Boys are adopting Andrew Tate's misogynistic views — and bringing them to class, study finds

Edmonton Journal

03-07-2025

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'Sometimes it's a little more overt than that,' Cousineau said. 'There are some illusions to folks saying, 'I think my administrator actually agrees with them.''
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'We really wanted to demonstrate this is happening in real time, and it's having some significant impacts,' he said. 'There are real and tangible dangers to continuing to do nothing. Not recognizing this as a real issue allows it to proliferate and continue.'
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This isn't just the immature actions of some boys. 'While it is tempting to be reductionist about a problem like this, we have zero social tolerance for overt racism, especially in the classroom. Why should we tolerate identity-focused hate based on gender,' Cousineau said.
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Violent misogyny is never fine. 'It only takes one violent misogynist to carry out a Toronto Van Attack or another Ecole Polytechnique.'
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In 2018, Alex Minassian drove a rented van into pedestrians on a busy sidewalk on Toronto's Yonge Street, killing 10. Minassian once told a psychiatrist after the attack that he realized his victims were random pedestrians and was 'wishing for more females.'
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In December 1989, 14 women in a mechanical engineering classroom were killed by gunman Marc Lépine at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique.
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How to monitor what kids are exposed to gets into thorny territory, he said. 'Do parents know what their kids consume online? Are lots of parents having in-depth, connected conversations with their kids about what they're consuming and what the implications of that are? Generally, no.'
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'These are really hard things to do. But if we don't know what kids are exposing themselves to, and we're not engaging with them, that stuff might not come out at home,' Cousineau said. 'It might come out at school.'
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'We have evidence in this country, and many other places around the world, of the most extreme form of these kinds of violent misogyny, and nihilistic violent misogyny, where young men go out and kill people because of these ideas,' said Cousineau.
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Those acts of violence don't come out of nowhere, Cousineau said. People grow into them. 'All of the data we have about radicalized violence show us they develop over time,' he said.
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'We need to be addressing it young and at source.'
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