Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. For
Speaker 1: some time now, an alarming number of Australian boys have
Speaker 1: been engaging with and looking up to, the misogynistic influencer
Speaker 1: Andrew Tate. And this week the conversation about misogyny and
Speaker 1: the manisphere has resurfaced. Social Services Minister Tanya Plipasek has
Speaker 1: accused married at First Side of platforming, coercive control and misogyny.
Speaker 1: Netflix has released Louis the Roue's Inside the Manisphere. A
Speaker 1: fresh research suggests roughly forty percent of teenage boys surveyed
Speaker 1: agreed that women lie about domestic and sexual violence. Takes influence,
Speaker 1: is warping classroom conversations, driving female peers to the fringe
Speaker 1: of discussion, and even causing some teachers to quit. So
Speaker 1: why are misogynistic influencers reaching so many young men?
Speaker 2: Today?
Speaker 1: We're bringing you an episode from twenty twenty four where
Speaker 1: Ange McCormack speaks to author and journalists and a I
Speaker 1: beout the misogynist radicalization in our schools. It's Sunday, March fifteen.
Speaker 1: This episode was first published in March twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Anna, you've written about Andrew Tate, and a lot of
Speaker 3: people will be aware of that name, I think. But
Speaker 3: as someone who's gone down some online rabbit holes for
Speaker 3: this story, can you tell us who is Andrew Tate?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 4: So basically, broadly speaking, he's I guess he's a misogynist.
Speaker 5: Controversial online influencer, Andrew.
Speaker 2: Tit Andrew Tait. Perhaps you're watching and thinking, who is
Speaker 2: Andrew Tate?
Speaker 5: I know women because I made a lot of money
Speaker 5: for women.
Speaker 6: Let me tell you something. I've been attacked plenty of times,
Speaker 6: and I've talked about this in another video already, but
Speaker 6: absolutely feeble.
Speaker 4: Andrew Tate's misogyny is quite out there. It's, you know,
Speaker 4: belong in the home. Men should be allowed to cheat,
Speaker 4: but not women. You know, grip her up by the
Speaker 4: throat kind of thing. Women shouldn't be allowed to drive.
Speaker 4: You know, it's really aggressive, beat women back into their
Speaker 4: boxes kind of stuff.
Speaker 6: They're useless, they ain't ready for the big man's slap.
Speaker 7: I've got a big hand.
Speaker 4: I guess what struck me about Andrew Taate was he
Speaker 4: was a little bit like Donald Trump for teens. He's
Speaker 4: got the swagger and the shamelessness about him that is
Speaker 4: very Trumpian.
Speaker 7: Every single time girl. Girls don't like being second place.
Speaker 7: Girls like being number ones every time I have a
Speaker 7: girlfriend or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got lots of girlfriends.
Speaker 7: Every time I get a chick, she's like, you and
Speaker 7: your brother, You're weird. You're weird, you're too friendly, You're
Speaker 7: weird trying to drive that wedgend. I would sooner shoot
Speaker 7: you in the head, bitch to stop talking.
Speaker 4: To my brother. Obviously, he doesn't look like Trump. He
Speaker 4: is a former kickboxer. He's very proud of his body.
Speaker 4: He's very sculpted.
Speaker 5: Coffee, cigars, lot of meat and hard train.
Speaker 6: And I'm thirty five and I've never had a single
Speaker 6: injection in my body.
Speaker 4: He sees himself as a businessman, which involves sort of
Speaker 4: online pimping of former girlfriends.
Speaker 6: Me teaching people how I managed females in those scenarios,
Speaker 6: how I controlled their emotions, how I convinced them to
Speaker 6: work and give me most of their money, how I
Speaker 6: convinced them to share me with other women, why they
Speaker 6: obeyed me.
Speaker 4: So I'm not sure how good a business that is,
Speaker 4: but it seems to be successful.
Speaker 2: Until now.
