One Year in Misogyny / Week 5 / Hate in the classroom
Stories of misogyny - unpacked! A year-long project, picking one news story per week.
In the news this week
A survey by a British teachers’ union has reported a flood of overt misogyny and racism in the UK’s schools. Female teachers are taking the brunt, with cases of boys barking at them, blocking doorways, and physically intimidating them, inspired by Andrew Tate videos. Teachers say:
“I have had boys refuse to speak to me, and speak to a male teaching assistant instead, because I am a woman and they follow Andrew Tate and think he is amazing with all his cars and women and how women should be treated. These were 10-year-olds.”
“A lot of the students are influenced by Tate and Trump, they spout racist, homophobic, transphobic and sexist comments in every conversation and don’t believe there will be consequences.”
“Pupils watch violent and extreme pornographic material. Their attention spans have dropped. They read lots of fake news and sensationalised stories that make them feel empowered and that they know better than the teacher.”
The head of the union, Patrick Roach, says “there is a system issue, and something needs to be done”. The union says that a new online safety law is welcome, and that schools should be supported to ban phones. Even existing regulations are clearly not working, he says, since young children are accessing sites and content that in theory are already regulated to prevent this. “It’s the role of government, now, to intervene,” and he’s calling for a national response.
Unpacked
Well, even if we only look at the boys themselves, this is a disaster for them. It is not setting them up for healthy relationships and thriving lives.
Amanda Ripley, in The Atlantic in 2017, looked into why girls are outperforming boys in education, in the country where this gap is the largest, which is Jordan, in the middle east. “In school, Jordanian girls are crushing their male peers. The nation’s girls outperform its boys in just about every subject and at every age level. At the University of Jordan, the country’s largest university, women outnumber men by a ratio of two to one—and earn higher grades in math, engineering, computer-information systems, and a range of other subjects.”
She describes a large government study there which found that the causes of this achievement gap included boys’ schools being more violent places, having worse relationships between boys and male teachers, “male teachers in all-boys schools were more likely to belittle or punish students for getting the wrong answer”, and teaching jobs lacking prestige, especially for men, who then may do those jobs less diligently. Meanwhile, being successful at school was not viewed as masculine by boys. The result of all this, for their education, is terrible.
If our boys are more engaged in the ‘education’ they are receiving from misogynist influencers than they are in what they are learning at school, then this diminishes their life chances. Where they could be learning useful knowledge and skills, whether maths or Mandarin, or self-discipline or the rewards of hard work. Neither are they outside playing sports, presumably, or playing an instrument in a band with their friends, or pursuing real-world hobbies, and picking up the skills, knowledge and social connections that might come them. Instead they are learning terrible attitudes towards girls and women, and a toxic mindset of entitlement and victimisation.
Where they could be setting themselves on track for a satisfying career in a field that interests them, they are busy harassing their teachers instead. Where they could be learning to build friendships with girls, and taking the first steps towards creating romantic relationships and a sustaining family of their own, they are being sold the line that trying to diminish the women around them is what will give them power, money, and self-esteem.
Schools exist to teach our young people things we think they need to know, to go on to successful and useful lives. When the things schools are trying to teach them get swapped out for a pile of misogynistic poison, there is a large opportunity cost. Something valuable gets vandalised, and what is put in its place is useless. Meanwhile our young years are our tender years, and what we learn then can shape our worldview, so this damage seems likely to be enduring, and possibly permanent.
And of course for the targets of their hostility – including the girls beside them in their classes, and the teachers trying to teach their classes – the impact is also terrible. So really a lot of people lose out from all this. Our boys, our girls, our teachers, and, by diffusion and by these boys growing up into our men, our whole society.
And when I say these boys are being sold a line, it really is being sold. Money is being made. Attention is being monetised. This vile brew is being poured into our boys and young men for profit. Romanian police have estimated Andrew Tate’s net worth at £10m (US$13m), from income streams including webcams and subscriptions to his ‘Hustler’s University’.
And not much is being done to hold back this dangerous tide. In 2022 “Controversial influencer Andrew Tate was banned on several social media platforms for violating their policies. But nearly two weeks into these bans, platforms are still inundated with clips of Tate making derogatory comments about women — highlighting what some media experts suggest is part of a dangerous system whose algorithm can be manipulated to radicalize young men to adopt harmful views against women and the LGBTQ community.”
And so even tech platforms which have technically banned Andrew Tate continue to profit from his content. His extremely popular messages are drawing male eyeballs to their platforms, and keeping them there, engaged. The social media companies hosting this content reap advertising income from their attention.
Damon Beres said this week in The Atlantic, “Twenty-one years after the creation of Facebook, social media has become the pond scum of the internet: everywhere, unremarkable, and a little bit gross.” An astute observation, and a great turn of phrase, although an understatement about some of the grossness of course. And in this context it’s easy to think of social media, and its harms, as just there, like the weather. Not always ideal, but what can you do.
Like an earthquake in a faraway country where they don’t have the resources to reinforce their buildings, and many thousands of people die. It’s sad and unfortunate, but not something you feel you can do much about. Hate in the classroom though, is different. It’s not an act of God. It’s being done, on purpose or through negligence, by people.
Misogynist influencers are seeking to con boys and men into becoming disciples of their cult of malignant propaganda, instead of living full and fulfilling lives. Social media platforms provide these misogynists with the means to reach a global audience, so they can reap advertising dollars. And politicians are not recognising the scale of the harm, and not reining in this sustained attack on our society. They are failing our boys and failing our girls, and degrading our everyday lives.
So then, it’s only taken five weeks, ten percent of my planned year-long project, for this to become incredibly depressing. This is part of the point I wanted to make, how relentless and dire all of these news stories are. It never stops. Misogyny never takes a week off.
But already I am pondering whether this project is wise? Maybe I am just helping to normalise the abuse of women and girls by analysing it here. How will my mental health stand up to a whole year of really looking at these news stories? Will I just end up damaging your mental health by going on and on and on about all this? Will this project become just to bleak for anyone to want to read it?
Next week, I need to choose something a little lighter. Not to automatically pick the worst story. The most disturbing news. The darkest window onto the siege we are under.
Also this week
A man who joined a social media group which “pitches itself as a place men can go for support when life gets hard and is affiliated with Better Bloke Project, a men's mental health charity”, found that it was rife with misogyny, including a requirement to post a photo of a highly attractive woman before being permitted to ask a question.
An 84-year-old woman has allegedly endured an attack from a man who was “charged after allegedly sexually assaulting an elderly woman inside her home after helping to carry her groceries”.
The body of missing woman Paria Veisi has been found, and a man charged with her murder. A woman has also been charged with conspiracy and preventing the “lawful and decent burial of a dead body”.
A senior UK police officer abused his “position for sexual purposes with two women”, even after being warned about his behaviour.
Elizabeth Bruenig’s article “The Harem of Elon Musk” in The Atlantic argues that Musk “Appears to acknowledge few, if any, bonds of genuine duty and responsibility among family members, much less bonds of care or love.”
Good news stories
Bonnie Tsui has a lovely article discussing how weird our attitudes are to women’s muscles.