My Musings On Masculinity #2 — My Son And Andrew Tate

At the start of this month, two things happened that caused me to sit up as a parent and take notice of my son.

The first thing that happened was that my 15-year-old boy was, for a minute or two, a mini cyberbully!

The second was a recent survey where one in four UK Gen Z males aged 16 to 29 revealed that they believed it’s harder to be a man nowadays. A fifth of the 3,716 people polled in this survey looked favorably upon former British-American kickboxer and social media influencer Andrew Tate, as well as others like bestselling author and Canadian academic Jordan Peterson, as role models.

Let’s start with my son and his brief stint as a cyberbully.

My Son The “Accidental” Cyberbully

On 1 February, a classmate texted a question in my son’s class WhatsApp group chat. The classmate wanted to find out about a girl in a different class and asked if anyone in the group knew her. My son did, or rather, knew who she was. Unfortunately, in typical teen fashion, he replied without thinking and said some pretty nasty things about the poor girl.

To his credit though, my son quickly realized that it was probably not the right thing to say. So, he deleted it for everyone in the chat group the very next minute. Unfortunately for him, someone in the chat group took a screenshot of his text before he deleted it.

What followed thereafter was of course pretty predictable. Word got out, the girl got upset, and the school investigated. To cut a long story short, the school gave my son detention and made him file an incident report.

[I’m still mulling over whether or not I should also impose some kind of ‘consequence’ on him]

Now onto the other thing — Gen Z males in the UK. And Andrew Tate.

Toxic Masculinity? Or…

In a report published on 1 February by King’s College London, the results of their recent research indicated that many Gen Z males in the UK felt that feminism did more harm to society than good. The overall sense was that more younger men today felt less confident about their identity and place in society, and that it was harder being a guy than ever before.

To help mitigate their feelings of inadequacy, these Gen Z-ers are turning to the likes of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson to bolster their sense of masculinity and to recapture some measure of control and assertiveness. To regain, as it were, a foothold of their gender superiority in the face of feminism and the now ubiquitous #MeToo movement.

Now for those of us who might still be living under a rock and haven’t heard of Andrew or Jordan, let’s just say they are the modern-day poster guys for tough, in-your-face toxic masculinity (a term I discussed at some length in a previous post). While I never approve of the forthright aggression these men often push out publicly, I can understand to a degree why their toxic alpha-maleness can appeal to impressionable young men like my son.

For a while, many memes and videos about Andrew Tate appeared on my son’s online feeds. While my son claims they were pushed on him and that he never actively sought them out, certain behaviors and traits in my son over the past two years suggest that the viewing of such toxic masculinity did influence to some extent his view of men and women in society.

…A Cry For Help?

Up until recently, I would sometimes hear my son talk arrogantly about how men are better than women. Men were less needy than women. How men were in many ways more important and superior to women.

These made me wonder if he was displaying signs of toxic masculinity. Or was it just a phase common among boys across millennia? As a parent, I certainly have my concerns. And for sure, having such misogynistic role models like Andrew Tate in our world today doesn’t help.

But, as spelled out in a recent article in The Guardian, Tate and his ilk are but a symptom. The root cause is how society today often punishes inherent masculine traits like “competitive zeal” and “friendly banter”, instead of striving to understand them and to channel these traits along more positive avenues of expression.

Such “punishments” often take the form of power imbalances, where the tables are turned, and boys find themselves bullied by girls (no doubt fueled by feminism and contemporary movements like #MeToo). And, like anyone bullied into a corner with little room for maneuvering, the recourse is to either capitulate or retaliate. If the latter, there can be no winners; only a fragmented society.

If only we could see these outward behaviors for what I believe they are: a cry for help.

Son, Never Forget That Both Genders Matter!

As a dad, I need to converse more with my son about how men and women in society are meant to complement rather than compete with one another. That, since time began, both genders are equally of worth, value, and necessity in forming stable societies. We can’t do without each other, so we must work together and not be adversarial.

To do that for him, I must begin from a place of clarity. I must help him understand what are the complementary roles men and women play. Roles that help society flourish all these centuries.

Easier said than done, given the unhealthy societal trends and ongoing harmful media portrayals of gender.

Thankfully, parents like me who have invested emotionally in our children since they were born, can take heart.

For instance, as soon as my son came home on 1 February, he immediately told me what happened.

Now stop and think about it for a moment. How many teen boys do you know would come clean so voluntarily and instantly to their dad about something like that?! I know if it was me, I would have kept mum until the moment I had no choice. Which is usually the moment the school contacts the parent!

Somewhere in our father-son relationship, I must have done something right for my son to trust me not to fly off the handle at the news. And indeed I didn’t fly off. I was calm and listened to him throughout his sharing, making sure to wear a poker face the whole time.

In my quest to learn how to parent my son well in this contentious issue of gender (and other societal issues), I will have to fall back on all my years of emotional investment in his upbringing if I’m to continue keeping his trust and helping him learn how to treat the opposite sex with respect and dignity.

Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, if you have any ideas about the “right consequence” for me to mete out for my son’s cyberbullying, I look forward to hearing from you!