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‘Andrew Tate is a symptom, not the problem’: why young men are turning against feminism

Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers

“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.

When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”

Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.

“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.

But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”

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  • Every single day I see a new reason why I am glad I pulled my daughter out of the hell that is public middle school and put her into online school.

    She told me yesterday that boys got into fights in the hallways almost every week. There were definitely fights between kids my middle school, but usually not on school grounds, almost never during the school day, and not constantly for sure. This isn't some low income, underfunded urban school, we're in a small city in Indiana.

    On top of that, the couple of friends my daughter had in that school vaped and smoked weed. They're between 12 and 13. Sure, I tried a cigarette at 13, but one cigarette. I didn't smoke weed until I was a junior in high school.

    What the fuck is happening in our schools?

    I just wish more parents, especially of girls, had the option to do what we did. We're lucky that we can survive (just barely) on a single income.

    • Just be careful that you don't "over protect" your daughter, and she ends up going off to college, and now with vastly more freedom and a spectrum of influence needs to "keep it on the rails". I have seen home school kids lose their shit when that time comes, as they never had to negotiate the gradual increase in both that level of freedom and influences on the way. I think of it much like the Amish Rumspringa ("rite of passage"), in that they go from a sheltered version of the world, to a much wider open one.

      • She has always been given a large amount of freedom and we have accepted her for whatever she wants as long as she is happy and healthy while she is in our care. We have never forced her to do anything she didn't want to do unless it was necessary (getting a vaccine for example). The only restrictions we have on her is that she has to get up for school on time, she has to finish all of her school work, and she has to do at least one extracurricular activity of her choice. Initially that was girl scouts, then she chose drum lessons, and now, after a couple of years, she just started drawing lessons.

        And in terms of social things, we have also been very open with her. When she was younger, we made sure she knew about birth control and STDs pretty much as soon as she asked where babies came from. It turned out to be less of an issue since she's only interested in girls, but we want her to know she can choose to have sex if she does it safely. We've also been extremely honest with her about drugs, about how there are addictive kinds like heroin and non-addictive kinds like weed and that the drug war is bullshit and that she is hearing a lot of propaganda. In fact, now that I can oversee her health classes (and social studies classes) I can directly say, "this is not true. They are lying to you." That's also a great asset when it comes to social studies. She's covering modern conflict in the middle east right now and I have been able to talk about things like American imperialism and Israeli apartheid (and now genocide) when the texts have been lacking- although they have been surprisingly good overall, if a little dated. And I doubt she would have even been covering that topic at all in her public middle school.

        • Sounds like you are doing a great job! Sorry my post was rather, judgy? I have just seen a good number of home school kids that either learn next to nothing useful, or worse, religious indoctrination with a splash of useless whitewashing of the world. It sounds like your daughter should turn out just fine, and I wish more people used home school as you have, to teach real topics in a way public school cannot without the Karen's ruining everything.

          • No no, it didn't seem judgy at all. I just wanted to clarify.

            Trust me, compared to the guy who is claiming it's my daughter's fault for being bullied because "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," you're calling her a straight A student and the most popular kid in school.

    • Every person I know who was home schooled is socially incompatible and I hope you reconsider your decision for your daughter's sake. Public school is hell but so is the rest of life after it, you can't shelter her forever.

      And boys fight, it's part of growing up. I don't know how you went to a public school and fighting wasn't common.

    • Damn, only a fight every week? They’re daily at my kids’ middle school. And not just the boys.

    • You had less drastic options than to pull your kid out of school, such as girls only school. I think you jumped the gun on this one.

      • First of all, there is no girls-only school in this town. The only private school is a Catholic school. My daughter is an atheist with Jewish heritage.

        Secondly, my daughter was so severely bullied that she actually had developed anxiety to the point that she had trouble going to a lunch party at the house of an old high school friend of mine with about 20 people in it. She was starting to get suicidal. She broke down one day and told us she literally could not go to school one more day because she was so bullied that even the bullied kids bullied her.

