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Parents, teachers and politicians are worried about the appeal of so-called “online misogyny influencers” to boys and young men.
These influencers post content to thousands of followers in videos and podcasts, offering advice about relationships, mental health and wellbeing, and achieving material success and status. They are believed to be having a negative effect on young men’s attitudes, beliefs and expectations, including about gender roles and relationships between men and women.
I’ve carried out extensive research with young people about sex and relationships for nearly a decade. We need to ask what the appeal of misogyny influencers among some young men tells us about how they feel about themselves, and what it means to be a man right now.
We also need to question what it tells us about our society’s failures to take the challenges young men face seriously. There seems to be a vacuum for these influencers to fill.
I use the term “misogynistic” to refer to clear expressions of outright hatred or dislike of women and girls – but also, more broadly, to the sharing of sexist ideas about both males and females.
We can understand the appeal of misogyny influencers by thinking about “push”, “pull” and “personal” factors.
Push factors come from the situations in which young men find themselves in society that makes misogyny influencers’ content resonate. One example is the perception that women and girls are achieving more in the workplace and at school, and that as a result, men and boys are being disadvantaged and left behind in terms of the opportunities and support available to them.
Pull factors are the tactics misogyny influencers use to enhance their appeal. These include the use of appealing visual content and sophisticated social media manipulation. They are able to create intense emotional responses through extreme messaging, while providing a community of like-minded others.
Personal factors then explain the different levels of vulnerability to the negative effect of these influencers among young men. Those who more acutely feel the pressure of expectations about masculinity from their peers may be particularly vulnerable.
This includes, for example, young men who are socially isolated or excluded, or those whose peers expect and celebrate forms of masculinity based on dominance and the heterosexual pursuit of, and success with, young women.
In research I conducted with boys aged 12 to 17 about sexual consent, I found they want consensual sexual interactions with girls but are concerned about dealing with the complexities of consent. They felt responsible as the supposed “initiators” of sex to seek and obtain consent. Most had been warned they may get into trouble legally if sex is not consensual.
For many, therefore, heterosexual interactions are fraught with the risk of unwanted sex – and of possible legal implications if a girl or young woman claims that sex is non-consensual.
But some of the boys also expressed hostile sentiments about girls and women, such as that they might “lie” about being sexually assaulted. Adults such as teachers may feel they need to shut down beliefs like this in an effort to take a zero-tolerance approach to the underlying causes of sexual harm – but this may lead to boys and young men feeling unheard.
I have found that their attitudes often reflect deeper-rooted uncertainties and anxieties that are not being meaningfully recognised or addressed.
Misogyny influencers such as Andrew Tate seem to provide boys and young men with a solution to these challenges, and a way to make sense of their feelings and experiences. Their solution often involves criticising progressive gender politics which, they argue, is damaging for both men and women. They in turn advocate a return to traditional gender roles.
These influencers present a celebratory version of masculinity. They legitimise, even agitate, male grievances and resentment, including towards women. Their content may be enticing to boys and young men who feel masculinity is being unfairly stigmatised and blamed.
It is a simplistic and divisive message. This form of masculinity is unlikely to be attainable, and may not even be desirable – a boy interviewed as part of my research said that “what most people want from a relationship is a nice relationship”.
Boys’ responses to such influencers are also likely to be nuanced. A report by the Global Boyhood Initiative, which provides resources as part of gender equality non-profit Equimundo, suggests that boys and young men hold different opinions about masculinity and have diverse masculine identities as individuals.
This suggests that some young men do not see masculinity displays such as those by Tate as something to be mindlessly copied or aspired to in full.
Furthermore, teenagers are attracted to risk and rebellion. The more that adults lecture boys and young men about the evils of misogyny influencers, the more attractive they may become, as they offer an opportunity to resist and rebel against adult norms.
It is therefore not enough to say the influencers are wrong or that young men should feel ashamed for liking them. We also need to offer a credible alternative.
Read more: Andrew Tate: how the 'manosphere' influencer is selling extreme masculinity to young men
Perhaps, though, we don’t yet know that alternative. As a society, we’re arguably still trying to figure out gender roles and relations and have not yet achieved consensus. We should, therefore, avoid shutting down, correcting or, worse, shaming young men who are grappling with these complexities.
Misogyny influencers are telling young men that no one is listening and they are being silenced, especially by people the influencers may consider feminist “man-haters”.
