We Could Use Some More Wife Guys and Dads

‘What the heck does good masculinity look like?” It’s the question of the day. The above quotation propelled a 6,500-word essay in the Washington Post by columnist and author Christine Emba. It’s behind the online discourse over confirmed misogynist and accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate.

For a generation, and particularly since the mid-2010s, the word masculinity rarely appeared in print without the preface — implicit or explicit — of “toxic.” The #MeToo movement and Donald Trump’s election created a moment where simply hating men was OK.

Then came the transgender movement, when the prestige media, politicians, physicians, and psychiatrists all began pretending that there were no natural differences between men and women, boys and girls.

Young men, knowing that they were, in fact, different from women, and rejecting the notion that this difference made them “toxic,” have gone in search of a positive understanding of masculinity. The lucky ones landed on Jordan Peterson (“make your bed; have good posture”), while the unlucky ones landed on Andrew Tate.

An elite culture that denigrates masculinity creates a vacuum that empowers deviants like Tate. Anyone who cares about culture — and especially anyone who cares about women — will seek out a better masculinity.

Emba, in the Washington Post, spent the length of a book chapter drawing her feminist and progressive readership toward acknowledging that there is such a thing as human nature and that it doesn’t always fit with a worldview based on radical autonomy and gender symmetry.

“For all their problems,” Emba writes, “the strict gender roles of the past did give boys a script for how to be a man.”

More directly, Emba states, “People need codes for how to be human.” This is subversive today. Former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, for one, infamously asserted that we all need to craft, from scratch, our own understanding of humanity.

But the most basic elements of human nature prescribe a pretty simple model for non-toxic masculinity. It’s marrying a woman, loving her with all your heart, forming a family, and dedicating yourself to your children. In the words of contemporary internet culture,

wife guys and dads.

This is not unproblematic, of course. The “wife guy” became a bad thing last decade

— men who were too effusive about their brides were somehow dehumanizing their wives.

Dad opinions, likewise, were denigrated as less valuable than the average opinion.

But we could use more men who order themselves below their wives, who coach Little League, lead Scout troops, and otherwise put their strength, logistical competence, protectiveness, and sense of direction in the service of others.