Haslop, Craig 
ORCID: 0000-0002-3183-5671, Ringrose, Jessica, Cambazoglu, Idil and Milne, Betsy
(2024)
Mainstreaming the Manosphere's Misogyny Through Affective Homosocial Currencies: Exploring How Teen Boys Navigate the Andrew Tate Effect
SOCIAL MEDIA + SOCIETY, 10 (1).
20563051241228811-.
ISSN 2056-3051, 2056-3051
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haslop-et-al-2024-mainstreaming-the-manosphere-s-misogyny-through-affective-homosocial-currencies-exploring-how-teen.pdf - Open Access published version Download (298kB) | Preview |
Abstract
During the summer of 2022, Andrew Tate became a focus of concern for the media, parents, and educational leaders as his sexist and misogynistic social media content became popular with young people, especially boys. To explore Tate’s appeal, we conducted a discourse and content analysis of Tate’s videos and a small focus group study with boys aged 13–14 from London (United Kingdom). We found that apart from the obvious ways that Tate promotes men’s domination of feminine “others,” his content also mainstreams misogynistic “manosphere” ideologies. Moreover, Tate plays on boy’s fears about their economic futures and place in the structures of hegemonic masculinity while stylising himself as a maverick, but authentic figure who—against the context of his concocted fears—offers hope through advice about dating and entrepreneurial skills. We highlight how these tropes support Tate’s business model in the affective and attention economies of social media. Through focus group analysis, we show how these tropes are potent homosocial currencies for boys, including their conceptions of Tate’s content as humorous. In so doing, we contribute new theoretical perspectives on the way emotion and affect can work as homosocial currencies across digital and non-digital spaces to reify hegemonic masculinity and normalize misogyny. We conclude by suggesting that rather than attacking Tate’s messages which might play into Tate’s maverick identity, we should offer young people critical digital literacy education that helps them understand the business models of Tate, and influencers like him, and how they peddle in forms of gendered disinformation.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | affect, Andrew Tate, masculinities, misogyny, the "manosphere" |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences > School of the Arts |
| Depositing User: | Symplectic Admin |
| Date Deposited: | 04 Mar 2024 09:58 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jun 2026 20:22 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/20563051241228811 |
| Related Websites: | |
| URI: | https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3179028 |
| Disclaimer: | The University of Liverpool is not responsible for content contained on other websites from links within repository metadata. Please contact us if you notice anything that appears incorrect or inappropriate. |
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