Rachel Giese, author of Boys: What it means to become a man, says the current cultural context is crucial to understanding why a return to the traditional gender roles espoused by creators like Tate appeals to some young men and boys.
“I think that part of it is that young men don’t know how to be men right now. I think our culture is somewhat in a period of flux and change when it comes to gender roles and gender fluidity,” says Giese.
Having been promised that power, success and privilege were their birthright through gender, some young men are overwhelmed by the changes.
“Boys are lonely. They don’t know how to be. They want to feel like they fit in, they want answers, they want stability and rules in a world that feels really in flux. Where they don’t know how to be and don’t know where they fit in,” Giese says.
When it comes to creators like Andrew Tate, “I think that there’s something for young men who might feel a sense of, ‘I have no idea how to act or behave right now, and I feel bad all the time’. To be told here, here are the answers, can be incredibly appealing,” Giese says.
“They feel that being a boy is a bad thing. People talk about privilege, and a lot of young men are not privileged and don’t feel privileged,” she adds.
Despite the changing social attitudes around gender, there remains a strong incentive for men and boys to perform a traditional expression of masculinity.
“When we think about what it means to be a man or the traditional idea of a successful man, there are still a lot of rewards in being able to perform that effectively,” says Giese.
“What I mean in this case,” she adds, “is physically substantial, tall, muscular, attractive to a certain degree. Competent, stoic, good in traditionally male dominated arenas like sports or leadership,” she says.
“A successful performance gives someone both a kind of social clout and a material clout,” says Giese.
These messages about what it means to be a man change based on factors like class and race.
“Traditional forms of masculinity may look different for working-class men. It could mean being good with your hands, being good at the trades, having a certain kind of swagger,” says Giese.
“For more middle and upper-class men it may be more in, say, a political kind of leadership. Or getting good grades, being successful in fields like law or medicine,” she adds.
It’s important to apply an intersectional approach when examining what masculinity demands of boys, notes Giese.
“There are ways in which certain racialized men are even more limited by norms of masculinity and put into roles of being either hyper-masculine in the case of Black men, or effeminate in the case of Asian men,” she says.
Further, says Giese, the ideals of masculinity are subject to change based on cultural values. Ghaleb Ghaleb (G.G.), 24, experienced this change firsthand when he moved from Saudi Arabia to Canada.
In his social innovation class, a group of students including G.G. decided they wanted to interview young men about masculinity, with the end goal of posting a series of YouTube videos that other men could watch and learn from.
Students participated with the Ottawa-based group, Masculinity: Under Construction to brainstorm, plan and execute the project. Masculinity: Under Construction offers a space for male-identifying people to meet and discuss masculinity, aiming to challenge themselves, acknowledge privilege, and build positive associations with masculinity.
G.G. says his personal interest in the project was prompted by the cultural differences he noticed after moving to Canada.
“Being a man from a hyper-masculine background and coming here to Canada, what I usually see as being a man kind of changed because of social structures here. I wanted to learn more,” he said.
In general, the messages about how boys should act start at birth, says Giese. For G.G. and the men he interviewed, many referenced the impact their father had on them from a young age, shaping their image of what it meant to be masculine.
“The minute that boys come into contact with the world, the world starts sending messages. Some parents might be able to protect their kids a bit more, but they’re everywhere.”
For an easy visualisation, a stroll down the baby aisle of your local superstore will do.
“You can see onesies with slogans on them that say things like ‘ladies man’ or ‘charmer’. There’s already a normalising of a certain kind of gender role that happens early on,” Giese points out.
She also references toys, television and movies as ways that young boys begin to absorb messages about gender.
It’s not just about looking good or being successful either, says Giese. Understanding gender roles can have a very real impact on a boy’s life, smoothing the experience of making friends and integrating into a social scene.
When boys reach preschool and kindergarten, “there’s a natural sort of jockeying to fit in, to understand the norms of a friendship, wanting to be inside, not outside,” says Giese.
Then comes adolescence. “Once kids get into early puberty and early teen years, those messages start coming from social media as well,” says Giese.
Part of the issue is the lack of adult moderation online. “Unlike school or sports where there are adults around, watching and present, it’s these spaces that are young people only where a lot of norms are set,” notes Giese.
A 2019 study of young men in Manchester by Innovation Unit found that parents felt incapable of effectively monitoring their children’s social media consumption due to a lack of technological savvy and social media transparency.
In a separate resource, The Global Boyhood Initiative recommends that parents choose the right moment and ask permission to discuss radical influencers with their children. This guide for discussing radical influencers stresses not to censor or judge your child, but to ask questions about context, and dig deeper into more critical topics once trust has been established.
According to the Initiative, this is key to figuring out what part of an influencer’s message resonates with your child, leaving the conversation open and reminding them that misogyny is deeply embedded in our culture.
When young men feel blame, or shame, they are less likely to listen. It can be difficult to facilitate productive conversations about influencers like Tate without prompting some boys to become defensive, says Giese.
“When we’re talking about young people who are still forming their identities, still forming their sense of self and still quite vulnerable in many ways, it really helps to go in without a lot of judgement,” she says.
“The last thing that’s going to work here is people who don’t understand or appreciate the culture coming from outside and being dismissive of … the needs and vulnerabilities that drew boys to these spaces in the first place,” says Giese.
It’s important to understand that boys find a sense of community in online spaces, and that creators like Andrew Tate exploit that need.
“Why aren’t there responsible, caring, decent spaces out there to address the needs that these sites are meeting?” Giese asks.
Rather than condemning or dismantling the spaces where boys congregate online, Giese suggests we need to provide healthy alternatives.
“Boys are engaging in these kind of social media spaces because they feel lonely, because they feel insecure, because they don’t feel like there’s someone who can talk to them. Because they want guidance and support,” she says.
Instead, “How do we create something that’s healthy and positive and has their best interests in mind. Is not exploiting them, is not using them for the eyeballs and the likes?” she asks.
Giese stresses the importance of teaching young men that there is no such thing as one singular performance of masculinity. Even for those men who perform and model masculinity to a tee, nothing is guaranteed.
“All masculinity is fragile, because it can be knocked apart or taken down. Particularly when it’s based on things like being strong, being financially successful, being romantically or sexually successful. Those are things that are always in flux,” she says.
“You’re constantly striving for something,” says Giese. “There’s never a landing or a satisfaction, or a chance of being okay in your own skin. You were always seeking approval from others, always seeking a top spot in a pecking order that is in flux.”