Sometimes the younger guys will take a look at TikTok and hear the screaming, crying lunatic women, either doing the usual rant about men or sobbing because no sane guy will come within twenty miles of her. There is a certain joy in the whiner’s misfortune, otherwise known as Schadenfreude, but almost immediately they will scroll over to look at guitars, sports cars, or check the score of the ball game. On the whole, the entire thing has become incredibly boring.
For years we did listen, actually until about seven or eight years ago. We listened through the ’80s, the ’90s, and the early 2000s, and then things began to change. We were dragged into Human Resources training and told we had to answer for scumbags like Harvey Weinstein and all the “sensitive” actors and Hollywood types that we knew were scumbags all along—and who were, incidentally, celebrated by women. We were told that we had to answer for Bill Clinton, when most men with even an ounce of testosterone despised the guy. The whole parade of #MeToo was apparently a shock to liberals, and especially liberal women, but there wasn’t a conservative guy on earth who couldn’t see these scumbags coming from miles away. Big shock that Hollywood producers, rock stars, politicians and celebrities might actually take advantage of a woman.
We listened as decent, hardworking men were lumped in with fictional characters like Don Draper, and we were told that somehow a sliver of revolting advertising guys from Manhattan represented all men. We listened through corporate diversity seminars that explained to us that when Neal grabbed Barb’s butt in the elevator, this was a bad thing. Thanks for the clarification. We listened as we were now expected to answer for creeps in New York and Los Angeles newsrooms and politicians who were sexting pictures of their weenies to their staffers, as though the rest of us had been consulted beforehand and somehow approved the plan.
We listened to all the lectures in college about toxic masculinity, which eventually seemed to encompass everything from men breathing oxygen to hiding in the garage. We listened while we were told that using rational argument was “mansplaining,” that “math was racist,” and abortion was “health care.” We heard all about the male gaze, so we stopped looking. We listened as we were told that women wanted to be judged equally in the workplace, except when they didn’t. Disagreement was fragility, attraction was objectification, and somehow lack of attention was discrimination. Opening the door for a woman was paternalistic, but not opening it was rude.
And thus we get to this recent moment, without much thought to the multiple steps in the cultural revolution leading up to it:
What, precisely, obligates men to perform physical tasks at the behest of woman in our vicinity?
In turn, what tasks should we expect women to perform for us on our behalf, when we deem it necessary?
— El Jacobo (@eljacoboaqui) September 18, 2026
As Glenn likes to say, chivalry was a code that made behavioral demands on women as well as men.