Andrew Tate's impact on Catholic men
Role models, reddit, and Jesus' radical masculinity
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If there’s an online personality that’s the opposite of my own, it’s the manosphere influencer. And if there’s an online audience that’s the opposite of y’all, it’s incel reddit.
For those who aren’t familiar: incel = “involuntary celibate,” a label usually self-identified by men who, for a myriad of reasons, feel that they are unable to “get a girl,” therefore, “celibate” without choosing such. A man named Andrew Tate, banned from all social media platforms (besides X) for spreading hate speech against women and bearing a stockpile of criminal accusations, lawsuits, and investigations for human trafficking of minors, rape, beating of an ex-girlfriend, and sexual aggression, is often looked up to as the idol to conform oneself to. He presents himself as having the “ultimate masculine life” men who pity themselves often wish for: the 30+ luxury cars, sculpted body, ability to demean women into submission, and most importantly, an air of being a victim of “woke culture” just for being a straight, white man who doesn’t subscribe to ultra-liberal ideas.
Social media bans still don’t have the power to stop others from making anonymous fan accounts that circulate videos of Tate, and these accounts are aplenty. You can peruse incel reddit threads and Andrew Tate content if you choose, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The comments and ideas are bigoted and hateful to women at their mildest and advocating in favor of rape at their worst.
It’s tempting to write these off as fringe ideas that hardly anyone actually believes—isn’t it obvious that women’s whole existence isn’t for sex work, as Andrew Tate recently wrote? That there’s more to life than just getting rich? That the humanization of women doesn’t create the downfall of men? Red Pill groups rope new recruits in the way all successful groomers do: entice them with the simplest, least-controversial ideas first, and eventually the most radical ones become palatable, too.
Will and I watched Adolescence this week as part of my preparation for writing this article, a short series that brilliantly portrays Jamie, a 13-year-old boy’s, consequences of “swallowing the red pill” alone on his laptop late at night in his bedroom. One teen character explains to his dad a belief widespread in the manosphere he sees his peers subscribe to the idea that “80% of women are attracted to 20% of men.” Will and I reflected on how that would have been incredible easy for us to believe when we were in middle school, as most girls are more mature than most boys at this stage. If this one idea can be readily accepted by a young man as true, then the more obviously dangerous ones become easy to accept, too. Without much difficulty, an entire worldview is built upon victimization, “truth,” and the adrenaline rush of carrying a gasoline-drenched torch of ideas one knows gets them in trouble.
Necessary spoiler: he stabs a classmate to death because she wouldn’t date him, after he asked her out in the aftermath of her topless photos spreading around Snapchat. He admits to a prison psychologist that he thought he had a better chance with her, “because she was weak” after this event, and he already felt that he was counted among the 80% “unchosen” men, anyway.
He wasn’t raised in an abusive home that taught him murder, he was raised by loving, normal parents who didn’t know what he was looking at online. And that’s the point—hundreds of thousands of men who once looked up to their good-natured dads now find a role model in Andrew Tate.
The Concerning Overlap
I am worried that there are many men in our Church who once followed Jesus closely, but now see the Church’s stereotypes as a home for their shallow ideals of masculinity, which they idolize more. Or, they never followed Jesus at all, but proudly tout the trappings of a church culture (in the western world) that feels more conservative because of its opposition to social values the left highly prizes at this time.
We know that what the Catholic Church is true, because our Holy, Triune God is the Author of objective truth. And we know that the Church starts and ends with true, sound logic at all points. It’s the “seamless garment” of our faith: if you pull one thread out, decide that one truth of the Catholic Church really isn’t a big deal, or is a mistake, or just something you don’t like, then the whole thing unravels.
The Catholic Church starts with the premise that women and men alike have inherent dignity as God’s children, then logically comes to the end conclusion that all men and women deserve to be treated with such care that upholds this dignity. But if someone agrees with this first premise, then in the middle gets entangled in a feeling that women are to blame for a culture that doesn’t want to date them, they’ll suddenly arrive at the conclusion that women ought to be “handled” into blind submission and trumpet out-of-context Bible verses and quotes from papal encyclicals about gender that make them feel justified in this.
When I browse (occasionally) the Catholic reddit and listen to Will tell me about conversations he’s had before with (a select few!) strangely behaving Catholic men, I see an alarming parallel. It usually takes the form of this sentence: