I spent my twenties and early thirties immersed in the world of “Red Pill” content, an online, male-centric subculture. I began as an observer and later became a recognizable voice within it. I spoke at Red Pill–themed conferences like the 21 Convention and the Conference of Masculine Excellence, appeared on shows such as “Fresh and Fit” and “Rich Cooper Unplugged,” and met many of the movement’s most influential figures, including Rollo Tomassi and the Tate brothers, Andrew and Tristan.
The Red Pill (TRP) comes from “The Matrix,” in which Neo swallows the red pill and sees reality as it is. Applied to relationships, it means believing that you have pierced illusion and uncovered the hidden rules governing attraction, hierarchy, and power.
TRP is not a single organization but a loose constellation — pickup artists, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) purists, incels, entrepreneurial “alpha” influencers — offering explanations for men’s frustrations with women and modern culture. It sounds clarifying. In practice, it operates as a closed system that dismisses counterevidence and turns contradiction into confirmation.
Its message is simple: You are the victim of a culture that favors women and discards men. To deal with women safely, treat them as adversaries. And now that you see the truth, the path forward runs through my book, my course, my subscription.
TRP is not a criminal enterprise. But having grown up in public housing projects, I recognize its psychological resemblance to gang recruitment. Gangs promise power, recognition, and protection to boys who feel shut out of legitimate paths to status. In return, gangs demand loyalty and offer refuge from a hostile world.
Both gangs and TRP promise masculine empowerment. Both cultivate grievance and reward anger. And both depend on insecurity that leaders can expand — and monetize.
Like many men who enter TRP, I arrived after a devastating romantic experience. When I was 22, a woman I had been dating told me she was pregnant — and that I might not be the father. A paternity test confirmed that I wasn’t.
When my mother learned of the pregnancy, she was ecstatic, and her enthusiasm was undimmed after the test results. She invited my now-ex and the child to move in and treated the boy as her grandson, hanging “family” photos that made my humiliation visible. In embracing them both, she signaled, intentionally or not, that my dignity was secondary to her desire for a grandchild. When I stopped visiting, she seemed surprised that I was hurt.
I thus felt rejected by two women in my life — one of whom had raised me — and I wanted an explanation. The Red Pill gave me one. A 2024 Journal of Gender Studies article, “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09589236.2023.2260318">Swallowing and Spitting Out the Red Pill</a>,” by Matteo Botto and Lucas Gottzén, found that entry into TRP often follows romantic rejection, humiliation, loneliness, or feelings of inadequacy. Many who arrive are nursing private wounds.
TRP teaches that you were hurt because you don’t understand the true nature of women. That ignorance, it says, led you to choose the wrong woman or to lose her because of your “blue-pilled, beta” behavior. In TRP’s taxonomy, you are either an alpha — the man every woman desires and other men seek to emulate — or a beta, ignored by women and disrespected by men.
These false dichotomies prime men to see the world as adversarial. Yet TRP packages this worldview with just enough sensible self-improvement advice to make it seem plausible: get in shape, earn more money, develop real hobbies beyond video games and Netflix, and you will attract more women. If TRP did nothing more than offer that counsel, I would not compare it with street gangs. But the advice functions as a Trojan horse. Personal grievance binds the system together; outrage keeps it alive.
TRP appeals to men who feel lost, doubt their value to women, and are searching for direction. Street gangs recruit from a similar population. Even in violent, low-income neighborhoods, most boys do not join gangs. Those who do typically enter between the ages of 12 and 15, when status anxiety and the need for belonging intensify. Longitudinal research — including the Rochester Youth Development Study and the Seattle Social Development Project — links gang membership to weak school attachment, delinquent peers, exposure to violence, and family instability. Poverty alone is not enough.
Gangs flourish where identity is fragile and recognition scarce. They offer a ready-made script precisely when one is most needed.
Movements cohere around enemies. As Eric Hoffer observed, “mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.” Whether that devil is real or exaggerated matters less than whether it is clearly named. A defined enemy converts diffuse anxiety into a concrete target.
Street gangs promise protection in a world of rivals. Retaliation confirms the threat. Police intervention becomes proof that the world is aligned against you. Each confrontation reinforces the premise: you are under attack, and only we can shield you.
TRP operates in a similar psychological register. Masculinity is portrayed as besieged by cultural institutions, family courts, and modern dating norms. Romantic disappointment becomes proof of systemic betrayal.
The Red Pill teaches that women are “hypergamous,” a term borrowed from evolutionary psychology and recast as a fixed law of female nature: women are said to be perpetually “trading up,” ready to leave when a higher-status man appears. The sentiment is captured in a common refrain: “She’s not yours. It’s just your turn.” Men are reduced to those two types: alpha and beta, the former dominant and desired; the latter compliant and tolerated. Masculinity becomes a hierarchy to climb rather than a character to cultivate. Men are told to “maintain frame” — never concede emotional ground, never empathize too deeply. Support becomes “simping.” Every interaction becomes a contest.
This mentality conditions men to approach women with distrust and see other males as competitors. As one former TRP adherent admitted to Botto and Gottzén, “I couldn’t create natural human connections anymore because I was so focused on how to look like an alpha male. In a new group, I measured everyone.”
TRP selectively highlights certain data points — divorce rates, custody outcomes, sentencing disparities — to amplify a sense of hostility. Some of these grievances are real: men face documented sentencing disparities, for example. Custody outcomes vary by jurisdiction and remain widely debated. Men underperform in education and die by suicide at higher rates. Many young men do struggle to find their footing in a rapidly changing culture. But real problems can be presented in ways that deepen distrust instead of encouraging careful analysis.
Over time, the framework reshapes behavior. If a relationship fails, it confirms the doctrine. The ideology hardens.
But what happens if the threat is neutralized? How does a movement sustain power if the problem that it organized itself around is resolved?
Movements built on grievance promise improvement through allegiance. But when men gain stability, the market for grievance shrinks. Leaders lose influence and revenue. Instability has economic value: on the street, through illicit markets; and online, through subscriptions and monetized outrage.
As Eva Bujalka, Tim Rich, and Stuart Bender argue in a <a href="https://fastcapitalism.journal.library.uta.edu/index.php/fastcapitalism/article/view/447">2022 study</a>, TRP resembles an online protection racket, in which insecurity is amplified and monetized. And insecurity can pay handsomely. Whether through book and course sales, memberships, seminars, or YouTube ad revenue, top Red Pill influencers generate steady streams of income. Rollo Tomassi, a foundational TRP voice, has said that he doesn’t do it for the money. Yet his Rational Male series has found a wide readership, and his ideas now reach hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers. Even if income isn’t his primary motive, it is substantial.
Inflammatory, adversarial content reliably generates attention. “Fresh and Fit,” known for confrontational debates with young women, earned over $1.5 million in fan tips, in addition to ad revenue, before it was removed from YouTube’s Partner Program.
The “Whatever Podcast,” with 4.6 million subscribers, reportedly generates $106,000–$309,000 in ad revenue monthly, according to VidIQ. Its format — panels of young women debating dating and gender norms before a hostile audience — produces viral clips designed to provoke male outrage and backlash.
Online, territory is digital and measured in subscribers and impressions. On the street, it is physical and marked by presence and retaliation. In both realms, status depends on visible conflict, and income flows from environments kept unstable.
Why do boys leave gangs, and men leave TRP? The similarities are striking.
Despite the mythology of “blood in, blood out,” most boys don’t leave gangs because of police crackdowns or harsher sentencing. The Justice Policy Institute’s report Gang Wars notes that the typical gang member is active for a year or less. The fantasy of power eventually collides with the reality of consequences.
In interviews with former gang members, the most common turning point was direct exposure to violence. One man put it bluntly: “I watched a dude die. . . . It’s still pretty traumatic.”
Others leave for quieter reasons. Former members describe “growing out of it,” taking on new responsibilities, or realizing that they are too old for adolescent posturing. On a Reddit forum where former gang members explained why they left, one poster wrote: “Eventually, you just get too old for that shit.”
Fear of punishment rarely appears as the decisive factor. Arrest and incarceration are often treated as rites of passage. Law enforcement can disrupt activity, but it does not reliably produce the internal shift that leads a young man to walk away. The turning point usually comes from within.
These patterns appear in the testimonies of former TRP adherents as well. In their 2024 study, Botto and Gottzén document accounts of men who initially embraced the ideology and later rejected it. One participant described internalizing the alpha hierarchy so completely that a physical injury felt like emasculation: “TRP always clowns ‘betas’ and insinuates that only affluent, muscular men are worth anything. After my injuries, I felt like less of a man. Any time a woman showed me attention, I assumed she wanted to exploit me as her ‘beta bux.’”
Another recalled the moment when the framework collapsed. After a breakup, he reassured himself that his ex was hypergamous and had left him for an “alpha Chad.” “Funny enough,” he wrote, “it was not. It was a girl. The Red Pill was utterly wrong.” Others described psychological fallout. “After all those hours listening to their theories, I felt like not me at all. Like my brain was melted. I couldn’t socialize. I just wanted the old me back.”
These men left when experience contradicted what TRP had promised. They saw successful relationships that didn’t fit the model. They encountered women who responded to vulnerability with care rather than contempt. Ironically, leaving TRP is how they began to see the world more clearly.
Many describe exhaustion. Treating every interaction — whether on a street corner or in a relationship — as a power contest takes a psychological toll. Eventually, the cost outweighs the benefit.
Others leave because they want different outcomes. An ideology built on cataloging women’s flaws makes intimacy difficult to sustain. As my relationship with my then-girlfriend — now my wife — deepened, I could no longer reconcile it with Red Pill doctrine. In the same way a young father may come to see gang life as incompatible with raising a child, a man who genuinely desires connection begins to recognize that TRP cannot provide it and, in fact, discourages it.
In both cases, departure requires tolerating uncertainty. Leaving a gang means relinquishing a ready-made identity; leaving TRP means surrendering a totalizing explanation. The world becomes less rigid, more probabilistic. Women are no longer caricatures, rivals no longer omnipresent enemies.
The transition is uncomfortable because it restores ambiguity — but also agency. The former gang member must find belonging without a uniform. The former TRP adherent must build relationships without a script that once protected his ego but guaranteed failure. Identity must be constructed instead of inherited.
Movements organized around grievance struggle when their members mature. Stability — through work, family, and competence — erodes the emotional conditions that made the ideology compelling. And maturity is difficult to monetize.
As my accomplishments in writing and as a professional boxer accumulated, TRP began to feel childish. Gangs and TRP do not invent insecurity; they attract men already wrestling with it. But instead of resolving that insecurity, they weaponize it — offering belonging at the cost of autonomy and flexibility.
We don’t need to pretend naively that courts are perfect, dating is easy, or heartbreak is painless. The alternative is building forms of masculinity that feel strong without requiring an enemy.
A man once told me that he avoided TRP because he found structure in sports and the military. Former gang members say the same about work, service, and fatherhood. Institutions that confer earned status meet the same psychological needs, without the same costs.
My strongest male friendships were built on shared discipline and effort. At the boxing gym, strength was measured in improvement, respect earned through consistency.
Intimacy works the same way. It requires risk — the willingness to be hurt again. The Red Pill promises insulation from that risk, but what’s necessary is the courage to face it. Men who leave eventually realize that adversarial thinking protects the ego but sabotages the life they actually want.
The best and worst things in life walk hand in hand. If all you try to do is avoid pain, you will forfeit your chance to experience joy.
***
This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute. The <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/red-pill-masculinity-online">original</a> can be found at the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
<a href="https://edlatimore.com/">Ed Latimore</a> is a former professional heavyweight boxer, an Army veteran, and the author of <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/740319/hard-lessons-from-the-hurt-business-by-ed-latimore">Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business: Boxing and the Art of Life</a>.

