Like many well-meaning, left-leaning, oat-milk-drinking adults, my partner and I watched Netflix’s Adolescence with the fascinated dread of watching a gender implode in real time. 1Netflix, Adolescene, 2025. The insecure man, afraid of losing his crown, therefore doubles down on his dominant behaviour. At the heart of it lies a belief that if someone else gains power, the insecure man has lost a Pokémon battle. That fairness is theft. That women, queer people, and basically anyone not currently recording a podcast called The Real Truth About Truth are coming for their turf. But this zero-sum game is a lie. And like all good lies, it wears mirrored sunglasses and sells protein powder on Instagram.
This essay contends that the current wave of reactionary machismo is less a show of strength and more a planetary man-tantrum. And there’s still hope. Hope that men might come to see that lifting others up doesn’t mean getting bench-pressed into oblivion. That empathy is not emasculating. That maybe, just maybe, sharing the world doesn’t mean losing it.
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