Online misogyny seeping into classrooms in 'frightening' ways, teachers and experts say

"Shut up and make me a sandwich."

"I don't have to listen to you, go get the man in charge."

Those are some of the comments one Halifax teacher says she has heard from some of her male students in recent years. Christine Emberley said the comments range from sarcastic sniping about a woman's place in society to "grotesquely sexual" remarks. Sometimes, the students refuse to make eye contact, listen or acknowledge her. 

"It's frightening," she said. 

Emberley has been teaching for nearly two decades and says the sexist and offensive remarks started cropping up only in the last few years. She teaches drama in classrooms across all grade levels and said these attitudes are more common among boys in junior high and high school.

She is not the only one noticing this rhetoric in the classroom. 

Luc Cousineau is a researcher at Dalhousie University and director of the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies. In a recent study, he analyzed what teachers said about their experiences on Reddit, a social media platform that hosts discussion boards for various communities, by filtering the teachers' discussion board for posts that mention Andrew Tate.

Tate has millions of followers on social media, with a message of unapologetic misogyny that has drawn boys and young men to the luxurious lifestyle he projects. The 38-year-old influencer is also facing 10 charges in Britain related to three women that include rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking and controlling prostitution for gain. 

A major component of Tate's rhetoric is the belief that women are subordinate to men. According to the latest data from Statistics Canada, just over 75 per cent of teachers are female in Canada.

Cousineau said his research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Gender and Education, showed misogynistic comments from students are disrupting learning environments, as teachers deal with sexist and degrading comments, defiance and male-supremacist sentiments. 

"Teachers expressed that this content and these things that students were saying in class were making them feel unsafe," he said. 

Cousineau said boys are exposed to misogynistic influences, even if they don't want to be, because they're suggested by social media algorithms. 

He said not all content from the influencers focuses on misogyny. They also post about bodybuilding, politics or feeling misunderstood.

"If young people are engaging with the messaging that doesn't feel contentious, then they're going to get that other [misogynistic] content as well."