Controversial Social Media Influencer Andrew Tate Detained In Romania

The Red-Pill Rabbit Hole Swallowing Young Men

Masculinity

MI x DW

red-pill

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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There&#8217;s a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@khloekuriatnyk/video/7628728608009309454">trend</a> going around social media where women brag about performatively hating on men before returning home to their loving husbands. &#8220;Coming home to my man after spending 2 hours being a certified man hater at dinner with the girls,&#8221; reads the caption to one <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DXo0H0KgJlF/">video</a>.
This isn&#8217;t surprising. From “the future is female” to “everything a man can do a woman can do bleeding,” the culture is full of demoralizing messages about men.
Under the influence of feminism, equality between the sexes long ago morphed into sameness between the sexes. It became an outright societal faux pas to assert any unique traits between men and women that might mean one sex is better than the other at doing some particular thing or exhibiting some particular trait.
Now, boys are told they are outright useless. As pop star Sabrina Carpenter sings in her hit song &#8220;Manchild,&#8221; “Baby, what do you call it?/ Stupid?/ Or is it slow?/ Maybe it&#8217;s useless?/ But there&#8217;s a cuter word for it/ I know/ Manchild!”
To our culture, men are second-rate women. It’s a complete reversal of the most cartoonish sexism of yesterday. Men are seen as less compassionate, less interesting, less emotionally intelligent, and less communicative women. Little time is spent engaging with the many ways in which men tend to possess <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-panic-in-dc-ballroom-a-quiet-act-of-protection-is-stealing-the-spotlight">uniquely strong</a> character and personality traits. We ignore these traits at our own peril; they are absolutely essential for the building of a just society.
Men are anything but useless. They are the most likely to <a href="https://www.prio.org/publications/7207" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.prio.org/publications/7207&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1777480401582000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3T_KqwiWK9ULLJbXh5DPDi">die in wars</a> and the most likely to do dangerous jobs. Over 90% of the most <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-conscious/202104/why-do-men-have-the-most-dangerous-jobs" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-conscious/202104/why-do-men-have-the-most-dangerous-jobs&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1777480401582000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2yMjaXA3HrFD4ebhs_jasq">dangerous occupations</a> are filled by men. That includes jobs like logging and construction, some of the most important occupations in the economy. Despite the risk, men keep choosing these types of occupations, ones where they are continually asked to put themselves in danger, often for the sake of another’s life. We should applaud them for it.
As women, we can’t say we want “real men” who are confident and strong providers and then trash the entire sex as sub-rate humans just because they don’t emote like women. We can’t expect boys growing up in this culture to rise to the occasion and become the masculine men we need in society if they grow up being dismissed just for existing.
We must assert that men are valuable in society and have unique capabilities and strengths compared to women, just as women do compared to men. That means we must do something that would make a lot of Western women uncomfortable, even those who wouldn’t necessarily describe themselves as feminist. We have to stop treating female character traits as inherently good and men’s as inherently bad. We have to assert that it is a good thing that men are more aggressive. If compassion and emotional intelligence are important for a cohesive community, then so is a penchant for competitiveness and emotional stoicism.
The caveats here are obvious; a man unable to tell his wife he loves her needs to loosen up a bit. But a woman who emotionally manipulates those around her needs to gain control of her feelings. These are tendencies that beset both sexes uniquely, yet they are often rooted in sex-specific personality characteristics that are in themselves good.
The second thing which we must do as women to assert men’s unique value in society is to admit that we need them. Not only does an individual woman need her individual man, but women as a group need men. Women need men to counterbalance their tendency to let emotions rule them. Women need men to take on the physically demanding labor their bodies cannot accomplish. Women need men’s protection as they carry out the physical bearing of children, from pregnancy to birth to breastfeeding.
If such statements make you uncomfortable, it is likely that you have been influenced more than you realize by the current feminist malaise.
***
Sarah Wilder is a wife and mom living on a small homestead in Michigan. She is a cultural commentator and a writer, and her work is regularly published in outlets such as Chronicles Magazine, 1819 News, and American Mind.

