What Pedro Pascal’s stardom reveals about Hollywood — and its war on real men
Over the past several months, Hollywood has been pushing Pedro Pascal as its next big thing.
Since being cast in Marvel Studio’s next multimillion-dollar franchise-launching film, "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," Pascal has been inescapable. From his heavily publicized appearance at the Cannes film festival to mainstream media cover stories fawning over the actor, he’s playing America’s golden boy.
The single, middle-aged star’s harmless schtick is a massive threat to masculinity.
At 50 years old, Pascal has built a unique cult of personality around himself.
In a recent Vanity Fair article, he is described by internet fans as “Daddy or Zaddy, meaning he’s a handsome, stylish older man they can imagine dominating them in a way they would not object to.” The article goes out of its way to make Pascal seem nonthreatening, often referring to him as “weird” and “sensitive,” describing how he was bullied in middle school for his artistic interests.
Pascal has tried to earn woke points for himself in Hollywood by being the stereotype of a social justice warrior. He has made his Latino heritage a huge part of his identity. In interviews, Pascal has expressed his desire for more “blind casting,” a term associated with increasing diversity quotas and changing the races, genders, and sexualities of pre-established characters.
Pascal is also no stranger to the LGBT movement.
He played the bisexual character Prince Oberyn Martell on the hit series “Game Of Thrones.”Additionally, he supported his sibling, Lux Pascal, when he came out as a transgender woman. When asked about his own sexual identity, Pascal has remained intentionally silent.
This allows fans of all genders and sexualities to be part of his target audience. His use of “gay slang,” language that is heavily influenced by LGBT culture, has also teased fans into thinking he may not be heterosexual.
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Much of Pascal’s success has come from his roles in major franchises, like “Star Wars” and “Gladiator.”He’s nearly impossible to avoid, with rumors constantly circling about where he might appear next. After Disney announced it would be rebooting the “Indiana Jones” franchise, fans speculated that Pascal might be cast to play the titular role.
Brands can’t get enough of him and are anxious to include him in every upcoming project. But the single, middle-aged star’s harmless schtick is a massive threat to masculinity.
In the past, the biggest male stars were men like Harrison Ford, Cary Grant, and Sean Connery. They were defined by their strength, their suits, and their occasional ability to make women swoon.
Pascal, on the other hand, is known for his androgynous fashion choices, including when he wore thigh-high boots and short shorts to the Met Gala. He is also known for opposing traditional, brawny male archetypes, as other celebrities like Dakota Johnson have described him as a “soft boy.”
Pascal has given up his masculinity for the sake of Hollywood’s praise. He’s not the only star to have done this, with other male actors like Ryan Reynolds playing into similar tropes to gain attention. They aren’t just playing the humorous, eccentric male leads anymore. Rather, they’re going out of their way to stifle their male attributes in order to please liberals.
Men’s mental health has become a huge issue in America.
Currently, men account for nearly 80% of all suicides in the United States. Among racial and ethnic groups, young white men have one of the highest rates of suicide in the U.S., and they account for nearly 70% of all suicide deaths in the country.
There are many factors that increase the risk of suicide, and mental health is a complicated topic. However, for all of Hollywood’s talk about equity and inclusion, it has gone out of its way to make masculinity look unattractive.
Young white men are constantly called racists, oppressors, or misogynists. Feminists have turned man-hating into a trend, as women increasingly post TikToks that make fun of their husbands and boyfriends. Other women have even joined the “Why I Would Never Date a White Guy” trend, giving superficial reasons for why they are ruling out young, white males from their dating pool.
Pascal has done everything possible to distance himself from the “oppressive male” label that leftists use to destroy men. His constant focus on his own racial identity and aligning himself with LGBT activism are ways for him to atone for his masculinity.
Worse, his plays at androgyny suggest that he is trying to subvert normal male expectations entirely.
Hollywood loves Pascal, and it's doing everything it can to make that painfully obvious. Hollywood's desire for him to be the film industry’s heartthrob reveals that they are finished with traditionally masculine actors. Even once-powerful figures like Robert De Niro and Will Smith have allowed themselves to be susceptible to the film industry’s calls. They have bent their knees to woke agendas, sacrificing their stoicism in the process.
