In 2022, Andrew Tate was Googled more often than Trump, Kim Kardashian, and the Queen of England combined. He seemingly rose to fame overnight and began dominating TikTok for boys and young men around the world, becoming a household name in many settings and forcing educators, carers, parents and coaches to navigate new and very challenging conversations with the youth in their lives.
But Tate isn’t the first harmful, anti-feminist online persona to capture the attention of boys and young men, and, unfortunately, he won’t be the last.
There is a growing group of men online who operate in the same vein as Tate - pushing harmful ideas, like that men are naturally dominant, and advancing narrow ideas of masculinity that put limits on what it means to be a man.
🙋So why are young men and boys drawn to harmful, anti-feminist online influencers in the first place?
🙋How can we, as trusted adults in their lives, intervene to prevent these online characters becoming idols for future generations?
🙋How should we talk with youth about these issues in a way that validates their experiences without giving people like Tate further opportunities to capture the minds of youth?
Join us on Zoom, Thursday 1st February at 9am Pacific Time as we are led by Next Gen Men’s Director of Programs, Jonathon Reed. We will learn:
✅ Why there is a draw to anti-feminist online influencers for young men and boys
✅ How to have transformative conversations with boys and young men about harmful online influencers
About Jonathon:
Jonathon (BA, BEd, MEd) sustains NGM’s reputation for reliable and high-quality program delivery within the field of gender justice, and contributes to NGM’s expertise on boys and masculinity through ongoing research, knowledge translation, and advocacy.
He started out as a teacher before realizing that he was uniquely passionate about supporting boys’ well-being and challenging gender-based violence. In 2017, Jake, Jermal and Jason helped him launch the Breaking the Boy Code podcast—now part of the NGM Podcast Network—and a year later, hired him to take the lead on NGM’s youth programming. The rest, as they say, is history.
Jonathon also loves adventure sports and is currently most excited about leading Next Gen Men’s Rite of Passage Expeditions Project, taking masculine-identifying youth on wilderness-based transformative journeys through the waterways of Ontario and the Rocky Mountains.
This workshop is free; you can join this workshop by becoming a Pathways community member! Not a Pathways Community member yet? No worries, you can express interest in joining the community here.