Gemini_Generated_Image_y8lig1y8lig1y8li

Women Brag About ‘Man-Hating’ At Dinner And Then Admit What Happens When They Get Home

Gender

Upstream

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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What began as a glittering evening at the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner ended in chaos Saturday night when gunfire shattered the calm in the ballroom and sent journalists, officials, and their spouses scrambling for safety. According to reporting, the suspect, identified as Cole Allen, later admitted he had been targeting Trump administration officials. In an instant, the glitz of the night became irrelevant, and instincts took over. When there is no time for calculation, no time for messaging or spin, what you see is character — unfiltered and immediate.
When the first shots rang out, White House adviser Stephen Miller reacted without hesitation. He immediately moved his wife, Katie — pregnant with their fourth child — down beneath him and covered her with his body, placing himself between her and the direction of the gunfire. Video shows that as they were evacuated, he remained close behind her, steadying her and guiding her forward. In the hours that followed, critics on social media attempted to twist the scene, falsely accusing him of using her as a shield. The shots came from behind him, and his body position reflected that reality. His instinct was not to hide; it was to protect.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
You can tell a lot about a man about how they instinctively respond when it hits the fan.
In this photo, Stephen Miller moves on top of his pregnant wife to protect her.
Pete Hegseth stands over his wife, surveying the scene while leaning over, protecting her. <a href="https://t.co/kEvHgg56bo">pic.twitter.com/kEvHgg56bo</a>
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) <a href="https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/2048356399675998620?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
He wasn’t the only one.
Nearby, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth responded with similar decisiveness. As everyone around him hid under tables, he stood to assess the situation, physically placing himself between danger and his wife, Jenny. When agents moved to evacuate the room, he cleared a path, pushing aside chairs and obstacles with a flick of his hand, and ensured that she moved ahead of him toward safety.
Accounts from inside the ballroom suggest that President Donald Trump himself behaved in much the same way. Spanish journalist David Alandete <a href="https://x.com/alandete/status/2048378082990440893" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/alandete/status/2048378082990440893&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1777378046758000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1fKzvoxVrKo257m-MqaYqR">described</a> how Trump resisted being rushed out blindly, demanding clarity about what was happening even as agents attempted to move him. He insisted that Melania Trump be evacuated first and that the visibly pregnant press secretary be prioritized as well. Only after ensuring others were being moved to safety did he leave, on his own two feet, even after being jostled by agents trying to hurry him along.
These moments matter precisely because unlike the rest of the night, these moments were not rehearsed. No one is thinking about optics when shots are fired, and there is no time to construct an image. There is only the split-second decision of whether to turn inward or outward — whether to preserve yourself or protect others.
For years, we have been told that masculinity is something to be softened, redefined, or even <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/america-tried-to-fix-men-for-two-decades-heres-what-it-got-instead">suppressed</a>. The phrase “toxic masculinity” has been applied so broadly that manhood has been under attack for years. But what unfolded that night offered a reminder: In moments of danger, the best men do not retreat into themselves. A real man responds to danger by deciding to shield, guide, and then acts.
Not every member of the administration that night reflected that instinct.
Videos immediately emerged of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as chaos broke out, showing his wife, Cheryl Hines, left navigating the disrupted room behind him. In heels and formalwear, she struggled to move across the space and ultimately had to seek assistance on her own, tapping an agent to help her as others focused on evacuating him. It is an uncomfortable contrast, with Stephen Miller being seen gently guiding his own wife in the same video angles.
Later that evening, as the Cabinet regrouped, another image began circulating, one that captured the same instinct. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood in a white dress shirt on a chilly night. His suit jacket was draped around his wife, covering her strapless gown as the shock of the night set in. It was not as dramatic a moment as the one we saw in the ballroom, but it was telling. The instinct to be a caretaker remained, and Rubio displayed the fact that his wife came first.
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<div id="attachment_1084627" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1084627" class="size-medium wp-image-1084627" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2273154054-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2273154054-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2273154054-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2273154054-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-2273154054.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images</div>
We have seen this instinct before under even more harrowing circumstances. During the assassination attempt at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Corey Comperatore was killed shielding his family, placing his body between them and the gunfire.
That same event became, in many ways, a defining moment of the election cycle. When President Trump rose to his feet after being shot, bloodied but defiant, and shouted “fight, fight,” it crystallized something for millions of Americans. It was not simply about politics. It was about projection — about what kind of strength a country wants to embody.
It is difficult to imagine a similar moment playing out the same way for former President Joe Biden. Fair or not, the contrast is part of the broader perception voters carry with them. Leadership, especially in moments of crisis, is not only about policy positions or speeches. It is about strength, resilience, and the ability to project confidence under pressure. The image from Butler was not crafted or rehearsed; it was incredibly revealing about the man running for office. And for many, it confirmed what they already believed they were not seeing from the current Biden administration.
The same dynamic, on a smaller but still meaningful scale, played out at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In a room filled with some of the most powerful people in Washington, stripped of ceremony and pretense, instinct took over. Some men stepped forward into that role without hesitation. Others did not.
There is a tendency in modern discourse to treat differences between men and women as largely constructed, to downplay the idea that certain instincts are deeply rooted rather than socially imposed. But moments like these cut through that fiction. When danger is immediate, men act according to who they are.
Saturday night revealed that there are still men who understand, at a fundamental level, what it means to protect the people entrusted to them. They do not wait to be told. They do not calculate how it will look. They simply act.
There are, in fact, good men in this administration. And in moments like the shooting at the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner, that reality is impossible to ignore.
***
Bethany Mandel (<a href="https://x.com/bethanyshondark">@bethanyshondark</a>) is a homeschooling mother of six and a writer. She is the bestselling co-author, with Karol Markowicz, of &#8220;Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.&#8221;

Security Scare at The White House Correspondents’ Dinner with President Trump

After Panic In DC Ballroom, A Quiet Act Of Protection Is Stealing The Spotlight

White House Correspondents’ Dinner

When Donald Trump first ran for president, many of us on the Right reveled in the thrill of the brazen businessman swinging a chainsaw at the bureaucratic beast that had spent years grinding down conservatives, families, and young men.
In the years that followed, we often felt vindicated. The Left had lied for years. Institutions failed us. COVID “experts” betrayed the public, Russiagate was a horrific hoax, and 2020’s summer of riots confirmed that rules only applied to the non-woke. Distrust was earned.
But recently, young conservatives — especially men — have traded righteous anger at the Left for a toxic victimhood that mirrors everything we once fought against. They parrot conspiracies and insist that everything — America, young men, the world — is doomed and the cards are stacked against them, no matter what.
This isn’t anti-establishment courage. It’s the same grievance politics the Left perfected, now wearing a red hat. As Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro warned during his recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-talks-truth-problem-solving-and-true-conservatism-on-uncommon-knowledge?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Drew+Berkemeyer&amp;category=Analysis&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Ben+Shapiro+Talks+Truth%2C+Problem-Solving%2C+And+True+Conservatism+On+%E2%80%98Uncommon+Knowledge%E2%80%99">appearance</a> on the Hoover Institution’s “Uncommon Knowledge” podcast, this internal rot — conspiracy culture, corrosive cynicism, and a Marxist-style obsession with exploding “the system” instead of fixing our own lives — is how conservatism loses its soul.
Shapiro warns that the Right’s biggest threat isn’t the Left anymore. It’s us falling into the same victimhood trap.
“You don’t want to solve your problems,” he told host Peter Robinson, “because you say, they’re not my problems, they’re society’s problems and I can’t solve those problems unless society is exploded. It’s almost a Marxist vision of history.”
This turns the Right away from traditional American ideals of individual agency and toward emotional, anti-institutional rage. I see this with my friends: it’s hurting relationships, crushing success, and handicapping personal ambition.
Young men specifically are suffering, and the Left bears real blame. Male <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/data.html#:~:text=6.5-,Download%20Data%20(CSV),data%20for%20the%20chart%20figure.">suicide</a> rates remain four times higher than women’s. For men ages 15-24, rates jumped 26% between 2010 and 2023. Millions of young men are falling behind in education, struggling to launch careers, and checking out of relationships. The Left’s oppressor-oppressed matrix, its war on masculinity, its celebration of broken families, and its assault on merit have left a generation of boys, and more and more females, feeling like the villain in their own country. That pain is legitimate.
But wallowing in it, embracing black-and-white “they all lie” thinking, and letting resentment replace agency, is surrender. 
Shapiro calls this “depixelation” — the collapse of nuance after three trust-shattering blows happened near-simultaneously: the media’s Russiagate lies, COVID’s contradictory mandates, and the Black Lives Matter double standard that let cities burn while the rest of us were locked down. Suddenly, everything became binary. No evidence needed; just rage. That’s dangerous.
Shapiro illustrates this perfectly using an episode of  Joe Rogan’s podcast. In it, Michael Shellenberger debunked Jeffrey Epstein blackmail claims against Trump. Rogan’s response? “Just because there’s no evidence doesn’t mean they won’t find it later.”
Ben Shapiro’s apt reply: “The moon is made of cheese? Well, have you been to the moon? Do you trust the people who went?”
Herein lies the danger. Once you are in that logical framework, accepting unfalsifiable logic — the same kind <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/criterion-of-falsifiability">Karl Popper</a> warned destroys real inquiry — you can be sold anything. Conspiracy theorizing without evidence isn’t just wrong; it’s a grift that turns people into marks for clicks, bile, and personalities over principles.
Ask yourself if these voices have strengthened the conservative movement or improved society. The answer is no. Instead, they’ve left a trail of anger, resentment, bitterness, and hopelessness. They raise questions but never offer answers. They push dark narratives instead of teaching what actually works. The end result is paralysis — a generation left stagnant and vulnerable.  
This is the horseshoe theory in action: The far Left and the grievance Right meet in the same dead end of inertia and despair. It’s why so many young men I know are single and sluggish. Ambition is crushed. Relationships die. Society gets weaker. The evidence is all around us; dating apps are flooded with it.
The problem with today’s populace is that too many of us no longer know how to defend an idea. We follow personalities — blindly, willingly — because we like the way they speak and the anger they validate. But when asked why we believe what we believe, or the logic behind it, we fall silent. This is the trap of following people instead of ideas.
Shapiro’s solution — and what I’ve been echoing — is a return to true conservatism: personal responsibility, evidence-based thinking, and relentless problem-solving. We must return to our foundational principles and place reason over raw emotion. We need to read, learn, and embrace a coherent set of values rather than a rotating cast of influencers.
But none of that yearning for knowledge and truth can happen until we first reclaim autonomy over our own lives. As Shapiro puts it, “Individual responsibility is the lodestar of a successful society.”
He’s right. Yes, institutions have failed many people — especially young men. But the answer is not to burn everything down or retreat into conspiracy. The answer is to rebuild on principle, agency, and honest analysis. Pure anti-Left reactionism or personality cults will never save conservatism.
We won’t save conservatism by worshiping personalities or “owning the libs.” We can defend it by knowing why it’s right — by reading the Founders, studying evidence, and choosing reason over emotion.
Institutions failed us, yes. But the solution isn’t burning them down. It’s rebuilding.

