I don’t want to be accused of cherry-picking or taking anybody out of context so, here, in full, is a press release issued yesterday by Fine Gael TD for Kildare North, Joe Neville. My emphasis added:
More needs to be done to address toxic masculinity on social media, a Fine Gael TD has said.
Deputy Joe Neville, Fine Gael TD for Kildare North, said stronger online safety measures and a whole of society approach are needed to combat this issue.
“This St Patrick’s Day we saw the worst of toxic masculinity on display in Conor McGregor being invited to speak on the world stage.
“I know from speaking to parents that they are worried about the impact of these social media figures on young men. These figures promote hyper-aggressive, misogynistic, and often violent forms of masculinity.
“We need to introduce stronger online safety measures, educational reforms, and greater support for parents and communities to protect children from this issue.
“The glorification of dominance, aggression, and the subjugation of women, through social media must be ended.
“Expanding digital literacy and media awareness in schools is essential in addressing the rise in toxic masculinity so that young people can separate the truth from online misinformation.
“We need a whole-of-society approach to this. We need the government, Coimisiún na Meán, schools, families, and social media companies to work together to combat this growing issue.
“Fine Gael and An Tánaiste Simon Harris have long advocated for stronger online safety measures for children. Parents can be reassured we are doing everything we can to protect children and young people online.
“We need to have serious conversations about how we can tackle the rise of toxic masculinity and its detrimental influence on our young people”, concluded Deputy Neville.
The first thing you should do when analysing this stuff, I always think, is to ask whether the person raising the issue has a point. When it comes to generally bad online behaviour, I think Deputy Neville does have a point. If a violent pimp like Andrew Tate, for example, is a “role model for young men”, then that is indeed a problem that society must address.
The more pertinent question is whether Joe Neville has any idea how to address it that doesn’t simply involve shutting Andrew Tate (and presumably many others) up.
The first thing I’d say here is that Neville appears to never have been a young man himself. The idea he postulates that the solution to young men embracing hardline content is “expanding digital literacy and media awareness in schools” seems to be based on a world where young men embrace authority rather than reject it. But rejecting authority is almost the very essence of being a young man.
The second thing he might consider asking is this: Why is Andrew Tate (or Conor McGregor, or whomever) attractive to young men in the first place? Why is their message appealing to young boys?
The answer to that isn’t hard, I’d suggest, for all the acres of newsprint devoted to producing complicated answers: Tate presents himself as something every heterosexual man with heterosexual male instincts wants to be: Rich, successful, and irresistible to attractive women. The man who tells you that he has never once had the idle fantasy of living on a yacht surrounded by an eagerly fascinated hareem of doe-eyed women is lying either to you, or to himself.
If Joe Neville could present himself as rich, successful, and irresistible to attractive women, he might find himself with an audience of young male admirers and wannabes himself.
The problem is simply this: society’s unwillingness to admit that being rich, successful, and irresistible to attractive women is a legitimate and entirely natural aspiration for a young teenage boy. Andrew Tate, for all that he genuinely is a monster, tells young men that their natural desires are perfectly in order. Modern liberal society, by contrast, tells young men relentlessly that their sexual instincts are a problem. Banning Andrew Tate content will not solve this fundamental problem. Indeed, Neville’s instinct appears to be to make the problem worse.
Young men have always followed characters who reflect the lives they want to live. This is why boys play with Action Man, or idolise Cristiano Ronaldo, or dress up as Batman/Bruce Wayne at Halloween. Male role models that attract the attention of young men tend to be rich, physically fit, and good with the ladies. That’s why they are male role models to begin with. Andrew Tate recognises that, unconsciously perhaps.
Turn to McGregor, another male role model: A successful fighter. A man who tells young men to be patriotic and fight for their country. A man who consciously invokes the patriotic heroes of yore and embraces the idea of masculinity as being about fighting for your country while also being rich and successful and not short of sexual conquests (voluntarily or otherwise). Certainly, this writer considers him no role model, but then I am forty, married, and not on the breadline. I am not young, starting out in life, and trying to find a path that works for me.
So, here’s a question for Deputy Neville: When you use the words “toxic masculinity”, what precisely do you mean?
And why don’t we ever talk about toxic femininity?
Let us concede, for a moment, that Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor are indeed toxic, because they send the message to young men that they should dominate women and that women like to be dominated. Is his message denied, or re-enforced by the likes of Lily Phillips, who tells those same young men online that she wants to be treated like a slut and have sex with as many men as possible? What about the women who litter the Instagram pages of these young men, looking for a “daddy”? What about the women who take to tiktok, as one famously did last year, demanding “a man in finance, trust fund, six five, blue eyes”?
It is not just Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor who are driving young men to a particular view of women, in other words. Plenty of women are contributing to the same instincts.
Joe Neville ends his press release by saying he wants a “conversation”, which is political code for “somebody should do something but I’m not sure what”.
I don’t know what will work, other than that the problem is more complicated than the existence of Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor. But I do know that the politician’s instinct here – shut up people you don’t like – won’t solve the underlying problem.
You won’t appeal to young men with this nonsense, Joe. You’ll just make them despise you more.