My concern is that they are going to learn that they are judged on the size of their penis. And if they have one that is small they are deemed to be a lesser man.
I somehow don’t think those boys are really going to be as influenced by that part of it as you fear, they will have forgotten that by now before the spectacle of the dude who tried to impress them getting stomped flat for real crimes.
You think that hasn’t been going on since forever?
So has misogyny. Since when has “it’s traditional” been an ethical justification for something?
A “better” retort would be - the people who are objecting to this probably have small penises…
Sure it has. But why celebrate Greta Thunberg doing it? Shouldn’t we all be trying to do better? Why is this type of body shaming ok?
I think Greta can do better
never mind
Because Tate brought it up with his bragging about his numerous expensive high performance cars and even more so about their “enormous emissions”.
He may or may not be “under-equipped” but he’s sure as hell overcompensating for something.
I think a fair assessment is that in an ideal world we wouldn’t make small penis jokes, but that Tate’s behavior is vastly more egregious, he set himself up for this with the “enormous emissions” double entendre, and it was so funny that I think we can give Greta a pass.
And as I said in one of the pit threads, she wasn’t saying that his dick was small. She was saying that his dick energy is small. Tate’s “dick energy” is precisely the product that he’s been peddling: He’s been claiming that if you follow the advice in his books and so on, that you can make yourself so über-masculine that women will cater to your every whim and desire. Thunberg is just pointing out, correctly, that Tate isn’t actually very masculine or desirable at all. Physical size of his actual penis is irrelevant, either way.
Thank you. Indeed, if people who fancy themselves Top Dogs can speak about having “BDE”, then people who are Full of Fail can be mocked for having SDE.
And while at it: Say No To Both-Sides-ism 
I think there has to be a way to express this that won’t make 12 year old boys worry about the size of their penis. Not sure they will see the nuance between “small dick energy” and “small dick”. I agree she hit the right guy the right way, just also feel that this whole “big dick energy” thing is toxic for young men.
I agree. I think claiming that it’s really okay because Tate’s schtick was
big [dick energy]
rather than
[big dick] energy
is a stretch.
It is evident that she hit him hard, because, in response to her gibe, he tweeted “How dare you!” He appears to be deficient on the upper end as well.
Yeah, pretty much: it was a great crack and, given his responses and subsequent events, was an entirely accurate slam - he did have small dick energy!
Also 99% sure that 12yo boys are a greater threat to each others egos than reading about a Twitter takedown of Andrew Tate could ever be. Trust me, in 1979 we didn’t need the internet, Twitter, Greta, or Andrew to mock the size of each other’s dicks during after-PE showers.
And on the other side of the @ , Greta was correct there as well: he is now getting a (new) life!
In general I don’t like the habit of describing someone’s character traits by analogy to penis size. However, in this case the guy deserved it. And it was appropriate precisely because of how he has spent his life.
Don’t forget in his original tweet, he was specifically stating the cylinder count and displacement of his cars.
He was literally bragging about the size of his equipment.
…because in the real world we need to recognize the real-world power differentials between the harasser and the person being harassed. And that Greta Thunberg at the time was still a teenager, and has been subject to constant misogynistic attacks and threats since she was 15 that have never let up and never-ever-will end.
On the one-hand we have a young climate change activist who is striving to make the world a better place, whose life is constantly in the spotlight and has been mocked by some of the most infamous people in the world.
On the other hand we have a misogynist arsehole who is currently locked up in Romania on charges of human trafficking and forming an organized crime group, who has been credibly accused of rape and repeated strangulation.
Why exactly are you asking Greta to “do better” here?
But this is the most important point.
Andrew Tate is literally a hero to many. And when he (or people like him) set their cross-hairs on someone they get brigaded.
One of the lessons from Goobergate was that you can’t just ignore the harassment. And what Greta did here was go on the offensive in a way that not only shut down Andrew Tate, but also shut out his “army of followers.”
In context, it was the perfect response.
Greta is not the person that needs to “be better.” We need to be better.
We are living in a world where we knew how bad Andrew Tate was back in 2015. And instead of dealing with him back then, he was allowed to build a misogynist platform and raised an army of thousands of hateful, misogynist trolls.
Andrew Tate thinks that “women belong in the home, can’t drive, and are a man’s property.” We can’t allow this kind of nonsense to prevail. Thunberg shut both him down and his army of followers with a harmless bit of snark. A single sentence cut them off at the knees. This is effectively the only weapon vulnerable people online have at their disposal. Remember that Tate was banned from Twitter until the new-guy decided he could come back. As soon as the racists and the misogynists and the transphobes were allowed to return to the platform, the amount of attacks on marginalised people escalated. When you’ve got the likes of Tate and his army coming after you and the owner of the website effectively says “yeah, that’s fine”, then what do you expect people do to?
If you are worried about “12 year old boys” then you should be thankful that Andrew Tate is finally behind bars. On the grand scale of things, Tate was infinitely a bigger threat than anything Thunberg has, or ever will, say.
But we can’t stop with Tate.
Great points.
I had never heard of this asshole and would be fine with him never pinging mine or anyone else’s radar ever again. It was such a perfect dis that I LOL’d. Although it really doesn’t penetrate my schadenfreude in this case, I usually come down hard on the side of gender based and body shaming insults are OK for everyone, or no one, and if it’s OK if the target is a big enough jerk, than it’s OK for all the insults.