Man reading fake news on cell phone

The Grievance Party is Killing Conservatism — And We Need Our Men Back

Conservatism

Victimhood

In a society that loves to “blur the line” between man and woman, the result can be a strenuous casting process that might almost postpone production.
Take FX’s &#8220;Love Story.&#8221;
In the new show, viewers embark on the romantic yet tragic story of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, America&#8217;s most beloved couple in the 1990s. Ever known for their iconic fashion and good looks, choosing the right actors was indeed going to be a high task at hand.
Executive producers Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson shared with <a href="https://people.com/how-love-story-cast-newcomer-paul-anthony-kelly-exclusive-11906585#:~:text=NEED%20TO%20KNOW,agreed%20there%20was%20something%20special.">People</a> that selecting Sarah Pidgeon to play Bessette was a swift and easy choice: she “jumped out and stole the role” and immediately “won our hearts.”
But the same could not be said for Kennedy.
“We were three weeks away from shooting and we still [had] not cast him,&#8221; Simpson said. &#8220;We&#8217;d seen every male actor between the age of 25 and 38.”
“We were about to shut down production and pause because we couldn&#8217;t find him,” he added.
The show’s creator, Connor Hines, admitted he even sought out people on the street and at the gym to come read for the role. 
But the problem wasn’t that they didn’t like their interviewees, Simpson said. There was something else missing.
“Part of it was just that sort of &#8217;80s, old school masculinity — a man with hair on his chest, sort of Richard Gere, Tom Selleck — the classic chiseled looks,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;We&#8217;re not making those guys anymore, for some reason, and he really needed to have that.&#8221;
In a GQ <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/how-love-storys-paul-anthony-kelly-became-jfk-jr">article</a>, Simpson elaborated further: &#8220;It’s these men with broad shoulders and they are in shape, but they’re in shape because they’ve been throwing a football around, not because they’ve been working on every muscle in their body for a Marvel movie.&#8221;
&#8220;We live in a world of electrolysis men, and it was a real challenge to find that sort of guy — a guy that women and gay men are attracted to, but also guys want to hang out and have a beer with.&#8221;
Something needs to be said if even Hollywood starts admitting there&#8217;s a masculinity problem.
The producers retraced their steps and considered the self-tapes they had already received, pulling out 13 new guys to come in and read. To their luck, Paul Anthony Kelly was among that group.
&#8220;You&#8217;re crazy if you don&#8217;t cast him,&#8221; Simpson recalled a makeup artist saying as she walked past.
Beyond his similar look to JFK Jr. — tall height, handsome, and yes, even chest hair — Simpson said Kelly had an &#8220;ease and charm&#8221; about him that was immediate. After a chemistry read with Pidgeon, there was no doubt the producers had found their Kennedy.
Now, Kelly is marking his first major debut and <a href="https://www.insidehook.com/style/actor-paul-anthony-kelly-oscars-best-dressed">becoming</a> his own American heartthrob.

FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” Red Carpet Premiere

The Difficult Task Of Casting JFK Jr. For ‘Love Story’ In The 21st Century

Entertainment

Hulu

John F. Kennedy Jr.

U.S.

