According to the left, confidence is arrogance, competition is aggression, roughhousing is dangerous, male bonding is exclusionary, and masculinity is a defect that needs to be managed, softened, regulated, and eventually replaced with something quieter and much more compliant.

And that damning message is everywhere. It's in classrooms, corporate seminars, Hollywood movies, commercials, and endless lectures about "toxic masculinity." It's now baked into the culture of every left-wing city, where regular, every-day male behavior now attracts rules, permits, warnings, fees, and Marxist-style bureaucratic red tape.

Case in point: a father takes his sons to an empty public tennis court on a random Thursday afternoon to teach them the game. This should be one of the most wholesome, normal, and unremarkable things imaginable in the United States of America. A dad spending time with his boys, passing along a skill, encouraging discipline, and giving his sons the kind of attention young men desperately need.

But sorry, left-wing cities won't allow that. It's just a tad too "toxic" for them.

In walks two fully equipped park rangers to investigate this overly masculine moment.

Sam Financial Samurai: 

Got approached by two park rangers in full gear today for teaching tennis to my own children. Empty park, 3:15pm on a Thursday.

No permit, $192 fine. Unless you can prove the students came out of you. I asked my kids to confirm I'm their dad.

Somewhere in San Francisco an actual crime is happening, but at least the forehand situation is under control.

Not a great use of city resources. But that's just my opinion.

Sure, on the surface, this looks like just another absurd example of city workers wasting time and money to enforce stupid little rules while far more serious problems rage on, right around the corner. But we see another layer to all of this.

The left has spent eons making healthy masculine development way harder than it should be. Fathers are treated as optional. Have you ever paid attention to US commercials? Men look like bumbling idiots.

Just look at this compilation of ads that paint men to be lazy, dumb morons.

These days, male spaces and moments are side-eyed with suspicion. Boys are constantly told to suppress their natural-born instincts that help them grow into strong, capable men.

When you dive into this space and see what women are writing about men, it really starts to paint a very scary and dangerous picture. This blip is from a Substack article titled "Actually, it is all men: Why patriarchy makes every man a potential threat."

Liberating Motherhood:

All men are potential threats to all women. This is not because all men are bad or unworthy, but because patriarchy forces us to live in a world where we can never be certain we are safe with any particular man.

Every few months, a version of the "not all snakes" analogy circulates on social media. It goes like this: You're in a pit of snakes. Some of them are venomous. Does it matter that it's not all snakes?