Young white men in America are at risk. They deserve to have good leaders. While that starts in households, classrooms, churches, and their communities, they also come from the culture. Celebrities shouldn’t be afraid to hide their masculinity, but they should showcase what makes it great.
We don’t need any more “Zaddys,” we need men of virtue.
China's 35 million incels face bleak future of state-run AI 'romance' — are American men next?
In China today, there are more single men than the combined total population of Australia and Singapore. Thirty-five million “leftover” males, the legacy of a once-celebrated one-child policy and a cultural obsession with sons, are now wandering through life invisible, unwanted, and alone.
The government’s solution? Dating camps. Week-long romantic boot camps for men to learn how to talk to women, brush their teeth, and hopefully get lucky with one of the few women available.
It’s not satire. It’s state policy. And it reeks of desperation.
While China’s numbers are uniquely staggering, the West is heading in the exact same direction.
In some provinces, officials are subsidizing flirtation seminars. Men — mostly from rural backgrounds, working low-paid jobs — are taught how to make eye contact, speak without trembling, and understand female preferences. They practice smiling. They are warned not to talk about tractors, dead relatives, or pig feed on a first date.
Fear of incels
Local governments are pitching this as a social stability initiative, because too many single men in a society often mean unrest, crime, and, eventually, revolution. The Communist Party may not believe in God, but it definitely believes in the threat of incels.
Let’s stop and define that word before it gets distorted by the usual suspects. Incel — short for “involuntary celibate” — doesn’t mean terrorist or keyboard troll, no matter how loudly feminist bloggers try to paint it that way. It means exactly what it says: men who want a relationship but can’t get one.
Not by choice, but because they’ve drawn the short straw — genetically, financially, socially, or all three. In China, there are tens of millions of them, walking proof that when a society turns love into a transaction, only the top bidders get through the door.
Feminism's lab leak
The reason dating camps exist is simple: Everything else has failed. Chinese women, especially those in cities, just aren’t interested. Why would they be? They’ve spent decades leapfrogging men in education and career status. Raised on a steady diet of Korean dramas, Western rom-coms, and aspirational Instagram reels, they now see marriage less as a necessity and more as a downgrade.
The guy who turns up in worn sneakers, quoting Xi Jinping, still living with his mother, and offering a life of austerity? He’s not Prince Charming. He’s a cautionary tale. And yes, China might look sealed off from the West, but don’t be fooled. The mind virus of modern feminism, which escaped from a university lab somewhere in California, leaked through the global media pipeline and infected everything it touched.
It told women they deserve everything and owe the world nothing, that motherhood is a trap, men are optional, children are a nuisance, and career is salvation. And now even in Beijing, you’ll find women with sky-high expectations and an allergic-like reaction to commitment.
An impossible standard
Today, to qualify as marriage material in China, a man must not only own a home (in one of the most inflated property markets on earth) and earn a steady wage. He also must be tall, handsome, emotionally literate, domestically competent, family-minded, and — critically — politically invisible to a regime scanning constantly for subversives and problematics.
It’s a checklist designed not by facts but by fiction. And for millions of men, the message is blindingly clear: You're not good enough and never will be. So they retreat. Not to the village, but to the screen.
More and more are turning to AI girlfriends, chatbots programmed to listen, flatter, and never say “ew.” It’s not love. It’s code in a dress. But unlike real women, she won’t ghost you for being 5'5" and earning less than a guy selling boiled eggs off a scooter.
Sound familiar, American reader?
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Don't laugh
Because while China’s numbers are uniquely staggering, the West is heading in the exact same direction, just with better PR. The birth rate is plummeting. Marriage is on life support. Millions of young men in the U.S., U.K., and Australia are quietly disappearing into online worlds, their real ones offering nothing but rejection and ridicule.
We laugh at China’s “virtual girlfriend” industry, where AI chatbots simulate love for lonely bachelors. But those same bots now dominate Western app stores too. Replika. EVA AI. Nomi. The West isn’t mocking China. We’re beta-testing the same collapse.
In both East and West, the crisis isn’t really about dating. It’s about worth and meaning. A generation of men — especially those without degrees, city jobs, or six-figure paychecks — have been quietly told they’re surplus. Not needed as protectors. Not wanted as providers. Not seen as viable partners.
In China, it’s a demographic failure. In America, it’s cultural warfare dressed up as progress: “Do better,” “toxic masculinity,” “the future is female.”