I’d suggest that it’s time to start listening more closely to boys and young men. We need to offer them the opportunity to play a positive role in identifying problems with misogynist beliefs, as well as developing other ways to view their place in society.
Emily Setty receives funding from the University of Surrey through internal grants, eNurture UKRI, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, and the Economic and Social Research Council.
Until the mid-19th century in Britain, watching someone die was considered a form of entertainment. Indeed, this shared experience shaped the landscape of London and bound the city together.
Entitled Executions, the current exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands tells the stories of tens of thousands of Londoners executed in public spaces across the city over almost 700 years, from 1196 to 1868 – the official recorded dates of its first and last public execution.
From gibbet cages erected on the main streets along the Thames, to pillories displayed for all to see at Charing Cross, and gallows at Tyburn (what is now Marble Arch) and Tower Bridge, public executions were a ritual which served several purposes. Learning about this history can offer insight into our contemporary appetite for – and apathy towards – the suffering of others.
Executing someone in public and leaving corpses and other decaying body parts on display for several days (or years, in the case of gibbet cages) worked as a deterrent to crime and rebellion. The gruesome sight and the smell shaped collective memory and were a reminder that nobody could escape the dire consequences of crime. The exhibition shows that no one was spared – from the common man to public figures of the time and, indeed, the King.
In his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, French philosopher Michel Foucault explains that public execution was not just about the “theatre of punishment”. It was also about the material expression of state power – a ceremony through which the hold that the state, the crown and the church exercised over the life and death of citizens was made clear.
Different typologies of crime called for different methods of execution. By the end of the 18th century, in England there were 220 offences – from treason to pick-pocketing – that were punishable by death. This ruthless penal system became known as the “bloody code”.
These executions could be attended by up to 50,000 spectators, bringing significant economic gain. Hawkers sold fruit, pies and beverages to the public queuing for hours at the gallows. Window views over the site of the execution were rented to those spectators who could afford them. Print shops distributed “execution broadsides” throughout the country, reporting the last dying speeches of the condemned and reflecting, often in satirical terms, on the nature of their crimes.
In 1722, printer Thomas Gent wrote that, as he was printing the dying speech of Christopher Layer, who had been hanged for treason, he was besieged by hawkers anxious for the publication and was unable to step outside his office until he had finished.
Public executions were not just about the sentencing of criminals. They were viewed as events that lasted several days where the hangman, the condemned, the priest and the governor were actors playing roles in a bigger collective spectacle – and where audience gratification was as important an element as the punishment itself.
In 1783, English writer Samuel Johnson was asked where he stood on the subject of public hanging, and whether he would favour the alternative of executing criminals right after the sentence and without public announcement. He did not, replying: “The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by the procession, the criminal supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?”
Less than a century later in 1849, however, Charles Dickens witnessed the hanging of Marie and Frederick Manning, a Swiss maid and her publican husband who were condemned for the murder of Irish customs officer Patrick O'Connor. The letter Dickens subsequently wrote to The Times was lamentful:
I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks, and language of the assembled spectators.
We know from literature, poetry and also science that the line between repulsion and attraction, horror and thrill, sublime and grotesque is fine. What sets the spectacle of public executions apart from these configurations is the staged, yet real, sensationalisation of an authentic tragedy.
Nowadays, images of death and suffering are routine in popular culture. In the age of tele-trauma, pain has been commodified. The suffering individual is lost and repackaged into a fictional other for our consumption.
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s work shows that consumption has nothing to do with gratifying our needs. Rather, it is the contemporary way in which we relate to one another and to society at large. In processing information from the media, we transform objects (reality) into signs (virtuality) to create alternative value-systems. These form a falsified reproduction of reality which alters public consciousness.
In other words, the media articulation of violent images and language produces specific meaning about the suffering of others. It shapes up specific ways in which we – the audience – engage with those distant and mediated vulnerabilities. This produces a shift in our response to pain and suffering. We move from empathy to apathy.
In the mid-19th century, Dickens was already noting how the spectacle of public execution triggered a collective disconnect from the suffering of others. In his letter to the Times he wrote:
When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. There was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgement.
Today we continue to both demonise and crave the vulnerability of others. The difference is that we no longer do it collectively in the public square, but intimately in our homes. It is an exercise which Baudrillard describes, in his 2000 book Screened Out, as a “great laundering”. By falsely identifying with distant victims of pain from our position of safety, we are able to condone our indifference and overwrite a more edifying, self-absolving story.
