Name: A “progressive Andrew Tate” isn’t the antidote to male radicalization | Richard Reeves
Uploaded: 2026-01-12T18:07:29.000Z
Duration: 25 min 21 s
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Modal verbs - A2

I think the idea that you can somehow just invent like a progressive version of Andrew Tate or somebody and just throw them online, add water, and

here's this new, suddenly globally famous alternative.

But the bigger issue for me is that the best antidote to an unserious online male role model, I'm using that term advisedly, is an in real life flesh and blood actual man.

By having male teachers, male coaches, fathers, uncles, neighbors, etc.

Just being a living and breathing version of what it means to be a man.

I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men, will believe their eyes more than their ears.

If there's a lack of real life men showing what it means to be a man rather than telling you how to be a man, then I think that creates a vacuum which then gets filled by online figures.

I'm president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.

I'm also the author of the Book of Boys and why the Modern Male Is Struggling, why that Matters and what to Do About It.

If we're not careful, these conversations can shut the conversation down with boys and young men rather than opening it up.

And so when we're talking about online influencers, we're talking about some of the kind of reactionary figures online.

Sometimes parents sort of react to discovering that their son, for example, is consuming video content from somebody like Andrew Tate, pretty well known misogynist influencer.

It's almost like they're watching hardcore porn.

You know, they sort of, they slam the laptop with the same kind of moral fervor as if they caught them looking at some pretty kind of horrible porn.

You've got to figure out like, well, why are you interested in this?

Because one of the things that the most successful reactionary online figures say is nobody will want you to talk about watching my stuff or listening to my stuff.

If you even mention to somebody that you're interested in this, watch how they react, watch how your mom reacts, watch how your school reacts and see how they react.

And then, so sure enough, if you raise this issue, you say to your mom that you've been consuming some of this content or you're doubting some of what you've been taught.

And if the reaction is immediate, like how dare you Watch.

You've just proved the point that the reactionary was making.

And this is one of those moments where it's hard.

But speaking here as a parent as much as a policy wonk, is that you take some deep breaths, you try to be open minded, you don't in any way compromise your own values and you have some curiosity and you try to become an ally and a partner to your son as they navigate this difficult online world and offline world.

And I worry sometimes that the uninformed, frankly reaction that many middle aged policymakers are having to some of these issues online, a they look out of touch and they sound out of touch, but

it also has this really chilling effect on an open conversation about what's really going on.

And that then just drives these boys and young men even further into the recesses of what's online.

The question is, who's having an honest and good faith conversation about this?

And I don't think that forcing boys and girls to kind of watch a fictional drama in schools, which is by definition fictional and not true to life in many ways, is going to open up that conversation.

At least it won't open it up for most boys.

So I worry that it'll actually backfire and be unhelpful.

There's a big difference between a show like adolescence becoming a big Netflix hit for people watching it and governments, as the UK government has proposing showing that in every secondary school, then it's an matter of policy and therefore I think it becomes an issue that we should pay more attention to.

And there's a real danger that you take something that's fictional and assume that it's more true to life than it really is.

It can make many parents fear that they're kind of inadvertently raising a monster, which is almost certainly not true.

So the good news about something like a show like adolescence is that it draws attention to some of the kind of risks online, some of the more reactionary figures online.

But the downside is that it can run into this common problem we have when we're discussing the issues of boys and men, which is that they're just a couple of clicks away from becoming kind of an incel violent criminal.

And their presumption that that might be about to happen can actually shut the conversation down.

It grows organically, it grows through algorithms, it grows through clicks.

And so I think it's just unrealistic to think you can somehow just create these things don't get created that way.

So first of all, it's very naive, I think.

But the bigger issue for me is that the best antidote to an unserious online male role model, I'm using that term advisedly, is an in real life flesh and blood actual man in the lives of boys.

The way to beat the online version of it is by having male teachers, male coaches, fathers, uncles, neighbors, etc.

I continue to believe that in the long run, boys, young men will believe their eyes more than their ears.

And so if there isn't enough of a sense of what does it mean to be a man in my community, in my home, in my school, etc.

I honestly believe that the way to beat the online world is offline, is in real life.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be online.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't, of course, support the people who are, and

there are lots of people in the so called manosphere, a term that I think is probably now redundant because I don't know who's included it anymore.

But there are lots of guys online doing fitness stuff, doing kind of motivational stuff.

I really love, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Pump Club.

I don't know if you've seen any of that, but what's great about that is that, and

probably I sympathize with this, somebody will show a video of themselves doing their first push up, right?

And they managed to do like one or two push ups.

And then Arnold himself will come on and say, that's great, go for it, etc.

It's incredibly warm and it's like welcoming.

And so there's a lot of really great stuff happening around this stuff online.

But in the long run, you can beat an Andrew Tate video with a classroom exercise or a hike up the mountain with your scout group any day of the week.

If there's a young man and he kind of watches some stuff online and it's kind of, and

it drifts into kind of misogynist stuff, Whatever.

Then first of all, which man is he going to talk to about that?

Certainly it's something I spoke to my sons about.

But who are they going to talk to about that?

Who are they going to test those ideas on?

So is there a man in their lives they can test that on?

But also then they're going to look at the guys and they're going to say, does my teacher or my scout leader or my uncle act like Andrew Tate?

Should we have male only spaces or female only spaces?

Maybe we should just get rid of them altogether.

I think as a general point, we don't want them in the workplace as places where power and favors are traded.

There's a reasonable suspicion of what was called the old Boys club and the idea that kind of men were congregating in male spaces and that power and influence were being shared in those spaces.

We quite rightly tried to turn against that.

But that's very different to the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts.

It's very different to youth organizations.

And I think it's a mistake to move from the correct claim that we shouldn't have an old boys club to saying that we shouldn't have Boy Scouts or we shouldn't have single sex classes or even single sex sports for both boys and girls.

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A “progressive Andrew Tate” isn’t the antidote to male radicalization | Richard Reeves

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