rise was made possible by a society that shrugs at femicide. That has effectively decriminalised rape. Tate is able to exist because misogyny runs through our society like a word on a stick of Blackpool rock.
Tate is absolutely a driver of misogyny. But there are other influences. How many boys grow up in homes where dads make sexist jokes? How many men live in a world that teaches them they can rape women and, if the data is anything to go by, they’ll get away with it? How many men live in a world that tells them women are objects? That tells them women are there for their sexual entertainment? That tells them women lie about rape? That tells them women are to blame for rape? Not all of them watch Tate. But so so so many men and boys hear these messages loud and clear, from a society that happily hates women.
It’s too easy to blame Tate. Blaming Tate lets those men who don’t listen to his bile, to think this has nothing to do with them. It lets the men who laugh at the sexist joke, who cover up for their mate’s harassment, to think they are one of the good guys because god, I really hate that Andrew Tate. It lets the dads who disrespect their wives, who allow for domestic inequality to flourish, to think they are one of the good guys because I talked to my son about Andrew Tate. It lets the men who push their girlfriend too far, who jokily shouted at the woman in the street, who have happily forgotten the hurt on that woman’s face, the tears she tried to hold back, that time, the time they don’t really like to think about because yeah, it was a bit off, wasn’t it? to think they are one of the good guys because I don’t listen to Andrew Tate. I’m so shocked by Andrew Tate - I just don’t understand this misogyny, did I mention I’m a feminist?
As for the rest of the society? It lets us believe that if we just drowned out Andrew Tate’s noise, then this rising misogyny would vanish. We are not the problem, because Andrew Tate is the problem.
Again, I absolutely think we need to take the threat of Andrew Tate seriously. The man’s views are dangerous and they are clearly having an impact on a generation of young men who are growing up learning that women are to be despised.
But Tate has become a cipher. He’s the bogeyman we blame, so we don’t have to think about how around 80,000 men rape women every year and continue to live their lives, free from fear of justice, while women have to slowly rebuild and recover, knowing they will never get justice. We look to Tate and say: he’s the problem, and then we don’t have to worry about the problem that means more than 100 women are killed every year by men, most of whom couldn’t point to Tate in a line-up.
Men blame Andrew Tate to absolve themselves.
And far from Tate being the sole groomer of a generation of angry young men, what about pornography?
Yes, I’m one of those angry anti-porn feminists the Daily Mail warned you about.
Why the ever-living fuck do you think non-fatal strangulation is going up? What did you think was going to happen when you have a mass industry that tells men and boys that sex = violence? What did you think would happen when you created porn that means men and boys enjoy the most intensely pleasurable sensation in response to women being raped, being beaten, being strangled? How many men shaking their heads sadly at Andrew Tate have orgasmed to a performance of women being gang raped? Of women forced to do ass-to-mouth? Of women being choked until her face is purple? And sure, maybe adult men who have a hinterland of different sexual experiences might be able to manage that – although it’s not guaranteed – but kids watching and growing up thinking that is all there is to sex? That all there is to sex is violence? What did you think was going to happen?
Now, I want to be clear: porn is not the sole cause of sexual violence, any more than Andrew Tate is the sole cause of young men’s misogyny. But it is part of the picture as much as Tate is – a picture of normalised violence and misogyny that has societal approval. And porn reaches far more of us than Tate does.
Tate makes the self-proclaimed good guys feel comfortable. He’s a convenient hate figure, that absolves them of responsibility.
And that’s a problem. Because if we are to fix this national emergency, if we are to create a world free from men’s violence against women and girls, it’s going to take more than booting a hate figure off the internet. It’s going to take men, even the good guys, to step up and reckon with their own misogyny.
Which is a much harder ask, isn’t it, than hating Tate?
Obligatory book plug
It’s 20% off this week! Buy it now to understand more about the fascistic natural order and how it impacts women’s safety and rights!
openDemocracy published an extract which is actually very relevant to this newsletter, you can read it here:
‘Women have to suffer’: Going undercover in the incel movement
What I’m writing
Two for you this week, one for openDemocracy and one for der Freitag.
Nearly 100 prison staff sanctioned for ‘inappropriate’ relationships
House of Parliament: The “old Etonians” are out
(the headline sounds SO much better in German!)
What I’m loving
This investigation in The Sunday Times into the middlemen cashing in on asylum hotels was really good, by Hugo Daniel and Laith Al-Khalaf.
This report by Luke Harding from the Kakhovka dam is also worth your time.
What I’m reading
Listen for the lie by Amy Tintera
The entire Paula Maguire series by Claire McGowan. All six in a row.
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
What I’m watching
I watched The Game on iPlayer and now watching Little Drummer Girl, on the same. Also saw a really good Storyville called Revenge: our dad, the Nazi killer. Also on iPlayer.
I also watched Douglas Is Cancelled, intending to hate-watch it only be totally stunned by Episode 3 and how it is one of the best portrayals of coercive control and abuse of power I have ever seen on telly.
I also went to see The Breeders, the Manics and Suede, Myriad Myriads, and Cosi fan Tutte. My first Mozart!
That’s it for this week! Feel the rage.
Until next time… ciao ciao