Caterina Nirta ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Pamela Anderson’s Netflix documentary is worth watching for many reasons, but one of the greatest lessons it has to offer is what a victim-survivor of intimate partner abuse looks like: resilient, resourceful, eternally optimistic and compassionate.
Unlike most other victim-survivors, Anderson has been granted a platform for a narrative we still rarely hear in the mass media but which professionals in the field have known for decades. People who experience intimate partner abuse are not the submissive stereotype but often strong willed and resistant.
Netflix are billing Pamela, A Love Story as a “humanising documentary”, necessary precisely because this is a woman who has been systematically dehumanised by media narratives throughout her life.
Anderson’s voice has always been drowned out by the stories other people have written about her. Most recently her experiences in her relationship with Tommy Lee and the exploitation of her reputation and private life have been mined without her consent in Hulu’s drama series, Pam and Tommy (2022).
This has prompted a woman who has finally found her power (spoiler, it was inside her all along) to tell her own story, out loud and in control of her narrative.
Narrative power is an important aspect of social identity – and taking control of it is one of the most powerful tools used by perpetrators of coercive and controlling behaviour.
Techniques such as gaslighting (where an abuser constructs a false reality by denying and contradicting their victim’s perception) manipulate and degrade the victim’s sense of reality and their sense of self. Yet it is not only within the abusive intimate relationship that a victim’s sense of identity can be warped by narrative.
Criminologist Nils Christie drew attention to what many of us think of when we consider victims of crime – especially victims of intimate partner abuse - in his classic work on the “ideal victim”. Christie explained that we view victims as inherently weak or vulnerable and that anyone who deviates from this is not considered a “real” victim.
In my research as an expert in intimate partner abuse, I often hear the common misconception that victims are submissive and dependent. Those who show resistance to their abuser are considered to be complicit or provocative.
Many victim-survivors I’ve spoken to explain – just like Anderson does in her Netflix documentary – that they do not perceive themselves as victims. This is because they do not align with the “ideal victim” stereotype. Instead, they see themselves as strong and fiercely independent, and with good reason.
Pamela Anderson is eternally optimistic and compassionate – she believes in love and romance. We hear the story of how Lee “wooed” her with constant messages and a whirlwind of drugs and champagne before they settled into a life dominated by his heavy drinking and control of her everyday activities.
It’s only looking back, she says, that she sees these red flags. Anderson continued to believe in her love story as she juggled young children, a gruelling work schedule and media onslaught.
“I thought I could love him/her better” is a common refrain in the work that I do. Persistence in an abusive relationship is not submission but fierce loyalty and generosity. Even after the relationship with Lee ends, Anderson retains her faith in romance, going on to marry three more times in attempt to find it.
It’s evident that she is not dependent on men – it’s clear that she was the one holding her life with Lee together. She just believes in the love stories we are all saturated in.
Anderson is also resilient. She withstood Lee’s demanding behaviour until the point that he attacked her physically.
At that point, she ended the relationship swiftly and with conviction, admitting that she was lucky to have the resources to do so. But she continues to co-parent with Lee and she endures the trauma of having had her most private moments revealed to the world in the infamous “sex tape” with integrity.
Read more: Don't watch Pam and Tommy – the series turns someone's trauma into entertainment
The documentary uses old photographs and videos to tell the story of how Anderson made a safe and happy life for her young sons, despite the heartbreak of “not being able to make it work with the father of my children” – a grief she carries still.
This is not to say that victim-survivors are invincible. Anderson explains that she doesn’t see herself as a victim, but as someone who puts herself into “crazy situations” and survives.
Anderson uses the status she has been conferred with – “sex-symbol” and “thing that belongs to the world” – to campaign for animal rights, an issue she is passionate about.
In a montage of chat show interviews, she is seen sidestepping the hosts’ jokes about “the sex tape” and relationship with Lee to talk about her work with the animal charity Peta. But the most poignant example of her resourcefulness comes through her pieces to camera – especially towards the end of the documentary, where we see her draw on her reputation and her survival instinct to train for the starring role in Chicago.
Anderson has transformed her experiences into wisdom, self-reliance and confidence.
In one of my research interviews, a victim-survivor told me: “I’m stronger than I could ever have been if this hadn’t happened.” This glows from Anderson too, as she’s shown performing on the Broadway stage at the end of the documentary.
It is not enough for Pamela Anderson to tell her story – it needs to be heard. I hope the world is ready to listen carefully.
Sarah Tatton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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