What The Riley Gaines-Simone Biles Skirmish Reveals About The Crisis Of Masculinity

For the past week, Americans have been glued to an ongoing social media exchange between Olympic legend Simone Biles and former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines.

The confrontation began when Gaines shared a photo of a Minnesota high school girls’ softball championship team whose star player was reportedly a boy, prompting Biles to attack Gaines on social media, calling her “truly sick” and a “sore loser” who was campaigning against transgender athletes simply because she had lost a race.

Gaines fired back, “If Simone’s inclusive dream came true, she would have zero Olympic medals and no one would even know who she is.”

The thread rocketed across timelines, not only because it was fiery, but because it issued a referendum on manhood. It asked every male coach, father, and teammate: Are you strong enough to sit this one out so women can compete, or will you weaponize your strength to win medals never meant for you?

In a recent piece for The Daily Wire, I wrote about the left’s slow, hostile co-opting of the word “masculinity.” But it’s not enough to identify what went wrong. In order to help save American men — and American society — we need to ask ourselves: what should men get right?

The Biles-Gaines saga gives us an opportunity to answer that question.

Riley Gaines has fought valiantly to keep men out of women’s sports, as have many other brave female athletes. But this saga should cause all American men to ask themselves: Where were the men in this situation? Where were the fathers telling their sons, “However you identify, you may not line up in the girls’ starting blocks,” or telling their daughters, “If anyone tries to silence your voice, Dad’s voice will echo louder”?

Perhaps the men were on the sidelines because for years, feminists and the left have told them that being aggressive in defense of what was right was “toxic.” Maybe they were worried that speaking out would make them seem dangerous — one of the worst things they can do.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be a man. True masculinity is a form of strength that heals instead of harms — dangerous on purpose, but disciplined by love.

Healthy masculinity begins with a posture, not a press release — a posture that leans into risk so others can rest easy. Walk into any volunteer fire station at 3:00 a.m. and you’ll find fathers who left warm beds to chase a propane smell no one else noticed, just in case. They aren’t reckless —  they’re responsible. They understand what G.K. Chesterton meant when he wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

Translation: Real manhood is the antidote to cultural decay, not its cause. Or, as Crain & Co. co-host David Cone said recently on my podcast, We The People, “Toxic masculinity is a contradiction of terms. You can’t have the modifier of a word be the antithesis of the word.”

True masculinity can never be toxic, because it’s covenantal: it binds itself to duties no government can assign and no ideology can erase. Scripture sketches the outline — husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church — and history fills in the colors, from St. Joseph guiding Mary into exile to Sgt. William Carney grabbing the colors at Fort Wagner and refusing to let them fall. Chesterton called it “The Romance of Orthodoxy” — the adventure of guarding what is good. That romance includes a listening ear. As psychologist Jordan Peterson notes, “a harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.”

So, how do we ensure that men understand and inhabit this balance? We start at home.

A 2024 meta-analysis in BMC Psychology found that children with engaged fathers show higher emotional resilience and academic grit. Yet engagement means more than hugs. It means clearly explaining to children the difference between right and wrong, and raising them to do what’s right. And of course, it means boldly, unapologetically modeling what choosing the right looks like.

When dads speak with that mix of empathy and iron, cultural confusion suddenly looks more like noise than destiny.

Sons who see their dads get up to feed a baby brother or sister so mom can sleep will grow up to be teenagers who step between a bully and a fellow classmate, and then men who shovel their widowed neighbor’s driveway without boasting about it on Instagram. Or perhaps even men who fight to protect women’s sports.

Nothing can replace fathers, but they’re not the only ones who can inculcate real masculinity in young men. A high school athletic director can set policy that preserves female divisions without waiting on Congress. A pastor can preach Ephesians 5 (“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church…) and then host a father-daughter self-defense night in the fellowship hall. Each act is a brick in a wall that tells our daughters, you’re safe here.

Notice what’s missing from that blueprint: self-flagellation. True masculinity doesn’t apologize for being strong; it apologizes for being selfish. It’s the difference between a freight train hauling relief supplies through the night and one that plows through a residential crossing because the engineer craves a thrill. Conservatives should celebrate the power while condemning the derailment. The Centre for Male Psychology calls this “pro-social masculinity,” but your grandpa called it being a gentleman.

The same culture that coined “toxic masculinity” is starving for the genuine article. Simone Biles has earned her medals, and Riley Gaines has earned her scars. Now the question is, will American men earn back their reputation as protectors?

If they do — if we do — the next generation of daughters won’t need to tweet for fairness. They’ll be too busy celebrating it on a podium their fathers kept level.

Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on IG and X @GatesGarciaFL

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.