“I didn’t know who Andrew Tate was, but my 13-year-old son did,” my colleague said and shook her head in amazement.
If you’ve been online recently you’ve likely seen articles emblazoned with Andrew Tate’s name, following the decision by Meta to ban the ex-kick boxer influencer from Facebook and Instagram for violating policies that prohibit “content that attacks, threatens, incites violence against, or otherwise dehumanizes an individual or a group.” For many, his name has seemed to appear out of nowhere, though in reality he’s been building a massive online following with millions of views on TikTok and YouTube, and a “Hustler University” on Discord which reportedly claims 100,000 members.
Tate brands himself as an “alpha male”—sporting aviator sunglasses inside and posing with cigars and fancy cars—and he gives advice on making money and how to “get” women.
What sets Tate's “lessons” apart from normal dating or life advice is that they are fundamentally rooted in sexual objectification.
Sexual objectification is the view or treatment of another person as merely, or disproportionately, a sexual thing or item. In this mindset, women become trophies that men earn and even deserve based on their success. Women are interchangeable, disposable, and lose value if they aren’t sexually available and at peak desirability.
He’s been slammed as a misogynist for statements such as:
– Spouting that “Females don’t have independent thought. They don’t come up with anything. They’re just empty vessels, waiting for someone to install the programming.”
– Describing his hypothetical reaction to a woman accusing him of cheating, stating, “Bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b*tch.”
– Saying women should “shut the f**k up, have kids, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee,” that men can cheat but women shouldn’t.
– And saying that 18-year-olds are “more attractive than 25-year-olds because they’ve been through less d**k.”
– While all of these comments are vile, even Tate’s more tame messages about relationships are damaging as they encourage men to use attention or success as a currency to accumulate sexual access to many women.
– Unfortunately, Andrew Tate is only the tip of the iceberg for online enticement of objectification.
Just look to YouTube videos telling boys how to convince a girl to send sexually explicit photos, for example. (Yes, unfortunately, that’s a popular genre of videos.)
When reviewing some of these videos I found comments like “Is 14 a little young for me to do this?” which received replies like “Nahhh get them nudes,” and “Well I’m 12 so…” Under the same video, a young girl commented: “When I first saw this and the title I thought wtf but as a woman (only 15) this is actually very accurate. Boys this man knows shit…. btw please don’t just use a girl (been there done that) I was dumb enough to trust a boy I thought loved me and will never trust again, don’t steal a girls confidence and trust, remember love is a girl’s life.”
Not to mention the essentially universal exposure to online pornography (one study found that 93% of surveyed males and 62% of surveyed females were first exposed to Internet pornography during their adolescents.) A 2018 study found a significant trend of eroticized violence against women in most online pornography. Females of all ages in this study were more likely to display pleasure in videos where they endured violence and aggression than videos where they did not.
Even movies like James Bond, and cultural “icons” like Playboy, center the idea of women as conquests for the elite, successful men.
Here’s the problem: sexual objectification is not something that happens in isolation. It fosters an acceptance of sexual violence.
Researchers have found that when someone is sexually objectifying another person, they are viewing them as if they are less deserving of moral treatment and as if they do not have a real, individual mind.
Another study states that the “frequency of exposure to men’s lifestyle magazines that objectify women, reality TV programs that objectify women, and pornography predicted more objectified [thoughts] about women, which, in turn, predicted stronger attitudes supportive of violence against women.” Others have found that objectifying TV and pornography each were associated with not only objectifying women but also “with greater rape myth acceptance and more frequent acts of sexual deception.”
Tate’s personal life seems to clearly mirror the research, with callous comments like “if you put yourself in a position to be raped, you must bare some responsibility.”
In a now-deleted YouTube video, Tate quipped that his recent choice to move to Romania was “probably 40%” due to his belief that it was easier to get off on rape charges in Eastern Europe. He said, “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free.”
Beyond this, Tate has also become a pornography “pimp,” as he purportedly owns a “camming” pornography livestream website, and he and his brother own a company that acts as a “manager” for OnlyFans accounts. It’s important to note that even mainstream pornography platforms have come under fire recently for facilitating sex trafficking and sexual abuse videos—leading to multiple lawsuits on behalf of survivors. Similarly, OnlyFans has been accused by a whistleblower of lenient action towards illegal videos as well.
It is particularly poignant, therefore, that Romanian police raided Andrew Tate’s house in April due to suspicion of human trafficking.
Andrew Tate isn’t the first pundit for sexual objectification or degrading views of women. In fact, objectification is often peddled by mainstream magazines, TV shows, and of course pornography. But it’s easier to see the damaging nature of such views when distilled into one persona.
Even if Tate is banned from every social media platform, there will be countless similar messages from other online personalities and even our mainstream entertainment at times. Objectification is a Hydra, and when one head is cut off, two more grow in its place.
And so, the greater challenge we face as a society is to recognize that the tentacles of sexual objectification and misogyny extend far beyond any one controversial figure. The real work is to call it out wherever it arises.
Haley McNamara is director of the Interational Centre on Sexual Exploitation, and vice president of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, (www.endsexualexploitation.org