WHY MODERN MOVIES PAINT MEN AS VILLAINS—and What Audiences Are Doing About It

We break down a blistering article on how modern cinema frames masculinity, why reboots sideline legacy heroes, and why audiences are walking away. We contrast on‑screen narratives with hard data on harassment, homelessness, suicide, and men checking out of dating and culture.

• hospital realities in the Philippines and life updates
• overview of the anonymous “war on men” article
• examples from Promising Young Woman, Barbie, Indy, He‑Man and festival films
• bait‑and‑switch writing and flawless heroine tropes
• statistics on harassment, homelessness, suicide and male victimhood
• intimate partner violence data vs cinematic portrayals
• the rise of “toxic masculinity” as industry orthodoxy
• culture war feedback loop in politics, media and dating
• men opting out: loneliness, marriage decline, mental health
• audience pushback, awards vs box office, return to older films

Let me know what you think. Do you agree with my points? Should I go streaming or should I shut my mouth?

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening, Life Updates, Hospital Realities
• 3:17 The Article: Cinema’s War on Men
• 8:27 Promising Young Woman and New Archetypes
• 14:20 Bait-and-Switch Heroes: Indy, He-Man, Star Wars
• 19:20 Barbie’s Satire and Male Caricatures
• 23:50 Festival Darlings and Award Incentives
• 28:00 Data Check: Harassment, Violence, Homelessness, Suicide
• 34:00 Intimate Partner Violence Stats vs Screen Stories
• 38:40 Why Keep Making Flops? Post–Me Too Ideology
• 44:00 Toxic Masculinity Goes Mainstream
• 50:10 Culture War: Politics, Dating, and Polarization
• 55:40 Men Opting Out: Loneliness, Marriage, Mental Health

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

What is up? You are listening to The Objective Jerk, and I am said jerk. How's everybody doing? I hope everybody's doing well. This is gonna be a long episode. And I I know I say that sometimes, and usually it ends up not being the case, but this I'm pretty sure will. I'm gonna talk about this article that perfectly encapsulates that the right word why current film and television suck. And how it's kind of a you know, it's a it's it shows you the political landscape of you know what's kind of going on and just the division and just just everything and how crappy film and television keeps being made even though it fails over and over again. It's ridiculous. So I'm gonna talk about that. But first, a little about what's me, I haven't recorded in a while. My father-in-law has been in the hospital, he's he's fine, but here in the Philippines, you have to have a family member there to do a lot of what nurses do in the States. I've talked about it before, you know, in America you have, you know, visitation time, and basically they don't want you, you know, anywhere near the patient except during visiting hours, so the nurses can take care of and everything. But they don't have the technology to monitor patients like they do in the States. I mean, they do here. That's the thing. People are like, oh my god, it's third real country. Yes, there are places that feel third world, you know. The hospital that my father-in-law is at is like that kind of. It's a little run down, old style. They don't do computers much. It's all like paper and it's kind of strange. Index cards, and it's just it's it's it's it's when I go there, it reminds me that I'm in a third world country. Yeah, there's a hospital not too far away that feels like a hospital in the States, so it's it's just kind of it's kind of strange. But anyway, you can't, you know, you gotta have somebody there to take care of all the little piddly stuff that nurses have to do in the states. And maybe that's why, you know, they they get paid better in the states, because they actually have to work a little bit more. Here they just they do they come in and check the vitals and do whatever, and then they're gone. And basically they just do whatever. I'm not saying they're just sitting on their ass, but you know, it's the the job of the family member to you know clean, bathe, change the clothes, do this. If something's going on, you go get the nurse, you know what I mean? So it's a little crazy. So I've been kind of busy with that. I mean, me not so much. My my wife has been, and so but with her tied up there, I'm having to run around all over doing the errands and everything. So I've just been non-stop going. So anyway, that's kind of enough about me. I, you know, I was I was gonna record this podcast a couple days ago, and I had I have a little list here, but yeah, so that's kind of this is gonna be long, so it's it's an article. Let's just get to it, because I I I have a feeling it's gonna be because just reading it straight out is kind of it's a long article. I did cut out some stuff to make it a little, you know, a little better. But basically, so filmindustry watch.org, right? So September 21st, this this article was posted. It's it's like um what do you call it? Anonymous. The War on Men, How Cinema Became a Weapon in the Cultural Backlash Against Men and Masculinity. It's a little typo there, I guess, but let me get to the so that's you know, that's where you can find it. Find the article. I'm gonna read pretty much the whole thing. But I I I did cut out some stuff. I cut out some examples because they take scenes and certain movies to give examples for. So I've talked about how certain movies are just like, you know, I'm like, what the crap is this? And just men are made to look stupid or evil, and some, you know, I understand like back in the day, you know, white men were always the good guys, and then you had the brown people, the black people were bad, and women were told what to do, and were always the damsel in distress, and everything. And I get like that was very misogynist, I guess. But it's been overcorrected to the point where it's just it's the same ridiculousness that was in the 40s and 50s, but it's it's just the complete opposite, you know. It's just like this this this the racism, like you can be racist to white people, you know. They they've been racist to black people forever, and it's just so it's okay. It's like, no, it's not okay. Because back then they were ignorant, they