This text comprises references to sexual violence.
How do you clear up an issue like Andrew Tate? And will ‘positive masculinity’ influencers have the reply? It is a advanced query — however with Worldwide Males’s Day upon us in the present day, it is one we must always actually face head-on.
Regardless of being charged with rape and human trafficking (which he denies), Tate has a persuasive sway over boys and younger males, with analysis exhibiting that one in three younger males have a optimistic view of him.
His profession trajectory – from Large Brother and TikTok notoriety to imprisonment and right-wing conspiracy theories – has triggered risky debates about masculinity: Is it inherently poisonous? Do boys should be taught not to sexually harass their feminine classmates? Ought to feminists – as Caitlin Moran explores in her newest e book What About Males? – be turning their consideration to males?
Whereas a lot has been written in regards to the rise of influencers selling “toxic” masculinity – outlined within the Oxford Dictionary as “a set of attitudes and ways of behaving stereotypically associated with or expected of men, regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole” – there are male influencers who use their platforms to advertise a fairly completely different message: that masculinity can (and sometimes is) optimistic.
However do they really stand an opportunity in opposition to their “toxic” counterparts? GLAMOUR spoke to the Managing Director of Past Equality, a charity selling optimistic masculinity, and Dr Alex George, a content material creator, creator, and UK Ambassador for Psychological Well being, to study extra.
The influencer financial system trades in human consideration. Influencers compete in opposition to each other to safe consideration earlier than promoting it to the best bidder. And the eye of boys and younger males is an more and more profitable product, as high-earning content material creators, together with KSI (price $27 million), Logan Paul ($45 million), and Mr Beast ($500 million), have came upon.
However, as all of the above have realized, producing controversy is a quick monitor to reaping consideration (and due to this fact £££) from social media. Unsurprisingly, producing controversy often includes offensive or inappropriate behaviour. Simply have a look at Mizzy, the 18-year-old former TikToker who went viral for all of the mistaken causes after filming himself abducting an aged lady’s canine, getting into different folks’s homes with out their consent, and strolling as much as younger folks at night time and asking in the event that they “want to die.” As Mizzy advised Piers Morgan: “Hate brings likes, hate brings views.”
Enter the algorithm. In 2022, an investigation discovered that TikTok bombards younger males with misogynistic content material (usually that includes Andrew Tate) after watching male-oriented movies, together with clips of canines, males speaking about psychological well being, and comedy. As Dan Guinness tells GLAMOUR:
“What will start out as watching a YouTube video about the struggles that men are facing in their lives and how to deal with these struggles – very legitimate things that they need to deal with – will [lead to] a video that explains these struggles as an attack on men.”
The Crowther Centre in Australia outlines that optimistic masculinity is outlined as: “The expression of attitudes and behaviours (character strengths and virtues which any gender might have) that have been embodied and enacted by males for the common good, both individually and for the community”
