Half a Semester of Women’s History and Somehow We Landed on Andrew Tate

On vague “good ideas,” young men, and patriarchy’s disturbingly durable marketing department

There are moments in teaching when you can feel your soul leave your body, hover above the room, look down at you, and whisper, “Good luck, babe.”

For me, one of those moments happened in a 400-level Women in History course I was teaching via Zoom.

This is important context, because in a physical classroom, a student staying after class has a certain ritual quality to it. They linger near the podium. They clutch their notebook. They wait while other students shuffle out, letting the room empty before asking something vulnerable, confusing, or occasionally so unhinged that the academic gods decide to spice up your afternoon.¹

But on Zoom, “staying after class” is stranger. It is not a student hovering at the front of the room. It is the digital equivalent of everyone else vanishing into the ether while one little square remains.

One by one, the students clicked out. Cameras blinked away. The class dissolved into black rectangles and silence. I was probably expecting a question about the research paper. Or maybe a clarification about suffrage. Or, if the universe was feeling especially generous, a student wanting to talk about Gerda Lerner and women’s right to know their own history, which was literally one of the questions built into my suffrage lecture. In that unit, I had students think about why women having “the right to know [their] own history” matters, especially when the story of suffrage is so often flattened into a tidy little parade float of progress.

Instead, this young man looked at me through the glowing portal of Zoom and said something along the lines of:

“I mean, I don’t agree with him on everything, but Andrew Tate has some good ideas.”

Now, I want you to understand the exact psychic violence of this moment.

This was not week one.

This was not the “welcome to the syllabus, please do not plagiarize, yes, Chicago citations are real, and unfortunately, they can hurt you” portion of the semester.

This was after weeks of women’s history.

Weeks.

We had talked about women being revered and demeaned at the same time. We had talked about how cultures can praise women for their reproductive, moral, social, or symbolic value while still treating actual living women like decorative livestock with opinions. In one early lecture, I framed the course around exactly that question: why can women be revered in cultures for the value they bring, and yet still be treated as less than in daily life? I believe the exact discussion and lecture that week centered around Catholic depictions of Mary.

We had talked about benevolent sexism. Not just “I hate women” sexism, but the much slipperier kind. The kind that smiles. The kind that holds the door open with one hand and locks the voting booth, bank account, lecture hall, and clinic with the other. Benevolent sexism, as I explained in that lecture, includes those comments and stereotypes that “feel both nice and wrong,” like the idea that women are delicate flowers who need male protection or naturally kinder and more caring than men. It sounds complimentary, but it still limits women’s roles.

We had talked about suffrage. We had talked about abolitionism. We had talked about the split between movements for women’s rights and Black civil rights, and how the question of who “deserves” rights first became one of the ugliest recurring subplots in American political life. We had talked about women moving from moral influence in the private sphere toward claims to actual political rights. We had talked about 1848, Seneca Falls, Frederick Douglass, the Fifteenth Amendment, Wyoming, the Nineteenth Amendment, and all the ways that even “victory” was never as clean as the textbook would like everyone to believe.

We had talked about feminism, backlash, the personal as political, power relations in marriage, sex, child-rearing, family, work, law, and the state. In the feminism unit, radical feminism appears not as a scary Halloween decoration for Fox News segments, but as a political analysis that power relations do not only exist between people and the state. They also exist between people in society, and those intimate power relations shape larger structures of inequality.

So when this student said Andrew Tate had “some good ideas,” I did what any historian would do when confronted with a vague claim wandering loose in the discourse like an unsupervised toddler with scissors.

I asked him to clarify.

“Which ideas?”

And that is when it got awkward.

Not because I yelled. I did not yell. Yelling and insults are reserved for men with unearned confidence and audacity, commenting on my articles and sending me hate mail. Not students who are still trying to learn.

I didn’t launch into some theatrical feminist monologue while lightning cracked behind me and the ghosts of suffragists rattled chains in the Zoom background.

I simply asked the most basic historical question: what do you mean?

This is the danger of asking people to define their terms. Suddenly, the fog machine breaks.

Because “he has some good ideas” is easy to say when the ideas remain vague. Vague is cozy. Vague is where bad arguments go to wear sweatpants. Vague lets someone gesture in the direction of discipline, confidence, financial independence, fitness, masculinity, responsibility, “traditional values,” or whatever other self-help confetti has been tossed over the actual ideology.

But once you ask, “Which ideas?” the whole thing begins to wobble.

