Anora and Andrew Tate

On sinning in the right and left direction.

Andrew Tate is a former (read: failed) martial arts guy who became rich by running a variety of pornographic enterprises, many of which were staffed (according to Tate) by women he was trafficking. He has since pivoted to social media influencer, which means he makes money by living online, posting pictures and videos that attract teenage simpletons, and offering “courses” that promise virility, enlightenment, and success. Jonathon Van Maren has written at length about Tate, and I refer you to JVM’s excellent work if you want to know more.

Joel Webbon is a pastor and social media influencer who has built up a platform among so-called Christian nationalist personalities. His brand, Right Response Ministries, is sponsoring a conference this year with guests like Stephen Wolfe (author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, published by Doug Wilson’s press) and Calvin Robinson.

In a recent podcast, Webbon made the case that Andrew Tate, while not a good person, was “sinning in the right direction.” By “right direction,” Webbon meant that Tate was behaving in traditionally masculine ways and selling his audience heterosexual smut, rather than the homosexual kind. Tate, according to Webbon, deserves some kind of acknowledgement that he is at least willing to offend feminists and transgender activists. Tate might have the wrong answers, but, for Webbon, he’s asking the right questions.

Webbon is not alone. As JVM has noted, several right-wing personalities, including Christian ones (Tate is Muslim) have made nice with Tate. If they are not willing to recommend him, they are at least unwilling to proactively distance themselves from him, despite the fact that Tate’s online audience is adjacent and in some cases overlaps with the conservative “manosphere” sympathetic to things like Christian nationalism. That’s a very jargon-filled way of saying that Tate, an alleged human trafficker, a professional pornographer, and a self-avowed hater of women, codes Right. He is on the right-wing team. And that makes him sympathetic.

Readers of this newsletter will not have to wonder what I think about this. “Sinning in the right direction” is a category for those whose moral compass is broken. But it’s a splendid little summary of where many people are these days. The costs of conviction, especially the costs of not getting attention, are too much. If Andrew Tate is what it takes to make the People We Don’t Like really mad, well…let’s wink at him and change the subject. He might be a monster, but doggone it, he’s our monster. These are the dying words of a terminally ill worldview.

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I thought about Tate when I saw two acceptance speeches from this year’s Oscars. I have not seen the winner of Best Picture, Anora, and don’t plan to. From what I’ve gathered it’s a story about a young oligarch who falls in love with a prostitute, and the movie makes every effort to put the prostitute’s skills on screen as much as possible.

Mikey Madison, the actress who plays the lead role in Anora, won the Oscar for her peformance. In her acceptance speech, she said this:

I also just want to again recognize and honor the sex worker community. I will continue to support and be an ally.

The director, Sean Baker, said something very similar while accepting his award for Anora’s screenplay:

"I want to thank the sex worker community — they have shared their stories, they have shared their life experiences with me over the years," Baker declared. “My deepest respect, thank you, I share this with you.”

Anora is not the first film about a hooker. But as far as I can tell, it is the first film to find its creators and stars showing solidarity with “the sex worker community” from the ceremony stage. This is not the language of compassion and care; it’s not Fantine in Les Miserables. This is the language of identity, of solidarity, of validation.

There have already been good pieces written about how “sex work” is a horribly deceitful euphemism. But even if you didn’t think so, how does one “support” and “be an ally” for those in sex work…without actually supporting and being an ally of sex work? I don’t think one can. When Madison and Baker expressed respect and honor for the sex work “community,” they were actually expressing respect and honor for the sex work itself. And in so doing, they were recasting prostitution, not as a tragedy that creates villains and victims, but as an empowering source of identity and freedom.

Madison and Baker’s premise is odd, too. We are living in what is arguably the golden age of “sex work.” Digital platforms report billions of dollars in profit from allowing ordinary women to sell themselves. Sex work has never been easier, more sanitized, less stigmatized than it is now. What it is not is different. It is not an identity or a vocation, because sex is not a commodity. These are profound lies being told to both men and women about what sex is.

Feminist progressivism is in a conundrum. Under its own logic, prostitution—that ultimate symbol of a male dominated world—has become profound. Modern liberals do not, of course, actually say that voters should hope their daughters become escorts. But they cannot do anything about the baptism of self-exploitation, because even in objection, they leave the door open for a view of sex and self that is off the table.

They are not unlike those conservatives who cannot bring themselves to condemn Andrew Tate, who uses sex to dominate others, the way Mikey Madison’s character might use sex to keep up with others. For the Right, Tate is like the “sex work” euphemism: A way to avoid confronting the problems with its calculated ideological movements.

Andrew Tate is a bad person, even if people with the moral framework to know why can’t afford to say it. Prostitution is bad, even if people with the political commitments to know why can’t afford to say it. And the biggest losers of this confusion will not be podcasters or Hollywood producers, but the young men and young women who consume the content, dazzled by the confidence they see, and unprepared for the consequences of being fooled.