Be A Man, Not Andrew Tate

AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

If asceticism is your thing, you could walk around with broken glass in your shoes, sleep on stone floors without a blanket, or try to listen to Andrew Tate talk for more than ten minutes. I’m no glutton for pain, but I am writing a book on masculinity, so I have tried to get a sense of what one of the most infamous influencers in the manosphere is like. If you’re curious, let me give you a little sample:

THE WORLD IS TRYING TO CASTRATE YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE A LION JUST LIKE ME AND WEAK HYENAS ATTACK THE STRONG LION LIKE ME AND THE CYBORG-FEMINISTS FEAR STRONG MEN LIKE ME WHO STAND UP AGAINST THE MEDIA WHO WANTS TO KEEP YOU BLUE-PILLED INTO THE MATRIX OF PORN BUT REAL WOMEN ALWAYS WANT TO SLEEP WITH REAL MEN LIKE ME—

GGUUURRRGGHHH!!!!

Okay, you get the idea.

Tate’s monologues straddle the border of a testosterone fueled fever-dream of a thirteen-year-old who just discovered profanity and a GI Joe self-help book on blistering, cocaine-energy. Erratic, lashing out hither and thither, Tate’s EMERGENCY MEETINGS are his opportunity to vent pure spleen, literally shouting his advice and grievances for thirty minutes. One gets the sense that in time, Tate will stop speaking in sentences and just shout words like “WAR”, “MEN,” “FIGHT,” staccato-like, inbetween long: AAAAAHHHHHH’s

What is Tate so riled up about? In brief, shadow forces are at work to create a simulation—a Matrix—to distract you from reality. Reality is a Nietzschean hellscape of power and exploitation where winners (read: men) take all (read: money and girls), so you need to make yourself as strong, indomitable, and wealthy as possible. But the government and media have lied to you: monogamy, sympathy, kindness, trust, taxes, etc. are made to look “normal,” but they are all really there to CASTRATE you and HOLD YOU BACK from embracing the shirtless aesthetic Tate is projecting.

He frequently zeroes in on problems like porn and spending too much time on the Internet, yet maintains that he can teach you how to have sex with as many women as you want (like a porn star) and how to make as much money as possible (on the Internet). And, aren’t you lucky, if you pay Tate money (on the Internet), he will teach you how to make money (on the Internet) and if this sounds like an elaborate ponzi scheme that proves that you are spending too much time on the Internet / not enough time on Andrew Tate’s Internet. If the words “cognitive dissonance” arise in your mind that just proves how much you are have been PSYOPED by the SYSTEM, you BETA. I bet you don’t even trade crypto or have ever been on Dana White’s yacht or leased a Bugatti, you peasant.

Don’t get me wrong, Tate isn’t 100% crazy. He mixes in plenty of things that the average person would nod along with: politicians aren’t trustworthy, the “American dream” doesn’t feel viable, Woke politics are bad, and (Tate’s bread and butter) the negativity piled on men is unfair. He even alludes to the idea of a God-given design to nature (though leaves the exact content of “God” fairly ambiguous). But woven into this are also things that are more…peculiar: women provide nothing but sex, a ferocious insistence on the need to be globally mobile, and a level of arrogance that makes Kanye West and Donald Trump look modest.

(Language warning)

Tate’s conceit is transgression. Whether he has just adapted to algorithmic-Internet (where the most outrageous content wins), or our attention ecosystem has just summoned him from the depths, like some Jungian archetype—he has learned how much attention you get when you desecrate taboos. His verbiage is, let’s say, colorful—moving far beyond the standard fare of vulgarities, he obviously is aiming for inflammation over information. He enjoys flipping conventional morality upside down, like arguing that monogamy and romance are “beta-male” behaviors. Women, in Tate-world, are “leeches” who are looking for men to subsist off of—and if you have enough money and swagger, they won’t mind sharing you with others.

Tate’s apologetic for this kind of immorality is (apparently) that he has an ungodly amount of money, a veritable carousel of attractive women lining up, and a burgeoning amount of influence online. Were Tate poor, fat, and alone, his histrionics and crudity would be…well, what any man who regularly refers to women as “whores” would be: nothing.