Speaker 8: Prosecutors in Romania have filed formal charges against the controversial
Speaker 8: influencer Andrew Tate, his brother Tristan, and two Romanian associates.
Speaker 8: The charges include rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized
Speaker 8: crime group, as well as illegally accessing a computer system
Speaker 8: and violence against one of the alleged victims.
Speaker 5: We have an open criminal investigation. I am absolutely not
Speaker 5: really sure I'll be found innocent. I know the case
Speaker 5: better than you. I know it intimately, and you don't.
Speaker 5: I have seen all the criminal files and the evidence
Speaker 5: against me, and you haven't.
Speaker 4: As an older person, you're just like, he's just ridiculous.
Speaker 4: As a teenage boy, I don't know. He must he
Speaker 4: obviously strikes a chord. Teenage boys are lapping it up,
Speaker 4: including boys in Australia.
Speaker 3: And what do we know about how popular he is
Speaker 3: in Australia. How are boys here engaging with him and
Speaker 3: his content.
Speaker 2: In terms of how popular he is in Australia.
Speaker 4: There was a recent survey done by the Man Cave,
Speaker 4: who do a lot of work in schools around masculinity,
Speaker 4: and they sort of did a survey of Australian boys.
Speaker 4: I think it was seventeen hundred Australian boys and they
Speaker 4: found that ninety two percent of them were aware of Tait,
Speaker 4: and a quarter of them, you know, saw him as
Speaker 4: a role model. There's been a couple of researchers, Stephanie
Speaker 4: Westcott a lecture at Monash University's School of Education, Culture
Speaker 4: and Society and her colleague, professor Stephen Roberts. They call
Speaker 4: it a type of misogynist radicalization that's happening online. So
Speaker 4: last year, Stephanie Wescott and Stephen Roberts put a call
Speaker 4: out on social media to female teachers at private and
Speaker 4: public schools across Australia to partake in a study about
Speaker 4: possible misogynists radicalization of their students in school, and they
Speaker 4: were inundated with responses from female teachers. Roberts was telling
Speaker 4: me how they still have teachers getting in contact even
Speaker 4: though the studies that particular phase that their research is finished,
Speaker 4: they still have teachers getting in touch saying please, I'm
Speaker 4: desperate to talk about it to someone. So you've got
Speaker 4: these female teachers are basically finding all these little mini
Speaker 4: taps sitting in the back row making their lives hell
Speaker 4: and other students' lives hell as well.
Speaker 2: It's not all boys. That's really important to note.
Speaker 4: For the teachers that they spoke to and the teachers
Speaker 4: that I spoke to, it's usually about five boys in
Speaker 4: a classroom of say twenty five, but that's a pretty
Speaker 4: hefty weight there, and especially in the way that they
Speaker 4: act and the way that they perform this masculinity. It
Speaker 4: takes up a lot of space and it.
Speaker 2: Really suffocates the room.
Speaker 3: And you mentioned that teachers, you know, female teachers in particular,
Speaker 3: are concerned by what impact this is having on classrooms.
Speaker 3: And there, I guess at the frontline of witnessing Andrew
Speaker 3: Take's influence on teenage boys, what do they say about
Speaker 3: the impact it's having.
Speaker 4: The last few years, there's been a real up in
Speaker 4: of the anti for female teachers. A lot of them
Speaker 4: talk about from the moment they enter that room, they're
Speaker 4: in a really combative atmosphere coming from these guys sitting
Speaker 4: at the back. And one of the teachers was talking
Speaker 4: to me about how how they take up space. They're
Speaker 4: always in a gang, and she said it was really cliched,
Speaker 4: except they weren't doing it before they got their feet
Speaker 4: on the desk, and they're constantly baiting females, constantly trying
Speaker 4: to turn every single part of the class into a
Speaker 4: discussion about whether a woman is worthy of what she
Speaker 4: currently has in society, and should women be allowed to drive?