Eradicating mutual need
China has its dating boot camps and AI waifus whispering sweet nothings in Mandarin. America has OnlyFans, SSRIs, and emotional detox tutorials from 23-year-old YouTubers. But none of it touches the core problem: We’ve waged a full-scale war on traditional male value. You can’t shame a man into being lovable. And you can’t seminar your way out of a dating market that treats him like a broken appliance.
The dating camps won’t work. You can’t reverse decades of isolation, emasculation, and techno-distraction with a weekend crash course on how to compliment a woman’s hair without sounding creepy. The deeper issue is that men and women no longer need each other in the same way they used to. That need has been severed, replaced by individualism on steroids, rising costs of living, and the dopamine drip of digital attention.
So we raise women to believe they should never rely on anyone. And we raise men to believe no one will ever rely on them. Then we stare blankly at the birth charts when neither wants to start a family.
Coming (non)-attractions
And if you think the CCP’s dating camps sound bleak, just wait until a U.S. senator proposes government-subsidized speed dating in Youngstown, Ohio, with tax rebates for every successful match. The disease is spreading. Fertility in the West is collapsing almost as fast as China’s. And our men aren’t just failing to marry. They’re failing to care. About women. About themselves. About the future.
We are witnessing the slow, quiet unmaking of civilizational continuity.
Thirty-five million forgotten men in China aren't just China’s problem. This is a preview, a grim symptom of a larger decay: post-industrial societies that gutted meaning, mocked fatherhood, pathologized masculinity, and outsourced intimacy to machines.
What remains are men no longer needed by anyone and women no longer impressed by anything. There is no app for that. No seminar. No quick fix. Only a rather brutal reckoning.
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The secret formula the podcasters have figured out is that audiences want to be talked to, not talked at.I was a 'problem student' — until all-male Catholic school let me be a boy
I have an old friend who owns a lefty/progressive bookstore here in Portland. I was visiting him recently when he told me his son is entering high school next year. “He wants to go to Central Catholic,” he told me, with some concern. “His mother and I were shocked. I know you went to a Catholic high school. Why would he want to go there?”
I thought about this and quickly came to the obvious conclusion. His son is conservative. At least in terms of what kind of school he wants to go to.
It wasn’t like public school, where you were required to show respect to your teachers. These guys commanded respect. They were serious people.
All of the public schools in Portland are very progressive, very activist. So much so that they frequently veer off into "Portlandia" levels of absurdity.
My friend’s son probably understands that attending Central Catholic is his best chance to have a semi-normal, traditional high school experience.
I wasn’t sure how to break this news to my friend, so I mumbled something about Catholic schools having more structure and better academics and that “it might look better on his college applications.”
I was trying to let him down easy. But I understood the reasoning of his son. When I was his age, I did the same thing.
The tolerance trap
My middle school experience was also at a Portland public school. Even though that was decades ago, it was very much the same as it is today.
My family lived in an affluent district, so my school was full of smart, well-behaved, upper-middle-class kids. The teachers were some of the best in the city. The school was so highly rated that they bused in disadvantaged black kids from across town — to share the wealth, so to speak.
I loved this school. It had nice kids. Pretty girls. Permissive teachers. Lots of sports. We even had our own ski bus.
The only problem: I was a small, excitable, hyperactive kid. I tended to be a bit of a smart aleck and a class clown. I had already been held back a grade in elementary school because of my “immaturity.”
Of course, the teachers at my new school were tolerant of my behavior at first. That’s the kind of school it was. Very inclusive and forward-thinking in its educational philosophy. They were slow to punish and dealt with each child as an individual. We were “people,” not just students.
So how did I respond to this tolerant and accepting environment?
I became an even bigger smart aleck! I was disruptive. I got in trouble. I got in fights.
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Problem student
I was not aware that I was a problem student. I liked my classes. I got good grades. I was popular and even had a girlfriend.
But the teachers thought otherwise, so much so that halfway through eighth grade, they dragged me and both my parents into a special after-school conference to express their disapproval.
Every teacher and administrator in the school took turns describing my terrible behavior. I ran in the hallways. I threw someone’s pencil out the window. I picked up a girl and threatened to carry her into the boys' bathroom.
I was surprised by how upset everyone was. I had no idea I was causing so much trouble. I thought I was being funny. I thought these teachers liked me!
