Smart and humane versus hateful and toxic: We need more Thunbergs and fewer Tates
"So when green goddess Greta Thunberg totally bollocked the loathsome Andrew Tate, it gave me hope for the year ahead. Since many of you, all very sensible, are not on Twitter, this is the story so far. Andrew Tate v Greta Thunberg, the viral conflict of 2022 and I’m not talking arguments about public health.
Tate, a British-American former kickboxer, a misogynist dimfluencer on TikTok, who says women are responsible for sexual assault, must have been lonely when he trolled climate warrior Thunberg wanting her email address so he could send her a list of all his gas guzzlers. It was accompanied by an image of him refuelling one of his cars.
Thunberg replied with her usual laconicism. “Yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.”
I’m definitely no fan of Tate but no fan of body shaming either. There are, I imagine, perfectly lovely men with small penises. It’s not how big it is, it’s what you do with it. Nor do I believe that all men with small penises behave badly to make up for perceived shortcomings. Sadly, Tate didn’t respond by being the bigger person. Instead, he said to the young climate activist, “How dare you!”
This was followed by a video tweeted by Tate of himself with a pile of pizza boxes, wearing a hideous robe and smoking a cigar in which he told Thunberg to “get a life”.
Folklore has turned this exchange into a cautionary tale. A Romanian pizza shop contact could be seen on the boxes and not long after, Romanian police arrested Tate and his brother, and later two young women who are accused of being collaborators in a shocking sex trafficking case. Thunberg tweeted: “This is what happens when you don’t recycle your pizza boxes” .
But sadly, says Snopes, my favourite ever fact-check site, the pizza boxes did not tip Romanian law enforcement agencies to the whereabouts of misogynist Andrew Tate, according to officials. Nah, it was a months-long investigation. The fable is funny but untrue, said a spokesperson for the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism.
Aside from the usual red-pill lunatics (called thus because of The Matrix movie franchise. Keanu, can’t you do something?) on social media platforms, the average user thought Thunberg won this ridiculous bout. How am I proving she won? It’s all in the metrics: Greta’s 3.9 million likes versus Tate’s 231.7K likes.
From a global perspective, Thunberg is on the money: repair, reuse, recycle, work to save the environment. Many more of us believe we should try to do good, to live with nature. Even if we don’t know it, we are followers of Seneca, who bade us to have good friendships where we learn from each other. Seneca urges us to choose excellence over “incelence”*, progress over hating habits.
Tate’s thinking is perfectly aligned with a real hatred of women and I fear he has driven a resurgence in the hatred of women. Tate says women are the property of men. Thunberg calls on us to act on climate change to save humanity.
We need more Gretas: smart, lively, funny, working towards a better life for all of us. And fewer Andrews: filled with anger, seeking power over others. Here’s how we make that happen. Seneca wrote of eudaimonia, the art of human flourishing. Only Thunberg wants that. Poor sad Tate wants to infect others with his hatred. I know where I want this year to go. Let’s ignore bad behaviour and invest in hope for the future. Greta for the win. Imperfect in our efforts but at least trying.
*Incelence is a noun derived from the word incel, the group of people nearly congruent with Tate’s followers. Sad people, sad lives.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/smart-and-humane-versus-hateful-and-toxi...
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