Andrew Tate & the Moroccan taxi driver

Andrew Tate and the Moroccan taxi driver

I was once in taxi on my way to the faculty and quite unfortunately the taxi driver was the typical Moroccan taxi driver who, with high proficiency and expertise, can easily discuss all matters from sociology to economy and even politics. Taxi drivers in Morocco are polyvalent, not only do they have to pay attention to the road, break the rules, scream at anyone who dares cross the road even when you have all right to cross it because they had plans of running the red light, talk on the phone, debate any subjects with the passengers AND be sexist.

It is no longer saddening to me to see taxi drivers be sexist. Why should I let a man whom I will never meet again, does not have a say on me or my life, doomed in to live in his deep-rooted generational sexism and misogyny have the slightest influence on me. It used to make me sad, mad and drive me to furiously engage with the taxi driver in a conversation that always seemed to be sterile and finish with a dead end. I used to pay the taxi driver with lots of disdain and contempt. Whatever he said, I used to think about it for days and what used to desolate me more was the certitude that he was not the only one who thought of women so little.

Now it is entertaining, and I like to think about the situation as if it’s more like a personal little social anthropology study of the taxi drivers’ community that I would describe as an unhinged persona. I like to think of myself as the therapist of this deranged and mentally unstable taxi driver who regards women with an internalized hate and despite.

I am not generalizing nor I am saying that being a taxi driver is something to be ashamed of, but if you are someone who looks at the other sex, that is not as privileged as you are, with haughtiness then I am most certainly not ashamed even a bit to call you and your actions out regardless of your position.

The way I see it, the Moroccan taxi driver who spends a third of his day in car traffics, stressed, struggling with all types of people, sometimes with each one of them about a dirham they refuse to pay, which is not a big deal if he had to forgive one passenger about it but is certainly a big deal if he had to let go of that dirham for every single passenger, which of course makes all the difference between a good day for the taxi driver and a bad day in which he has to give up to 200 dirhams to the person who initially owns the taxi, to fuel up the vehicle to its maximum capacity for the other taxi driver for his following shift and then keep the rest of the money to himself, all this during a time in which gas prices are high, with no medical insurance or social security. (The government woke up from its coma only recently to help taxi drivers along with other jobs cope with those difficulties). Back to the point, the Moroccan taxi driver, while having to face all those problems, surely with antecedents of sexism injected in his spirit when being raised, finds it outrageous and extremely defying to his manhood that I woman drives a better car than his, worse, she owns it. So it seems like attacking her with the taxi’s horn while insulting her with all type of words, calling her a bad driver and telling her to go back to her kitchen is an ideal strategy to compensate for what he is lacking; money, social status, etc, along with assuming that every bad driver is a woman without bothering to actually check if it is the case or not, which is a moment I find filled with pleasure because most of them are men and it is satisfying to inform the driver that it was a man, not a woman as he stereotypically assumed.

The taxi driver, with this perception of matters, does not only hate women, he looks down on men too. He is one of the solemn promoters of the “Wlad Chaab” philosophy in which, if you pursued a good education with hopes of a good job instead of quitting school at a young age to help your parents, or if you gained enough money to have a decent life, or worse, if money was no issue to you since you were born, you are by default evil, you are by default, someone who does not care about religion or have morals and principles. You are by default someone who sold yourself to the devil in exchange of a good social status and you do not belong to “Drawch” “Wlad Chaab”. Of course those descriptions could be treated superficially as stupid attributions made up by people but the meaning behind them is really serious and shows the deep-rooted hatred of people like taxi drivers who blame other people for privileges they were born within. It is one thing to socially and financially struggle, but it is a whole other thing to blame other people for things you could not achieve. And that mentality is not adopted by cab drivers only but by lots of Moroccans, which is a point I have forgotten to add in a previous blog “The Moroccan specimen”.

 The sarcastic tone that many cab drivers addressed me with as soon as they knew I was heading to med school or the minute I handed them 100 dirhams to pay for the drive, saying that I must have lots of money to be able to pay with 100 dirhams and lots of money to be able to study medicine.

 Social injustices, mainly remaining because of privileges, for whatever reasons, do exist, but I believe as God says “قل ان ربي يبسط الرزق لمن يشاء و لكن اكثر الناس لا يعلمون”

“Say: Indeed, my Lord extends provision for whom He wills and restricts [it], but most of the people do not know”

And as Ali ben Abi Talib would say:  إن الرزق مقسوم وسوء الظن لا ينفع وفقير كل من يطمع وغنى كل من يقنع

And I most definitely do not think of myself that I am any better than any taxi driver.