Going Jesuit
That summer, with high school looming before me, my parents and I considered my options.
I could go to the public high school, where I might get into more trouble. Or I could go to Jesuit, an all-boys Catholic high school not far from where we lived. All I knew about Jesuit was that it was strict. And all boys. And priests taught you.
My family was not religious. And neither was I. But somehow it was decided that Jesuit was the better choice.
Years later, I asked my mother, “When did you decide to send me to Jesuit?”
“We didn’t decide,” she replied. “You wanted to go.”
Peace through hierarchy
I have vivid memories of my first day of school there. I was overwhelmed by the rowdy atmosphere in the hallways between classes. The roughness of it. The boy-ness of it.
There was a distinct male energy to the place and a kind of underlying threat of violence. Not actual violence. Nobody was going to hurt you. But there was a definite hierarchy that existed among the students. And it wasn’t negotiable.
As a freshman, you were at the bottom of the pecking order. This was not necessarily unfair, as everyone at the school had once been a freshman. So everyone had gone through the same process.
For me, this hierarchical structure had a calming effect. There was nothing you could do about it. And it helped you bond with the other freshmen.
All of us frosh suffered our various humiliations together. It was all very Classic American High School circa 1955. It was timeless in a way. And though the public school types might have considered it uncool or retrograde, I had no problem with it.
Boys to men
Another thing that struck me during those first days: the seriousness with which the school operated.
There were rules, and you followed them. The lay teachers were men. The priests were men. The administrators were (mostly) men. The principal was a man.
It wasn’t like public school, where you were required to show respect to your teachers. These guys commanded respect. They were serious people. One of our football coaches had briefly been a San Francisco 49er. My geometry teacher had flown helicopters in Vietnam.
Measurable distance
My social life was what suffered the most during my first year at Jesuit. The only girls we officially socialized with were the girls from the two all-girls Catholic schools.
There were dances and other activities to bring us together. These girls were not as slick and sophisticated as the girls at public school. Some of them appeared to be right off the farm. So there were often awkward encounters.
But it was still fun. And there was an innocence to it. And it was often hilarious. Like the nuns really did come around to check on you and make sure a measurable distance was maintained between the boys and the girls while slow dancing in the dark.
And best of all: If you embarrassed yourself with a girl on Friday night, she wouldn’t be sitting next to you at school on Monday morning.
Football, not feelings
The schoolwork was hard at Jesuit, but at the freshman level it was basic and rudimentary. You realized the teachers were not so much teaching you in an overly intellectual way. They were teaching you how to focus and concentrate and organize your time.
That was the real genius of the school: It took into account the reality of teenage boys. Oh, you have a lot of energy? You can’t sit still? You’re feeling aggressive?
Jesuit had sports for that. We had football. We had a weight room. The teachers and administrators didn’t worry about your feelings. Their strategy was to provide various ways for you to burn that adolescent energy and then keep you moving toward adulthood, where most of your problems would work themselves out on their own.
Refuge for the rambunctious
Catholic school was a perfect place for a kid like me. And yes, I remained a troublemaker. A class clown. An instigator of various escapades. But everybody expected that. The whole place was designed to withstand the rambunctious and destructive nature of teenage boys, to reroute that energy and put it to good use.
As it turned out, I never got in serious trouble there. Not for four years. No fights. No conferences with my parents. And since there were no girls to pick up and carry around, I never did that either.
No school like the old school
So I hope my friend’s son enjoys Central Catholic. It’s co-ed now, as is Jesuit, my old school. All-boys schools, it seems, have ceased to exist. So it’s probably a softer, gentler Catholic school than the version I saw.
But I’m sure it will still be a more uplifting experience for him than public school, where male energy is seen as toxic and boys are put on psych meds if they show any form of “willfulness.”
And what about “all-boys schools”? The concept seems unimaginable in our current times.
But I bet if they brought them back, a lot of boys would eagerly enroll. Even if they had to talk their parents into it.
Digital castration: Why real men should ditch dating apps
“It’s convenient, but I like to see the things I’m buying in person before I spend my money on them.”
This is one of the most common complaints about the rise of Amazon and same-day delivery services. After all, we want to try on a pair of jeans before we buy them or physically see the apples at the grocery store so we don’t get bruised ones.
Dating and marriage should be a beautiful, loving process. But online, it becomes as predatory as LinkedIn.
