TEACHERS have reported an alarming rise in the number of boys watching hate-filled misogynistic influencers online.
One notorious woman-hater, Andrew Tate, was facing trial in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges but has fled by private jet to Florida, telling reporters he is “misunderstood”.
Teacher have reported an alarming rise in the number of boys watching hate-filled misogynistic influencers, such as Andrew Tate, online[/caption]
Andrew Tate was facing trial in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges but has fled to Florida[/caption]
This is something that Alexandra Smith’s son Sam, now 14, believes.
Here, mum-of-two Alexandra tells Nikki Watkins how she watched her sweet, kind boy get sucked into the toxic online “manosphere” after starting secondary school and getting a mobile phone.
I’LL never forget the moment my sweet 12-year-old son called his younger sister Matilda “a little bitch”.
I was absolutely stunned, disgusted and heartbroken.
Sam had always been a caring, kind boy.
He loved hanging out with his sister, adored her, and was an affectionate big brother from the day she arrived when he was three.
I am a feminist, and from the minute my babies were born they were both told women are equal to men.
This was ingrained in Sam — or so I thought.
When he started at the local comprehensive in 2023 he changed.
He had some great friends — they were mischievous, but it was all harmless.
But it was also when Sam got his first mobile, to call us if he needed to, and it had a few other apps. TikTok was one of them.
A month into school, I noticed he was spending more time on this particular app.
He became a bit withdrawn, but I thought it was because he was almost a teenager, and kids become aloof as they age.
I talked to my husband Jon and we set a screen time limit of two hours a day, and never allowed him to take his phone into his bedroom.
I didn’t realise then that Sam had been sucked into watching anti- feminist videos from influencers like Andrew Tate.
My biggest worry at that time was him seeing pornography, but I wasn’t aware of the “manosphere” — the community of websites, blogs and forums promoting misogyny and opposing feminism.
Before the awful incident with his little sister, there had been signs.
One evening, at the beginning of his second term, we were at a family party and Sam announced, entirely out of the blue, that the 9/11 attacks had happened because there were two women flying the planes.
You could hear a pin drop as everyone in the dining room stared.
I asked him why he was talking such nonsense, and he said he’d seen it on TikTok.
‘SEXIST DIATRIBE’
We laughed it off as some sort of weird joke, I guess because we were with other parents and didn’t want to cause a scene.
Later at home I told him we were disappointed with what he’d said and that it was sexist.
He nodded, and I assumed it was a one-off.
I wish now that I had looked into TikTok and realised misogynistic content lurked there.
About two months later, at dinner, Sam said: “Why do you have to go to work?”
I replied that I’d always worked, and I liked it.
He blurted out he didn’t think it was right, and it would be better for the family if the woman of the house stayed at home.
Again, I didn’t consider that he had been ingesting a poisonous, sexist diatribe off the internet.
I could kick myself now for assuming it was because I’d been away from home for a big work project and he simply missed me.
That month, we were watching TV and he called a female newsreader an idiot and said they shouldn’t let women read the news, because they were feminists.
His dad was open-mouthed and I shouted at him, asking him what he thought “feminist” meant.
He replied that all he knew was that it was damaging families, and added that the newsreader was stupid and was only on TV because she had nice hair.
Andrew Tate and brother Tristan arrive in Florida[/caption]
I challenged him but he stormed to his room and we couldn’t get a word out of him all night.
Jon and I talked late into the night about what had given him this vile idea.
After he was grounded for a day without screens we tried to talk to him, but he blanked us.
It was three days later when he called his sister and her friend “little bitches” when they were joyfully singing their favourite song in the kitchen.
He had always adored Matilda and would never use a derogatory term like that.
She was only nine at the time and her face fell.
I went mad and screamed that he’d get no pocket money for a month.
But what made me sob into my pillow that night was the fact that he had said it calmly, like he really meant it — there was hate in his eyes.
Two months later Sam told me that one of his friends had written a note to his female teacher, which said: “Make me a sandwich.”
He said: “It was so funny, you should have seen the teacher’s face. She was so angry.”
I had no idea what this meant, but after texting around, I discovered it is something Andrew Tate says to women, to shut them up.
I started to look into Andrew Tate.
I was horrified to see that he is known as “Toxic Tate” and that his videos often contain speeches about women being inferior to men.
He calls women “intrinsically lazy”, has said there is “no such thing as an independent female” and was banned from Twitter for saying women should “bear responsibility” for being sexually assaulted — before being reinstated on the platform now known as X.
Tate himself has called himself a misogynist, and worse still, in Romania where he lives, this man who my son and his friends were now following had even been charged with rape, human trafficking and organising a crime group to sexually exploit women.
‘LOST MY SON’
I went cold with fury.
I burst into my son’s room and vowed that if I ever found out he had repeated something Tate said, as his friend had done, I would ground him.
He laughed — he’d had a total personality change.
I demanded he take TikTok off his phone or we’d take the phone away, and I showed him a headline about Tate’s crimes, but Sam suggested it wasn’t true.
I explained it was harmful to think this way and insulting to his mum and sister, but he didn’t understand why he was getting into trouble.
We argued for ages, before he clammed up again.
At that moment I felt like I’d lost my son — and I’m unsure whether I’m going to get him back.
He looks at me differently. I thought he would admire me because I have a career in marketing and have always worked, and pay for family holidays and such.
Instead, he sees me as a woman who isn’t looking after her family.
I’m having trouble sleeping because I keep thinking of scumbags like Tate who have changed my kind son — and millions of other boys up and down the country.
I read that a University of York survey found 76 per cent of secondary school teachers are extremely concerned about the influence of online misogyny in schools.
There is a glimmer of hope for Sam.
Over the last couple of weeks he has stopped calling his sister names and started helping around the house, like he used to.
The problem is that all his friends are following people like Tate, so even though Sam no longer has access to the content, his friends will likely share it with him.
I hope he’ll soon become the peaceful young man he was before, but maybe the damage is done.
But I’m considering counselling for him, and talking to his teachers about how we kick this hate speech out of our children’s lives.
