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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am.

An alarming number of Australian boys are engaging with, and looking up to, the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate.

Tate’s influence is warping classroom conversation, driving female peers to the fringes of discussion, and even causing some teachers to quit.

So, why are problematic influencers reaching so many young men? And why is it forcing teachers to walk away?

Today, contributor to The Monthly and author of Night Games, Anna Krien, on the ‘misogynist radicalisation’ happening in our schools.

It’s Wednesday, March 6.

And a warning: this episode discusses violence against women.

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ANGE:

Anna, you've written about Andrew Tate and a lot of people will be aware of that name, I think, but as someone who's gone down some online rabbit holes for this story, can you tell us, who is Andrew Tate?

ANNA:

Right. So basically, broadly speaking I guess, he's a misogynist.

Audio Excerpt - Various Reporters:

“Controversial online influencer Andrew Tate”
“Andrew Tate!”
“Perhaps you’re watching and thinking, who is Andrew Tate?”

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Tate:

“I know women, because I've made a lot of money from women. Let me tell you something, I’ve been attacked plenty of times and I’ve talked about this in another video already but they are absolutely feeble.”

ANNA:

Andrew Tate’s misogyny is quite out there. It's, you know, women belong in the home. Men should be allowed to cheat, but not women. You know, grip her up by the throat kind of thing. Women shouldn't be allowed to drive. You know, it's really aggressive. Beat women back into their boxes kind of stuff.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Tate:

“They’re useless, they ain't ready for the big man slap, I got a big hand”

ANNA:

I guess what struck me about Andrew Tate was he was a little bit like Donald Trump for teens. He's got the swagger and the shamelessness about him that is very Trumpian.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Tate:

“Every single time you get a girl, girls don’t like being second place, girls like being number one. So every time I get a girlfriend or whatever, well I’ve got lots of girlfriends, every time I get a chick she’s like, you and your brother, you’re weird, you’re weird, you’re too friendly, trying to drive that wedge in. I would sooner shoot you in the head, bitch, than stop talking to my brother.”

ANNA:

Obviously he doesn't look like Trump. He's a former kickboxer. He's very proud of his body. He's very sculpted.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Tate:

“Coffee, cigars, a lot of meat, and hard training. I’m 35 and I’ve never had a single injection in my body.”

ANNA:

He sees himself as a businessman which, you know, kind of involves online pimping of former girlfriends.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Tate:

“Me teaching people how I managed females in these scenarios, how I controlled their emotions, how I convinced them to work and give me most of their money. How I convinced them to share me with other women, why they obey me.”

ANNA:

So I'm not sure how good a business that is, but it seems to be successful. Until now.

Audio Excerpt - Reporter 1:

“Prosecutors in Romania have filed formal charges against the controversial influencer Andrew Tate, his brother Tristan and two Romanian associates, the charges include rape, trafficking and forming an organised crime group. As well illegally accessing a computer system and violence against one of the alleged victims.”

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Tate:

“We have an open criminal investigation, I am absolutely sure I will be found innocent. I know the case better than you. I know it intimately and you don’t. I have seen all the criminal and the evidence against me and you haven’t.”

ANNA:

As an older person, you just, it’s just ridiculous. As a teenage boy, I don't know he must, he obviously strikes a chord. The teenage boys are lapping it up, including boys in Australia.

ANGE:

What do we know about how popular he is in Australia? How are boys here engaging with him and his content?

ANNA:

In terms of how popular he is in Australia, there was a recent survey done by the Man Cave who do a lot of work in schools around masculinity, and they sort of did a survey of Australian boys, I think it was 1700 Australian boys, and they found that 92% of them were aware of Tate and a quarter of them, you know, saw him as a role model.

There’s been a couple of researchers, Stephanie Westcott, a lecturer at Monash University's School of Education, Culture and Society and her colleague, Professor Stephen Roberts, they call it a type of misogynist radicalisation that's happening online.

So last year, Stephanie Westcott and Steven Roberts put a call out on social media to female teachers at private and public schools across Australia to partake in a study about possible misogynist radicalisation of their students in school. And they were inundated with responses from female teachers. Roberts was telling me how they still have teachers getting in contact, even though the study's, that particular phase of their research is finished, they still have teachers getting in touch saying, please, I'm desperate to talk about it to someone.

So you've got these female teachers basically finding all these little mini Tates, sitting in the back row, making their lives hell and, you know, other students lives hell as well. It's not all boys, That's really important to note, for the teachers that they spoke to and the teachers that I spoke to. It's usually about five boys in a classroom of, say, 25, but that's a pretty hefty weight there and especially in the way that they act and the way that they perform this masculinity, it takes up a lot of space and it really suffocates the room.

ANGE:

And you mentioned that teachers, you know, female teachers in particular, are concerned by what impact this is having on classrooms and they’re, I guess, at the frontline of witnessing Andrew Tate’s influence on teenage boys. What do they say about the impact it's having?

ANNA:

The last few years, there's been a real upping of the ante for female teachers. A lot of them talk about, from the moment they enter that room, they're in a really combative atmosphere coming from these guys sitting at the back. And one of the teachers was talking to me about how they take up space, how they're always in a gang, and she said it was really cliched except they weren't doing it before. They've got their feet on the desk and they're constantly baiting females, constantly trying to turn every single part of the class into a discussion about whether a woman is worthy of what she currently has in society, and should women be allowed to drive? And why should a woman be telling a man what to do? And every sort of a tiny opening in a classroom, is sort of manipulated into these discussions about a woman's inferiority and it's been hellish, absolute hell to try and combat this while continuing with educating the class and trying to make the others feel safe and welcome.

