Responding to Vile Values in the "Mansosphere"
Thinking about Positive Role Models for Everyone, not just Boys
Yesterday’s post by Meredith Blake for The Contrarian, “The Tate Brothers Are as Vile as Jeffrey Epstein: Can we please stop calling them “influencers” now?” has me reflecting on role models for young as well as old folks, but especially young boys and men. I’m also thinking about “the manosphere,” its vile values, and how we can constructively respond to these terrible influences in our society and culture as educators, parents, grandparents, and members of our respective communities.
If you’re not aware, “the manosphere” is:
a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists (MRAs), incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. While the specifics of each group's beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry (hatred of men). Acceptance of these ideas is described as "taking the red pill," a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix.
Four years ago when we moved to North Carolina and I continued teaching middle school media literacy classes in Charlotte, I was deeply concerned by one of my 6th grade students who identified Andrew Tate as his primary life role model. Again, if you’re not familiar:
Emory Andrew Tate III (born 1 December 1986) is an American and British social media personality and former professional kickboxer who built a webcam pornography business before gaining notoriety for promoting various highly controversial positions in the manosphere. His commentary has resulted in his expulsion from various social media platforms and concern that he promotes misogynistic views to his audience. A divisive influencer, Tate has amassed 9.9 million followers on Twitter as of August 2024 and was the third-most googled person in 2023. He has been dubbed the "king of toxic masculinity," has called himself a misogynist, and is politically described as right-wing or far-right.
In fall 2022 I was not previously familiar with Tate or his brother, who were arrested last week in Miami “as part of a UK police investigation into a number of alleged sexual offences.” I commend Meredith Blake’s article from yesterday to you, for a comprehensive summary of the Tate brothers, their various business ventures, as well as interactions with international law enforcement authorities. Claude AI helps summarize:
Andrew and Tristan Tate, former kickboxers, built a fortune through a webcam pornography business, then allegedly ran a trafficking operation from Romania, using manipulative tactics to recruit women into sex work while keeping most of the profits. Romanian authorities arrested them in 2022 on trafficking and organized crime charges, with Andrew also charged with rape; both were barred from leaving the country for years while cultivating ties to MAGA-aligned figures. After the travel ban lifted in February 2025, they relocated to Florida, but federal marshals arrested them in Miami and they now face extradition to the U.K. to answer the original charges.
As a current middle school classroom teacher, I do not even want to say the name “Andrew Tate” in front of my students, or encourage any of them to talk about him. Part of the challenges as well as opportunities of the digitally connected day in which we live and teach is that simply knowing a name or keyword can lead to an online web search, or interaction with an AI chatbot, that can propel a middle school boy (or anyone) down a rabbit hole of links and media which can potentially become an alt-right pipeline:
The alt-right pipeline (also called the alt-right rabbit hole) is a proposed conceptual model of internet radicalization toward the alt-right movement. It describes a phenomenon in which consuming provocative right-wing political content, such as antifeminist or anti-woke ideas, gradually increases exposure to the alt-right or similar far-right politics. It posits that this interaction takes place due to the interconnected nature of political commentators and online communities, allowing members of one audience or community to discover more extreme groups. This process is most commonly associated with and has been documented on the video platform YouTube, and is largely faceted by the method in which algorithms on various social media platforms function through the process recommending content that is similar to what users engage with, but can quickly lead users down rabbit holes. The effects of YouTube's algorithmic bias in radicalizing users has been replicated by one study, although two other studies found little or no evidence of a radicalization process.
These dynamics of online “influencers” and message boards like 4Chan enabling “troll armies” / troll farms were catalysts for the ongoing “Conspiracies and Culture Wars” media literacy inquiry project that I started in 2019 with my Media Education Lab colleague, Brian Turnbaugh (@wegotwits). It also led to a two part mini-course I taught in 2024 for the lab on “Teaching the Conspiracies.”
Here are a few links related to my thinking about how I want to encourage my students to identify and learn about positive, ethical role models for their lives in the school year ahead.
I plan to further iterate on last semester’s “Good Role Models Project” which I’ve been using the past couple years.
In last year’s lesson, I gave students these requirements:
Choose Your Three Role Models
One must come from our parent-recommended list:
Dr. Ramwilas J. Rathi
A role model one of your parents/guardians suggest to you
A second role model from this website list of Artificial Intelligence/AI leaders
A third role model of your choice
This year, instead of using AI leaders, I’m considering asking students to choose a Space and Aerospace “Trailblazer” which I included on the “Trailblazers” webpage I created for our July 2026 “Space Education Camp” 3 day teacher workshop.
Role models are important, and we need to encourage each other to find and share good ones for our lives. This ongoing unit is part of the way I’m continuing to try and respond to “influencers in the manosphere” in my middle school classroom.
How are you responding?