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
My wife and I don’t watch porn, and certainly not together, but it sure felt like we were when we sat down to watch &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms23FeJWvKU">Inside the Manosphere</a>,&#8221; a documentary on Netflix that currently sits in the top-10 on the platform.
Over the course of 90 minutes, award-winning documentarian Louis Theroux immerses himself in the “alpha-male subculture” that is attracting millions of young males to an abnormal way of life. But we’ve seen this act before, and I emphasize “act.”
The manosphere is a derivative of pornography. It promotes unnatural and unattainable standards. It is a performance consumed through a screen, not lived. It destroys real intimacy and relationships. It creates no societal value — only profits for the participants. And it exploits both men and women. The manosphere isn’t masculinity just like porn isn’t sex. 
For example, in the documentary, influencer Myron Gaines asks women on his podcast to use a calculator to design their ideal man. The tool only allows for a few inputs: income, height, ethnicity, etc. This is akin to how one custom-tailors a sex scene on a website’s search bar. This is not how relationships work in real life. 
Like the stars of this show, the formula lacks any whiff of morality. The measures of success are money, clout, and fame. And these come at the expense of the consumers who pay to watch these men live their lives rather than go on living theirs. Nowhere is character or responsibility emphasized. In fact, responsibility gets kicked to the curb. The only man featured who is a father, Justin Waller, proudly points out he doesn’t do “baths and diapers.” These aren’t the ingredients of a fulfilled life; they’re markers of attention. 
While these men promote a life philosophy, their actual theory is a contradiction, and the contradictions run rampant. Harrison Sullivan, aka HSTikkyTokky, owns an OnlyFans management account but claims he would disown his hypothetical daughter if she were on the platform. (This came shortly after he introduced a scantily clad woman on his couch as his “dishwasher.”) Or take the many quotes about the uselessness of women, while their entire business model depends on women. But they know this. As Sullivan says, “I’m just a salesman.” They are monetizing the attention economy. 
These men perform for cameras during almost every waking minute of their lives. It is awkward when the Netflix cameras catch the random hanger-on hiding in the corner, recording every moment on a phone. There are even moments when the influencers aren’t sure whether they are supposed to address the cameras. And perhaps the saddest part of the film is when Sullivan goes to reunite with his father after years of estrangement. To no surprise, he livestreamed it to his audience. These men live in an algorithm prison.
But the act gets revealed many times throughout. In the midst of Gaines introducing his girlfriend to the camera, she emphasizes that “Myron is somebody in front of the cameras, but behind them is somebody else with me.” She is then pressed about his wishes to pursue one-way monogamy, which it is clear she doesn’t endorse. Gaines then backtracks, but Theroux quickly calls his bluff, at which point Gaines abruptly kicks his girlfriend out of the interview and barks at her to “clean up the room” in an attempt to regain his assertiveness.
Throughout the entire exchange, the same man who is shown saying “I’m a dictator” and that he will dictate when a woman has sex with him is visibly uncomfortable as he awkwardly laughs, fights with his dog, and touches his nose multiple times. Nonverbal cues sometimes say more than words; an article from Psychology Today<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/let-their-words-do-the-talking/202306/sniffing-out-deception"> claims</a> “rubbing the nose is a behavior that may be observed in individuals who are deceptive” and can be a “subconscious attempt to relieve anxiety associated with dishonesty.” 
Only a few sentences apart, Waller tells Theroux that he has two daughters and that their mother participates in threesomes with him and his girlfriends, but she is not allowed to see other men. Throughout the exchange, he laughs uncomfortably, breaks eye contact, and gives defensive answers to questions he isn’t asked. The body language of these men reveals what the rhetoric hides. They don’t have identities; they have personas. 
Perhaps, though, the most unfortunate aspect of the story is not the actors but the audience they grift off. Like porn, these men are exploiting lonely boys. A <a href="https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it">Harvard study</a> found that 24% of 18- to 29-year-olds are lonely. Furthermore, 73% of those surveyed said technology was to blame. This data provides the demand for the manosphere’s supply. These men are monetizing loneliness. 
They boast of “escaping the matrix” of society: things like a 9-5 job or being held down by one woman and a family. But they aren’t helping men escape the matrix; they are building a worse one. 
While the manosphere is heavy on performance, it is light on meaning. It emphasizes the quantity of followers over the quality of relationships. But what is widely known from the famous <a href="https://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/">Harvard Study on Adult Development</a>, conducted over 85 years, is that the quality of relationships matters more than the number of your friends; individuals with strong social bonds live longer, have stronger immune systems, and have lower rates of anxiety and depression; and relationship satisfaction at age 50 is a better predictor of physical health at age 80 than cholesterol levels. 
The manosphere comparison to porn becomes impossible to ignore. In researching the pornography-loneliness partnership, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/is-pornography-use-increasing-loneliness-particularly-for-young-people#:~:text=Pornography%20use%20that%20is%20regular,(or%20other%20troubling%20emotions).">the Institute for Family Studies states</a>, “The further the person entrenches this experiential pathway, the more elusive real relationship fulfillment could become.” Psychology Today<a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/why-bad-looks-good/202109/the-link-between-pornography-and-loneliness#:~:text=Viewed%20in%20this%20fashion%2C%20they,reduced%2C%20as%20healthy%20relationships%20thrive."> describes</a> a self-perpetuating cycle, noting that “using explicit material as a temporary fix likely fails to address the root cause of loneliness &#8230; potentially making it a maladaptive method of coping and creating potential entrapment in a destructive cycle of pornography and loneliness.” 
This is the real matrix. 
The manosphere isn’t about a few bad actors. It’s about us. Harrison, Gaines, Waller, and others exist because young men are confusing attention with value and performance with purpose. We like, share, and subscribe. Where porn inhibits intimacy, the manosphere traps us in a life of loneliness. And both consume our souls in the process. 
At the end of the documentary, it is revealed that Harrison has been arrested and that Gaines’ girlfriend has broken up with him. It appears these men are also resigned to a life of loneliness.
***
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast, We The People with Gates Garcia. Follow him on X and Instagram <a href="https://x.com/GatesGarciaFL">@GatesGarciaFL</a>.

It’s Drawing Tons Of Young Men — But The Reality Doesn’t Match The Pitch

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Chuck Norris has died, and if I’m being honest, I thought death would die first. For my generation, Norris wasn’t just a man; he was a legend. The memes will live forever.
“Chuck Norris doesn’t dial the wrong number. You answered the wrong phone.”
“Chuck Norris can cut through a hot knife. With butter.”
And my personal favorite, “How many push-ups can Chuck Norris perform? All of them.”
Our laughter was revealing, though. Beneath the humor was truth. Chuck Norris was the archetype for the version of masculinity society is letting fade away. The man was strong, competent, and in control. Norris wasn’t just cast in masculine roles; he was the living embodiment of masculinity.
It seems hard to imagine a time when men didn’t <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/america-tried-to-fix-men-for-two-decades-heres-what-it-got-instead">apologize for being masculine</a>. When I was enjoying my snacks on the couch to &#8220;Walker, Texas Ranger,&#8221; masculinity flooded the airwaves. Men exuded a quiet strength. Strength was functional and moral. Now it has become aesthetic and performative.
Young men today are looking for masculinity in internet search bars. But they’d be better off watching some reruns of Norris&#8217; show or learning about the life he built off the screen. Today’s version of masculinity is generated by an algorithm. Norris’ was lived. Rather than grifting off impressionable young boys or selling them the next course on the “alpha framework,” he was living an example others could pattern — for free.
What made him exceptional wasn’t talent. It was discipline. Norris was a six-time World Professional Middleweight Karate champion and held black belts in five different disciplines, including judo and jiujitsu. Perhaps martial arts are the perfect analogy for his life: order, repetition, and mastery.
Discipline builds confidence, and confidence builds leadership. But the modern approach to manhood is the inverse: life hacks, shortcuts, and a culture of optimization. Norris modeled actual work instead of simulated progress. 
He also embodied strength without anger. Today’s version of masculinity is rooted in grievance, resentment, victimization, and chaos. Men are constantly looking for who has wronged them and seeking vengeance. 
Norris grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father who killed a woman in a drunk driving accident and was sentenced to a work camp. His brother died in Vietnam when Norris was only 30. But rather than let those tragedies consume him, he demonstrated control, restraint, and stability. He couldn’t have a victim mentality because he refused to see himself as one.
Norris was a hero, a masculine role model for boys like me growing up. But we’ve replaced role models with influencers. While Norris earned respect through his actions, today’s influencers rent authority through followers. Men used to want to be strong. Now they just want to look strong.
Perhaps the meme craze around Norris’ life tells us the most. Real masculinity doesn’t have to announce itself; it gets recognized by others. The only person who didn’t promote Chuck Norris was Norris himself. Of course, he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DVtiSHbETbX/?hl=en">leaned into</a> the memes, but didn&#8217;t start them. Today’s influencers promote themselves and no one else, but when you’re doing things right, you don’t need to say so. It’s the difference between a protector and a projector.
While modern masculinity consumes life, Norris built one. He was known for his deep commitment to family, having five children and 13 grandchildren. While he was recognized more for his martial arts accomplishments, he won multiple acting awards and received multiple honors, including Honorary Texas Ranger, Honorary Texan, and Honorary Marine. These are the outcomes of a man who spent more time training instead of scrolling, more time building instead of reacting, and more time creating instead of commenting. 
Norris was also courageous. In a Hollywood industry that often turns its back on faith and demands conformity to progressive ideologies, Norris was both an unapologetic patriot and a vocal conservative, and he was never shy about his religious convictions. He even published a book titled &#8220;Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America,&#8221; which critiqued the loss of moral direction in the United States. He was also an Air Force veteran serving as an air policeman in South Korea, long before he was a Texas Ranger. 
Now, after his passing, we can make a final observation of his life that is becoming rarer for famous men in our culture. Chuck Norris’ public image matched his private life, a long and noble one. So many men use their public image to hide their private flaws. But for Norris, outward service was a reflection of his inward stability.
The timing for me is eerie. I just enrolled my two boys in jiujitsu for the first time. As they learn the same disciplines that shaped Chuck Norris, I will use the intersection of these two events to teach them about the man, the myth, the legend. I hope what they find isn’t just nostalgia, but a standard.
As Norris travels to meet his maker, perhaps one more meme is appropriate: “Chuck Norris doesn’t need a GPS. He decides where he is.” For now, let us decide to keep his example here, where it’s needed most.
***
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast, We The People with Gates Garcia. Follow him on X and Instagram <a href="https://x.com/GatesGarciaFL">@GatesGarciaFL</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Chuck Norris Works Out

Chuck Norris Didn’t Just Play Tough. He Lived It, And Today’s Culture Can’t Match It

