‘Barbie,’ ‘Poor Things’ Actually Encourage Toxic Masculinity

It should go without saying, but teaching that men can only be good if they never stand up to a woman is very bad for both males and females. It teaches women to see healthy men who stand up to them as exhibiting toxic behavior, and that demanding doormat behavior from men is the sign of a healthy woman.

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For men, teaching them that they can be only doormats or nasty guarantees that they will be the only kind of men that you will have.

It’s ironic that “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig and [Andrew] Tate both have the same view of men: That their only choices are to be a doormat or domineering. But Gerwig is the greater fool because she believes that if she offers those two choices to men, that they will somehow not choose to be dominant.

So what is the alternative to these two Kens?

Ed Morrissey

This didn't start in a single Oscar cycle. Men have been depicted as oafs or malevolent in Hollywood for many years, and especially in TV sitcoms and commercials where men are almost always the butt of any joke. It may not have been as didactic as Holmes argues it became in Barbie and Poor Things, but it's been the context of the entire "girlboss" genre since the Mary Sues descended into cinemas.  

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