But why doesn’t this same principle apply to dating?
In the digital age, online dating has become the standard method of meeting for adults seeking a serious relationship. Research shows that 10% of married adults in the U.S. met their spouses on a dating app, with that number rising to nearly 20% for those under 30. Further, 53% of people under 30 have used a dating app at some point.
This trend is no longer a rare, last-ditch attempt to find a partner, but has become the overwhelmingly normalized expectation for meeting a significant other.
'Love' on demand
At first glance, online dating seems harmless, if not beneficial.
It allows people to distinguish religious beliefs, physique preferences, and long-term relationship goals through a quick swipe through someone’s profile. This convenience can help prevent the awkward incompatibility of a butcher asking out a vegan.
But the cost of this commodity is authenticity. Fairy tales and rom-coms have a reputation for their tacky love-at-first-sight stories, where two people's eyes meet, someone tells a good joke, and a spark is lit between them. Many people's parents and grandparents met their spouses this way. For generations, high school sweethearts and chance encounters were the start of a typical love story.
The problem with online dating apps is that they take the humanity out of relationships. Individuals are trying to sell themselves, so they spend time crafting carefully manicured versions of themselves. They edit photos, reuse their friends’ witty one-liners, and leave out unattractive imperfections. Online dating is much more akin to a game of "Sims," where people become characters with hand-selected features who lack any shortcomings. Tinder users report going on two to four dates per week, often with different potential partners.
The process has become impersonal, with users trying to meet as many potential matches as possible in a desperate attempt to find someone who fits their desires.
Beta mode, activated
This detached style of relationship-building has completely removed masculinity from dating.
It begins with a lack of courage. Dating apps remove the age-old anxiety of just going up and talking to her. Men no longer have to initiate face-to-face contact. Instead, they can send half-hearted text messages behind the comfort of their phones.
It’s a small change, but it has meaningful impacts. It symbolizes waning gallantry.
The removal of physical interaction creates a disparity between reality and fiction. About 57% of women under 30 have received unsolicited explicit messages on dating apps. Without the corporeal link between two individuals, it becomes much easier for men to jump into the murky waters of unchecked vulgarity. The male attributes of confidence and leadership are used in perverted ways that ruin the chances of building meaningful relationships as ordained by God.
It’s not the fault of men.
This is the exploitative nature of online dating. Dating and marriage should be a beautiful, loving process. But online, it becomes as predatory as LinkedIn.
Seeking out a partner should be about finding someone with similar values, shared experiences, and who gives you butterflies. Instead, online dating turns the process into another networking system. People must pull from a handful of photos, a bit of basic information, and a few brief sentences about hobbies to sum up their entire being.
This is why online dating looking a lot like online shopping. Now, people swipe left for the most insignificant offenses, which Gen Z calls "the Ick." It's a superficial process that doesn’t rely on creating a genuine connection. It only fuels the ego.
Death of duty
Online dating, however, does result in a significant number of long-term serious relationships — but fewer and fewer marriages.
As growing numbers of young people turn to apps to find their partners, marriage rates among this group have significantly fallen. Worse, the proportion of young couples who have children has reached almost historic lows in the U.S.
Traditionally, men have always been the leaders in a relationship. They’re the ones who get down on one knee; they’re the ones tasked with protecting and providing for their families. Online dating slowly chips away at cultivating these types of men.
Relationships are built on responsibility. Without the authority of masculinity, these relationships are increasingly less fruitful. People are more likely to live with their partners without ever getting married. And if a couple do marry, they’re less likely to have children.
The burden of responsibility is cast aside because masculinity’s value has been degraded.
The sacred chase
Familial relationships are crucial to maintaining a healthy, balanced society. They are the building blocks of communities, the biblically ordained gift that structures Western civilization.
As online dating becomes the norm, it hides crucial elements of the human spirit. For all of human history, men learned to overcome their fear of the beautiful girl rejecting them by holding on to the hope that she might agree to a date. The uneasiness allowed for something holy to arise.
But the self-satisfaction created by flipping through people's profiles is the mark of an age held hostage by technology. If you don’t want the online food delivery service to leave bruised fruit on your doorstep, you should go to the farmers' market and pick some out for yourself.
Maybe while you’re there, you’ll walk by someone who seems nice and get the courage to go up and talk to her.
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