Buried deep within The Left’s war on men is an even more insidious battle:
THE WAR AGAINST THE MALE HERO.
Hollywood has increasingly transformed, replaced, or diminished many of the male characters who once served as role models for boys.
Look at what has happened to our cultural icons.
The original Ghostbusters team was replaced by an all-female cast. Marvel has introduced female versions and successors to many of its most prominent male heroes while simultaneously weakening or eliminating the originals. Iron Man was killed. Hulk was maimed. Thor was transformed from a mighty warrior into a fat, depressed and emotionally fragile character. Captain America was aged out of the role. T’Challa was not recast after Chadwick Boseman’s death.
AND IT DOESN’T STOP WITH SUPERHEROES.
Star Wars and Star Trek have become increasingly female-centered. Doctor Who cast a LESBIAN woman as the Doctor, and later a WEEPY GAY BLACK MAN. In The Last of Us, a woman kills the male protagonist, Joel, in both the game and television adaptation.
Meanwhile, male characters are increasingly written as weak, incompetent, damaged, regretful or morally suspect - often while the women around them are portrayed as the truly competent adults in the room.
There is nothing wrong with strong female characters.
There is nothing wrong with women being heroes.
The problem arises when female empowerment requires male diminishment.
Young boys need role models too.
They need to see men who are courageous, competent, disciplined, honorable, protective and willing to sacrifice themselves for others.
They need examples of masculinity that aren’t automatically labeled “toxic.”
And yes, boys should learn compassion, emotional intelligence and vulnerability. But those qualities shouldn’t require us to strip away the strength, courage and leadership traditionally associated with good men.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Those supposedly “toxic” masculine traits have also built much of the world we live in.
Men have built, explored, invented and defended civilizations for thousands of years. And when civilization has needed someone to stand on the front lines and risk his life, it has overwhelmingly been men.
That doesn’t make men superior to women.
IT MEANS MASCULINITY IS A NECESSARY FORCE.
Hollywood doesn’t have to choose between male heroes and female heroes.
Give us both.
Let girls have their Wonder Woman.
Let boys have their Superman.
But stop pretending that boys don’t need men to look up to.
We don’t need fewer male heroes.
We need MORE OF THEM.
Follow along On Byl’s Substack:
This is by design. Somewhere along the line, the world's rich and powerful realized that strong, brave, independent, intelligent, competent men were a threat to overthrowing their rule and their "birthright" of luxury and decadence.
It's far easier to control weak, submissive, sickly, ignorant, distracted, broken men.
But beyond that, they still need a force of jackboot thugs to enforce their will and keep those broken men under their heel--hence the unchecked flooding of Western societies with violent, low IQ, unenlightened men born to a world of strongmen l
taking everything by force and liberty an alien concept.
Brutish men without the capacity to create or enjoy beauty, honor sacrifice, or envision a future beyond their next gratification. They only understand violence, f---ing, eating, and more violence.
Once you connect these two long-running trends of destroying Western Man and importing savages, you start to understand their plan.
It’s bad drama… strong characters need strong antagonists… if you don’t provide them, both characters are diminished.
And that’s exactly what we are seeing and it’s the primary issue behind the charge of “Mary Sue-ism”