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In all honesty, 3rd wave feminism chased away a lot of male allies. Like a whole lot.

But I don't think that's what led to Andrew Tate, that is no failure of feminism.

Andrew Tate is the product of hyper capitalistic individualism being held up in all forms and media and real life as 'the ideal lifestyle', a rich, aggressive asshole that has enough clout that most people can't back them down.

The Tates, Trumps, Elons of the world are having their day because our current generation conflates wealth with competence.

And it's going to ruin our world.

That said, feminism as it stands now is far more welcoming and inclusive to men than it has been in 25 years and I applaud the change.

“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,”

The same could be said about "communism" and "socialism". The words have been turned dirty, such that people shy away from what is objectively a good thing when done honestly and to the letter of the principle.

I actually agree.... We simply ignore the needs of men who are suffering. When was the last time you read a story about a male domestic abuse victim who WASN'T laughed at.

If you don't want to parent your own son, there is someone out there willing to do it for you. They will not do a good job.

I feel like a lot of people confuse feminism for straight up misandry. #killallmen? #maletears? These were started by so called "feminists" but this is the definition of misandry.

And people wonder why young men don't like feminism when this might have been their only exposure to it.

I really think that tate is an imbecil, and his fanbase are just being manipulated.

It is sad to see that boys think that this idiot is someone who deserve attention.

Is it really that hard not to be a fucking cunt?

I think slacktivist corporate feminism is an easy punching bag which makes it an easy case to dismiss the message.

That and with internet allowing every village idiot a voice, it is very easy for someone to say something incredibly batshit insane which becomes a punching bag for the rest of the people.

If you cannot name, let alone quote, a single piece of feminist literature, are you really against feminism, or are you just railing against your own fucked up projections?

A big problem - for ages now - is, that young men just don't have fathers. There's a male around, often, but these are rarely "fathers" that convey a whole picture of a male person. I grew up without one, and I can tell you, how confusing that can be. You attach yourself very easily to ideas other male persons have. Thinking for yourself is another skill that's kinda rare, not only today, it was at any time. It's hard to navigate these years.

I’ve always felt like these things are cyclical in a way - just in that people are constantly rebelling against the last generation.

When I went to high school in the early 2010s there was this huge movement of like… positivity and sunshine and wellness and feminism and good times for all. Bob Ross was on everyone’s mind and Pharrell’s “Happy” blasted on the stereo, people wore really bright and mismatched and often gaudy outfits.

This was seemingly “in response” to that mid 2000s emo/grunge/depressed aesthetic which was very dark and moody. And now, in response to that 2010s positivity we seem to get this really jaded, “actually, feminism sucks and becoming a ‘trad catholic’ is chic” movement.

It’s annoying, and I’m sure we’ll see an opposite shift again in 5 years.

If men and boys are finding current models of masculinity to be difficult - which is what Tate et al prey on - perhaps they have more in common with feminists. The patriarchy harms everyone.

Andrew Tate himself is absolutely a problem, that doesn't preclude there from also being other, related, broader, problems. Usually, when you see an argument in the form of "X thing (small, defined, addressable) isn't the problem, Y thing (large, nebulous, intractable) is the problem!" Then what is happening is someone is re-framing the debate from a cognizable issue to an unsolvable issue, to defuse any actual action. It's a great tactic!

Lack of actually good and well-known male role models leads to scum filling the vacuum. Disproportional push in favor of girls and to the detriment of boys is also to blame. Doesn't look like it's gonna fix itself anytime soon though.

YouTube Algorithms, facebook Algorithms, etc. make them all publishers responsible for their content.

As a (formerly young) man myself, I can say with experience that boys are gullible. If something just had a veneer of plausibility, then that was good enough for me!

Still, this hit hard, because it’s so true:

He says [about boys]: “It’s not showing that emotional weakness. It’s also the expectation to always be right. Like you are not able to show that you can fail; that there’s more shame in doing something and making a mistake than there is just sort of sitting it out or dropping out.”

He stresses that many of the men he deals with have positive attitudes to women and feminism, but he says some can feel they are being stereotyped, or blamed for others’ actions.

I faced a lot of pressure to be “tough” and “perfect” (I’m not sure where that pressure came from. My parents weren’t the problem). I also misunderstood that feminism only means fairness and equality. “Fortunately”, I was trying to control an anger management issue, and I only recently realized that the experience had the side effect of teaching me that imperfections are normal and nothing to be ashamed of. Being fair was, well, only fair, so although I didn’t notice it, I never had an issue with basic feminism. I didn’t know much about it, but I wasn’t against it, and recognized that guys who were proudly anti-feminist were almost always jerks that I didn’t want to emulate.

Men benefit significantly from feminism, through the breakdown of male stereotypes, and the expansion of how normative masculinity is defined. Not that benefiting cishet men is necessarily the most important thing in the world, but the idea that feminism puts men on the losing end of some zero sum game is simply wrong.

Honestly it could not be more clear in my own experience. There is a ton of diversity in the human experience, and the masculine experience is part of that. You deny your own freedom when you put yourself and others in a conformity pigeonhole. And you additionally deny yourself access to this diversity of experience when you do it to others. But I also kind of understand why this nuance is initially lost on children, and suspect that experience plus education will help immensely.

So Andrew Tate is a human trafficker scum of the earth, and we are trying to combat his message. That's alright, I agree, he's not a disease but a symptom.

Tate is taking an existing problem, which is the fact that young boys feel left out by society at large with feminism being mainstream. Don't get me wrong, go and empower women, but when boys have "a growing sense that somehow they must be mistreated and hated because they are boys and men" and "some can feel they are being stereotyped, or blamed for others’ actions", and things like “My son is reluctant to go to school due to bullying by a group of girls, he feels that there is a big power difference in schools, where boys are always punished, not listened to, and not believed.” happen, then that's a problem separate from the problems that feminism wants to solve.

Telling boys to help solve women's issues in response to them telling you they have problems of their own is what's causing this. And it's either you listening to them, or it's going to be people like Tate or Trump.

People hyperfocus on the 1% of crazy feminists instead of the other 99% who are actually normal and reasonable. Sadly that 1% are doing more harm to the public image of feminism than good.

We live in an age of twitter screenshot outrage and that pathetically emboldens some peoples beliefs so the root cause really is social media. Nothing more nothing less.

I also blame CBC and other supposedly legit sources for giving this fuck air time and even asking him about the Israel/Palestine war as if his opinion matters.

Also so called journalists like this who remove all responsibility from Tate for being a rapist piece of shit