For the first time in seven years I didn’t watch Love Island. I just couldn’t.
Just hours before the first episode the news broke about the latest wolf in police clothing – guilty of 80 vile sex attacks on 12 women over 18 years, shattering the very last flimsy belief that women matter. That might sound over the top, but that’s how it feels.
We’re not safe, even with those meant to protect us. It makes me frightened. And incredibly angry. And it’s robbed me of the ability to give an entertainment show the benefit of the doubt about the treatment of women.
I’ve always excused Love Island as an equal opportunities objectifier. The discomfort experienced when girls line up to be chosen by boys is eased when boys line up to be chosen by girls.
But last year’s series featured an unignorable amount of misogyny, gaslighting (being told you’re crazy/paranoid/stupid when recognising a lie) and shameful double standards.
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This behaviour was so stark, so prevalent, that during the contestants’ families visit to the villa, one boy’s mum pulled him up on it on air.
“There have been times when I’ve wanted to give you a good telling off,” she said to her son. “When you come home we will have a chat about it.”
Well done her.
Obviously the boys on Love Island don’t represent every young man in the country, but they do represent a rapidly growing section. Personally I’m horrified and alarmed – yes, as the mother of a son and the godmother of two young girls, but also as a citizen of the world.
Much of the blame for the chauvinist cancer growing amongst today’s teenage boys lies at the door of an individual called Andrew Tate. He was last seen on social media, sending a video to Greta Thunberg boasting about how many cars he had – pathetically winding up a teenager, unprovoked.
He accidentally revealed his location, meaning police who were looking for him on suspicion of human trafficking and rape, which he denies, found and arrested him. (This didn’t take place in the UK, where some coppers would presumably have shaken his hand and bought him a pint.)
Last August, he was banned from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, but it was already too late. Clips of him are still online, easily Googleable, and anyway, Tate – who proudly admits he is “absolutely a misogynist” – has already groomed an entire generation.
On TikTok alone, videos of him have been watched 11.6 billion times. They are supposedly inspirational, billed as self-help.
He flaunts his playboy lifestyle, featuring the elements that only impress teenage boys – bikini-clad hotties, private jets, guns, cigars – and instructs followers on how they too can be rich, strong and successful with girls.
Once he’s lured them in, he tells them that women belong in the home, shouldn’t be allowed to drive, or leave the house alone, and are a man’s property. He talks about hitting and choking women, trashing their belongings and stopping them from going out.
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He says rape victims must “bear responsibility” for their attacks, and though 36 himself, only dates women aged 18 or 19 because he can “make an imprint” on them. I could go on, and on and on, because he most certainly has.
Endless, easily accessible sexist, homophobic, violent hate. Unsurprisingly, Tate’s views have been described as extreme misogyny by domestic abuse charities, capable of radicalising men and boys to commit harm offline.
I’d heard about Tate, thought I broadly had the measure of him, but watching as much of his videos as I could bear for this piece genuinely made me nauseous.
Again, not just because my eight-year-old son will soon enough be his target audience. Cavemen had more enlightened, respectful attitudes to women when they were dragging us around by our hair.
Unfortunately talking about him here gives him the publicity he craves, but as that wise Love Island mum says, we all need to have a chat about it with our children. It’s up to us to remind them that women do matter, and more.
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