didn't really know it was a normal thing to have slaves. So people learned like it's bad, but now we have people that know that, and they're knowingly acting the same way, you know what I mean? It's it's like, what is going on? So, anyway, I'm gonna read this. There's been a couple examples I've talked about. I'm trying to think of what those films were. Gosh, that fan is going. I can kind of hear my recording kind of shh trying to cut out the noise. I think I'm gonna turn it off. I have it on because my AC's broken in my room, which is something I was gonna discuss. You know, you got Star Wars, I mean, everything, every television-wise and movie-wise, some of it is not as bad. So this article kind of it it's it brings up some examples of films that really just like holy crap, you know what I mean? So I'll read them. I I I cut a couple of them out, but anyway. In one jarring scene of promising young woman that came out in 2020, a young man gently lays an apparently drunk woman on a bed and begins unbuttoning her dress. Shh, you're okay. You're safe, he whispers. A grotesque reassurance even as he pulls down her underwear without consent. Suddenly, she sits bolt right up, stone cold sober. I said, What are you doing? She demands, fixing him with an icy stare. The predator freezes, terrified at being caught. This moment of tables turning shock encapsulates a striking new archetype in today's critically acclaimed cinema. Men as predatory or pathetic figures, and women as their righteous reckoners or survivors. From indie festival darlings to Hollywood blockbusters, a growing roster of films is casting masculinity in a harsh light, depicting men as abusive, weak, absent, or broken while positioning women as victims turned avengers or the moral centers of the story. And of course, the world is nothing if not black and white. Why wrestle with the messy complexity of gender dynamics when you can flatten it into the simplest cliche imaginable? So I mean movies like the last Indiana Jones movie, which I didn't watch, but I've I've watched detailed you know reviews on YouTube, so I've basically watched the movie, I've seen it, you know, condensed or whatever, but it looks like complete trash. But they make Indiana Jones an icon of heroic, you know, freaking tough, like what what's another word? Just, you know, very what's the word? You know, a normal guy, tenacious, that's the word I'm trying to think of. And then they make him into this just hapless loser that lost his wife and can't do nothing, and then this woman's gotta, you know, make everything better. And that's that's been the synopsis for like every movie that's come out, especially when they remake these movies and it's like, oh my gosh, here we go. The Masters of the Universe cartoon. I'm a huge He-Man fan. I always say I'm not a fanboy, but if I was if I had to pick something that I would be a fanboy of, it would be He-Man. And yeah, they just they made the movie all about Tila and her lesbian friend. And then the second part, whatever, was a little better. I watched it. But it's just like, you know, it's horrendous. And it's like movies are failing, failing, failing. I don't watch them anymore. I don't care. Like I, you know, at first it was kind of hard. I was like, man, I want to watch that, but I'll just like uh like I haven't seen I haven't seen Deadpool 3, you know. Not that that has anything, but I'm just like I'm done. I just don't care. You know, and this is why. This is gonna explain it much better than I ever could. Anyway, so it talks about the movie in promising young women, men's misdeeds are the central evil, and an avenging angel is a woman driven to drastic ends to expose them. Even basically decent men are portrayed as cowardly or culpable. The message is that every man is guilty, if not of rape, then of complicity or willful ignorance, and it's the women who bear the pain and seek justice, one rever one reviewer wrote. So yeah, men in film are just if they're if they're a good guy, they're they're an idiot, they they mess up, they can't do nothing right, or they're they're the bad guy. That's just how it is. I mean I keep watching shows, and it's just over and over again the same same cliche. It is the current cliche. Alright, back to the article. In this new cinematic landscape, even when men aren't outright villains, they are depicted as feckless, foolish, or fragile. What I just said. Take last year's Kane's Palm de Justin Triate's Anatomy of Fall, 2023. The drama centers on a wife accused of killing her husband, Samuel, under murky circumstances. As the trial unspools, a damning portrait of the late husband emerges. Samuel was a frustrated writer suffering professional envy and depression, prone to paranoid behavior. He had been secretly recording his wife Sandra's every word for months, and grew quote unquote jealous of her literary success. In a climactic court scene, the prosecution plays an audio recording of the couple's final argument, in which Samuel's composure collapses and an explosion of violence is heard. It suggests that he physically attacked Sandra. She was left with bruises, leading to the fall that killed him. The subtext is clear. Samuel is depicted as an emotionally broken and volatile, a man who literally couldn't handle being eclipsed by his wife. Sandra, by contrast, is portrayed as complex but ultimately more sympathetic. An intellectual and mother who maintains poise under pressure, effectively the moral center at the court and the audience. Anatomy of a fall isn't clever. It's entry-level bait and switch. Yeah, bait and switch, that's the Indiana Jones. I mean, how many other see I I there's so many. But yeah, the bait and switch is a problem. The script stacks back to the article. The script stacks obvious. She did it, breadcrumbs, loaded and s anecdotes, convin conveniently incriminating fragments, a neatly arranged trail of mar martial rot, and that and then smirks. Gotcha, misogyny, as if the audience suspicions were proof of their bias rather than the direct result of the film's own engineering. That's not depth, it's a cheap card trick where the magician palms the queen and then lectures you for noticing the deck. You know, there's there's certain movies that do this better. I