Speaker 4: And why should a woman be telling a man what
Speaker 4: to do? And every sort of tiny opening in a
Speaker 4: classroom is sort of manipulated into these discussions about a
Speaker 4: woman's inferiority, and you know, it's been hellish, absolute hell
Speaker 4: to try and combat this while continue with educating a
Speaker 4: class and trying to make the others feel safe and welcome.
Speaker 4: A lot of the female teachers have spoken about this
Speaker 4: incredible sadness as they've watched their female students slowly shut down,
Speaker 4: not so much shrinking, because it's not as if they
Speaker 4: really believe they're not taking what these boys are saying
Speaker 4: on board.
Speaker 2: But it's just too difficult to combat.
Speaker 4: There's no point in engaging, so they stop talking. The
Speaker 4: male students who aren't like that sort of stare out
Speaker 4: the window, just in a desperate gaze of trying to
Speaker 4: be anywhere but there.
Speaker 2: So it's working.
Speaker 4: It's sort of this misogyny that's really working in the classroom.
Speaker 4: And that's really scary thing is that the female teachers
Speaker 4: don't want to be there either.
Speaker 3: After the break, what the women leaving teaching say is
Speaker 3: happening in their classrooms and a female teachers are sounding
Speaker 3: the alarm of Andrew takes influence in the classroom. What
Speaker 3: kind of impact is it having on female teachers, you know,
Speaker 3: how they feel about their jobs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean we're in a crisis at the
Speaker 4: moment where there's not enough teachers or at a teacher shortage,
Speaker 4: and women are leaving, they're leaving their profession. No one
Speaker 4: knows entirely what the numbers are exactly. I did speak
Speaker 4: to one female teacher who said, I'm out, I'm absolutely out.
Speaker 4: I've got an interview next week for a desk job,
Speaker 4: and she got that job. She's left teaching, and she
Speaker 4: just said it was just too much. It would get
Speaker 4: to the point where they were sharing porn and sort
Speaker 4: of looking at her and snickering, and would she would
Speaker 4: call it out, and it would just everything was an
Speaker 4: invitation to do battle. And you know, she felt very
Speaker 4: much unsupported by her the male leadership.
Speaker 2: And that was something I.
Speaker 4: Heard quite a lot of as well, that there's this
Speaker 4: idea that it's because a women teacher if she's having
Speaker 4: problems in her classroom it's because she hasn't got a
Speaker 4: good sense of discipline.
Speaker 2: She can't control her cohort.
Speaker 4: The irony being is that if a man can control
Speaker 4: his cohort, it's not necessarily because he's doing anything. It's
Speaker 4: just because he's a man, so these boys respect him.
Speaker 4: So she's sort of destined to fail before she's even
Speaker 4: entered the room, just because of who and what she is.
Speaker 2: I think that's really troubling.
Speaker 3: What's being done to address the impact this is having,
Speaker 3: not just on kids in the classroom, but on teachers
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean I don't think anything's really been
Speaker 4: done to support them. There's been some moves to address
Speaker 4: the misogynistic attitudes in school and to deal with toxic
Speaker 4: masculinity online. The federal government is trialing a Healthy Masculinities Project,
Speaker 4: which is I think it's about a three point five
Speaker 4: million dollar project, three year trial program to combat they
Speaker 4: say harmful gender stereotypes perpetuated online. I think, you know,
Speaker 4: that's great, it's good. I mean, understandably, I think female
Speaker 4: teachers are a bit wary of you know, is this
Speaker 4: actually going to be another thing on our plate to
Speaker 4: deal with as opposed to what's going on here? Where
Speaker 4: does this start? How can this end? And why is
Speaker 4: it always you know, our plate to sort of unpack
Speaker 4: these issues. I think Andrew tat is obviously a symptom
Speaker 4: of a larger problem. It's the online manisphere, which is
Speaker 4: sort of you know, it's a lure, and these boys
Speaker 4: kind of fall into it. It's very comfortable answers to
Speaker 4: uncomfortable questions having.
