Andrew Tate’s views on being a man

Introduction

I am a standard man. I’m likely to earn more than a woman doing my job. I can dress how I like, my ideas are more likely to be listened to (even if I have no idea what I’m talking about). I can walk about and be less likely to be harassed.

Being a woman is much harder, statistically there is more housework and childcare, alongside trying to have a career. Life is pretty easy, right?  So why am I three times more more likely to die by suicide than a woman? Or more likely to be homeless, have no friends or die of alcoholism?

What is being a man?

I’ve been partly asked to write this off the back of the rise (and subsequent arrest on charges of rape and human trafficking) of self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate. In case you’ve missed him, he is a polarising character who attracts widespread vilification juxtaposed with a huge wave of support from young men and boys. A couple of his more (relatively) mundane social media posts caught my eye:

“The masculine perspective is you have to understand that life is war. It’s a war for the female you want.  a war for the car you want. It’s a war for the money you want. It’s a war for the status. Masculine life is war.”

“I have everything every man has ever dreamed of. I got a big mansion, I got super cars, I can live anywhere I want, I got unlimited women, I go where I want… I do anything I want all the time. So, I’m an amazing role model.”

He talks about the life of a man being ‘war’, and life being an accumulation of money, power, status, cars and women. He’s very popular with billions of views on TikTok. But are his ideas true? Or good for us?

Man box

One way this has been studied is via the ‘Man Box’.  You could probably guess at the contents of the box – just ask yourself, what is being a man?

These include:

Self-sufficiency

Acting tough

Physical attractiveness

Rigid masculine roles

Heterosexuality and homophobia

Hypersexuality

Aggression and control.

In 2017, young men aged 18-30 in the UK, USA and Mexico were questioned about the ‘Man box’.  This is a set of values that are applied to men by society, determining acceptable behaviours.

Whilst certain areas around homosexuality were largely accepting, traditional views still scored highly.  This included acting tough, even if internally scared (about 50%), the man bringing home the money (40%), knowing where your wife or girlfriend is all the time (40%), having the final say in a relationship (33%). The tough, strong, controlling image still resonates for quite a few young men.

But if we think back to those statistics about men’s mental health and the discrepancy with women, could these approaches be playing a role in the difficulties men experience?

The man box causes anxiety and mental illness

Until a few years ago, I bought into some of these values wholesale. I wasn’t particularly aware of them, but I knew I had to do certain things. Climb the career ladder, earn more money, get a mortgage and a car, start a family. If people asked how things were they were always automatically ‘fine’. I’m not sure I could really have told you if anything was particularly wrong.

Working as a GP, I had to help a lot of people, lots of whom had mental health problems. In a sense, this was a rewarding thing to do, as it enabled a chance to reflect on what had led to the difficulties that people were experiencing, and gave them a chance to do something about them.

The difficulty for me was they just kept coming, and I wanted to help. I took on extra roles to help the practice and further my development and growth.

Over time, though, odd things started to happen. I felt tired, my body started to ache. I became more preoccupied with thoughts that I wasn’t good enough, I was a failure, and that we needed more money. I worked harder, adding in more tasks, more patients, more complexity. I couldn’t wait to get to Fridays for a few beers. But there was a problem, the more I did the above, the more difficult things became. Exhaustion and poor sleep joined in.  Even more worrying looking back was the daily thought when cycling home ‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to cycle into the oncoming traffic?’ Fortunately, I never acted on this specific thought. But I didn’t act on any of it.

I remember one clinic in my mind telling me ‘you’re more ill than the patients you’re seeing’. I just ignored it. I was increasingly angry at home, shouting at everyone, or just exhausted and asleep. I reached the point where I couldn’t get out of bed and I had to stop.

My approach was pretty typical of most men. Showing weakness through self-understanding, self-compassion was not an option. The only way was to keep going. But what I didn’t understand (and now do, though Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT) was that I was surviving on stress hormones to keep going, and that this isn’t sustainable, it just makes you ill in the long run.  Unfortunately, this approach creates a downward spiral of bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions and behaviours which are self-reinforcing and ultimately made me really unwell.  I believe that this spiral, alongside environmental, genetic and societal triggers means we’re more likely to end up in a situation of depression, homelessness, suicide or alcoholism.

Interestingly, one of the elements of Andrew Tate’s thinking – control, or the perception of it – ran through my thinking, and I think runs through this cycle more widely. There’s a desperate attempt trying to keep everything the same. Being rigid and inflexible is a way of trying to manage your own distress in this situation, something both is described by Andrew Tate and the Man box study