mean, just reading this reminded me of Funny Farm. You ever seen Funny Farm with Chevy Chase? He's an author. They move out to the country, all this crazy crap happens. He's writing a new book, and while he's doing it, his wife's writing like a children's book of like a squirrel that's kind of based off of him. And, you know, he panics and he sends her her her manuscript in and they like it, and then there's you know this this battle, and they end up like getting a divorce, but they come back together. I think it's been so long since I've seen it. But you know, it's like you can do that, you can do things like that. The thing is, like every single film is exactly what I'm reading right now. Like all of it. You know, half of the half of the country half the world are men, you know, and they're completely alienating men. Which is why they're all failing. Alright, back to the article. Even ostensibly lighthearted films reinforce the theme. Greta Gerwig's blockbuster Barbie, which I didn't see, don't care to, garnered attention for its candy-colored feminist subtext. In the film's satirical reversal, Barbie Land is a matriarch where Barbie runs everything, and Ken's are decorative decorative sidekicks. But when Ken discovers the concept of patriarchy, he promptly leads an over-the-top male takeover and plunges Barbie Land into a goofy dystopia of hoarse-inspired macho posturing. The depiction of Ken and his brethren is potentially comical, vain, simple-minded, and easily manipulated by their own fragile egos. To defeat the Kens, the Barbies execute a clever plan, will distract them by pretending to be helpless and confused. Kens can't resist a damsel in distress, one Barbie explains. The Barbie feign cluelessness's cluelessness to flatter the men who immediately fall for it. In one scene, a brainwashed Ken leans over a Barbie to mansplain the difference between stock market CDs and music CDs. I don't even know the difference. Oh sweetheart, you are just so cute when you're confused. CD stands for certificate of deposit. He lectures while she bats her eyelashes in feigned awe. The ruse works perfectly. The duped kins relinquish their grip on power without the women even needing to use force. Barbie's gleeful message is that when men do have power, they don't know what to do with it besides impose absurd chauv uh chauvinism, and savvy women can easily outsmart them. The film pointedly makes it heroine, the moral and emotional anchor, while the men learn a lesson in humility. Again, that's every film. Yeah, this film was popular. I think mainly just because the way it looked and the way it was shot, and you know. And you know, what's his face, I guess, that played Ken was pretty funny. Again, I didn't see it, so now I know more about it now, just reading that. But it's, you know. I don't know, like, here, I'm just gonna keep reading it. Alright. Every man in Enora, this is another film. I I think this part I cut out, is either abusive, cowardly, or complicit, while Annie alone has integrity. Unsurprisingly, critics rewarded this Excortian Xcor, I can't read. Uh masculinity with the palm dip and Oscars proof that verifying men remains a reliable ticket to festival glory. Like there's a there's a movie right now that I've I've seen or heard about. It's got fucking Leonardo. Oh man, see, I'm trying not to say that for Leonardo DiCaprio and and Sean Penn. I don't know about DiCaprio, but I know Sean Penn is a liberal retard. I mean this movie's about like Antifa, and it's like it sounds retarded, and it's like this only left-wing loonies are gonna like it. It's already didn't make any money, but it's gonna watch, it's gonna win like tons of awards at the Oscars and stuff, and that's all it is. That's all these you know award shows. That's why they're all failing too. Nobody watches the Oscars, nobody watches what are they called, the Grammys or the the Emmys. Because we don't give a shit anymore. We don't care about celebrities because they're all garbage human beings. So, you know, the the time of of famous actors, Hollywood actors as being the American, you know, royalty is over. That's done. You know what I mean? And I I kind of wonder if it'll ever come back. Alright. Ruben Austlin's Triangle of Sadness gleefully dismantles masculine masculinity from start to finish. Carl, a fragile male model, bickers over dinner bills and is later reduced to Abigail's boy toy in exchange for food. On the lot on the luxury yacht, rich men from the drunken Marxist captain to the fertilizer tycoon are grotesque vomiting through storms or ranting drunken politics over the PA. The final act on a desert island flips power completely. Abigail, once the ship's toilet cleaner, declares herself captain, doiling out food while billionaires and influencers, especially the men, meekly comply. Carl prostitutes himself for pretzels, embodying male emasculation as comedy, which that's huge now, too. You know, it used to be kind of funny. Now it's like it's it's so old. It's so yesterday. The film won the Palm de Who Gives a Shit nominations precisely because it reveals in humiliating men revels in humiliating men and celebrating female dominance, a perfect fit for the post-Me Too blah blah blah. Across these examples, never rarely, sometimes always, promising young women, anatomy of the fall, Barbie, poor things, honora, and triangle of sadness. A excuse me, a common pattern emerges. Men in these stories are overwhelmingly sources of harm or hindrance to women. They are rapists, abusers, overgrown boys or insecure wrecks. Women, by contrast, are victims who find strength or caretakers who clean up the mess. Or they're just awesome from the beginning. That's the other thing though, too, is like in the Star Wars. There's no arc. She's awesome right from the beginning. She's a Jedi knight and she didn't know it. You know what I mean? Crap like that. This trend is especially pronounced in prestige cinema and festival favorites. The very films that garner Oscars, which nobody cares about. All these award shows, just it's just for these people to suck each other's dicks. It as if Hollywood and the art film circuit in the wake of Me Too have collectively decided that the time of the heroic I said it, I can never say that word for some