Andrew Tate and the Idea of the "Positive Male Role Model"

We assume young men lack role models, and desperately need them. But do they?

“Achilles introduced to Nestor” by Joseph-Désiré Court, 1821

The Guardian recently noted that the UK Labour party “would help schools to train young male influencers who can counter the negative impact of people like Andrew Tate (by providing) a powerful counterbalance to some of the negativity that young men might be exposed to online”, including (from the point of view of the report) pervasive misogyny and fake news.

Everyone seems to agree that young men’s current malaise is due to the absence of the right kinds of role models, and that the latter are essential to their healthy development. There’s plenty of research to back up this point, but the recent fixation on it contradicts my own experiences so I wanted to write about why, as well as talking about some under-discussed reasons someone like Tate might be popular.

When people talk about the absence of good male role models it’s generally in two positions, teachers and Dads. Let’s take each in turn.

I grew up in a place and time when having male teachers in Primary and Secondary school was very common and, as all of my education up to 18 was in single-sex schools, marginally the norm. I can’t recall a single teacher that I would have regarded as a role model, and my teenage self would have found comical the idea that any of these crumbly and be-cardiganed specimens were worthy of imitation.

That’s how I felt at the time, but teachers are often cited as role models because they instil lessons that are only understood later; and that they will recognise or give vent to an aptitude in a child, giving it space to flower in a way it couldn’t before. This is often accompanied by wistful reminiscing about a “Dead Poet’s Society”-esque English teacher.

Both claims are typical of the muddiness of thinking around role-modelling. I enjoyed English classes in school and found them a relief from other subjects I didn’t naturally excel at. That enjoyment was often increased by teachers who felt the same way about the subject, some of whom were male. But it’s not correct to take those disparate facts together and conclude that my male English teachers were role models, and again, reflecting back on specifics I find no reason to believe that was so.

That’s not to denigrate the value of being a competent or encouraging teacher but the overwhelming factor was that a facility with an attraction to language is a part of my nature and would have burst out of me in any circumstances unless strongly and actively suppressed.

The other area where role models are considered essential and at present largely MIA are fathers. It’s obviously true that having a father in a child’s life is better than not; and that where a father is present that they model behaviours that kids will learn from. I am 100% certain that my own father (who was and is a great dad) did that for me in a way that was greatly beneficial. Even so, I think the idea of dads as role models tends to be either overrated and confused.

The first confounding factor is simple genetics, which means that young men will be somewhat like their father whether the father is around to model behaviours or not. The second is that many of the things that are passed off as role-modelling on the part of fathers are actually something else.

It’s common for people who grew up in two-parent households to feel that the Dad is like a formal head of state to their mum’s Prime Minister. In situations of conflict he is the one who would be less emotional, who becomes involved as a signal it’s really serious, and whose judgement you fear, but mum is the one who actually understands what is happening in the house and can effect change in your day to day life.

I appreciate everyone’s experience, even within two parent households, is different. Yes, I know plenty of well-functioning households where the dad is the softie and the mum is more distant, and that in most those roles are blurred. Yes, I also know of one-parent households where single mums and dads juggle both roles admirably. My only point here is to emphasise that fathers in two-parent households can provide a value that is often characterised as role-modelling but is really a different and complementary style of parental authority. It’s the father’s presence and the exercising of that authority that often makes the difference, not modelling behaviours.

Back to Tate, since that’s where we started. If role-models aren’t as important as we think, what is his existence and popularity attributable to?

In large part it’s the simple adolescent male enjoyment of obnoxiousness, passed through magnifying lenses of the internet and social media. An 11 year old watching Tate in 2024 is the equivalent of scratching a swear word into a school desk with a pen-knife 40 years ago.

The other largest part is a spiteful over-correction to the main thrust of popular culture with its loud fixation on respecting everyone’s feelings, making sure everyone’s involved, not saying the bad words or observing the bad facts. It has become commonplace to observe the divergence of the political opinions of young men and young women, but it’s true. It’s interesting to think of Tate as a result of the continuing drift of cultural bodies towards a set of ideas young men are very alienated from, even in places where men are found. If that has happened, it’s not surprising to find young men figuratively or literally withdrawing from mainstream spaces and creating ones that (whatever their other virtues) are too vulgar, mean-spirited and downwardly mobile to be worth gentrifying.

Ethan Strauss has commented on this process in American sports. He’s noted that when it comes down to it the product is fundamentally second-hand testosterone and feral competitiveness, but the people who own the product insist on presenting and it cloaked in strident social justice pageantry, as though the median consumer has the political values of a particularly obnoxious Ivy League freshman. He’s also noted the impact this has had on the consumption of the product.

You can see the growth in popularity of weightlifting, influencer boxing, and UFC as responses to that politicisation, the latter particularly. It’s violent and ugly and cruel and celebrates all those things without diluting or excusing them, as well as their linked values of courage, strength, and the uncomplaining endurance of pain. You will never arrive at a UFC bout and find the arena festooned in rainbow flags, or that the organisers are insisting participants take a knee to acknowledge the scourge of White Supremacy. Complaining out loud about those things might be boomerist cringe, but I don’t think you can exaggerate what a relief the whole UFC package is, to men in particular.

In these examples I’m of course mixing up societal, cultural and political change with biological sex, and it’s not as clear cut as that. Lots of women love sport as much as men, and lots of men are social justice activists. We shouldn’t take the absence of overt political messaging from a particular sphere as evidence that people are drawn to that sphere because they have the opposite views. Trump gets cheers when he attends MMA fights but it’s also true that MMA is one of the least racially homogenous sports going, so it’s not like it's a White Power meet up or anything.

The truth is that even the meekest of young men are drawn to cruelty, violence and vulgarity in a way that young women aren’t. That’s not an excuse for bad behaviour or a reason to tolerate boys being horrible shits to girls in the classroom. But the question isn’t about bad behaviour but the ability of our culture to mind-read young men, and the value of role models in managing their inner lives. Both seem more limited than we’re willing to admit. It’s obvious to me that the absolute worst thing anyone concerned about Tate could do is try to develop and promote alternative role models with the right kinds of political attitudes. Not only does it not work but it intensifies the need for spaces away from scolding and emotional micromanagement, and the desire to spit in the face of those things. 

I’m someone who had the increasingly uncommon benefit of growing up in a stable, comfortable and happy two parent household and schools with lots of same-sex teachers. I don’t doubt that role-modelling has value and that it’s value is greater in circumstances where young men don’t have any of those benefits. I’m sure some of the talk about the need for role-models stems from a sincere concern about young men’s psychological health and a desire to uplift it. For anyone coming at it from that perspective, I think it’s worth considering if the difference between young men’s lives in 2024 vs yesteryear is not an absence of role models, but of space.