Addressing misogyny and gender roles with young people

BECID
April 22, 2025 ·

Authors
Maria Murumaa-Mengel (maria.murumaa@ut.ee), Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Tartu
Kaarel Lott (kaarel.lott@ut.ee), Junior Research Fellow of Digital Media Studies at the University of Tartu

This material is useful for talking to young people about content creators like Andrew Tate and gender roles in general.

You will find the following:

1. Ready-to-use lesson/training/quiz materials, six exercises:
1.1. Widening value gap
1.2 Masculinity and femininity as social constructs
1.3. The backwards world
1.4. Personal experiences of injustice
1.5. Shifting perspectives
1.6 Manfluencer bingo
1.7 Tate’s messages
2. Further reading recommendations

1. Teaching materials

1.1. Widening value gap between men and women

Look at the graph showing the divergence in values between young men and women in different countries.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998

Such reviews are usually the result of an aggregated analysis of many different studies. For example, either national or international comparative surveys are carried out, asking male and female respondents (recently also non-binary desirable) about their political preferences, perceived gender roles, general value preferences (material, collective, educational, hedonistic, etc.). Nuances on this issue are provided by qualitative research, where in-depth interviews seek to understand the examples, experiences and general patterns of thought that people express in their responses. For more details on examples of studies, with a focus on methodology, see for example here:

Discuss together:

1. To what extent and if at all can such divergence be seen in your country?
2. How can it be measured in sociological terms? What should we ask? Put together a survey and carry it out in your school. For inspiration, see for example the ICCS survey for Estonia 2022 (in particular, look at what is asked under the relevant topic).
3. If such trends are worsening, what does this mean and entail: for the individual? For society? for you? for your mother? for your father? for your mother? for your father? for your mother? for a friend/loved one?
4. How do young people think the situation could be improved?

1.2. Masculinity and femininity as social constructs

Conduct a vote or a poll (e.g. by physically sitting in a circle in the classroom) asking students to draw on stereotypes about what is usually considered masculine and feminine.

After the exercise, discuss together:

‘Explain to the alien who has just landed, why?’- ask the young people to imagine that an alien has just landed on Earth who knows nothing about life here and has just watched this exercise and asks – ‘but why is X/Y/Z thought to be more male/female?’.
On what did your group have quite similar opinions?
On what do they differ greatly?
Which ones made you laugh? Which made you sad? Which made you angry?
How do you know? Where did you get this knowledge?
What is biological (genetic, inborn) and what is social (acquired through upbringing and life)?
What happens when you break these norms?
What happens if a great many people at once decide to break these norms?
Where do non-binary people fit in? What are the opportunities and risks of such stereotyping for those who do not identify as male or female?

1.3. The backwards world

Once you’ve talked a little about gender and its social construction with young people, you can start to play with reversing gender stereotypes. Together with the students, create (social) media content that would reverse gender roles and gender stereotypes: talk about men/boys as they talk about women/girls and vice versa. As a separate issue, what images and stereotypes are spread about non-binary people can be discussed.

As a preparatory task at home, young people can be asked to find different media texts or sort them out by sharing a screen:

Find texts in the press that talk about what men and women are/would be/want to be (search words: ‘men’, ‘masculine’, “women”, ‘feminine’, etc.).
Find texts from the so-called agenda media or taste media – i.e. publications presenting themselves as journalism and carrying strong worldviews – that talk about what men and women are/should be/want to be like.
Find social media texts (written, audiovisual) that talk about what men and women are/would/want to be. And then turn it around again.

The Man Who Has It All social media accounts can be used for inspiration:

1.4. Personal experiences of injustice

After the warm-up exercises, once the group is quite comfortable with each other, the topic can lead to concrete personal observations.

What was a memorable and gender-related ‘ahhaa!’ for you? or ‘oh no’ moment in your life so far (positive and negative discoveries and insights)?
That moment, situation, conversation, etc. where you realized that you were being treated a certain way because of your gender?
You can think of a lot of things: what toys were you told to play with, what hobbies were considered appropriate, what rules of behaviour were you told your gender had, what safety rules were introduced, what was said about the opposite sex, what you saw in the (social) media or in games, etc.?
And what then: what are the harms involved? For women? For men? For non-binary people? What are the benefits?

It is important to underline that noticing and talking about gender stereotypes helps us to spot unfair beliefs that can be disagreed with and not followed.

With a group interested in the topic, you can read this interview:

1.5. Shifting perspectives

For young people who already have some experience of computer games:

Play a computer game for X hours, where you can assign a gender to your character, change his/her appearance and interact with other players while playing. Design your character as a distinctly opposite sex. What options do you have? See how this gaming experience differs from your normal experience. What will you do differently? How do others interact with you? What are the differences between creating a character as a male and female player?

As a supplementary task, an interview task could be given, for example, to interview three opposing players and ask them about their general experiences and observations.

1.6. Manfluencer Bingo

By showing how easily manipulated the videos and other social media of many of the misogynistic content creators are, it becomes clearer exactly how we are being trapped. By giving young media users critical glasses, by showing how hugely predictable the messages of manfluencers are, a kind of immunity and healthy scepticism can be built up towards such narratives. An entertaining way of carrying out this exercise is the so-called Manfluencer Bingo.

The students themselves could bring examples of local manfluencers and around the world and then they could watch and analyse them together with a bingo sheet. You could complete the bingo grid together, analysing for each category why this and why not the other way round. For this exercise, bear in mind that it is worth starting to dissect the content of manfluencers once they have become a topic of discussion among young people. Bringing the content to young people on your own runs the risk of inadvertently popularising it.

The underlying logic of the exercise is inspired by this article:: Vail, K. (2023). Preventing online radicalization and extremism in boys: A conversation with Pasha Dashtgard. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(7), 30-35.

Design: Inger Klesment and Gretel Juhansoo

As a text:

Showing muscles	Metropolitan area (e.g. Dubai), high-rise buildings	Cars, yachts, boats, planes	Filmed from the bottom up, you appear to be below the speaker.	Talking about addictions (social media, porn, alcohol)
Gym environment, working out	Modern society is a failure	Tips on how to be a ‘real man’	Tips on how to treat women	Tips on how to get rich quick
Men must be dangerous and/or strong	Talks about alphas, sigmas, betas	Necessity of going through suffering	Films himself talking in the car	Cryptocurrencies, investing
Swearing, e.g. ‘fucking’, ‘pussy’, etc.	Stresses the importance of discipline	The video has a background of techno music with a serious mood	Speaks in a serious, dominant tone	Pressures you into action by claiming you are too lazy, weak, cowardly, or poor
Claims that society is against men	Mocks mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression	The video colors are dull and dark	Extends some characteristics to all women, demonizes women	Uses hashtags ‘real’, ‘grind’, ‘motivation’, ‘gym’ in the caption

1.7. Tate’s messages

Finally, you can also analyse the messages of Andrew Tate, the most famous online celebrity producing misogynistic content (see the resource in English for more instructions). As with the previous exercise, you should consider the moment when to discuss the content with young people. If young people are still in contact with the content and it is being given a platform in the classroom for the first time, there is a risk of inadvertently popularising it.

What do these messages say about women and men?
What problems can they create for men and boys?
What problems might they cause for women and girls?
What problems might they cause for non-binary or trans people?
Why is Tate so famous?
Where else have you noticed such messages?

2. Further reading recommendations