I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. For some time now, an alarming number of Australian boys have been engaging with and looking up to, the misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate. And this week the conversation about misogyny and the manisphere has resurfaced. Social Services Minister Tanya Plipasek has accused married at First Side of platforming, coercive control and misogyny.
Netflix has released Louis the Roue's Inside the Manisphere. A fresh research suggests roughly forty percent of teenage boys surveyed agreed that women lie about domestic and sexual violence. Takes influence, is warping classroom conversations, driving female peers to the fringe of discussion, and even causing some teachers to quit. So why are misogynistic influencers reaching so many young men?
Today?
We're bringing you an episode from twenty twenty four where Ange McCormack speaks to author and journalists and a I beout the misogynist radicalization in our schools. It's Sunday, March fifteen. This episode was first published in March twenty twenty four.
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?
All right?
So basically, broadly speaking, he's I guess he's a misogynist.
Controversial online influencer, Andrew.
Tit Andrew Tait. Perhaps you're watching and thinking, who is Andrew Tate?
I know women because I made a lot of money for women.
Let me tell you something. I've been attacked plenty of times, and I've talked about this in another video already, but absolutely feeble.
Andrew Tate's misogyny is quite out there. It's, you know, 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.
They're useless, they ain't ready for the big man's slap.
I've got a big hand.
I guess what struck me about Andrew Taate 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.
Every single time girl. Girls don't like being second place. Girls like being number ones every time I have 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, You're weird trying to drive that wedgend. I would sooner shoot you in the head, bitch to stop talking.
To my brother. Obviously, he doesn't look like Trump. He is a former kickboxer. He's very proud of his body. He's very sculpted.
Coffee, cigars, lot of meat and hard train.
And I'm thirty five and I've never had a single injection in my body.
He sees himself as a businessman, which involves sort of online pimping of former girlfriends.
Me teaching people how I managed females in those 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 obeyed me.
So I'm not sure how good a business that is, but it seems to be successful.
Until now.
Prosecutors in Romania have filed formal charges against the controversial influencer Andrew Tate, his brother Tristan, and two Romanian associates. The charges include rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group, as well as illegally accessing a computer system and violence against one of the alleged victims.
We have an open criminal investigation. I am absolutely not really sure I'll be found innocent. I know the case better than you. I know it intimately, and you don't. I have seen all the criminal files and the evidence against me, and you haven't.
As an older person, you're just like, he's just ridiculous. As a teenage boy, I don't know. He must he obviously strikes a chord. Teenage boys are lapping it up, including boys in Australia.
And what do we know about how popular he is in Australia. How are boys here engaging with him and his content.
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 seventeen hundred Australian boys and they found that ninety two percent of them were aware of Tait, and a quarter of them, you know, saw him as a role model. There's been a couple of researchers, Stephanie Westcott a lecture at Monash University's School of Education, Culture
and Society and her colleague, professor Stephen Roberts. They call it a type of misogynist radicalization that's happening online. So last year, Stephanie Wescott and Stephen 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 misogynists radicalization 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 studies that particular phase that 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 are basically finding all these little mini taps sitting in the back row making their lives hell and 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 twenty five, 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.
And you mentioned that teachers, you know, female teachers in particular, are concerned by what impact this is having on classrooms. And there, I guess at the frontline of witnessing Andrew Take's influence on teenage boys, what do they say about the impact it's having.
The last few years, there's been a real up in of the anti 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 how they take up space. They're always in a gang, and she said it was really cliched, except they weren't doing it before they 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 tiny opening in a classroom is sort of manipulated into these discussions about a woman's inferiority, and you know, it's been hellish, absolute hell to try and combat this while continue with educating a 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've watched 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 that's really scary thing is that the female teachers don't want to be there either.
After the break, what the women leaving teaching say is happening in their classrooms and a female teachers are sounding the alarm of Andrew takes influence in the classroom. What kind of impact is it having on female teachers, you know, how they feel about their jobs.
Yeah, well, I mean we're in a crisis at the moment where there's not enough teachers or 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 they were sharing porn and sort of looking at her and snickering, and would 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, that there's this idea that it's because a women 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 is 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 even entered the room, just because of who and what she is.
I think that's really troubling.
What's being done to address the impact this is having, not just on kids in the classroom, but on teachers as well.
Yeah, well, I mean I don't think anything's really been done to support them. There's been some moves to address the misogynistic attitudes in school and to deal with toxic masculinity online. The federal government is trialing a Healthy Masculinities Project, which is I think it's about a three point five million dollar project, three year trial program to combat they say harmful gender stereotypes perpetuated online. I think, you know,
that's great, it's good. I mean, 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 sort of unpack these issues. I think Andrew tat is obviously a symptom of a larger problem. It's the online manisphere, which is sort of you know, it's a lure, and these boys
kind of fall into it. It's very comfortable answers to uncomfortable questions 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 an university degree. They don't 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 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 while we're trying to help women and girls see themselves as subjects, not objects, and that is.
Because they're as 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 burnt 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?
And Anna, I think there's a tendency to kind of write off influences 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 Tait as well?
I guess we could apply it to the individual Andrew Tait. For sure, he is already Yesterday's news. He's under house arrest. Can watch videos of him pacing under house arrests, smoking cigars and really quite troubled and he's getting out his warrior mode at the moment. So he is yesterday's news. There is absolutely no doubt that there's someone else who's 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 to the world where the next door neighbors 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 say when someone says something. 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.
Ada, thanks so much for your time today.
Thanks Age.
We'll be back tomorrow with an episode about how the most offensive duo on Australian radio we're handed a two hundred million dollar contract, the gamble the network was making, and what it means now that the bet seems to have fallen apart.
I think aarn have been talking about the business of Kyl and Jackie Oh and how that business is broken for a long time in boardrooms around the country. The contract is insane. It should never have gone ahead.
I'm Daniel James. Thanks for listening to seven AM. We'll be back tomorrow.
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