Andrew Tate trial: Why Romania wants to remind the world the toxic influencer is British |
Whether you like it or not, people like Andrew Tate. A lot. To understand the rise of the former kickboxer turned self-avowed success coach, famed for his misogynist views, we must first and foremost understand what it is about him which resonates with men. While I haven't thought about this long or hard, off the top of my head I would attribute Tate's popularity to two key driving forces. Firstly, the fact far more men agree with the misogynistic views which Tate espouses than many of us would care to admit. Secondly, maybe I am being naive, but I genuinely think some of Tate's followers, well maybe not his diehard apostles, genuinely do not know, or perhaps wilfully ignore, some of the misogynistic influencer's more extreme and violent views. As I noted in my newsletter last month, social media content provides the ideal gateway drug for influencers who hold hateful views to covertly lure people in. Tate is arguably enticing viewers with his self-help videos and lavish lifestyle characterised by ostentatious cars, private jets, and opulent properties. With many arguably unaware of his terrifying views on women. Research I previously covered by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) unearthed 47 videos of Tate pushing what it describes as "extreme misogyny". In a bid to try and understand the influence Tate is having in Romania, I interviewed four campaigners and a local politician in the eastern European country. The world must "remember" misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate is from the UK, a local Romanian politician told me, as the country remains gripped by the influencer's court case. Oana Toiu, an MP who is president of the labour and social protection committee, told me Tate is "exploiting" misogynistic views among young people in Romania while their "patriarchal" government is ignoring issues around young people being radicalised by misogynistic social media personalities like Tate. Her comments were echoed by teenage campaigners in Romania who warned the world must not forget Tate is from the UK rather than Romania as they explained most of the boys in their class support Tate and "continuously" discuss him. Tate, who has been banned from a number of social media platforms for hate speech and voicing misogynistic views, is presently under arrest in Romania facing allegations of being part of an organised crime group, human trafficking and rape alongside his brother Tristan. The brothers deny the allegations levied against them. As ever, if you have first-hand personal experience of anything in this newsletter, feel free to drop me an email at maya.oppenheim@independent.co.uk (I would love to hear from you!) |
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'I can't explain how exhausted I was': Women hit by change in state pension age describe physical toll of work |
The stories which women affected by the increase in the state pension age gave me for a recent article were heart-wrenching. Retirement might be dubbed the "golden years" but there was nothing golden about their experiences. On the contrary, the women warned of the physical toll of working in older age as they raise concerns that millions more could be forced to work until they are 68. While campaigners condemned recent reports that the retirement age could increase to 68 as early as 2035, arguing that it is "completely wrong" for the government to force people to "work until they drop". It comes after almost 4 million women were affected by a controversial state pension change that saw the age of retirement for those born after March 1950 increase from 60 to 66. As a result of the changes to the state pension age, Julia Jacobs, just one of the women interviewed in the story, won't receive her state pension until 2025. Despite this, she gave up work in 2019 because of the physical toll it was taking on her body. Ms Jacobs, who lives in Solihull, spent most of her adult life bringing up her four children, but also worked in retail. Discussing the job, she says: "It was hard, physically draining work, involving climbing ladders, pulling and pushing heavy stock in the service lifts, and standing all day for shifts up to 12 hours. My body could not cope with the work, and it has caused back pain and problems with my feet, knees and hips which last to today. I gave up this job with medical advice to do so by my GP in 2019." Ms Jacobs says raising the age to 68 would force people to "work till they drop", adding: "I physically and mentally could not work to age 68." The 63-year-old, who looks after her three grandchildren, also worked as a part-time exam invigilator on a zero-hour contract prior to the coronavirus pandemic, but is now living off her life savings ahead of drawing her state pension. "Of course, this money is reducing rapidly," she says. "I haven't been on holiday since 2017. I have got rid of my freezer. I heat my home only for an hour in the morning and two hours in the evening. I try to buy 'yellow-stickered' food where I can. I live a very quiet life. I have never had a takeaway delivered to my home. I rarely meet friends to eat out or socialise, and even tend to refrain from a coffee out because of the cost. I cannot afford to join an exercise class or a gym. Life is not good. It is a case of limping through each month, just about coping but constantly worrying over money." |
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"If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night." |
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Would you trust an app to tell you if you're fertile? Because it might be the future |
What is the first thing you do in the morning? Do you grab straight for your phone, half asleep and bleary-eyed, to doom-scroll social media? Or perhaps you snooze your alarm and fall straight back into the warm embrace of sleep? Or maybe you jump out of bed like a smug duracell bunny to embark on an intimidatingly health-conscious morning routine? Or perhaps you do some combination of the above depending on which side of the bed you wake up on or how debauched your evening before was. But scrap all of the above if you are using an app called Natural Cycles which one of my colleagues Ellie Muir has written about in an interesting story for The Independent's lifestyle desk. "Katherine spends 30 seconds each morning with a thermometer under her tongue," Muir writes. "She takes her temperature and notes the result in an app on her phone. After a minute, her screen will beam one of two colours: crimson or bright emerald. The latter lets her know that she isn't fertile. The former means that she is, and ought to use protection if she's having sex that day. The 30-year-old is using Natural Cycles; the first birth control app cleared by America's FDA. Think of it working like a standard period-tracker app, only powered by a very personal kind of algorithm. Natural Cycles allows its users to either plan a pregnancy or prevent it, with prevention the most popular use among young women." For those intrigued about the efficacy of this app, you can read Muir's nuanced and balanced story here. |
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Number of people charged for so-called revenge porn branded "woefully low" as new data shows just 4 per cent of reports lead to court action as cases surge |
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'Being a solo parent is all-consuming': Natascha McElhone on her new career focus and that controversial relationship in The Crown |
While I am not a parent, I have interviewed enough people who struggle with the wildly extortionate, wholly unsustainable, equality-entrenching cost of childcare to perpetually wonder how I will cope when I hopefully one day have a child to call my own. Childcare struggles are real and they are radically, and not in the cheering, uplifting sense of the word, tougher for single parents. This burden falls disproportionately on women due to the fact they are far more likely to be single parents; Some 90 per cent of the two million single parents living in the UK are mothers. Natascha McElhone, an actor known for her roles in The Truman Show and Solaris, has discussed this in an interview with The Independent. "You're the frame, they're the picture, and you keep your eyes on them," she says of being a single parent. "I haven't actually worked that much [while raising them], which I know sounds strange. Over the years I've done a couple of shows that luckily people have watched. But I've also been at home for up to two years at a time. I'm not going to say I was just a stay-at-home mother because we all know it's never 'just' – it's all-consuming. But there have been long stretches where a lot of my creativity and energy have gone into my children, and joyfully so." |
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