But that “success” is precisely what he points to. Don’t like how he talks? Concerned that he is a convicted sex trafficker and rapist who trains other young men on how to manipulate women into becoming prostitutes? Too bad, Tate is too busy bathing in Cristal on private jets to notice. The majority of his content looks like a hip-hop music video from the early aughts: ostentation, sports cars in Dubai, million dollar rolexes in Tokyo, cigar-glow reflecting off his Cobra Tate sunglasses (worn by 5,000+ Alpha Males, his website promises). But shuffled into this is material that is suggestive that Tate is no mere hedonist, but a sage Nostradamus whose cryptic prognostications should be heeded by the faithful.

Which brings us back to the sheer rage that radiates from Tate at near constant rate. Tate has no self-awareness of how silly he comes across. He wants to be taken very seriously, even when he is clearly a deeply insecure man (watch this video where he boasts of being the 10x world champion at Uno). But, if his life is that glamorous, if he has that kind of entourage and (alleged) importance, then is he—however insufferable he may seem—right? I mean, I don’t own any penthouses or $300K watches. I’m typing this out from my extremely normal life where I only have one wife and no businesses online and still pay taxes. Egg on my face?

The reason I don’t lose any sleep at night over a life that Mr. Tate would find disappointing is not only that his life is so transparently sad, but also that I have a very different set of coordinates for masculinity, for the “good life” than he does. I do not believe that love, romance, faithfulness, or trust are emasculating. God’s Word teaches me otherwise. Fidelity to my wife and humility to my brothers in Christ are the good life. Jesus Christ was the perfect embodiment of masculinity, and He is typified by love, gentleness, sacrifice, and faithfulness to His Bride, the Church.

Tate is correct on a number of basic concepts about masculinity: strength is good, life is hard, we should heroically face it and strive to do great things. But Tate is adrift in his quest because he has nothing other than his own base impulses and instincts driving him: get money, have sex, crush your enemies. He is living for the glory of man and the pride of life. These things, God’s Word teaches us, quickly pass away…and leave you wondering: is this it?

I am reminded of Jesus’ parable of the wealthy man who builds bigger and bigger barns as he continues to succeed in life, only to be visited by the Lord one night:

‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ (Luke 12:20)

If I could suggest a contemporary alternative to Mr. Tate’s view of the good life and what it means to be a man, I would put forward Ben Sasse, the former Senator from Nebraska who is dying from pancreatic cancer.

Tate’s worldview boils down to: “You must master the universe through raw will-power and conquest and strength.” He has, by worldly standards, amassed quite a bit of success. But it is fundamentally a perspective that uncoils at the presence of death, is so framed on the here and now, that it seems…childish. It doesn’t matter how hard you punch or rage against your own mortality; you will lose.

Sasse, on the other hand, is a Christian, and that worldview has not only prepared him to die, but which has given him a framework that shaped an entire life that makes one’s death, if I could say it, worthy. In his dying, Sasse is revealing to us all—men, in particular—what is worth living for. As we all face the grave, we will not be comforted by sexual escapades or the number of rolexes we own. We will be comforted by knowing two things: Have I lived my life well? and Am I ready to die? Sasse is teaching us both: love your wife, your children, honor the Lord, keep the Sabbath, strive to do whatever good you can while the Lord gives you life, and then die in Christ.

We should view the Andrew Tate’s of the world as a symptom of absence:

• Absence of a sense of mortality as well as morality.

• Absence of the traditional virtues which ground and guide human nature towards its God-given end.

• Absence of fathers and mentors providing boys with positive role models of masculinity.

• Absence of thick communities where men and women intermingle as equals.

• Absence of a culture that maintains healthy definitions and distinctions between men and women and understands those distinctions as features to celebrate, not bugs to eliminate.

Masculinity is not a toxin that has ruined the world, any more than femininity is. Both men and women are made in the image of God and have unique qualities that are blessings to the world. We do both men and women a disservice when we try to flatten them into each other or treat them like they are a genderless glop with no meaningful differences.

But when you patronize one of the sexes—male or female—as the source of all evil, there will be some who will be cowed over. But there will also be some who will react with a buffoonish extreme, who will rely on transgression and outrage and raw anger to motivate a backlash that will be far, far worse.