        Thirdly, you have no fucking idea what we have gone through to try to help our daughter make it through school and not end up severely scarred without the school doing a thing.

        Fourthly, I sincerely hope you never are in the position we've been in with a suicidal 13-year-old.

        But sure, judge me for doing what's best for my daughter, especially since she's so mentally healthy now that she was able to tell some girls from her old school that were harassing her at the roller skating rink to fuck off. She has never had that much self-esteem. She's also never had as many friends as she has now.

        She's in a state-funded program with really good teachers and she's getting a great education. I must be the most abusive parent ever.

        • Had a friend with a kid getting bullied badly before the start of covid. They said going online was the best thing for him, emotionally and grade-wise. Gave him a chance to break the anxiety cycle and room to breathe. I hope yours has found their way to thrive!

          Hey downvoters, the world doesn't always allow for convient or conventional solutions. Anything is better than a kid that calls it a day. Anything. Anything. Say it with me. Anything. I know of families that tried to pretend their kid's mental health was a phase to buckle down and push through. Want to guess the end to that story?

          • Thank you, she is definitely thriving now.

            I think part of the issue here is something I just clarified to someone else- homeschooling and online schooling are not the same. Homeschooling is where the parent acts as teacher. Online schooling is where the child works with real licensed teachers and has real graded assignments by those teachers using the same textbooks public schools use and live videoconference lessons every day.

            I'm glad your friend got their kid out too. I just wish more parents could, but it usually requires some parental supervision to keep the kid on track (unless you want your kid to fail), which means one parent has to stay home and that's not realistic for probably the vast majority of people in the U.S. My wife has a pretty good job and the cost of living here is low, so we're able to manage it as long as we generally do without luxuries.

        • Oh with added context your decisions make sense. I feel like you shouldn't be angry that some online stranger has no idea.

          I didn't consider that your situation involved dealing with someone suicidal. I hope it's not hyperbole on your part.

          My own position was the kid would lose out on valuable years of social development and engaging with other kids of her own age. I thought it was bullying but something that the kid was kind of dealing with in their own way but able to manage.

          Since you have said that your kid has got back her courage to flip the bird on her bullies and also gotten a lot of friend, Congratulations on the win! Don't let me or anybody tell you otherwise.

          Forgive me for saying "you jumped the gun" as it was judgemental. I only said it because i did not have the info you just posted.

          "homeschooling" triggered concern from my end because of some horror stories i hear about kids who are at college graduation age but stunted because of a common denominator that they were homeschooled.

          • I appreciate it and I apologize for snapping at you. Like two days ago someone called me abusive for the "crime" of letting my daughter be a girl scout and I'm still a little touchy.

            Also, to clarify, homeschooling and online schooling are very different. Homeschooling is where the parent is the teacher. I help her learn, mostly by keeping her focused and explaining things to her when she has trouble understanding, but I am not her teacher. She has live video classes with licensed teachers every day and her assignments are graded by those same teachers who also make themselves available to kids when class is not in session. And because it's a state school (although contracted out to a private company), it has to adhere to state education standards and there is no religious bullshit.

            She does have friends who are homeschooled because she is part of a social group for kids who are not being traditionally schooled, but I think that's usually a terrible idea. Unless you have a teaching degree, you really don't know anything about pedagogy. It's too early to tell how those children will do once they're adults, but considering I have heard the same stories, I have the same concerns.

            What's really bad here in Indiana is that you don't have to tell the state you're taking your kid out of school or prove that your kid is getting legitimately schooled. My daughter had a friend (he recently moved away) whose parents just left him at the library all day to fend for himself and had him use Khan Academy and called it his school. I felt so sorry for that kid. At least everyone who worked at the library knew him and looked out for him.

    • We had a bridge not too far away for our "real" fights. Strangely, the formality kept things more civil.

      Though there was one time a kid got literally thrown over the side of it. Water underneath so he was fine, but still was kinda crazy.

402 comments