DAVID MARCUS: Andrew Tate is the woke Left's misogynist Frankenstein

Andrew Tate is back in America, forcing us to confront his perverse messaging to a subset of America’s young men. But what we really need to come to grips with are the social conditions in our culture that created an opening for this men’s rights Frankenstein.

Tate, 38, is a former professional kickboxer facing sex trafficking charges in Romania, serious enough that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis insists the podcast star is not welcome in the Sunshine State, where he landed earlier this week; the Florida attorney general is now investigating Tate and his brother Tristan.

ANDREW TATE SAYS HE PLANS TO LIVE IN FLORIDA DESPITE ‘HEE HAW’ OVER RETURN TO US SOIL

Tate made a fortune off of a "webcam model" (read: porn) business, then began selling online courses ostensibly teaching alienated boys and young men how to become alpha males. His modus operandi seems to be to prowl around shirtless and scowling, cigar in hand, as he prattles on in rapid-fire fashion about how all women are whores and how his fans should treat them as such.

Tate advises his followers to have children with as many women as possible and not worry too much about being a real father. He boasts about beating women, including during sex. Among his typical tidbits of advice is that it is better to have sex with a hot trans "woman" than an ugly actual woman.

(L-R) Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate speak to Fox News Digital from Opa-locka airport in Miami, FL, Thursday, March 6, 2025. The brothers have been named the targets of a criminal investigation just days after returning to the United States amid ongoing legal troubles in Europe that include allegations of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. (Mega for Fox News Digital)

And these are some of the tamer aspects of his odious and morally bankrupt worldview.

I was relieved a few years back, when , just as Tate was becoming internet famous, I asked my then pre-teen son if he knew about him. "Yeah," he replied, "That guy is an idiot. My friends and I call him tater-tot."

But for many young men, then and now, Tate is a revered figure, the man who will finally tell them the honest, ugly truth about women, and help them achieve masculine perfection in a society that he insists victimizes men.

Across the man-o-sphere of podcasters, this idea that men are second-class citizens in everything from education and employment to entertainment, is a common theme. It gains traction because it is not entirely without credence. 

But in the end, what well-meaning male advocates and the cringeworthy cretinous Tates of the world see as the oppression of men is actually a deep confusion over what becoming a man means in a world where our educational and social systems have been increasingly feminized.

Tristan Tate and Andrew Tate are brought in by police officers to appear in front of a judge at the Bucharest Court of Appeal, in Bucharest, Romania, March 12, 2024.  (Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS )

Boys and men are hard-wired to believe male virtue means protecting and deferring to females, even if we don't always live up to it. But the new messaging is that women are at least equal in every way and to believe otherwise is misogynistic. Girl power is a great thing, but it gets confusing on the woke margins, where only a Chauvinist would ever hold a door for a woman, only a bigot would object to a man identifying as a trans woman pummeling a biological woman in an Olympic boxing ring, and the Boy Scouts of America have to be rechristened "Scouting America." 

This brings me back to an earlier memory of my son. I have an old, dear friend who is a prominent liberal columnist. One day, when her daughter and my boy were about four years old, they were fighting over a water gun in the backyard.

Simultaneously, I yelled, "Let her have it, she’s a girl," as my friend’s voice rang out saying, "No shrinking violets!"

I immediately understood how deeply confusing these two directives were. It's that confusion that has made Tate a millionaire many times over.

It feels as though in our teaching and development of youth, girls are treated as mannequins, encouraged to don garments such as aggressiveness, interest in STEM, or leadership qualities. But boys are treated like a stone sculpture, which is only ever chipped away at, not added to.

Over the past few decades, as our society has tried to chip off only the toxic bits of the stone sculpture of masculinity, we increasingly find that we too often also shed the good traits, the stoicism, strength, and selflessness that were once hallmarks of how we view men.

Over the past few decades, as our society has tried to chip off only the toxic bits of the stone sculpture of masculinity, we increasingly find that we too often also shed the good traits, the stoicism, strength, and selflessness that were once hallmarks of how we view men.

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What Tate really peddles is a particularly vile strain of victimhood, which is a growth industry all over the political spectrum, and like all the players in that noxious business, he soothes the wounded egos of his followers with comfortable lies.

Therein lies the solution to Andrew Tate, which has nothing to do with Andrew Tate, but everything to do with not causing the emotional damage to young men in the first place, not creating the wounds to which this megalomaniacal quack applies his snake oil.

For a long time, our society has frowned on the idea that "boys will be boys," but it is time for that to change. The extraordinary measures we took in the 20th century to level the playing field for women worked. Now, more women graduate college than men. But it’s time to take our thumbs off of the scale.

So, let your boys be boys. Do not let them feel ashamed of their so-called privilege or afraid of their own natural emotions, because when that begins, the predators such as Andrew Tate are ready to pounce.

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David Marcus is a columnist living in West Virginia and the author of "Charade: The COVID Lies That Crushed A Nation."