Obituaries

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it.
Let me back up. In 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers published &#8220;The War Against Boys,&#8221; documenting how American schools had begun treating normal male behavior as something to be diagnosed and medicated. A seven-year-old was suspended for pointing a pencil like a gun at his friend. A boy in California was punished for running during recess and nearly suspended for jumping over a bench. Schools banned tag and dodgeball. Boys were five times more likely to be expelled from preschool than girls and accounted for 70% of suspensions — not for anything dangerous, but for roughhousing, defiance, and being loud. Instead of addressing the gap, institutions doubled down, remaking classrooms around female learning styles. They criminalized the “bad guy” play that men have channeled into building civilizations since the dawn of time. Almost nobody listened to Sommers, or they mocked her. For over a decade, the project to dismantle masculinity stayed contained in academia, slowly working its way through education policy like a parasite.
Then it broke containment. By 2015, the national psychedelic trip we now refer to as &#8220;wokeism&#8221; was reaching its crescendo, and men — specifically straight, traditional men — were its favorite target. &#8220;Toxic masculinity&#8221; migrated from academic journals to Thanksgiving dinner. &#8220;Men are trash&#8221; became something people said at brunch without flinching. &#8220;Mansplaining&#8221; entered the lexicon. Gillette released an ad lecturing its own customers about the sins of manhood. No razors, just shame. Hollywood gender-swapped &#8220;Ghostbusters&#8221; and sidelined Luke Skywalker for a new female lead. In 2019, the American Psychological Association issued guidelines pathologizing &#8220;traditional masculinity&#8221; as harmful. The message from every direction was the same: Manhood was broken, and women would fix it.
I had a front row seat as a columnist for Playboy, the most famous men&#8217;s magazine in the world, from 2015 to 2017 — the exact moment it stopped knowing how to talk to men. The organization was paralyzed by fear and overrun with young liberal women and gay men, which rendered it incapable of meeting the moment. Everything about the brand signaled apology. Playboy should have held the line. It was a wide-open lane. Instead, it followed every other men&#8217;s magazine in the same direction: less for the man&#8217;s man, more for the gay man and queer woman. Had it doubled down on unapologetically speaking to red-blooded American men, it could have led a renaissance. Instead, it chose surrender.
And in the space created when the culture forced men to be small, scummy opportunists filled the void. We got the Tates. The Sneakos. Parodies of men. Guys who are what a teenager thinks masculinity looks like when he doesn&#8217;t have a good father: flashy Rolexes, rented Lamborghinis, and endless talk. Talk, talk, talk. The guys who screamed loudest about the feminization of America were engaged in an inherently feminine activity. They were podcasting. They were sitting behind desks and running their mouths. And when you put men in a space that&#8217;s fundamentally about talking, their conflict becomes female-coded: reputational attacks, betrayal narratives, emotional manipulation, hissy fits. In real life, male interaction is moderated by the threat of getting punched in the face. Online, that&#8217;s gone. So the most effective tactics are the ones women use. These guys didn&#8217;t fight the feminization of culture. They became it.
I feel privileged to have known men who stormed the beaches at Normandy, who fought in the South Pacific, who came home and never spoke of it. Real men don&#8217;t whine about sacrifice. They make it. And I feel sorry for younger generations who haven&#8217;t known men like that — men who felt proud to serve, who understood trade-offs, who didn&#8217;t see the world in black and white. Young men are desperate for identity, and if you don&#8217;t give them Captain America, Ted Williams, and George Washington, they&#8217;ll find Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson identified this collapse in meaning early; it makes young men terrifyingly easy to radicalize.
And now these same guys — the ones who spent years raging about how pussified America is, the longhouse, the feminization of men, soy boys, turning the frogs gay — are now having hissy fits because America is actually being masculine. Militarily masculine. The real deal. And they&#8217;re whining about how they feel betrayed. &#8220;We&#8217;re not dying for Israel.&#8221; You&#8217;re not dying for anyone, buddy! You&#8217;re not dying for America. You&#8217;re not dying for anything except your subscriber count. You spent years cosplaying as warriors, and the moment actual sacrifice entered the conversation, you folded like every other fraud who has ever confused talking with doing.
Compare the Biden-era Army recruitment ad, an animated spot about a soldier raised by two moms marching in a pride parade, with what&#8217;s coming out of the Pentagon now. A Special Forces trainer deadlifting 500 pounds: &#8220;Stronger people are harder to kill.&#8221; Soldiers on a firing range: &#8220;We train until we can&#8217;t get it wrong.&#8221; Enlistment is at a 15-year <a href="https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4365687/fy25-sees-best-recruiting-numbers-in-15-years/">high</a>. When you stop apologizing for what the military is and start showing men what it demands, they show up. That&#8217;s what real masculinity looks like when it&#8217;s not being run through the filter of “how is this going to make Karen feel?”
The culture is shifting everywhere, thanks in part to comedian Joe Rogan, who held the line and built a parallel comedy establishment that is unapologetically masculine, irreverent, and enormous. Bud Light — the brand that nearly destroyed itself partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney — signed as its new spokesperson Shane Gillis, a comedian who&#8217;d been dropped from SNL only to return as a host. And on February 22 — 46 years to the day from America’s “Miracle on Ice” — the U.S. men&#8217;s hockey team beat Canada in overtime for our first Olympic gold since 1980. Those players stood at the State of the Union, grinning from ear to ear, and got a standing ovation. My nephews are obsessed with them. They see those radiant smiles and that pride in America, and they want to emulate it. 
In his post-game interview, hockey star <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/gold-lost-teeth-and-a-true-grit-american-moment-from-jack-hughes">Jack Hughes</a> said, “This is all about our country right now. I love the USA. I love my teammates. It&#8217;s unbelievable. The U.S. hockey brotherhood is so strong and we had so much support from ex players, and I&#8217;m so proud to be American today. So proud.” That&#8217;s not some guy ranting into a webcam about alpha males; it’s the real thing, and young men can feel the difference.
The 2024 election was, in many ways, a referendum on all of this. The entire post-election media analysis centered on one question: How did Democrats lose young men? The answer was simple. They&#8217;d spent a decade telling young men they were the problem, and eventually, young men believed them and voted accordingly.
Saving this country is going to require things that make some people uncomfortable. It is going to require men who are willing to be strong without apology, to serve without being asked, and to lead without waiting for permission. For 20 years, we told men to sit down. The men who are standing back up — not the talkers, not the grifters, but the ones who actually build and serve and sacrifice — are the ones who will matter.
But I&#8217;m not going to speak for men. Instead, I&#8217;ll let Sergeant Dan Hollaway, 82nd Airborne Infantry, share his thoughts on the resurgence of American masculinity.
“Masculinity is not a social accessory,” he told me. “It is the backbone of every civilization that has ever endured. Masculinity began as an unspoken contract with reality: I will go where it is dangerous so others don’t have to. If certain burdens are not carried, then people die. This is the natural law of masculinity, and it has never changed. For a generation, America’s masculinity was mocked, undermined, and treated as something dangerous or obsolete — and many men simply withdrew. But that retreat is ending, and as men return to strength, discipline, and responsibility, the benefits are already becoming visible. American pride is on the rise, and we have the unique opportunity to save the greatest country in the history of the world by simply being men.”
***
Bridget Phetasy is a writer and comedian. She’s the host of the show Dumpster Fire and podcast Walk-Ins Welcome. Find more of her writing on her Substack Beyond Parody at <a href="https://phetasy.com/">phetasy.com</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

GettyImages-2218584648

America Tried To ‘Fix’ Men For Two Decades. Here’s What It Got Instead.

