Courses being run for teachers on how to tackle Andrew Tate’s views are selling out, with schools trying to prevent teenage boys from following what is being viewed as his toxic masculinity.
An expert who runs workshops challenging the beliefs that Tate promotes said schools that aren’t proactively tackling misogyny are laying foundations for “rape culture”.
Writer Matt Pinkett, an expert on boys, gender and masculinity, said toxic masculinity has just been tolerated in schools for years.
This includes behaviour like groping and any offensive sexual comments said to pupils or female teachers.
Pinkett held a number of workshops for teachers on this topic last weekend and they were completely sold out.
He gained mainstream notoriety for remarks that got him banned from all major social media platforms, although his Twitter account was reinstated in November after Elon Musk acquired the social media giant.
The 36-year-old has millions of followers on social media, and uses it to boast about how wealthy he is, including the expensive cars he owns.
The influencer and former kickboxer is currently being detained in Romania on suspicion of organised crime and human trafficking since late December, alongside his brother Tristan and two other suspects.
All four, who were initially detained in Bucharest in late December, had hoped to overturn a judge’s 20 January decision to extend for a second time their detention by 30 days at the request of prosecutors. They previously lost an appeal against an earlier extension.
A teacher told The Times that more needed to be done in schools to talk to boys about Tate and why they admire him so they can challenge these views.
He said: “Tate is just a personification of this rampant masculinity that’s existed in schools and been tolerated for years.
“Boys harass and abuse peers and teachers. Middle-ranking male teachers haven’t done enough to combat this.”
He added that sexualised behaviour has previously been “tolerated” in schools. Some took the attitude that “boys will be boys, it’s something you accept”, he said.
The teacher went on to explain that schools tend to racism and homophobia policies but very few have sexism policies.
He continued to explain that it’s become normal for boys to make sexual comments at young female teachers.
Girls can get groped in corridors and boys will talk about masturbation loudly while in class.
“Not all of them grasp that what they’re doing is sexual harassment.”
Pinkett co-wrote a book titled Boys Don’t Try: Rethinking Masculinity in Schools in 2019.
The author wrote how the issue of sexual harrassment in schools isn’t just a problem it’s a “catastrophe”, adding that it is the “toxic foundations of rape culture”.
Calling for pornography education, Pinkett also argues this could help to undo the harm done by extreme material being viewed by boys.