Believe when I say that I am the last person to view the world with a utopian perception with claims that money is not important because it is crucial for us especially nowadays, as Marilyn Monroe would say in Diamonds are a girl’s best friend: “If a girl spends all of her time worrying about the money she doesn’t have, how is she going to have any time for being in love”

The same applies to us all, whether the idea makes me seem as if I was materialistic or not, if we don’t have enough money, then what distraction do we have from the misery that life is really?

But it is important for us to know that no one can take what is meant for us, that in life, we all are destined for something and something is destined for us, no one can or will take your place and whatever is yours will stay yours and will meet you when time is right.

The amount of taxi drivers who, with no initiated conversation from side, decided to start babbling about how much they hate women, how women are the cause and source of all the natural disasters we are witnessing (especially the drought and the shortages in water supplies, regarding our context), that God is punishing us because of women with severe natural events, because of women, not because of Riba-based banks, Casinos and gambling, the alcohol implicitly socially acceptable for men specifically, adultery that is mainly caused by men and socially justified and the list goes on and on. It is funny how the Moroccan taxi driver (and the rest of the population) is indifferent to Islam until it comes to women doing something for themselves. No one cares about the five prayers, Riba and gambling, etc, in an Islamic context, but we all care when Morocco decides to make Adool women a thing. With the same analogy, most men do not care about feminism until it is time to pay the bill of a restaurant or when the sudden and harsh realization of how hard it is to financially take care of a household, “Rijal qawamun aala nisaa” applies only when men want to take control over you, tell you that you don’t really have to finish your studies or pursue a career and gaslight you into giving up your education that could only help you one day leave the man if he turned out to be a bad partner, while securing a good life, financially at least.

I wonder about how any woman must live under the wings of a man who, while driving me somewhere I am supposed to be at, reveals his tempestuous wish and desire to burn all women then, carelessly, unmercifully watch them scream in front of him as they suffer.

The reason the blog is named “Andrew Tate and the Moroccan taxi driver” is because one day as I was taking a cab to get to my destination while having the sexist episode in which a taxi driver was complaining to another man who shared the taxi with me about his ex wife who left him, his kids who decided to join her and his sworn hatred for all women because they are the reason a man’s fortune and life is ruined, that all women were alike and they all are despicable filthy creatures. I can feel the other man’s sorry tone as he addresses the taxi driver to tell him that he should be ashamed of what he says while I, a woman, was there. The woman in question, who is me, was watching Andrew Tate, finding the pattern repeating itself again in men (yes, I know, not all men).

Former kick boxer, Andrew Tate is known to be an internet celebrity, an investor, a producer and most of all, a self made billionaire, which is the thing that gives him most pride.

Whether Andrew Tate is a real stupid person who actually and genuinely believes the nonsense he says or is a smart person who only pretends to believe what he shares on the internet, the scary part in this whole thing is how many people, with no need to state the obvious (the sex of his followers, that are men), believe and follow the path of his thoughts. His public promotion of disrespect towards women is a behavior many young and old boys look up to and find it to be an enlightening speech.

I spent a long time ignoring every video of Andrew  on the internet, especially on TikTok, but the day I decided to actually give them a try, I found the level of stupidity quite entertaining and amusing though he saddens me because I am pretty sure he cannot have a normal relationship with any woman. But then again, how can I take a person seriously when he admits his refusal to perform any CPR to help save someone’s life because that would make him look gay, unless the person in need for help is a hot woman. Or when he says, without any medical qualifications or any scientifically based evidence, that depression is only laziness, an excuse to avoid any responsibility and compares it to the feeling of sadness which only requires the act of moving on.

Tate is the result of an enormous effort of hiding his own insecurities of having to grow up poor and struggling with money (not that this is something to be ashamed of, unless you grow up to be like Andrew) with a so called dominant powerful persona, that claims to have a strong composure, an irresistible charisma and a solid confidence. Tate is the ultimate example of the toxic masculinity that views women as objects, treats them as such, fantasizes about the “good old days” where women were submissive and knew their place (the kitchen), the “good old days” where women served their spouses religiously with no complains, with no knowledge or consciousness of their rights.