Because if the “good idea” is “men should exercise,” that is not an Andrew Tate idea. That is a gym teacher idea. That is a doctor idea. That is a “your knees will start making rice cereal noises after thirty” idea.²

If the “good idea” is “young men should take responsibility for their lives,” that is not Andrew Tate. That is every grandmother, coach, mentor, therapist, and exhausted older sibling who has ever looked at a young man playing video games for thirteen hours straight and said, “Please drink water and apply for something.”

If the “good idea” is “men are lonely and need guidance,” fine. True. Let’s talk about it. Young men are lonely. Many are isolated. Many are angry. Many are emotionally underdeveloped because they have been raised in a culture that treats tenderness like a design flaw and vulnerability like an invasive species. That is a real problem.

Not only that, but it’s a problem created and enforced by patriarchy.

But here is where the little classroom goblin starts chewing through the wires.

The problem is not that young men are being told to improve themselves.

The problem is that they are being sold ordinary self-help advice wrapped in contempt for women.

And that wrapping matters.

A protein bar dipped in sewage is not a health food.

This is why the “some good ideas” defense drives me up a wall. Because misogynistic ideology rarely survives by introducing itself honestly. It does not walk into the room wearing a name tag that says, “Hello, I believe women are lesser beings and should exist in service to male power.”

That would be too easy to clock from the start.

Instead, it arrives wearing the language of discipline. Or protection. Or biology. Or tradition. Or “natural roles.” Or “hard truths.” Or “men and women are just different.” Or “I’m just saying what everyone is afraid to say.”

History is basically one long record scratch of men saying, “I’m just saying,” and then building a legal system around it.

That is what made the moment so mind-boggling. Not that a young man in one of my classes had encountered misogynistic influencer content online. Of course, he had. We live in a cursed algorithmic terrarium where young men can watch one video about push-ups and within forty-eight hours be fed a worldview suggesting women caused the fall of Rome, their personal credit score, and possibly the death of the dinosaurs.

The mind-boggling part was that he had been sitting in a Women in History course.

He had heard the pattern. He had participated in the discussions. He was engaged and listening, not defensive or resistant to the ideas or the primary source documents.

Week after week, the course had been laying out the machinery.

Women are told they are morally superior, then denied public power because politics is too dirty for them.

Women are told they are naturally domestic, then economically punished for unpaid labor.

Women are told they are delicate, then blamed when male “protection” becomes control.

Women are told their biology is destiny, then treated as irrational for objecting to laws, customs, and institutions built around that assumption.

Women are told they are revered, then punished for acting like full human beings.

That is the old trick.

And once you have taught women’s history for long enough, you start to recognize the trick even when someone has put sunglasses on it, handed it a podcast microphone, and rented a sports car.

The thing about patriarchy is that it has always had excellent branding.

In the Victorian era, for example, women were not simply told, “We hate you and want you powerless.” That would have been vulgar. Instead, they were placed on a pedestal, which is just a prison cell with better lighting.

Victorian gender ideology framed women as physically weak but morally superior, suited to the domestic sphere as spiritual guardians and ornamental trophies, while men occupied the public sphere of business, politics, and competition. In my lecture on the Victorian era, I described this as the sharpening of separate spheres: women as physically weak and morally superior, men as physically strong and morally weak.

On paper, that can sound almost flattering. Women are purer! Women are kinder! Women are the moral center of civilization!

Great. Do they get property rights?

No.

Can they vote?

No.

Can they pursue education on equal terms?

Let’s not get hysterical.

Can they control their own money, bodies, marriages, sexuality, or public lives?

Certainly not. But someone may write a poem about how angelic they are while denying them those things, so that’s nice, I guess.

This is the historical pattern: praise women in the abstract, control women in reality.

And that is exactly why “good ideas” can be such a trap. Because antifeminist and misogynistic movements often do not begin with a sneer. They begin with a compliment.

Women are special.

Women are precious.

Women are naturally nurturing.

Women are the heart of the home.

Women are too valuable to be degraded by politics.

Women are too sacred to be sullied by work.

Women are too emotional for leadership.

Women are too important as mothers to be distracted by autonomy.

There is always a reason.

There is always a story.

There is always some “good idea” tucked into the machinery to make the machinery look less like a cage.

And that is why I asked the student to clarify.

Because when someone says, “I don’t agree with him on everything, but he has some good ideas,” the next question has to be: which ones?

And after that: why do those ideas require this messenger?

Because young men do not need misogynists to learn discipline.

They do not need misogynists to learn confidence.

They do not need misogynists to learn how to exercise, save money, take responsibility, develop ambition, or stop treating their lives like an abandoned group project.

They need adults who can help them build self-respect without making women the villain of their coming-of-age story.

That is the bait-and-switch.