reason. Or even just complex, sympathetic male protagonist is over. But you notice like shows that still have a protagonist that's a strong male like reacher or terminalist. Those shows are huge. They're the most highly rated shows. I wonder why that is. What the heck? Stop scratching the table. Instead, filmmakers are holding up a mirror to the ugliness of toxic masculinity and often making sure that the mirror shatters on the screen. So yeah, it's just it's non-stop over and over and over again, just different levels. You know what I mean? Some some movies like these that nobody watches, but they're the film the pump, you know, they go like crazy with it. But then in the mainstream films and TV shows, they're doing the same crap. It's just maybe not quite in your face. But people that notice it or look for it, like myself, you know, we see it. I mean, even when I'm not looking for it, I'm watching something, and then I'm like, oh man, what the crap? Really? They just do something stupid that just okay, great, here we go. So, you know, and I you know it's coming, so you turn it off. Oh, sorry, making a mess. So I turn it off, and I don't watch it. And that's most people, you know, and it's not even. I mean, my wife doesn't, you know, she can watch stuff and she don't notice it. We we we'll start watching stuff, and then I'm just like, I can't watch this. This is stupid. And she might finish it, but sometimes she's she notices it too, you know. Anyway, I got a long ways to go, so bear with me. Where am I at on time, by the way? Oh dang, this is gonna be a long episode. Okay. I'm gonna try and read a little faster though. Consextured contextualizing real-world statistics against the exaggerated portrayals of men in contemporary cinema. So here's the best part. So the first part of the article, which I cut some of it out, was just examples of how you know current film are. And then this kind of gives you this the rest of this kind of talks about certain statistics. So here we go. So here at this point in the video or the podcast, this is where liberals will stop listening because they don't want to get facts. Alright, the gap between cinematic narrative and social reality is staggering. In the films surveyed above, the ones we talked about, male characters are overwhelmingly cast as predators, abusers, or enablers of violence, as though every man is complicit in misogyny. Yet hard data tells a very different story. Globally, only a small fraction of men are ever accused of sexual harassment. I think a lot in India though, sorry, if you're listening to this from India, you guys like to grope people. Any, whether formally or informally, in the United States, for example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received around 7,600 sexual harassment charges in 2018. The first full year of Me Too representing less than 0.01% of the US male population. Even when looking at a four-year span from 2018 to 21, the total number of men accused through the EEOC charges remains well under 0.1% of American men. Workplace HR complaints are more common than lawsuits, but still affect only a small minority of men. Research suggests perhaps 1 to 2% of employed men over several years will face such an allegation. Anonymous surveys cast a wider net. About 4% of men in 2017 surveyed admitted to behavior they considered harassment. Even if we take the higher estimates, this still means the overwhelmingly majority of men, upwards of 90 to 95% worldwide, are never accused of harassment at all. Now, place those percentages besides the reality of male victimhood. Around 60 to 70% of the homeless in the US are men. A silent crisis rarely dramatized in prestige cinema. Men also account for about 78% of homicide victims. And globally, men die by suicide at roughly three to four times the rate of women. They also make up the vast majority of workplace deaths, overdose fatalities, and combat casualties, of course. In other words, men are not only dispro dispro I'm not gonna be able to say this, disproportionately the accused in cultural narratives, but also disproportionately the victims in real life. Now let's look at a relationship and intimate partner violence. I gotta check my camera thing to make sure I'm okay. I think I'm still good. I moved it a little bit. A large US study of young adults found that about 24% of relationships I had a hard time saying that, had some violence. About half of those were reciprocal, meaning both sides. But here is the real shocker. When intimate partner violence was one-sided, women were the perpetrator in more than 70% of those cases. Since this data goes against everything you've heard your entire life, here is the source. And I got a graph here because we know you're not going to believe us. Yeah. So here's a graph, relationship, intimate partner, violence, share. Maybe I'll try and get a clip of this and put it up in my in my video. But yeah, so it's the ri I already said it. So okay, contrast these statistics with the cinematic landscape. In promising young women, every man Cassie encounters is either a rapist, an accomplice, or a coward. And never rarely, sometimes always, every male figure is absent, lecturous, or abusive. In Honora, Annie is surrounded entirely by exploitative of spineless men. Even comedies like Barbie and satires like Triangle of Sadness reveal in reducing men to clowns, predators, or parasites. The cumulative effect is a vision of society where male toxicity is universal and male innocence non-existent. Alright. So the graph relationships of intimate partner violence share share of all relationships by group. I don't see how so non-violent seventy-six percent. Reciprocal violence, eleven percent, female only violent, eight percent, male only violent, three point six. This disjunction matters. When films repeatedly suggest that men as a class are dangerous, complicit or broken, they risk cementing a cultural script that far outstrips reality. Yes, harassment and abuse are serious problems, but they are perpetrated by a minority of men, often repeat offenders. Cinema, however, portrays them as the majority, if not the entirety. Meanwhile, the real vulnerabilities of men, homelessness, suicide, homicide, are erased from the screen. The result is a