By now, you may or may not have heard of Andrew Tate, a 35-year-old quasi-celebrity influencer and former kickboxer who has captured the attention of young men and boys online, and not for reasons that are any good. But with many parents unaware of their kids’ online activity, teachers are now coming out in full force on social media to deliver a stark warning about the damaging effect Tate and his ideologies are having on young minds.
Tate’s content is nearly impossible to avoid on streaming platforms such as Twitch and TikTok, where his young fans re-post and regurgitate his videos. His extremely misogynistic rhetoric includes beliefs that women are “property” to be owned my men and not allowed to leave the house, that women share the blame for being raped based on how they act and dress, and that men should date 18 and 19-year-old women who are less experienced in order to make an “imprint” on them.
Additionally, Tate was kicked off of the U.K. reality series Big Brother in 2016 after video surfaced of him beating a woman with a belt. Recently, he was under investigation for human trafficking in Romania, where he claimed to have moved because it’s apparently easier to be cleared of rape charges in Eastern Europe.
And boys, some as young as 11 or 12, are listening very closely to what Tate has to say.
One Reddit post, in particular, posted to r/teachers, has gone extremely viral, from a teacher who is witnessing this happen first-hand in her classroom. “Have y’all heard of a sexist, misogynistic, disgusting excuse of human being known as Andrew Tate?” asked the Reddit user. “Well, I promise you all your middle school and high school boys have, and they’re addicted to his content.”
She writes that in addition to making extremely misogynistic claims, some of her students are outright refusing to engage in assignments involving female authors. And, in at least one instance, a father even agreed with the beliefs his son was espousing.
“It’s been only two weeks of school and these young boys are losing it. I’ve never heard such vitriol from young boys since this Andrew Tate guy came on the scene,” the teacher added. “This rise of incel and misogynistic rhetoric is terrifying.”
After the post likewise went viral on Twitter, one user shared a TikTok video from a teacher who says that she’s had no shortage of male students telling her how much they love Tate. She said that earlier that day, she had an 11-year-old boy turn to a female student and tell her that she’s fat because “she sits at home and eats all day,” and that she uses men for money.
“And at least he’s a hard-working man and he ‘works’ for his money,” she explained, using finger-quotes. “They’re 11, OK? You need to be aware of what your kids are watching.”
One Instagram account geared towards empowering and supporting educators even put together a multi-step guide for what teachers can do when their students are being influenced by Tate.
“As much as I don’t want to give this loser any airtime, teachers NEED to know about him and what he does,” reads the post. “Because it’s very likely (depending on the age of your students), that they have seen one of his videos, and if they have seen one of his videos, they have been exposed to some very very problematic and dangerous views.”
Terrifying, indeed. And, it goes without saying that teachers definitely do not get paid enough to deal with this garbage.