This man, who shamelessly doesn’t come up with any factually based arguments, can easily invent and fake “facts” with a confidence that strikes all attention, using techniques that make him seem kind of convincing or at least persuasive such as speaking fast, not giving you any time to actually process his claims and formulate an idea or response, Andrew Tate is like the teenager who read a book once and cannot seem to shut up about it, believing that its content is the supreme truth about a specific issue. He actually would not miss a change to use a provocative tone that intimidates most people he shares a conversation with to eventually agree with him, praise and gratify him. He seems to think that his opinions about everything are not negotiable and that only he withholds the elite views on every social issue. His odious and repulsive manners of speaking vexes lots of people surely, but the number of people who actually think he is speaking facts is not reassuring at all. People look up to him as this is self made persona, who promotes the hustle culture because he cannot spend a minute without being ostentatious, bragging about having lots of money and properties, about being the envied mafia boss who has lots of haters and enemies, exaggerating his own self and experiences. The man seems to be struggling with some paranoia issues if you think about it for a moment, but people, boys specifically, want to be like him because they view him as a successful person.

Andrew Tate is a man who cannot have any normal interaction with any woman, his misogynistic speech that you can find anywhere on the internet made him go viral in no time, from referring to women as “females”, to reminiscing about the era of submissive women, Andrew attacks feminism in every occasion presented by resuming it to women wanted to be publicly naked and onlyfans.

Not only that, Andrew despises the MeToo movement and explains the reason why he moved from the UK to Romania because, basically, it was easier to get away with sexually assaulting women and raping them in Easter Europe than it was in the West, because he simply likes the idea of being able to do as he pleases. So it is no surprise to know that Andrew Tate has been the subject of legal investigations because of some rape allegations and human and sex traffic charges, not to mention accusations of domestic violence and abuse, which he denies all of it of course.

He justifies men cheating because “a man can only cheat if he loves someone else”, without an ounce of care for women’s sentiments or feelings, as if they don’t have any. The “man” finds actually weird for brothers and sisters to bound, he literally cannot form a relationship with the opposite sex without any sexual objectifying background thoughts. He cannot connect with women, has no empathy or sympathy towards the opposite sex and cannot visualize women as complete and whole creatures who are humans as much he is, with a capacity to be and do something big, bigger than serving him, so it is no surprise again, to know that Tate “grades” women by the number of relationships they have been through and that to him, an 18 years old woman is more valuable than a 25 years old woman she has been through less relationships and has less emotional “damage” to get along with than the 25 years old one.

The problem is not Andrew Tate believing what he says, the problem is the people who look up to him thinking that he is right, what type of example is being set to them if from a relatively young age, they are a target to not only Andrew’s statements but also other misogynistic internet figures who think it is now a trend to talk about “females” with a degrading tone.

I am so tired of the Moroccan taxi driver, Andrew Tate and now not just men but women with their internalized misogyny who excuse men’s acts because they are men and cannot know better. They do know better.

I am so tired of men thinking it’s cool to hate on women and call them ‘females’, I am tired of men thinking that women lack any emotional intelligence that would let their acts slip with no actual emotional consequence and I am tired of men lacking the intelligence to understand that treating a woman in a disrespectful way is simply wrong without going with the usual speech of “what if she was your mother”.

I hope that the degrading comments on the internet, the street, the cab, were really necessary for men and for their self accomplishment; I hope that whatever comment men said about women, it made them feel better about themselves, I hope that when a man’s friends dare him to sexual assault a woman, the joy of his friends was really worth the struggle of making a woman feel so bad in her own skin. I hope it was necessary, that it made them feel better, that it made their day, because if it did not than what a waste, what a waste of a woman’s feelings of discomfort and guilt towards herself.

The Moraccan taxi driver and Andrew Tate are setting the bait to our young men who are supposed to be a part of our future population into making them insensitive emotionally stupid people who lack basic feelings that makes us connect and understand other people. Young men are falling for this scam that sets the two sexes miles apart, making it impossible for us to have a harmonious society that view people as people rather than portable genital organs, any time soon.

Comparably to the Moroccan taxi driver who shares a hatred for both sexes in particular situations that involve a decent social status with the spices of a deep rooted misogyny, I genuinely believe that Tate, while belittling women, does indeed belittle men as well, portraying and drawing them as those premature impulsive creatures of nature that are only driven by instincts, incapable of doing the least of things such as loyalty.

Again, whether Tate actually means his outrageous speech or not, the problem is the perception of this matter as a trend to which many jump on, podcasts that discuss women by men who pretend to be alpha males with a tone that implies that those man do know what they are talking about and have a certain expertise, reaches a fragile population of men and boys who believe that those internet persons are only aiming to bring back the masculinity of men and let them know their worth without acknowledging the toxicity of this ‘trend’ that threatens solid basis of society such as the construction of marriage and family, reducing it to everything but what it is supposed to be.

Young boys are falling for this trap the same way young girls fell, not a long time ago, for the idea that the pornography industry is empowering them.