distortion. Audiences are invited to see the quote unquote problem not as a subset of bad actors, but as masculinity itself. Why is this done? Why are they trying to ruin men? Why when movies don't make money they keep doing it? Why? That's a great question. Why is that? Well, if I have enough time, I'll talk about it why I think afterward. Got a ways to go. In real life, not on screen, it's actually safer to be a woman than a man. In real life, it is actually safer to be a woman than a man. But it's the opposite in film. Bottom line. When you tally deaths and serious injuries, homicide, suicide, fatal work injuries, and ED-treated violence. What's ED? Anyway, men are harmed and killed in greater numbers overall. Women do suffer more sexual and partner family violence, usually from a partner, ex-partner, or a family member, with only about 20-30% of sexual violence is done by strangers. So, you know, you have the serial killers that would go and target women generally. And then, you know, when a woman, a mother and wife is killed, generally it is the husband or whatever. And you notice there's the the true crime stuff, and like that's the stuff they put out there. You know, even though it's like a low minority, that's the stuff that gets put out. Excuse me. Taking the full ledger into account, it's clear that on balance it is much safer to be a woman than a man. And they live, on average, five years longer. I mean, a lot of that's because men are crazy stupid and doing like, you know, we do stupid shit and guys do. But yeah, the reason is because we gotta put up with women too. Women drive us stress levels and we have heart attacks and we're like ready to go. It's like we're done. In other words, these so-called brave realist social dramas are anything but compl they're just all bullshit. In truth, according to the hard facts, they're closer to science fiction, fit to be shelved alongside Inception, Blade Runner, and all that crap. Alright, here's another graph. I'm gonna try and put it on there. Negative portrayal of men in cinema versus reality. Films with negative portrayals 95%. Reality formal accusations 0.01% reality workplace complaints 2%. These portrayals are no accident of individual storytelling, but part of a broader ideological shift in Hollywood after the Me Too movement. In late 2017, Harvey Weinstein's Harvey Weinstein, whatever the hell, scandal and the Me Too reckoning exposed the prevalence of sexual misconduct by powerful men. But he was one dude that did it all the time. That's the thing. Is you have these certain individuals and they repeat offenders. I mean, I'm not saying he's the only one, but I mean everybody in Hollywood's a you know sexual deviant piece of shit. So let's see. Powerful man, not just in entertainment, but across society. Yeah, so it wasn't just, you know, Hollywood, but the response from the creative community was swift and continues to reverberate reverberate rever reverberate more films centering women's perspectives, more beautiful examinations of gender power imbalance, and unmistakably less patience for glorifying or excusing bad men. See the thing is it's not so much like directors, women directors, it's the writing. That's the biggest thing right now, is you have women writing this crap, and they just they don't know what they're doing. I'm sorry. You know, write what you know. Like what Amazon bought James Bond and they they put on there like the covers of all the you know the James Bond movies and they removed all the guns, so they're not holding guns. You can find some stupid movie with a woman who's president holding guns and being all badass, but oh no, let's not James Bond. We gotta we gotta we gotta we gotta reel it in a little bit, you know. I mean, I guess they fixed it supposedly, but the James Bond franchise is f is done. I didn't even see the last one. It looked like crap. Anyway. In fact, Hollywood has arguably arguably turned cinema into a vehicle for advocacy, determined to dramatize the wages of male sin. Hollywood is now becoming its own loudest voice and helping to call out what a bad thing this is. By embedding Me Too lessons into scripts and characters, filmmakers have essentially institutionalized the cultural reckoning within popular narratives. And it's not just the Me Too, though, you have all the Black Lives Matter and and you know all that kind of crap added to it too. The Me Too movement was at the front lines, then it became institutionalized by these films and TV shows, TV shows, which people will continue to watch years later. Thomas, that's that's what they're trying to do. They're all these streaming platforms have all that's why there's so many shows and so many movies, dude. There's just they're trying to flood it, and eventually all the old classic were men were men are just gonna like you're not gonna be able to find them. How come I can't find this? Where's it at? Or they're gonna edit it to a certain point, like the James Bond posters. So it's like that's why I always I don't always, but you need to buy physical media, buy movies. I I'm trying to buy all the old movies that are my favorites because eventually you're not gonna be able to access them, you know. Anyway. Where am I at? Let's see, movies like As The Assistinator Promising Young Woman, I think that's the typo, will remain this is probably an AI article because there's been a lot of typos. Women will remain to remind future viewers of the period when society finally said enough to man's abuse of power. Many creators are openly intentional about this mission. Kitty Green, writer-director of The Assistant, based her film's grim portrayal of a Weinstein-like boss on real testimonies and said she wanted male viewers to feel a tad uncomfortable. Of course. Green noted of audience reactions adding, I think a little bit of the discomfort is what we need right now. Dude, we all know, you know, it's like I grew up, my mom was physically assaulted by my stepdad. I had, you know, people, friends, and this and that were, you know, raped and stuff. It's like we know the shit that women go through. But the thing is, women don't know the shit that men go through. You know what I mean? Anyway, I think I'm gonna skip a little bit of this. I don't care about let