Thomas-Parr, Georgia;
Gilroy-Ware, Marcus;
(2025)
Im/Perceptible Boyhood in a Post-Andrew Tate World.
Australian Feminist Studies
10.1080/08164649.2025.2460822.
(In press).
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Abstract
This study examines how boyhood is rendered im/perceptible via the infamous social media influencer Andrew Tate, in response to testimonies of teachers that attest to his influence on boys’ adoption of misogynistic, anti-feminist and sexist behaviour. Alongside the assemblage of discourses about Tate, we examine videos featuring him on the social network, a TikTok. Somewhat in contrast to the prevailing narrative that Tate’s influence on and appeal to boys is confined to misogyny, much of the content featuring him centred on narratives of self-improvement, mental health, resilience and upward mobility. Negative framings or outright degradation of women – while present in some content – appeared within a much wider context in which factors ranging from highly neoliberal aspiration, harshly conservative and traditional gender roles for men and women, pseudoscientific claims about evolutionary biology and extravagant consumerist lifestyles were presented as a single belief system. We conclude that the cultural individualism encouraged and exacerbated by neoliberalism in the English-speaking developed world act as a key element in the life of boys and young men anticipating their transition to adulthood, raising questions for the opportunities that this case may offer for the development of forms of feminism that include boys.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Im/Perceptible Boyhood in a Post-Andrew Tate World |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/08164649.2025.2460822 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2025.2460822 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Keywords: | Andrew Tate; TikTok; social media; boys; radical influencers; teen |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204571 |
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