A lot of these influencers identify a real wound. Male loneliness is real. Male insecurity is real. Male purposelessness is real. The emotional starvation created by narrow masculinity is real. Boys and men are often told they can feel anger, lust, pride, and not much else without risking ridicule. That is not healthy. That is not sustainable. That is emotional malnutrition with a gym membership.

But instead of helping men become fuller human beings, misogynistic influencers give them a script.

You are not lonely because we have a shredded sense of community, because digital life has replaced intimacy with performance, because patriarchal masculinity has taught you that needing people is weakness, or because nobody ever taught you how to name your feelings without wanting to fake your own death.

No, no.

You are lonely because women are shallow.

You are insecure because women have too much power.

You are sexually frustrated because feminism ruined everything.

You are unhappy because men are no longer “real men” and women are no longer obedient enough to make that fantasy work.

It is a very old con.

Take a structural problem. Blame women. Sell masculinity back to men as domination.

Rinse. Repeat. Add ring light.

This is why women’s history matters. Not because it teaches students that men are bad. Despite what the internet’s least literate comment sections seem to believe, Women in History is not a semester-long ritual where I light candles, summon Susan B. Anthony, and hex men named Brad.³

Women’s history teaches students to see systems.

It teaches them to recognize that gender is not just a private identity or a set of personal preferences. It is political. It is legal. It is economic. It is cultural. It is enforced through stories, laws, customs, institutions, medical theories, religious teachings, family structures, jokes, textbooks, advertisements, and, now, podcasts where men in suspiciously tight shirts explain civilization.

That is why “the personal is political” remains such an important concept. In the lecture on feminism and empowerment, I explained that radical feminists argued that personal experiences in marriage, sex, and child-rearing had political consequences and that power relations between men and women shaped women’s broader position in society.

That matters because misogyny does not only operate through obvious public policy. It also operates through the intimate. Through who gets interrupted. Who is believed? Who is expected to sacrifice? Who is assumed to be naturally caring. Who is allowed anger? Who is punished for ambition? Who has to soften every sentence with a smiley face so nobody mistakes authority for cruelty?

It operates in the household. In the classroom. In the workplace. In dating. In marriage. In sex. In the group chat. In the comment section. In the Zoom room, one student thinks he is making a reasonable point, and his professor is silently wondering whether she can legally assign him the entire history of patriarchy as homework.

The other reason that moment stuck with me is that he knew enough to hedge.

He did not say, “Andrew Tate is right.”

He said, “I don’t agree with him on everything, but…”

That “but” is doing Olympic-level gymnastics.

It is the verbal equivalent of putting a napkin over a grease fire.

“I don’t agree with him on everything” means he knew there was something there he needed to distance himself from. He knew the name carried baggage. He knew, at least vaguely, that he could not simply endorse the whole worldview in a Women in History class without sounding like he had wandered into the wrong Zoom link by accident.

But he still wanted to preserve the “good ideas.”

And that, to me, is where the lesson lives.

Because patriarchy does not need every young man to become an open cartoon misogynist. It does not need him twirling a mustache and announcing his plan to repeal women’s suffrage before lunch.

It only needs him to keep making exceptions.

It only needs him to say, “Well, yes, the misogyny is bad, but…”

It only needs him to treat contempt for women as an unfortunate side dish rather than part of the recipe.

It only needs him to separate “discipline” from the worldview it is being used to launder.

And it only needs him to believe that women objecting to that worldview are overreacting.

That is the part I want people to understand.

When women object to misogynistic influencers, we are not objecting to young men having role models. We are not objecting to men working out, finding purpose, making money, improving their mental health, or developing confidence. Contrary to popular belief, feminism is not hiding in the bushes waiting to confiscate dumbbells and protein powder.

We are objecting to the political education happening underneath the ‘self-help.’

We are objecting to the idea that male confidence requires female subordination.

We are objecting to the idea that men can only become strong by treating women as weak, disposable, manipulative, childish, sexually obligated, or naturally inferior.

We are objecting to a worldview that takes the real pain of young men and turns it into resentment toward women, rather than teaching them to seek mental health help and community where they can genuinely express their emotions without being mocked for being “girly” or “weak.”

This is why shows like ‘The Pitt,’ ‘Ted Lasso,’ and ‘Shrinking’ are so important.

That is not empowerment.

That is patriarchy wearing a motivational hoodie.

And historically, this is familiar. Exhaustingly familiar. Put-it-in-a-museum-next-to-the-other-terrible-ideas familiar.

Anti-suffragists argued that women entering politics would disrupt the home. They argued women’s service as citizens belonged in wifehood and motherhood, not voting. They connected women’s suffrage to social disorder, anti-patriotism, socialism, race panic, and the collapse of the natural order. In my suffrage lectures, I had students trace how anti-suffrage rhetoric framed women’s political power as a threat to home life, citizenship, and social stability.