me see. I'm gonna skip this one. I can't even read. Portrayal of men as villains, major awards. Yeah, so then all these movies were like women are awesome, men are pieces of shit, win all these awards, of course. That's what and you know, nobody's watching that crap. Toxic masculinity, from pop psychologically to Hollywood gospel. Central to this ideological shift is the rise of the concept of toxic masculinity. You hear that all the time now. Coined in academic and therapeutic circles decades ago. The term entered the popular lexicon in the tw in the 2010s and has since become a catch-all in media and Hollywood for the stereotypical behaviors of men that are deemed destructive, aggressive, sexual entitlement, emotional repression, violence, you name it. The thing is everything is toxic masculinity, you know. Me wanting to take my son's camping or something and show them how to shoot properly is toxic masculinity. You know? It's like, man, you're a toxic retardist. Alright. Feminists have adopted toxic masculinity as shorthand to characterize the misogynist, abusive, or emotionally stunted behaviors that are common in men. In public discourse, toxic masculinity doesn't refer to individual bad actors so much as it indicts an entire system of social conditioning. Mainly right wing, conservative Christian values are toxic masculinity. It's the idea that traditional norms of manhood, the old, you know, boys don't cry, make right, might makes right, so your wild old's mentality create a poison that spreads through men's psyches and by extension hurts women and society. Hollywood's new narrative have embraced this concept with zeal. In film after film, the worst male characters are practically case studies in toxic masculinity, domineering, violent, unable to empathize, and ultimately pathetic. The Barbie movie outright name check's patriarchy as Ken's newfound religion, lampooning its absurd absurdity. Promising young women all but use the phrase toxic max masculinity in its premise. The lead character feigns helpless drunkenness drunkenness precisely to expose men's ingrained predatory responses. So she's pretending to be drunk, that first one. And behind the scenes, this viewpoint has been validated by mainstream institutions. So brave. The APA warned that socializing boys to be stoic, competitive, and aggressive leads to a host of problems, from mental illness to violence. In effect, APA distilled toxic masculinity into an official stance. The time honored traits of manhood, strength, stoicism, and dominance were recast as risk factors or pathology or pathologies to be curbed. Yeah, strength, faith isn't, but they don't talk about it because this is still a Hollywood article. So, you know, there you know, just because Hollywood is retarded as it is, there are people that are you know aware of it that are not going along with the mob or the cult. And so that's where this article came from, you know. And that's why it's uh you know, anonymous. Critics have noted that this concept once fringe is now virtually orthodoxy in liberal media and entertainment. The term toxic masculinity itself might not be spoken within these films dialogue, but it ethos undergrids them. But its ethos undergrids them. Yeah, okay. In press junkins and interviews, creatives frequently talk about examining or deconstructing toxic masculinity th masculinity through their work. For many, it's seen as necessary re-education of the audience, but others argue it has become a blunt instrument in patholog pathologizing all things male. Pathologi did I say that right? For conservatives, the concept of toxic masculinity knocks down the virtues and ways of life they hold dear strength, honor, duty, and bravery. See, that's you know, half of the army values right there. One observer writes, noting how this rhetoric essentially recasts positive male attributes as negatives. Indeed, when every traditionally masculine trait is viewed with suspicion, culture edges towards implying that masculinity itself is a disease. Nowhere was this cultural clash more evident than in the reaction to a certain shaving razor commercial in 2019. Gillette's now famous advertisement launched in the Meet in the heat of the Me Too directly invoked the f the phrase toxic masculinity and urged men to be better, to intervene against harassment, to shed the the old boys will be boys excuses. The ad showed scenes of bullying, catcalling, and boardroom sexism, asking poignantly, is this the best a man can get? A twist on the company's classic slogan. The back I didn't even when did this come out? 19? I never saw this. The backlash was immediate and ferocious. Many men, some women, blasted the ed as an unfair generalization that implied most men were sexual harassers or violent thugs, and was merely virtue signaling corporate pandering. Prominent conservative actor James Woods accused Gillette of jumping on the men are horrible campaign. On YouTube, the commercials' dislikes quickly far outnumbered likes. The Gillette saga is intrusive. It revealed how polarizing the concept of toxic masculinity had become. So then what they say is like, well, just because everybody's toxic, all these masculine men are toxic and they don't like it. You know? I don't know. To one side, it was a long overdue call for accountability. To the other, it felt like an all-out attack on male identity. Hollywood's current crop of films decidedly take the former stance. They presume toxic masculinity is real, and pernicious man, what word is that? Pernicious? I swear this is AI. Give me another word. Synonym. And they set out to critique or lampoon it. The result, intentionally or not, is that a lot of traditional male behaviors now show up on screen, coded as toxic. Stoic emotionally distant father figure. Likely he'll be portrayed as failing his family. Okay, let's see. This is talking about another one. Okay, gender politics and the culture war on masculinity. This cinematic trend doesn't exist in a vacuum. It mirrors and feeds into a wider sociopolitical context. The American culture, especially gender, has become intensely politicized terrain in recent years, with masculinity often in the crosshairs. The war on men that some commentators decry is the large part a reaction to the kind