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He’s won legions of fans thanks to his straight-talking appearance on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and former Bachelor star Luke Bateman has now opened up about his past misdemeanours like never before in a raw video.
The NRL player turned BookTok influencer took to Instagram to share his candid thoughts about “what it means to be a performative male” – something Luke said he was “accused of online every day” by fellow men.
“But to talk on this subject, I need to take you back to a time when no other men called me performative,” Luke said in the video as part of a paid partnership with the government organisation The Line I Live By.
Luke, who grew up on a cattle station in WA, has previously been open about how a gambling addiction that consumed him at the height of his footy career left him contemplating suicide.
“No men called me performative when I abused drugs and alcohol. No men called me performative when I was depressed and medicated,” he shared in his new video.
“No men called me performative when I cheated on my partners, often in front of them.
“No men called me performative when I was in active addiction. No men called me performative when I was admitted to rehab, a husk of a human. There was only silence.”
Luke went on to say that changed when he decided to show up as himself – a “soft, book-loving, nerdy, fragile young man”.
At that point, the star explained, “other men found their voice”.
“You see, the issue is not about being performative. The word performative doesn’t mean fake. It means threatening,” Luke shared. “It means that I stopped performing to the version of manhood that validates other men.”
The star went on to call out “male silence”.
“Men will stay silent when they watch their friends degrade others. Men will stay silent when their friends cross lines.
“Men will stay silent when their friends abandon integrity. Men will stay silent when they watch their friends become someone dangerous. But when a man steps out of that script, that’s when they speak up,” he said.
“That’s not courage, that’s cowardice.”
Luke’s impassioned discussion resonated with his 494,000 Instagram followers.
“The sincerity of this so clear. Thank you for being a man with emotional intelligence on the internet!!” one viewer commented.
“You need to start sharing this as a TED talk!” another added.
Is Luke Bateman still with Ellie?
However, while Luke’s candid chat has proved a hit both online and on TV, the ex-girlfriend he met on The Bachelor in 2023 isn’t so enamoured with the star.
Ellie Rolfe, 31, who split with Luke just four months after the season finale of the dating show, previously slammed the former Canberra Raiders player in a scathing social media post.
“People can curate a whole identity for their personal gain/ego,” Ellie wrote. “You don’t know anyone until you’ve been in some sort of relationship with them. Even then you don’t know someone but you know where I’m going with this.
“Don’t put people in the media on a pedestal!!!!” she continued. “You don’t know them.”
The former reality star dished more on her previous relationship on an episode of the Seriously podcast, claiming that Luke had “love bombed” his way into her heart.
“I wasn’t aware of it at the time, because I was caught up in that fairytale world, and I’m a sucker for that,” she said.
“First date – boom: ‘I’m going to marry you’. And it only got more intense from there. I think I was very naive. How can you determine that? How can you be so sure of something like a commitment that large without knowing anything about me?”
Ellie claimed that after filming for The Bachelor ended, she started to see some traits in her boyfriend that did not sit well with her.
“I guess you just kind of get in too deep,” she explained. “It’s a little bit like emotional manipulation – it becomes like a trauma bond because you got so close so quickly, had such intense experiences together and… you’re still really holding on to the fairytale version.”
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