If Andrew Tate is Your Hero, I Feel Bad for You

His masculinity is smoke and mirrors.

Photo by Jaroslav Devia on Unsplash

In case you haven’t heard, Andrew Tate recently tried to own climate activist Greta Thunberg by bragging about his 33 sportscars and their carbon emissions. It started a feud that ended not only with Tate humiliating himself but also accidentally revealing his location to Romanian police, who arrested him for human trafficking. It’s a satisfying finale to a season of bro meltdowns.

Maybe you’re wondering, who’s Andrew Tate? Well, he’s a misogynist who made his first millions by hiring camgirls to talk to men. He ran a studio for them, but took more than half their earnings.

From there, he started promoting himself as a wealth coach.

Prosecutors say Tate has been recruiting women and coercing them into making online pornography. You know, I believe it. Tate has a history of advocating violence against women. He justifies rape. He says women belong to men. He blames “99 percent of society’s problems” on their promiscuity.

He wishes they were robots.

At the very least, it makes this guy a hypocrite to build his fortune on women’s labor, then turn around and bash them.

Talk about ungrateful…

If you want to know how Tate makes money now, watch this video by Jordan Welch. It sounds like he sells $5,000 memberships to exclusive clubs and then charges $3,000 for private consultations, then skips out. These ventures teach men how to take advantage of people for profit, especially women.

The only thing worse than Andrew Tate is the litany of praise from his fanboys (and occasional fangirls). Let’s face it, he has massive influence. Even after learning that Tate basically runs scams, his admirers say things like, “the marketing and his business model are solid.” When Tate makes sexist remarks they say, “He’s just kidding. He’s doing that for shock value.” They call him a marketing genius. They describe his wealth as inspirational, even if he makes it by running ponzi schemes and human trafficking rings. They shrug at his climate denial. When he calls the pandemic a hoax, they look the other way.

To them, it’s all about the money.

It excuses everything.

They point out how polite he is to women, even when he’s politely explaining why they should be treated like children. As for the women who inhabit Andrew Tate’s orbit, they listen to all of this while sitting back and saying things like, “I agree” or “That’s interesting.” They normalize it. Worst of all, this crowd routinely frames any criticism of Andrew Tate as envy.

Fortunately, Greta gave us a masterclass in how to deal with toxic men. You don’t normalize them. You don’t ignore them. You don’t laugh them off while praising all of their other “brilliant ideas.” You don’t lecture them.

You call out their #smalldickenergy.

Andrew Tate isn’t a hero, and he’s not an inspiration. He’s a cautionary tale. He’s a scarred man who elevated himself by latching onto unhealthy stereotypes and then built wealth by selling online courses to other bruised men.

Nobody should want to be like him.

So why do they?

Let’s talk about Lawrence.

Lawrence wants a woman no taller than 5’5,” and she can’t weigh more than 110 pounds. She needs to be strong, but she can’t have too much visible muscle tone. She can’t believe in god, either. He includes an image of his dream girl as a reference. If you don’t look like that, keep swiping.

Here she is:

Twitter

When Andrew Tate looks at Lawrence, he doesn’t see a young man who needs help. He sees a business opportunity, someone to take money from. I know this because I’ve watched a few Andrew Tate interviews.

Deep down, I think Lawrence knows he’s never going to attract a woman who looks like that. They don’t exist. Even if he did, it still wouldn’t make him happy. See, Lawrence’s dilemma doesn’t begin with women. He’s simply using them as an anger management tool. He’s establishing these false expectations in order to distract himself from his real problem:

He has low self-esteem.

I wouldn’t call out his #smalldickenergy just yet.

He’s not toxic, but definitely bruised.

When we talk about toxic masculinity, that’s what we really mean. These men might project enormous amounts of confidence, but they’re compensating. Beneath all of that, you find a lot of pain and confusion.

Andrew Tate sees that pain, and his brain says cha-ching. He sees someone he can sell courses to, so he nurtures their pain.

He feeds it.

As Lauren Vinopal writes in Fatherly, “toxic behaviors are a reaction to perceived threats to the masculinity of a subset of men with poor self-esteem.” There’s tons of young men out there with these problems, and they’re trying to fix them by embracing unhealthy stereotypes and competing for status.

That’s when poor self-esteem goes toxic.

Studies have shown that insecure men are more likely to engage in violence and aggression. They especially tend to target women who’ve achieved some sense of intellectual or financial independence.

It gets worse every year.

Millions of young men have convinced themselves they’ll never attain the kind of life they want. They look to figures like Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson, who offer them all the wrong answers. Instead of focusing on the ways that predatory capitalism has largely destroyed their future, the Tates and Petersons of the world swoop in like vultures to profit off them further. They sell them books, courses, memberships, and conferences that promise to help them redeem their masculinity and grant them access to some kind of secret brotherhood.

They convince these men to blame women for all of their problems. It’s not the corporations ruining their lives, it’s women with college degrees. They’re the real threat. This brand of toxic masculinity markets the debunked idea of the alpha male as the solution. If you simply act like a sociopath, then your wildest dreams will come true. You’ll get the anime girl.

Men like Andrew Tate don’t understand self-esteem. If they do, then they’re lying to their fans. They treat it like a zero-sum game. To them, you can only create self-worth by depriving someone else of theirs. That someone else is usually a woman, or another man further down the hierarchy. Likewise, you can only make money by taking it from peasants and slave minds.

That’s what these men sell in their online courses. You gain wealth by exploiting others. It’s what they promote. It’s why Andrew Tate trolls for attention, and why he acts out when it backfires.

It’s not marketing genius.

It’s cruelty.

These masculinity merchants aren’t helping men when they portray women as the cause of their unhappiness. They’re preying on them. They claim to stand outside of oppressive power structures, but they’re playing a very active role in those structures. Earlier this year, a report even identified Tate’s camgirl studio as a scam that conned men out of thousands of dollars for the promise of real relationships. Tate defends it by saying, “It’s their problem, not mine.”

So, men like Andrew Tate aren’t trying to solve young men’s poor self-esteem. He’s not offering them anything of substance. He’s simply taking their money in exchange for a variety of hollow fantasies.

He collects cars with it.

It would be nice if men could promote a different kind of masculinity. It would be nice if they told other men it’s okay if you don’t look like the heroes in fantasy novels. Your worth doesn’t depend on external status. It doesn’t require anime girlfriends. It’s fine to be single. It’s good to learn how to cook for yourself and do your own laundry. You don’t need sportscars full of strippers.

It’s not even about respecting women.

It’s about respecting yourself.

We won’t solve this problem in a couple of years. It’ll take generations. Women can’t carry this burden. We need parents and teachers. We need school counselors and thought leaders. We need communities.

We need positive male role models.

Not Andrew Tates.

If you’re someone who’s been promoting these men, please stop laughing off and dismissing their misogyny. It’s never a joke. They’re never doing it for shock value. It always winds up being who they are.

Always.

So we come back to Lawrence, a typical example of Andrew Tate’s target audience. He knows he’ll never date an anime dream girl. He believes there’s nothing for him in this world. It makes him feel better to establish impossible standards for women. It’s the zero-sum self-esteem game in action.

He elevates himself by preemptively rejecting almost every woman on the planet. He has no hope, so he prefers to fantasize.

Andre Tate sells male fantasies.

There’s millions of guys out there fantasizing. They need an economy that doesn’t exploit them from every possible angle. They need purpose and belonging. Someone other than Andrew Tate needs to offer it.

It’s time to wake them up.