of messaging Hollywood is now applying. Messaging that aligns closely with progressive, feminist informed politics. So basically, psychos. Indeed, the US Democratic Party's messaging and left-leaning media in the Trump and post-Trump years. Yeah, this is AI. So, yeah, I mean, we had it was post-Trump where we had dipshit Biden, but I don't know. Have frequently portrayed traditional masculinity as something suspect or needing reform. Meanwhile, conservatives have seived has seized on this to rally men to their side, arguing that the left is demonizing half the population, which is true. The numbers suggest a growing gender divide in political affiliation. Young men have been veering rightward, while young women have trended even more to the left, creating a stark polarization. You know, my wife is she's neither. She's more central, but she she's more right than she is left. But yeah, she's I man, I don't know. I see some of the some of the even just the girls I meet in person, I'm just like, oh my gosh. I feel bad for my sons. Luckily, my oldest though, he's pretty on it. He's very selective, he's very picky, and you know, he doesn't want the psycho-feminist crazy Lib Tard. And that's not from me. You know, I I do I do preach a little bit about politics, but I've really I really try not to because I just like I don't want them to have that, you know, because being in politics and following it is just it's it sucks. So, and I'm trying to distance it myself and just be more Christian, you know, and and and focus on the church and you know, getting involved with the church and things like that. Trying to stay out of the politics, and I'm trying not to say nothing to my kids, but you know, but they they kind of pick up on it on their own, which is kind of cool. Anyway. As of 2020, fewer than four percent of US marriages were between one Republican and one Democrat. Americans are increasingly even choosing romantic partners along political lines. This hints at a deeper cultural split. I mean, yeah, that makes sense because, like, you know, there was there were girls that I was in love with when I was younger, and I think now I was like, if if if we would have stayed together or gotten married, we wouldn't still be married because I know for a fact that they would be far left and you know it wouldn't have worked. They wouldn't have, oh what are you like Trump? I want a divorce. Anyway, this hints at a deeper cultural split. Many young women identify with feminism and social liberalism liberalism, which Jesus spoke about in the Bible. You know, this was forewarned and foretold and all that, whatever you want to call it. This kind of crap was you know, it's not good. You know, women aren't objects to be owned, but you know, feminism is the complete opposite, and it's just too it's too far. It's cra they're crazy. Feminists are crazy, man. Anyway. Feeling attack. Okay. Whereas a lot of young men feeling attacked or alienated by that rhetoric are gravitating to more conservative or contrarian spaces. You know, that's why you know a lot of people are going overseas doing passport bros or whatever, because girls here in the Philippines are not like in the States. You know, they're a little more the woman takes care of the house. You know what I mean? Like it's there are there are girls that are, you know, you know, they're influenced by America and this and that, and they kind of go that route. But it's not it's not it's not, it doesn't seem as prominent as it is in the states. And that's why a lot of, you know, men are finding women that are not American because they're all progressive feminist douchebags, and nobody wants to marry that. In an era when personal is political, as the saying goes, one's stance on masculinity has practically become a litmus test. Progressives progressives often spotlight toxic masculinity as a social societal ill, a problem to be addressed through education, corporate initiatives, and yes, representation in media. For example, President Biden's administration convened a gender policy council, and whilst it focused is largely on women's equality, it implicitly calls for reshaping male behavior too, such as engaging men to prevent gender-based violence. Liberal culture outlets like the New York Times and Atlantic have run a slew of pieces on the problem with men in modern dating, educating and work education and work, implying that men need to change or face being left behind. Another introduced readers to the term hetero fatalism, the bleak notion that straight relationships are doomed by men's inadequacies, a single women vent about the dearth of good men willing to commit or even date earnestly. This media dumb drumbeat paints a picture of masculinity in crisis, but crucially it often frames it as a crisis men themselves have caused by not adapting to modern norms. In reality, many men feeling unfairly blamed for crimes they did not commit, have chosen to check out of dating in society they increasingly perceive as hostile towards them. And all this crap that they're talking about in this article, it's the same crap with the whole race thing. White people, horrible, racist, garbage, you know. It's so we're getting it from all angles, not just from the women and you know, white race, like it's coming like we're getting barraged by by mortars. And that's why you're seeing everything failing, and everybody's going, you know, becoming Christian. Everybody's starting to do it because it's like, dude, no, we're done being attacked. That's it. On the other side of the aisle, conservative politicians and pundits have leaned into defending traditional masculinity, accusing the left and Hollywood of collectively waging a war on men, which they are. They see the constant critiques and ads, obviously, whatever, and Oscar-winning films as an unfair generalization at best, and at worst an attempt to erase what they view as healthy masculine virtues. The outrage over the Gillette ad was one flashpoint. Oh my gosh, I'm getting messages like crazy. Come on. Okay, we might need to go to Will's. There's no way, man. There's no way I can read this whole thing. I'm gonna have 15 minutes! Oh my gosh. Okay, I gotta scan through this. Lonely single and left behind. It's like a bunch of articles put together. The real world consequences for men. Okay, this is a good part. I'm gonna read this and then I might end it. Amid the cultural crossfire, men are living through a quiet crisis. By numerous statistical measures, men in Western societies are struggling. And education and relationships and mental health, and the timing coincides with the post-MTo cultural climate. The portrayal of man as broken in films like The Anatomy or the Fall and blah blah blah, what we talked about. Yeah, so these are all just articles. This is a bunch of articles put together in one. Uncomfortable echoes the real world trends among males. Consider some of the data. Okay, young men are increasingly single and socially disconnected. