🔒 How the Far-Right Weaponized the Masculinity Crisis

Why would Andrew Tate tweet something like this?

Tate is mostly—almost exclusively—known for his misogyny. But the mistake that people make, to the extent that they can stomach knowing anything about him at all, is identifying him as some sort of pickup artist or sex guru, an antidote to the so-called and oft-cited “male loneliness epidemic.”

 The truth is much more sinister. Andrew Tate grew out of the petri dish of pickup artistry but that culture, with its wacky hats and corny nicknames, died some years ago and was replaced evolutionarily by the disease that Tate and similar figures comprise. They are not the cure to male loneliness, they are its source, and it is their nutrition.

It can slip your notice, but you can see how the right-wing discourse is shifting when it comes to men and women, especially now that the far-right is gaining in influence over traditional conservatism. The shift is deliberate, tactical, and frightening.

 When Andrew Tate or Nick Fuentes tell you that having sex with women is gay:

You might be surprised to learn it has a lot to do with this:

And also, a lot to do with this:

But let’s back up.

 For basically the whole 20^th century the conservative position was the nuclear family ideal. The “tradwives” thing is still obviously prominent on the right, particularly the elements that still strongly emphasize Christianity, but this is less common among the new right, the far-right.

 Donald Trump’s marriage isn’t hugely emphasized the way that other presidents have made efforts to promote themselves as family men, and in fact his forthright disdain for women is considered part of his appeal. Trump has two daughters and three sons across three different women, and although Ivanka played a prominent role in his 2017-2020 term, neither she, nor Tiffany, nor much of Melania, have been heard from in 2025.

 Elon Musk has impregnated five women that we know about, but they were almost all conceived via IVF, selecting for male children. Apart from a few photos of him hanging out with Grimes, Musk is never known to associate with women or enjoy their company. Of his 14 known children, I think only one was born female, while his most famous offspring, Vivian Wilson, drove him to incandescent rage with her gender transition. Not a fan of girls, is what I’m saying. 

What’s happening is that the traditional right-wing vision of the male and female social roles—a monogamous lifelong marriage, the man the breadwinner and societal engine, the woman the childbearer and homekeeper, her husband ideally her first and only sexual partner—are falling away in favor of the masculine ideal being the incel, and women being… well, a bug to be worked out of the system, frankly.

 This is the really dire modern trajectory of a predatory culture of male entitlement that has always seen women as a problem to be solved. The early 2000s fad of pickup artistry—which had existed in some form for at least a century as an underground thing, but was made mainstream in 2005 thanks to Neil Strauss’ bestseller The Game—was all about solving single men’s trouble with women by selling them the secrets to the female mind. It’s called “artistry” but it was treated as more of a science, the idea that women’s minds can be hacked, and that winning sex with them is a solved game, hence the activity literally being called “Game.”

 The PUA grift, which had been chugging along sleazily but relatively harmlessly for a hundred years, didn’t survive mainstream exposure and the subsequent boom, but I believe it did incredible damage to society during that boom.

 By which I mean, I don’t think Neil Strauss should be tried at the Hague for his book, but I’m also not far from thinking that. There is, it turns out, no secret cheat code to the female mind. Most of the successful advice that the PUAs sold amounted to dressing well and approaching women. For those who weren’t able to make Game work for them, there was the red pill, then the black pill, then the incels.

 The hucksters of bottled masculinity had to find a new grift to adapt to their changing audience.

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