Digital Patriarchy and the Perceived Threat of Andrew Tate: Women’s Experiences in the Platformed Risk Society

This article examines how digital infrastructures mediate the production and circulation of gendered harm through the cultural prominence of Andrew Tate, a controversial online figure associated with misogynistic rhetoric. Drawing on Ulrich Beck’s theory of the risk society, Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity and feminist critiques of platform governance, the study introduces the concept of the platformed risk society to theorise how digital systems amplify symbolic and epistemic threats to women. Based on qualitative survey data from 110 self-identifying women, the analysis identifies three interrelated themes: symbolic threat, epistemic injustice and feminist resistance. Participants describe Tate as a figure of moral contamination whose visibility destabilises gender norms and undermines women’s credibility in both online and offline discourse. Their responses reveal that misogyny is not only a cultural discourse but a platformed phenomenon: amplified, monetised and at times normalised through algorithmic infrastructures that reward provocation and suppress dissent.