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that a whopping 63% of men under 30 report being single. Nearly double the share of women in the same age group, 34%. In generations past, young men were more likely to have a steady partner than young women, in part in part due to earlier marriage norms. Now the script, pun intended, has flipped. Even more striking, most single young men aren't even looking for relationships or dates. Which is true, man. Like I said, with my son. Like when I was his age, all I could think about was pussy, pussy, pussy. Vagina, vagina, vagina. You know what I mean? He's just like he's which is great, man. He's focusing on school and everything. Like I'm I'm proud, but I'm just like, it's crazy. And yeah, so this is it's true. Like he doesn't even care. He's not even he doesn't want to get with a crazy woman. He's he's just focusing on himself, which is good. Alright, between 2019 and 2020, precisely as cultural messages about men, men's toxicity grew louder, the percentage of single men under 30 who say they are actively seeking a romantic partner plummeted from 61% to 50. In essence, half of the young single men have just opted out of dating entirely. Social scientists tie this to a mix of factors, economic woes, porn and video game escapism, fear of rejection, or me too style allegations, yeah, and an overarching sense of alienation. By contrast, single women's interests in dating did not decline nearly as much in that period. Marriage and family formation have sharply declined for men. In the late 70s, less than 10% of American men reached the age of 40 without ever being married. By 21, that figure has tripled to 28%. Marriage rates are failing across the board, but again, men seem to be pulling back more. Many men, especially working class men, express uncertainty about their economic viability as husbands or delusionalment with the institution of marriage. You need Jesus. The rise of voices disparaging men as inherent inherently problematic might play a sociological role. Some men question whether they are man, okay, hold on. I'm just gonna read some of the C. 15% of men, five times as many, reported having no close friendships. A quarter of the young men say they feel lonely. Educationally and economically, men are lagging. Mental health and suicide depar disparities are alarming, roughly four times the rate of women. Yeah, so I mean a plea for balance. Let's see, hold on. Okay, uh wait, what? Oh, this thing is wrong. This thing is wrong. It's saying 9 of 28. I'm at the bottom, so I was reading through it pretty good. Man, could have kept reading them, but alright. Anyway, let's see. Let's see. Recently, even CNN has decided a whole hour to the subject with somebody, a member of the Democratic Party who represents Illinois, blah blah blah, chief of staff under Bama. He also served as somebody who gives a shit. Median age, first-time home buyers rose from 28 to in the 90s to 38 today. Male suicides have risen faster than female suicides in recent decades. Today, men take their own lives at more than four times the rate of women. We already knew that, we read that. So here's this is what I wanted to read too. So this is a reaction to the article. The popular YouTube channel, Film Threat, covered this article, the one that I'm reading, and we'd like to highlight some of the more disheartening comments from its viewers. Glad people are calling this out and pushing back. I'm sick and tired of constant slander. When I started my acting career, I can't even read it, it's so small. You cannot fight sexism with sexism or racism with racism. This is the mistake they are making in Hollywood. It's true. Wait, why is this Disheartening? Why are these these sound good? It's it's why I quit watching most modern films. Yeah. This essay hits on the main reason why I don't go to movies very often. Now women Now Women Complain, men don't approach me or I can't find a date, or men are timid. Oh, disheartening because yeah, they all agree with all this crap. That's why it's saying disheartening. Okay, I thought it was people that were like, yeah. You've seen this Disney animation too. Ralph from Ralph Breaks the Internet, Searcher Clad from Stranger World, Bruno from Encanto, you Heroes Like Aladdin, Hercules and Tarzan are long gone. This issue is why the majority of movies and TV I watch is before 2015. Same here, dude. Everything I watch is older films, and everything I'm buying is older. Why do you think the movie theaters like Shawshank Redemption is gonna be in the theaters again? It's because nobody's going to the theaters. Because nobody's watching this bullshit that Hollywood is is regurgitating out their asshole for us to watch. Anyway, that's kind of it. That was this is this is my longest podcast right here. I don't know. Let me know what you think. I'm thinking about doing somebody said, like, why don't you do some what is it called? When I do it live, streaming or whatever. But the thing is, is like most of the people that do listen to me or watch, I think are way on the other side. So if I go live, they're gonna be in bed. So I don't know. Anyway, let me know if you want me to do some streaming so we can. I don't know, I've never done it really. So anyway. Hey, thanks for hanging out. Thanks for listening. Let me know what you think. Do you agree with my points? What do you, you know, should I go streaming or should I shut my mouth? All right. Again, thanks for hanging out. Appreciate you. God bless, and I'll see you next time. Alright, bye.