'Labour's plan to tackle misogyny isn't enough - we need bold men to speak up'
Everyone knows it’s a huge problem, but it feels like the horse has long bolted, so what can we really actually do?
Now, at last, an alternative to shrugging and tutting – the Labour party say they will educate young people in schools about hatred and prejudice against women. Get ’em while they’re young, and impressionable, and the message about fighting misogyny stands a chance of getting through.
They’ll develop young male mentors to be positive role models. Pupils will be taught how to question the huge amount of material they see on social media from scumbags like online influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women (which he denies). Labour’s plan is great, refreshing – essential. It’s also not enough.
It’s a good start, thrilled it’s happening, but what else can we do? Because when it comes to a David v Goliath battle like this one, so far we’re trying to beat Tate’s nuclear weapons by holding a banana like a gun and saying “bang”.
Tate is so dangerous because he appeals to boys as they really are, at their most base level. He taps into the truth and exploits it for his own gain.
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Even if men don’t really think about sex the much-quoted every seven seconds, studies show they do twice as often as women – and rather than knowing this, as most of us do, and pretending it’s irrelevant, Tate addresses and utilises the fact. This is who you are, he tells boys, I see you. I know what you want – be like me, and you’ll get it.
His laughably tacky image – on a yacht, with a glass safe so the stacks of cash inside are visible, surrounded by women I want to cry for, in bikinis – presumably reads as glamorous and enviable to teenage boys who don’t know any better (not to mention probably many grown men, who do). How can we grab their attention away from that? Lure them on to the right path when the wrong one is so persuasive?
The answer is what the Labour party are proposing, and then some. We need some heroes to defeat this anti-hero. Tate dismisses anyone who disagrees with him as “agents of The Matrix”, instantly overriding anyone talking sense.
We have to reframe this twisted narrative by providing young men with role models every bit as aspirational and compelling to them as – ugh – Tate is.
We need big, bold, loud high-profile agitators – someone like, for example, Stormzy, who is powerful, successful and cool, but respectful to women, openly talking about how much he loves his mum and putting her in his videos. He never misses a chance to empower women. When he won Best Male at The Brits, he made a point to call out the names of all the women on his team, before adding, “The ‘best male’ is nothing without these incredible females”.
Likewise Daniel Craig, who said of the character he’s most famous for playing, James Bond, “Let’s not forget that he’s actually a misogynist”, and Tom Hardy, who was asked in a press conference whether he thought there were too many women in “man’s movie” Mad Max, responded incredulously, shutting down the ridiculous question.
We need to attack the developing minds of children today from all angles. Supply them with role models they’ll genuinely look up to, sneak the message into entertainment, like the Barbie movie, never stop demonstrating what’s right.
It must be a multi-pronged assault on contempt for women from every possible direction.
Every good man has to speak up, and ensure that his voice is heard, so the roar is more deafening than Tate’s poisonous bile. This needs to be a group effort, because no one can do this alone. Not even James Bond, or Stormzy
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