Peacocking: Religion as “Loud Piece” in Masculinity Influencing
by Suzanne van Geuns
For everyone fortunate enough not to know this man, this is Andrew Tate, perhaps the most famous misogynist influencer of our moment. He made his career giving advice to men – or boys, for Tate is particularly popular among teens – who feel that they are at a disadvantage in a world where women have more and more public presence. Follow my advice, Tate tells them, and become a top G, a man untainted by women’s ascendence. Becoming a peacock is a small part of his vision for men’s re-enfranchisement, but it is crucial. Peacocks can claim the sexual success that is men’s due. Loud pieces pave the way to power.
If you do know Tate, however, it is probably not thanks to his clothing advice. Starting in 2022, mainstream media have picked up on his intense misogyny and his enormous popularity. Newspapers initially reported on his being banned from most social media platforms, and then they reported that he was facing charges that neatly correspond to his advice for men; rape, human trafficking.
Here he is being led into the courtroom, dressed in muted dark tones. It would seem as though he has no loud pieces, if it were not for what Business Insider is helpfully pointing out. Tate is carrying a copy of the Qur’an.
This is the provocation I want to offer: Tate’s conversion and his commitment to the sartorial look of a “G” are connected, or put differently, that the peacock is the point of entry into the role of religion on the misogynist internet.
Andrew Tate did not debut peacocking as a strategy, masculine dominance by means of adornment is not his invention. That honor belongs to this man. Erik Horvat-Markovic made name for himself on the internet, where he went by Mystery. In 2001, he joined a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to advice for men unsure of how to persuade women to have sex with them in an age where women have so much of a say in the matter.
He immediately became known for his excellent instructions and made a career out of this distinct fame. Throughout the early 2000s, he taught seduction bootcamps that men paid thousands of dollars to attend, became the star of his own reality TV show, and his book, The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women into Bed, was one of Oprah’s recommended self-help books in 2010.
When he is interviewed in this period, or speaks to contestants in his reality TV show, people always ask about his outfit. Mystery answers that he is peacocking, and it is working. Wear accessories that grab her attention; give her something to remark upon. All the better if the accessories can be loosened from your person – drape her with the scarf, put your fuzzy hat on her head, make it impossible for her to ignore you. The skilled peacock raises questions with his outfit. Why are you wearing pilot glasses in the club? She needs to be intrigued, beguiled, made to wonder.
Mystery knew all about the enticement peacocks can exert because he was, before launching a career in seduction instruction, a practicing magician. While magic is potent, however, it is not quite seemly. Around 2012, seduction forum users began to turn against the Mystery Method.
This 2013 Reddit post articulates seduction forum users’ growing suspicions. “Is peacocking even necessary at this point,” asks the user who wrote it, laying out a problem that is familiar to scholars of materiality and religion.
The funny hats and nail polish are permissible as instruments, as crutches that help men work toward the real thing. They cannot be charms in their own right, however, and men cannot depend on the material item itself. “There is no point in having a funny hat if you are not going to use it as a conversation starter,” he writes. The magic cannot be real magic. The success cannot actually come from the scarf. It can only come from men using the scarf skillfully, as a trick.
Unlike Mystery, who frustrated and compelled his followers by remaining ambiguous on this point, Tate makes no claim to actual magic skills. He arouses no secular suspicions – but that does not mean that he can avoid magic. This is a picture of Iggy Simmelweiss, an illusionist who is in Tate’s fulltime employ and appears in many of his videos. The magician usually stands next to Tate, a silent accompanist to his rants. The project of misogynist empowerment is not magic, but it is also never bereft of its sheen.
This is what scholars of religion are uniquely equipped to point out in the sartorial practice of peacocking. We can see that the misogynist internet has seen the familiar hammer of a secular discursive regime fall. Here is religion, which can be loud as long as it is in its right place, and here is superstition, which should be muted.
In his advice for dressing like a top G, Tate provides detailed recommendations that he is always quick to undercut by saying that “it’s all about how you carry it.” The fuzzy hat must remain a fuzzy hat; the material must remain a crutch for power rather than power itself.
The Qur’an is different. It is at home in the courtroom; its power hardly depends on how Tate carries it. The Qur’an draws the eye without prompting dismissal. Peacocking reveals to us religion as a loud piece guaranteed to keep us looking.
Suzanne van Geuns is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion. Her research interests are in American religion and computation, with a focus on sexual ethics and artificial intelligence. Her book manuscript, entitled Seductive Methods: Sexual Success in the Computational Imagination and under contract with Class 200 at the University of Chicago Press, is a genealogy of misogynist frustration and an inquiry into our shared computational condition. During her postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton, she developed the Does Not Compute toolkit for online historical research. Link: https://suzannevangeuns.com/does-not-compute/