More Than A Magazine, A Movement
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern faced online vitriol at a rate between 50 and 90 times higher than any other high-profile figure.
Because men commit the vast majority of violence directed at women in politics, men who reject misogyny and violence have a special responsibility to call it out. What can men who believe in elementary fairness and other basic democratic values do? They can start by pushing back against the idea that violent rhetoric in politics is normal.
Most of Andrew Tate’s alleged criminal conduct took place in private. But his rise to fame—or infamy—took place in full public view. It is important to understand how and why all of this happened. Here are four “teachable moment” topics raised by the Andrew Tate saga:
1. Tate’s normalization of misogyny harms girls and young women.
2. The ideal of “manhood” Tate promotes harms boys and young men.
3. 3. For many uninformed young men, feminism is a hostile philosophy and feminists are caricatured villains.
4. There is a strong connection between misogyny and right-wing politics.
Andrew Tate has been called “The King of Toxic Masculinity.” TikTok videos that feature him or his ideas have received an estimated 11.6 billion views. But many of his most controversial—and widely shared—pronouncements are those about women.
He says he dates women aged 18–19 because he can “make an imprint” on them. He said women in heterosexual relationships “belong to the man.” He once lectured a group of young women that their career aspirations don’t matter and that the “happiest women” have children and a man who is paying their bills. Tate has helped to normalize expressions of overt misogyny.
It has simply become unthinkable for millions of white men to vote for a party they see—in crudely stereotypical and misogynous terms—as soft, weak and effeminate.
People think it’s so obvious the shooters are young men that there’s literally no point in saying so. In that sense, ‘gunman’ is internally redundant; everyone knows that ‘man’ follows ‘gun.’
As long as men, young and old, have easy access to high-capacity killing machines at the same time their society furnishes them with endless heroic masculine narratives about redemptive violence, the next tragedy is always going to be just around the corner.
As women from Tehran to Texas continue to fight fearlessly for basic respect and human rights, men have a choice to make: Do you stand with those women? Or do you sit this one out?
Will you go out and vote as an act of solidarity with the women you love and have always claimed to respect and support?
We send Ms. to 5,418 women in federal, state and county prisons through the Ms. magazine Prison and Domestic Violence Shelter Program—funded by charitable contributions earmarked for this purpose, as well as Ms. community members who buy an extra membership and subscription for a friend they don’t know. Over the 18 years since this program’s birth, we’ve discovered that even this small gesture of recognition, support and information means a lot.
If media commentators want to provide their audiences with deeper insights into the nature of the dangerous escalation in violent rhetoric and action that has accompanied the rise of Donald Trump and the radicalization of the GOP, examining the relationship between masculinities and violence is a good place to start.
Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel, It Ends With Us, was the sixth best-selling book of 2021, BookTok is going nuts over it and USA Today called it “the kind of book that gets handed down.” The novel centers on the relationship between Lily and Ryle, a young newlywed couple who live in Boston.
Hoover’s writing is being touted as part of a resurgence of romance writing, but It Ends With Us is not a romance novel; it’s a celebration of toxic masculinity.
U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back.
This week: State lawmakers come for abortion providers; Texas sues the Biden administration over HHS guidance; more than a dozen House Democrats get arrested at an abortion rights rally; The House passes landmark legislation; and more.