That rhetoric was not always “women are trash.”

Sometimes it was “women must be protected.”

A compliment-shaped cage.

In the twentieth century, the same pattern reappeared in domestic ideology. Women were told that fulfillment came through marriage, sex, children, and housework. In the lecture on The Feminine Mystique, the course covered the assumption that women would be fulfilled by domestic life, and that “truly feminine” women should not want work, education, or political opinions.

That message was also sold as protection. As happiness. As natural order. As psychological health. As family stability.

Not domination.

Never domination.

Domination has terrible PR, so it usually travels under an alias.

This is why the “which ideas?” question matters so much. It forces the alias to show ID.

If the idea is “men should have discipline,” wonderful. Let’s teach discipline.

If the idea is “men should build confidence,” great. Let’s teach confidence.

If the idea is “men need spaces to talk honestly about pain, failure, loneliness, and fear,” absolutely. Let’s build those spaces.

But if the idea is “men can only heal by restoring dominance over women,” then we are not talking about self-improvement anymore. We are talking about backlash.

And backlash is also a historical pattern.

It shows up after women gain rights. After women enter public life. After women challenge sexual norms. After women become economically independent. After women demanded education. After women refuse compulsory motherhood. After the violence against women. After women stop pretending private suffering is private.

Backlash says: things have gone too far.

Backlash says: men are the real victims now.

Backlash says: feminism destroyed the family, dating, sex, universities, workplaces, comedy, children, movies, the military, and apparently the entire fragile ecosystem of male podcasts.

Backlash says: we just need to return to something natural.

And women’s history, if taught honestly, responds: natural according to whom?

Because the “natural order” has always required a remarkable amount of law, violence, religion, propaganda, economic pressure, sexual control, and educational exclusion to keep it looking natural.

Funny how that works.

My student probably did not mean to walk into all of that when he stayed after class on Zoom. I doubt he was trying to initiate a full-scale historiographical crisis. He was probably testing an idea out loud. Students do that. Sometimes they are brave. Sometimes they are thoughtful. Sometimes they are wrong in ways that make your left eye twitch and hit the bar that evening.

But that is also the point of teaching.

Not to dunk on students for not already knowing everything.

Not to humiliate them for repeating something they absorbed from the cultural sludge machine.

But to ask the next question.

Which ideas?

Where did they come from?

Who benefits from them?

What assumptions are they carrying?

What kind of world do they imagine?

What kind of power do they protect?

And why, after half a semester of women’s history, did those ideas still sound good?

That last question is the one that stays with me.

Because it is not really about one student. It is about the limits of information. You can put the evidence in front of someone. You can walk them through centuries of women being praised into submission, protected into dependence, excluded for their own good, silenced for social stability, controlled in the name of morality, and punished for wanting to be full human beings.

And still, patriarchy whispers, “Okay, but what if this time they really are just overreacting?”

That is why we have to teach the pattern.

Not just the facts. The pattern.

Andrew Tate and his compatriots are only interesting because he is a modern delivery system for a much older story.

The story says men are naturally rulers and women are naturally subjects.

The story says male pain is women’s fault.

The story says male emotion is weakness.

The story says equality is humiliation.

The story says domination is discipline.

The story says hierarchy is order.

The story says women’s freedom is men’s crisis.

And then, because the story knows it cannot always say that directly, it adds:

Also, remember to work out, dress nicely, and drive a nice car.

That is the trick.

That is the trap.

That is the historical fungus growing under the motivational poster.

So yes, I still think about that student. I think about his little Zoom square. I think about the awkward pause after I asked him which ideas he meant. I think about the way vague admiration becomes harder to defend once it has to become specific.

And I think about how many young men are being handed the same poisoned sandwich and told it is protein.

They deserve better than that.

Women certainly deserve better than that.

And if the “good ideas” only remain good when you peel them away from the contempt for women, then maybe they were never his ideas in the first place.

Maybe discipline does not belong to misogynists.

Maybe confidence does not belong to men who need women smaller.

Maybe responsibility does not require domination.

Maybe young men can become whole without being taught that women are the obstacle, the prize, the temptation, the enemy, or the helpmeet.

Maybe the actual good idea is this:

If your masculinity requires women’s subordination to function, it is not masculinity.

It is a hostage situation with a podcast.

1. “Did the Boston Tea Party kill the fish in the harbor?” is one such unhinged question I will never forget.

2. They will. I did not listen. My right hip has bursitis now.

3. Though, believe me, I have been tempted.