I don’ thave a problem with so called influencer Andrew Tate’s misguided adoration of money and the power it can buy. I just can’t remain mum about his misogynistic absurdities regarding women and their supposed place in society.
There should be no forum where a male (I won’t call him a man: a real man has a modicum of integrity) like Mr. Tate gets to spread his vile ideas of male dominance. No one should be allowed to call for violence against another person. No man should be permitted to incite violence against women, a behavior that should have been made a crime a long time ago and handled accordingly.
My first question, among many that come to mind, is why was Mr. Tate even allowed to rack up billions of views on the social media site Tik Tok? His demeaning speech should have never been allowed to be available for even a hundred thousand, let alone billions of people, to access it.
Is there no government agency that could intervene to prevent archaic and dangerous ideas like Mr. Tate’s (and of other individuals of his ilk) from contaminating the minds of our impressionable young children? Isn’t anyone moderating the social media spaces our school-aged children must use?
Becoming a misogynist (or a misanthrope in general) doesn’t happen accidentally. Children learn from what they see and hear, and when children see and hear adults behaving badly, they tend to ape the that behavior.
Could we, maybe, begin to teach our boys that people don’t derive their intrinsic value as a person from their material possessions; that no matter how wealthy a man may be or how aggressively he can behave, that man has no business mistreating another human being (specially not someone physically weaker than him)? Could we teach our boys that money and riches don’t automatically entitle any one to the ownership of another person?
Women aren’t objects a man can choose to abuse or command as he sees fit.
They aren’t born to be subservient to those of the opposite sex.
They are not supposed to be men’s slaves.
As AJ Willingham, from CNN, reports, there are consequences to allowing behavior like Mr. Tate’s to go “unchecked”; misogyny leads to “larger channels of hate.”
Misogyny doesn’t just lead to domestic violence against women (women are usually the main victims of domestic violence); it also engenders violence in general.
And we cannot rely on technology alone to solve all of our society’s problems. In the case of misogyny, we must make the fight more personal, so to speak. Misogyny is a sort of problem we could, if not eradicate, at least make less pervasive. We parents could, for example, take a more active role in our children’s upbringing and in their education in general.
We parents could be the first front in the fight against misogyny and other types of violent behavior. It’s true that our boy’s classmates have undue influence in their behavior—as do other boys of similar age. But if we parents display good behavior and manners in front of our boys, there’s a likelihood that they would emulate our behavior instead of that of their friends.
It doesn’t take a mind like Einstein’s to comprehend that education starts at home. Many of the ills in our society, including misogyny, could be made less severe if we simply teach our boys the difference between good and bad.
Of course, home education doesn’t have to consist of training like that involved in creating a good member of the US Navy SEALs. If you asked me, I’d say that tough love (at least when it comes to teaching good behavior and decency) is a remedy better dispensed in small measures.
I’m not, mind you, implying that we need to fill our society with weaklings. What I am advocating for is a proper early education. Education to serve as foundation for when our boys must go out into the world; education aimed at elevating our boys’ integrity, rather than education focused only on the accrual of money.
I don’t know about you, but I would prefer to raise a boy who grows up to become an adult with integrity and good values—not merely excess ego. If we teach our children that boys and girls are simply the two faces of the same coin—the worth of which decreases in direct proportion to the diminishing value of one or the other—then our boys will grow up to be men that don’t regard women as a lesser being whose worth depends on whatever value men choose to place on them.
Let’s raise our boys to understand that men and women complement each other. If we do this, our boys won’t grow up to be men who must undermine women because that is the only way they can feel like real machos. Let’s help our boys understand that a real man doesn’t think he become less of a man when a woman takes her rightful place, both at home and in society at large. Let’s show our boys that, to a real man, his partner’s success is his success in the same way that, for any woman, her partner’s triumphs are her own.
Decent, conscientious men don’t need to mingle with women-bashing men. They don’t need to act up and behave as if women existed only to serve their male opposites. Real men don’t need to belong to any male cohort to feel whole; they already belong to the human cohort. It’s that simple.
It’s a fact: when we parents don’t make time to educate our boys at home, they end up turning to online forums to find what they think they’re somehow missing. That is, if we don’t show our boys the right way to be a man, others will (to our boys’, our own, and society’s detriment).
Also, we can’t blame women for the lack in social skills of today’s boys. Lack of social skills isn’t a problem that only boys suffer from. Millions of girls are lacking in social skills too nowadays, and we don’t see them blaming the boys for this shortcoming. If anyone, or anything, deserves blame for the repugnant behavior of men like Andrew Tate, it is parenting. It’s technology (the inappropriate use of it that is).
Misogynists are bullies. But well-reared boys don’t turn into bullies. Properly-reared boys become men who, in the same way that they wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, neither would they regard women as lesser beings just because women come equipped with a reproductive organ other than a phallus.
Some of our schools are doing the right thing. They’re trying to educate our boys on what constitutes good behavior toward women; however, we as parents should not be relinquishing all responsibility for the education or our boys; we shouldn’t be leaving the problem in the hands of our already-overworked teachers.
Our schools should be in the business of teaching our kids facts, skills, and how to reason (which should result in increased knowledge). Schools cannot, and should not, be tasked also with teaching our kids what constitutes good or bad behavior and simple decency.
If we wait for our children to reach the middle grades, it would then be too late. We will no longer be able to arm them with the skills they need to function in society and to interact with members of the opposite sex in a healthy manner.
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