A lot of the female teachers have spoken about this incredible sadness as they watch their female students slowly shut down. Not so much shrinking, because it's not as if they really believe, they're not taking what these boys are saying on board, but it's just too difficult to combat. There's no point in engaging so they stop talking. The male students who aren't like that sort of stare out the window, just in a desperate gaze of trying to be anywhere but there. So it's working. It's sort of this misogyny that's really working in the classroom. And the really scary thing is that the female teachers don't want to be there either.

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ANGE:

Anna, female teachers are sounding the alarm of Andrew Tate’s influence in the classroom. What kind of impact is it having on female teachers? You know how they feel about their jobs?

ANNA:

Yeah, well, I mean, we're in a crisis at the moment where there's not enough teachers, we’re at a teacher shortage. And women are leaving. They're leaving their profession. No one knows entirely what the numbers are exactly. I did speak to one female teacher who said, I'm out. I'm absolutely out. I've got an interview next week for a desk job, and she got that job. She's left teaching, and she just said it was just too much. It would get to the point where that was sharing porn and, sort of, looking at her and snickering and she would call it out and it would just, everything was an invitation to do battle. And, you know, she felt very much unsupported by her, the male leadership, and that was something I heard quite a lot of as well, there was there's this idea that it's because a woman, a female teacher, if she's having problems in her classroom it's because she hasn't got a good sense of discipline. She can't control her cohort. The irony being that if a man can control his cohort, it's not necessarily because he's doing anything. It's just because he's a man. So these boys respect him. So she's sort of destined to fail before she’s entered the room just because of who and what she is. I think that's really troubling.

ANGE:

What's being done to address the impact this is having, not just on kids in the classroom, but on teachers as well?

ANNA:

Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't think anything's really been done to support them. There's been some moves to address sort of misogynistic attitudes in school and to deal with toxic masculinity online. The federal government is trialling a healthy masculinities project, which I think it's about a $3.5 million project three-year trial program, to combat, they say, harmful gender stereotypes perpetuated online.

I think, you know, that's great, It's good, understandably I think female teachers are a bit wary of, you know, is this actually going to be another thing on our plate to deal with as opposed to, what's going on here? Where does this start? How can this end? And why is it always, you know, our plate to unpack these issues.

I think Andrew Tate is obviously a symptom of a larger problem. It's the online menace fear, which is, you know, it's a lure and these boys kind of fall into it. It's very comfortable answers to uncomfortable questions.

From having my own boys, you know, they've only been on the earth for about ten years, right? So through their eyes, they haven't done any university degree, they don't have this history of Feminism and oppression. All they see are these, sort of, books telling girls that they're awesome. Which is great, these, you know, huge celebrations of female footballers, they don't have the critical capacity to see, to look at Parliament and go, oh well actually, it's mainly men. They don't have the capacity to have that kind of critical analysis or to understand why it's so important to redistribute power. So sometimes I get frustrated at this idea of something that can be dealt with, with respectful relationship discussions, and almost airy fairy feelings, when I really think what these kids need is a history lesson. There is a reason why we're doing redistribution of power. There is a reason why we're trying to help women and girls see themselves as subjects, not objects, and that is because there is a history. When women tried to ride bicycles, people threw rocks at them. When women tried to order a beer at pubs, men poured beers over their head. When women tried to study at Cambridge University, male students burn effigies of women. There is an absolute history to this and if they don't know it, how are they supposed to understand what's happening right now?

ANGE:

And Anna. I think there's a tendency to kind of write off influencers in a way, you know, like, despite their name, you know, some people don't really take their influence seriously. You know, the impact that they have is seen sometimes as a passing trend and I guess that often bears out, someone could be really popular, but then the world just moves on. Is that an argument that we can apply here to Andrew Tate as well?

ANNA:

I guess we could apply it to the individual Andrew Tate, for sure. He is already yesterday's news. He isn't under house arrest. You can watch videos of him pacing under house arrest, smoking cigars and really quite troubled. He's getting out his warrior mode at the moment. So, he is yesterday's news but there is absolutely no doubt that there is someone else that has already risen in his place.

I think there's too much talk about protecting young people. I think there's just not enough truth telling when it comes down to young people. And even if you were to protect your child, your cocoon, your child, and make sure that you're watching their time on the internet, it doesn't matter. You're sending them out into the world where the next door neighbours don't.

Which is why I just feel like they need to know history. History is so important. We can talk to them about what to actually say when someone says something but how do they actually know what's right and what's wrong? How do you get that down into their gut? I think that's the most important thing.

ANGE:

Thanks so much for your time today.

ANNA:

Thanks Ange.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today

The law firm Birchgrove Legal says it has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Australian ministers, including prime minister Anthony Albanese, over culpability for Israel’s actions during the war in Gaza and if they are found to have broken international law.

The prime minister dismissed the law firm’s announcement as having no credibility, and said it was based on misinformation, citing Australia’s vote at the UN general assembly in favour of a ceasefire and the release of all hostages.

And three people have been arrested in Melbourne over a protest for climate action on the West Gate Bridge.

Activist Deanna “Violet” Coco, who was jailed and then had her sentence quashed last year in relation to a climate protest on the Sydney harbour bridge – was featured in a video of the protest released by Extinction Rebellion.

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