Bring Back the Man Who Opens the Door

It’s official. The 2020s will be known in history books as the era of falling on the sword of a “noble” cause despite our best interests. Exhibit A: masculinity. Exhibit B: other strong women. We’ll leave Exhibit B for another column. Let’s focus on the men today because they need us and we need them. That will always be true. Ladies, name something hotter than a man who preemptively opens the door for you. Grabs your overhead luggage. Confidently asks for your number and your time. I’ll wait. Yet here we are, in a radioactive wasteland of what masculinity once was, lucky if some zillennial dude in sweats doesn’t let the door slam in our face. Men blame the feminists. Women blame the men . Years ago, I looked around and saw a dating scene more desolate than a future Spirit Halloween lot. The disconnect between women and men was palpable. No one could see eye to eye on what a man was supposed to be, what women actually wanted, or where gender roles fit in the modern world. Most of this messaging to feminize and villainize men came out of the dysfunctional Hollywood machine. Yet even celebrities in Woketopia couldn’t help acknowledging the truth. Kristen Bell told me that when her husband, Dax Shepard, shows kindness, like leaving a big tip, she can’t get home fast enough to get it on. His & Hers star Jon Bernthal addressed the bleak state of masculinity, saying, “I think you just need to hang out with different men. Get out of Hollywood.” Fair enough. But underneath the jokes was something we’re still splitting brain cells over. In the crusade against “toxic masculinity,” we started confusing toxicity with the most primal male trait: strength. Now men are lost, women are frustrated, all while we feel the effect of less sex, fewer marriages, and fewer babies. Let’s give it up for… ourselves. Meanwhile, we complain when men become passive, hesitant, or confused about how to act while in a game of Twister post-Me Too era. The same people priding themselves on “sticking it to the man” let feminism instantly leave their bodies as soon as the check comes at dinner. Women don’t get to have it both ways. We can’t sneer at chivalry and then complain nobody courts us . We can’t frame male leadership as inherently oppressive, then resent a man for taking less initiative than a doorknob. We can’t sneer at chivalry and then complain nobody courts us. It didn’t take Nostradamus to tell us what would happen next. The vacuum was ultimately filled by manosphere clowns with nothing more than egos and microphones, capitalizing on resentful and insecure boys with advice as helpful as a life raft in a tsunami. We got very good at telling men what not to be, but never gave them a compelling vision of what a good man should be. Does that give men a free pass? Absolutely not. They should be held accountable just as women should be. Getting mixed messages doesn’t permit chauvinism or actual misogyny. I was on one of the biggest manosphere shows, Whatever , and saw firsthand how these characters and people are one and the same. After enduring eight hours of what felt like macho, psychobabble BS purgatory while fighting for common sense around all this, neither Andrew Wilson nor anyone on the show crew would even walk me to my car at 2 a.m. This Is Us star Justin Hartley’s rendition of masculinity, on the other hand, was music to my ears. “There’s a responsibility when you’re twice as big as half the people you’re walking through the earth with,” he said. “There should be a class where you learn how to be a man.” Milo Ventimiglia gave me the definition of a man that is Smithsonian-worthy: “You have to be kind, you have to be honorable, and you have to have strength.” There’s a reason even men joke that The Notebook is the one palatable romance movie. Ryan Gosling’s character built the woman a whole damn house. Deep down, most women still want something remarkably simple, and many are more contradictory about it than they admit. Plenty who would unravel at the phrase “traditional masculinity” still want an alpha who embodies these traits. Yes, men deserve a culture that tells them their strength has value. But women arguably deserve it even more. Because when good men are taught to suppress their strength, women are the ones who suffer . We didn’t spend thousands of years telling stories about male heroes because everyone was dying to watch Steve Urkel carry the village to safety. From Greek gods to the knights and warriors, male strength wasn’t treated like a character flaw. It was an ideal. That’s what’s lost in this conversation. The more conviction, passion, and individuality a woman has, there’s nothing less attractive to her than someone she can steamroll. A fully embodied woman needs an equal who can meet her there. Healthy masculinity and healthy femininity don’t cancel each other out; they bring out the best in one another. Just as women need male steadiness and assertiveness, men need our softness and compassion. That isn’t regression. It’s the timeless yin and yang. No amount of ideological overcorrection can erase that. For generations, women fought to prove we could stand on our own two feet. And we can. But autonomy doesn’t mean rejecting men as proof of progress. Women only hurt themselves when they resist the very qualities we want, as if those qualities diminish our own power. They don’t. Just the opposite. We need a masculine counterpart who can challenge us, build with us, and grow alongside us. For our dreams, our families, the trials and the tribulations. For the experience of life itself. The strong man is not your enemy. He’s your ally. Not because you’re a damsel in distress, but because you respect yourself enough to recognize a man who respects you. A weak man wants your power diminished. A strong man helps you wield it. When good men are taught to suppress their strength, women are the ones who suffer. Memo to the manosphere: A strong woman doesn’t threaten your masculinity. She actualizes it. Real men know this, just as real women should know their agency doesn’t erase the desire for male strength. Had the men at the Whatever podcast walked me to my car at 2 a.m., it would’ve spoken volumes. Not because I couldn’t do it myself. Because strength means understanding what your strength is for. Yellowstone got it right. Rip epitomizes the unapologetic alpha just as Beth embodies the ferocious female force of nature. Together? Get the hell out of their way. So when men and women keep trying to stomp each other out and prove we don’t need each other, nobody wins. The entire past and future of the human race is built on the fact that we do, no matter what the internet has to say about it. Our very existence depends on us understanding this. But considering it’s the blueprint of our own design, it shouldn’t be all that complicated. Right? Perhaps the truest form of progress is to stop trying to out-evolve what already works.