Speaker 2: My own boys.
Speaker 4: You know, they've only been on the earth for about
Speaker 4: ten years, right, so through their eyes, they haven't done
Speaker 4: an university degree. They don't they don't have this history
Speaker 4: of feminism and oppression. All they see are these sort
Speaker 4: of books telling girls that they're awesome, which is great,
Speaker 4: these huge celebrations of female footballers. They don't have the
Speaker 4: critical capacity to see, to look at Parliament and go,
Speaker 4: oh well, actually it's mainly men. They don't have the
Speaker 4: capacity to have that kind of critical analysis or to
Speaker 4: understand why it's so important to redistribute power. So sometimes
Speaker 4: I get frustrated at this idea of something that can
Speaker 4: be dealt with with respectful relationship discussions and almost airy
Speaker 4: fairy feelings, when I really think what these kids need
Speaker 4: is a history lesson there is a reason why we're
Speaker 4: doing redistribution of power. There is a reason while we're
Speaker 4: trying to help women and girls see themselves as subjects,
Speaker 4: not objects, and that is.
Speaker 2: Because they're as a history.
Speaker 4: When women tried to ride bicycles, people threw rocks at them,
Speaker 4: When women tried to order a beer at pubs, men
Speaker 4: poured beers over their head. When women tried to study
Speaker 4: at Cambridge University, male students burnt effigies of women. There
Speaker 4: is an absolute history to this, and if they don't
Speaker 4: know it, how are they supposed to understand what's happening
Speaker 4: right now?
Speaker 3: And Anna, I think there's a tendency to kind of
Speaker 3: write off influences in a way, you know, like despite
Speaker 3: their name. You know, some people don't really take their
Speaker 3: influence seriously. You know, the impact that they have is
Speaker 3: seen sometimes as a passing trend. And I guess that
Speaker 3: often bears out someone could be really popular, but then
Speaker 3: the world just moves on. Is that an argument that
Speaker 3: we can apply here to Andrew Tait as well?
Speaker 4: I guess we could apply it to the individual Andrew Tait.
Speaker 4: For sure, he is already Yesterday's news. He's under house arrest.
Speaker 4: Can watch videos of him pacing under house arrests, smoking
Speaker 4: cigars and really quite troubled and he's getting out his
Speaker 4: warrior mode at the moment. So he is yesterday's news.
Speaker 4: There is absolutely no doubt that there's someone else who's
Speaker 4: already risen in his place. I think there's too much
Speaker 4: talk about protecting young people. I think there's just not
Speaker 4: enough truth telling when it comes down to young people.
Speaker 4: And even if you were to protect your child, your
Speaker 4: cocoon your child and make sure that you're watching their
Speaker 4: time on the internet, it doesn't matter. You're sending them
Speaker 4: out to the world where the next door neighbors don't,
Speaker 4: Which is why I just.
Speaker 2: Feel like they need to know history. History is so important.
Speaker 4: We can talk to them about what to say when
Speaker 4: someone says something. How do they actually know what's right
Speaker 4: and what's wrong. How do you get that down into
Speaker 4: their gut. I think that's the most important thing.
Speaker 3: Ada, thanks so much for your time today.
Speaker 2: Thanks Age.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with an episode about how the
Speaker 1: most offensive duo on Australian radio we're handed a two
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar contract, the gamble the network was making,
Speaker 1: and what it means now that the bet seems to
Speaker 1: have fallen apart.
Speaker 9: I think aarn have been talking about the business of
Speaker 9: Kyl and Jackie Oh and how that business is broken
Speaker 9: for a long time in boardrooms around the country. The
Speaker 9: contract is insane. It should never have gone ahead.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James. Thanks for listening to seven AM. We'll
Speaker 1: be back tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Money