It feels like feminism just can’t catch a break at the moment. From being blamed for treating men like they have no emotions through the political ideology of ‘dump him feminism’, to allegedly being the foremost reason women have to work (an argument debunked by countless feminist scholars), feminism is once again dominating public discourse. Its crime? Creating violently misogynistic men like Andrew Tate.

In 2022, the Luton-born American-British social media personality was one of the most Googled public figures in the world. In August last year, he was banned from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for his misogynistic comments (which included comparing women to dogs and children, discussions of using women as property and arguing that female rape victims should bear some responsibility for their own rape). In response, his supporters flooded social media sites with his most offensive clips to maximise engagement. As a result, he is now one of the most prolific figures on TikTok, with his hashtag racking up 407.1 million views at the time of writing.

Tate – who self-identifies as a misogynist – believes he is saving young men from ‘woke’ society. Through his sexist videos and podcasts, he advocates for a traditional form of masculinity, arguing that men are the protectors, providers and patriarchs, while women are their subservient caretakers. Men like Tate believe feminism is trying to destroy the natural order of things, and that he is simply trying to fight back. Young men comprise the vast majority of Tate’s following, and his words resonate with them. Tate knowingly exploits the fears and insecurities of a generation of young men who see our changing landscape as an attack on their masculinity.

On December 29, after getting lambasted by Greta Thunberg on Twitter, Tate and his brother were arrested in Romania as part of a rape and human trafficking investigation. Prosecutors have accused the brothers of using the “loverboy method” to lure women from Europe and the US to Romania. They allege that the Tates deceived women with declarations of love and marriage before forcing them to produce pornographic videos for sites like OnlyFans. As news of their arrest broke, the internet lit up. And while many celebrated his seeming demise and speculated on his crimes, others wanted to know how a man like this came to prominence in the first place. In a now-deleted tweet, the poet Joseph Massey asserted that “the Andrew Tates of the world would not exist if men weren’t demoralised, degraded and confused about what masculinity is and isn’t”. “Thanks, feminists, for the absolute shit show you created,” he wrote.

But even before Tate’s arrest, people were echoing Massey’s sentiments and beginning to speculate whether feminism had something to do with his rise. Writing the Scot Scoop in October 2022, Jasneh Sasan suggested that “Tate resulted from extreme, modern feminism”. “As feminists kept villainising ‘straight, white, Christian males’, men were faced with two options: either support the feminist narrative or go against it,” he said. And in August, Sky News political commentator Daisy Cousens argued that “it’s hardly surprising that young men are gravitating towards him [Tate] when society has spent decades demonising masculinity and blaming all of society’s ills on their gender”.

When I first came across this narrative on social media, I was resolute in the belief that feminism did not create Andrew Tate. Feminism, as bell hooks defines it, is “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression.” So how could feminism, a weapon against injustice, create what it is fighting against?

Cultural commentator and YouTube video essayist Alice Cappelle tells Dazed the question of whether feminism “creates” misogynist influencers like Tate is a complicated one. “The belief that the existence of the manosphere and people like Andrew Tate are a result of feminism is technically true,” she says. “In the 1990s, journalist Susan Faludi in her book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, showed that advances towards gender equality and the promotion of women’s rights were systematically met with a moderate to intense backlash. Nothing has changed. Tate embodies the most reactionary fridge of what I see as the post-MeToo conservative backlash.”

While anti-feminists like Massey, Sasan and Cousens will assert that feminism continues to push young boys and men into the arms of misogyny, by neglecting them and villainising them on account of their gender, Faludi reminds us that these people hate to see “women’s equality become increasingly possible”. As we know, feminist revolution means a complete overhaul of society. But so many people, especially those in positions of power, are happy with the status quo and don’t want their privileges to be threatened. So they retaliate. “What is important now,” says Capelle, “is how we respond to it.”

In November 2022, the Global Boyhood Initiative released its first-ever State of UK Boys report, which was launched to promote positive masculinity and respond meaningfully to the diverse experiences of boys. The report found that boys are suffering – not because of feminism – but from patriarchal masculinity, which disconnects them from their emotions and socialises them into violence. The report advocated for a feminist approach to teaching and learning. Writing for the Guardian, Laura Bates explained that the report emphasised the importance of “challenging male violence and misogyny, encouraging different types of masculinity and seeing women as allies. It all contributes to better mental health and educational attainment among boys.” Feminism is not the problem here, it’s the solution.

In fact, feminism is a life-saving practice – not just for women but for everyone. While anti-feminist and misogynists will say that we’ve gone too far, it’s imperative that we go further. It’s the only way we can change the lives of boys, men, and all those oppressed under the patriarchy. Feminism is a politics of justice, and there’s no justice without love. So no matter how much anti-feminists want us to believe that feminism is an ideology filled with hate, we must remember that to choose feminist politics is to choose love.

Andrew Tate is a symptom of a generation of disaffected men, but feminism is the cure not the underlying sickness. So while feminism is technically the reason Andrew Tate exists, it’s also the reason people like him will disappear. Capelle puts it best: “women, feminists, mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives have consistently extended a hand to men to help them overcome reductive gender stereotypes. Feminism has never been solely about women. It’s a social project, a vision for a society where people like Andrew Tate will naturally become irrelevant.”