When the Justice Department released the latest batch of Epstein <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/justice-department-releases-millions-more-epstein-files" target="_blank" rel="noopener">documents</a>, I didn’t read them like a political junkie or a conspiracy sleuth. I read them like a father.
While commentators argue over names and timelines, my kids are learning something far more important: what America rewards in men, what it excuses, and what it quietly tolerates when power is involved. The lesson is ugly.
Strip away the sensationalism, and one reality stands out: This was a scandal almost entirely driven by men. These men were powerful, successful, and even married. They had children, platforms, influence, and every reason to know better.
What the Epstein documents really expose isn’t just corruption or crime. They expose a collapse in male self-government, and that collapse doesn’t stay contained at the top. It trickles down.
I have sons. I coach youth sports. I sit in dugouts tying cleats and listening to boys talk before they’ve learned how to filter themselves. And I can tell you this: Young men are desperate for clarity. They are constantly scanning the world for cues about what manhood actually means. What they’re being shown right now is poison.
They see men at the highest levels of society who preach intelligence, leadership, and sophistication while privately living like entitled boys. These men treat marriage as ornamental, fidelity as optional, and women as consumables. To them, accountability is something for lesser people.
If you want to know why so many young men are cynical about commitment, look no further. The message couldn’t be clearer: Success buys indulgence, power bends rules, and discipline is for men without leverage. That’s not masculinity. That’s moral anarchy.
Real masculinity has always been rooted in restraint, in self-command, and in the ability to say “no” when saying “yes” would be easy, pleasurable, and unlikely to bring consequences. Every culture that survived understood this. Boys became men not by indulging appetite, but by mastering it. Strength wasn’t measured by conquest, but by responsibility. Authority was paired with obligation.
Somewhere along the way, we replaced that vision with something hollow. Today, male excess is explained rather than condemned. Cheating is framed as temptation instead of betrayal. Sexual misconduct is “complicated.” Men who fail morally are treated as tragic figures rather than accountable ones.
When those men are powerful enough, the system rushes in to cushion the fall. The Epstein documents confirm what parents already fear: Elite men are often insulated from the standards they publicly demand from everyone else.
And kids notice. They don’t think in terms of legal nuance or sealed records. They think in terms of patterns: who gets punished, who gets protected, who gets forgiven, and who gets erased. The pattern they’re seeing is corrosive.
Ideas are no longer coming from parents. They are coming from culture, and culture is being shaped in part by exactly the kinds of men exposed in these documents. This is how a crisis of masculinity forms — not overnight, but drip by drip. Boys are taught that desire is destiny and discipline is repression. Men in positions of authority model indulgence instead of honor. Consequences disappear for the powerful and multiply for the ordinary. Then we act shocked when young men delay marriage, distrust institutions, and treat adulthood like a suggestion instead of a calling.
The Epstein documents don’t just reveal wrongdoing. They reveal what happens when men stop seeing themselves as stewards — of their families, their influence, and their responsibilities — and start seeing themselves as entitled consumers. That’s not liberation. It’s decay.
As a father, I don’t want my sons growing up believing masculinity is defined by appetite. I want them to know that real strength is the ability to govern yourself when no one is watching. Leadership without accountability is corruption, power without virtue is dangerous, and no amount of success excuses dishonor.
The Epstein documents make it painfully clear that when men fail to hold themselves to high standards, the damage spreads far beyond their own lives. Families fracture, trust erodes, cynicism grows, and the next generation learns the wrong lesson. This isn’t about moral grandstanding or pretending men are perfect. It’s about refusing to normalize male collapse.
If we want better men tomorrow, we need to tell the truth today. We need to stop excusing behavior simply because it’s common among elites. We need to stop confusing sophistication with virtue and access with worth.
The Epstein documents don’t just raise the question of who was involved. They ask who we’re becoming and whether we’re finally willing to teach our sons that manhood isn’t about what you can get away with, but what you choose not to do.
If we fail at that, then the next scandal won’t be a surprise. It will be the inheritance we handed them.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast “We The People.” Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Patrick McMullan Archives

The Epstein Documents Teach Our Sons A Distorted Lesson About Men. It’s On Us To Reject It.

Boys

Epstein Files

Fathers

Jeffrey Epstein

Editor’s note: This week, we’re reprinting some of our best stories from the past year. In this piece, originally published in June, Gates Garcia offers a reminder that true masculinity is not toxic.
* * *
The Left’s successful rebranding of masculinity as “toxic” didn’t just rewrite a dictionary entry — it rewired the cultural DNA that once produced great men.
In 2018, the American Psychological Association updated its Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, effectively declaring stoicism, risk-taking, and competitiveness — the building blocks of masculine virtue — “<a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf">psychologically harmful</a>.”  
Within months, Gillette aired its infamous &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI">We Believe</a>&#8220; commercial, scolding ordinary dads at backyard barbecues while implying every son harbored a bully within. Seemingly overnight, &#8220;toxic&#8221; became the default adjective attached to manhood.
But this cultural ambush was decades in the making. It has its roots in second-wave feminism, which in the 1960s began reframing male strength as patriarchal oppression. By the ’80s and ’90s, freshly-minted gender studies departments were churning out theses that branded healthy male assertiveness “hegemonic.”
On television, the upstanding patriarch of “Father Knows Best” gave way to the beer-bellied, weak-willed Al Bundy. When clickbait culture arrived in the 2000s, every societal ill — from climate change to mass shootings — found a convenient culprit in “<a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/17/gun-violence-masculinity-216321/">traditional masculinity</a>.”
C.S. Lewis foresaw the danger. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise,” he warned in The Abolition of Man — adding the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/113211-we-make-men-without-chests-and-expect-from-them-virtue?utm_source=chatgpt.com">punchline</a> our era can’t escape: “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
The cultural costs are no laughing matter. Today, 17.6 million American children — nearly one in four — <a href="https://www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic">grow up without a father in the home</a>. Their odds of suffering are grim: Barack Obama, citing Census data in 2008, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2008/06/text-of-obamas-fatherhood-speech-011094?">noted</a> that such children are “five times more likely to live in poverty… nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
If only he did something about it. 
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Almost 60 years earlier, Daniel Patrick Moynihan <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Moynihan%27s%20The%20Negro%20Family.pdf">sounded the same alarm</a>, saying, “the deterioration of the fabric of &#8230; society is the deterioration of the &#8230; family.” At the time, he was dismissed as an alarmist. The empty chairs around dinner tables prove him prophetic.
Classrooms reveal the next domino. The same ideology that pathologized masculine energy has left boys academically stranded. On the <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022">2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress</a>, 8th-grade girls outread boys by nine scale points, continuing an unbroken gender gap that dates to 1992. Overall scores for both sexes hit the lowest level on record. 
College quads tell the same tale. Men have fallen to just <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/18/fewer-young-men-are-in-college-especially-at-4-year-schools/">44% of American undergraduates</a>, a gap that’s widened every year since 2011. UNESCO, surveying 140 countries, now calls boys’ lagging literacy a “<a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/leave-no-child-behind-global-report-boys-disengagement-education">growing global crisis</a>.” Christina Hoff Sommers <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9334744-boys-today-bear-the-burden-of-several-powerful-cultural-trends">captures the cultural headwind:</a> a school climate that “valorizes feelings and denigrates competition and risk…views masculinity as predatory. Natural male exuberance is no longer tolerated.” 
Why did “toxic masculinity” stick? Because it performed a linguistic jujitsu: attach a moral defect to the identity you want to erase, then offer “liberation” through re-education. Courage degenerates into “aggression,” leadership into “oppression,” fatherhood into “patriarchal privilege.” The outcome is predictable: abolish the virtues that civilize male strength, then lament the violence or apathy that follows.
Yet the data refuse to cooperate with the narrative. Children with involved fathers are <a href="https://www.lakeconews.com/news/community/commentary/56433-delcol-happy-father-s-day">40% less likely to repeat a grade</a>, more likely to earn As, and far less prone to behavioral problems. Even the <a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/boys-men-practice-guidelines.pdf">APA guidelines</a> — often cited as proof of masculinity’s hazards — concede that male risk-taking can be “harnessed for good” when directed toward service and innovation.
Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child <a href="https://developingchild.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/The-Science-of-Resilience2.pdf">summarizes</a> decades of research showing that self-regulation and disciplined resilience — traits once labeled stoic — buffer children from stress and reduce lifetime mental-health risk. In other words, the same virtues our culture now brands “toxic” are the ones empirical science says we need.
Trust the science.
Conservatives bear some blame for this inversion. While we tallied marginal-tax victories, Hollywood and higher ed rewrote the story of manhood. Institutions we once guided — churches, Scouts, civic clubs — sat vacant as HR departments filled the void. The cockpit was empty. The Left merely climbed in and took control.
We didn’t arrive here by accident. The cultural collapse around masculinity wasn’t inevitable — it was permitted. While conservatives focused on policy wins and economic metrics, the Left waged a full-spectrum cultural campaign that redefined manhood itself. They infiltrated the classroom, the newsroom, and the writers&#8217; room. They turned moral virtue into pathology and repackaged fatherhood as oppression. And we let them. Not out of malice, but out of misplaced trust — that truth would prevail unaided, that tradition could defend itself, that boys would become men by default.
Now, we stand in the wreckage of that assumption. A generation of boys has been raised to doubt their instincts, to apologize for their strength, and to see their fathers as liabilities rather than legacies. This is not just a political failure — it’s a civilizational one. But it also means the stakes are finally clear. If the conservative movement wants to conserve anything worth passing down, it must begin with this: the restoration of masculine virtue. Not nostalgia. Not anger. But clarity. The recognition that the war on manhood is really a war on order, on protection, on the nuclear family.
We’re not at the end of this story — we’re at the hinge. The institutions may be hollow, the narratives poisoned, but the hunger for truth remains. And in that hunger lies our moment. Not to manage decline, but to name it. Not to tinker around the edges, but to tell the truth loudly enough that our sons can hear it. Before we rebuild, we must remember who we are — and what we allowed to be stolen in the dark.
Masculinity is not toxic — it’s virtuous. When we reclaim that distinction, we invite our sons to stand tall instead of apologizing for existing — and we give civilization the allies it deserves.
* * *
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast &#8220;We The People.&#8221; Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

New cowboy (1)

Best Of 2025: How The Left Hijacked Masculinity — And Why That’s Bad For Society

How The Left Hijacked Masculinity — And Why That’s Bad For Society

fatherhood

Feminism

Leftism

Toxic

For an episode that aired on Sunday evening, UFC President Dana White told CBS&#8217;s &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; that in his mind, there was no such thing as being &#8220;too masculine.&#8221;
White, who spoke at the Republican National Conventions in 2016 and 2024 and supported President Donald Trump through three campaigns, spoke with correspondent Jon Wertheim about the concept of &#8220;toxic masculinity&#8221; and whether or not the culture was shifting around that idea.
Wertheim began by quoting a term he said White had used in the past, saying that he&#8217;d decried the &#8220;wussification of America&#8221; — and White suggested that the word he&#8217;d used had actually begun with a different letter, but that he understood why that might be censored for broadcast television.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨NEW: Dana White tells &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; there&#8217;s *NO SUCH THING* as being &#8220;TOO MASCULINE&#8221;🤣
&#8220;How can somebody be too masculine? Is that a possibility? Can you be too masculine?&#8221;
&#8220;No! The answer is h*ll no!&#8221;<a href="https://twitter.com/DailyCaller?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DailyCaller</a> <a href="https://t.co/ZheAKOIBDW">pic.twitter.com/ZheAKOIBDW</a>
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1972617926697001125?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 29, 2025</a></blockquote>
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White went on to say that the reason the UFC was so successful — and growing — was that they knew their audience and were &#8220;unapologetically masculine.&#8221;
&#8220;Can this bubble over to too much?&#8221; Wertheim asked. &#8220;When you hear toxic masculinity, what do you–&#8221;
&#8220;Haha what’s that mean?&#8221; White laughed as he interrupted Wertheim.
&#8220;You tell me,&#8221; Wertheim challenged.
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&#8220;You just said it,&#8221; White pushed back. &#8220;What’s the definition of ‘toxic’? … How can somebody be too masculine? Can you be too masculine?&#8221;
&#8220;You tell me,&#8221; Wertheim repeated. &#8220;Do you think so?&#8221;
&#8220;No. The answer is hell no,&#8221; White declared.
The UFC is expected to hold an event at the White House in 2026 as part of America&#8217;s 250th birthday festivities — an event that both Trump and White have independently confirmed.
&#8220;We’re literally going to take over Washington, D.C., that week. We’re going to do the weigh-ins there. We’re going to have the weigh-in events. And we’ll have fan events all week. We’re going to do our expo there and just a total Washington, D.C., takeover,&#8221; White said of the planned event.

UFC 290: Whittaker v Du Plessis

‘Hell No!’: UFC Prez Tells ’60 Minutes’ There’s No Such Thing As Being ‘Too Masculine’

Culture

Dana White

General

Politics

Sports

Taylor Swift is officially off the market, and it’s no coincidence that America’s most beloved pop star didn’t say yes to another brooding actor, a melodramatic musician, or even some tortured poet. She ended up engaged to 6-foot-5, 250-pound Travis Kelce, a Super Bowl champ with a well-groomed mustache and a macho swagger. 
In other words, after years of dating men typically referred to as artsy “soy boys,” Swift said yes to the quintessential jock.
Swift may be an unapologetic lib, and Kelce may have shilled for Pfizer during the COVID pandemic, but this celebrity pairing actually bodes well for conservatives. Someone with her massive cultural influence over women is bound to start trends, and thanks to this latest development, old-school proposals and traditional marriage might be officially back in style. It’s only a matter of time before wedding-themed earworms start taking over the airwaves. 
Photos of the staged proposal were straight out of Swift&#8217;s wildest dreams. Kelce got down on one knee in a sun-dappled garden. The pop star is wearing a sundress and a soft smile. Swift posted a photo of the ring alongside the caption, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” 
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For this particular Hollywood love story, there was no girl bossing, no modern twists, no glorification of living in sin forever. This viral moment had everyone swooning because it was – gasp! – traditional. That makes it a cultural win for conservatives, even if the main characters are leftists through and through.
And there’s something very significant about the man Swift chose to spend forever with. This wasn’t a petulant man-child or anti-hero with a guitar and endless pathos. This is a bruising, six-foot-five athlete who knows how to win and isn’t afraid to go after what he wants.
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Kelce took the lead from the very outset of their relationship. In 2023, during Swift’s Kansas City tour stop, he confessed on his “New Heights” podcast that he tried to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it. When she didn’t get it, he joked about being “butt-hurt.”
Swift later said she thought his attempt was “metal as hell.” The nation’s biggest pop star admitted that confidence and directness are attractive. In an age when men are told to be sensitive, to cry, to ask permission before winking at a woman or sending a DM, Kelce came in strong with a solid attempt without any creepy overture. That’s the difference between being a man who leads and a boy who cries about not getting his way.
In so many ways, this isn’t just another celebrity love story. It’s a reminder of something our culture has tried to forget: women are biologically wired to be drawn to strength, confidence, and dominance. For centuries, and across cultures, overtly masculine traits like physical strength and the ability to protect and provide have been considered signs of a good partnership for women. These days, it&#8217;s written off as dated, old-fashioned, or, worse, &#8220;toxic.&#8221; But Swift’s decision to commit to Kelce speaks to the truth of women’s attraction to certain types of men on a deeper level.
Women are naturally drawn to a strong jawline, a muscular build, and height as cues of sound genetic fitness. This hasn’t changed for much of human history, despite so many current attempts to downplay it. 
It’s easy to see the difference when comparing her romance with Kelce to Swift’s ex-lovers. The “Shake It Off” singer has famously dated a lineup of artsy men, including indie actors and sensitive musicians who made more appearances in her lyrics than they did in the spotlight. This may have been a boon for fans craving the next great breakup song, but it wasn’t ideal for Swift herself. 
Joe Jonas. Jake Gyllenhaal. Lucas Till. John Mayer. Harry Styles. Joe Alwyn. Swift’s list of exes sounds like a who’s who list in the tortured soul competition she knows all too well. 
Kelce also doesn&#8217;t appear threatened by Swift’s fame or popularity. As a professional athlete, he&#8217;s accustomed to playing for tens of thousands of fans on any given Sunday. And even if Swift is on a different level in terms of fame and notoriety, so far, he hasn’t appeared fazed by the newfound attention. The NFL star seems smitten, just like the rest of her fans. 
Underneath all the glitz and glamour, this story is simple. Taylor Swift, the most successful female artist of her generation, chose strength. She chose a man who could protect, provide, and lead. She chose someone who isn’t afraid of pressure. 
That’s not an accident. It’s not a coincidence. It’s biology at work. Real men, whether they’re referred to as jocks, providers, or alphas, are usually winners because they&#8217;re wired for it. Feminists can whine about &#8220;toxic masculinity,&#8221; but human nature is what it is. Women like Swift, at their core, seek strength that complements their own. As she sings in &#8220;So High School,&#8221; a song inspired by Kelce, &#8220;You know how to ball, I know Aristotle.&#8221; 
It&#8217;s poetic. After so many artsy flings with overly sensitive men, she&#8217;s going home with the jock. Ladies, take note: nature always wins.

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