Everyone keeps asking “What is a woman?”
But no one wants to ask the harder question:
What is a man?
Because whether you like it or not, what it means to be a man has changed.
And some of you weren’t paying attention.
You think this is something that’s happening.
It’s not.
It already happened.
That’s the first thing you need to understand.
The first thing to go was being tough.
That shit had to die — because it was holding us back.
“Tough” meant suck it up.
It meant don’t talk.
It meant don’t feel.
It meant be a man — without anyone ever explaining what the hell that meant.
And when you really break it down, “be a man” usually meant:
Don’t be kind.
Don’t show emotion.
Don’t ask for help.
Bottle everything up and keep moving.
That version of toughness turned men into workhorses.
Your value came from how much money you could make
or how hard you could hit someone if it came to it.
That’s not strength.
That’s conditioning.
So yeah — toughness is gone.
And we don’t need it anymore.
That doesn’t mean we’re weak.
It doesn’t mean we’re soft or feeble.
It means we understand emotions now.
And a man who understands his emotions
doesn’t lose control of them —
he commands them.
It’s okay to be silly.
It’s okay to be the butt of the joke.
We don’t take offense at being misunderstood —
we understand we’re different.
We respect freedom,
so we respect others when they exercise it.
We don’t drink like our fathers did —
or we learned from their example.
Because these changes didn’t happen overnight.
They crept in, generation by generation, lesson by lesson.
Men aren’t getting worse.
They’re getting better.
They love their children —
and the mothers who bore them.
They stay with their families,
even when things go sideways.
They lift others onto their shoulders
and take pride in watching them grow.
So don’t give me bullshit about men getting softer —
that’s not what you’re seeing.
We’re getting stronger.
Stronger because we shed the illusions of the past.
Stronger because we stopped confusing silence with strength
and cruelty with discipline.
We didn’t lose our edge —
we learned where to use it.
And look — I get it.
It’s not over.
There are assholes everywhere.
There always will be.
But ask yourself this, honestly:
Define a man.
Not yesterday’s man.
Not some cosplay of the past.
Not a shadow boxing with nostalgia.
Define a man today.
Here.
Now.
A man today is someone who understands his emotions
and takes responsibility for them.
He is steady, not brittle.
Kind, not performative.
Capable of humor, humility, and restraint.
He loves his children openly.
He respects the mothers who bore them.
He stays when things go sideways.
He carries weight without needing applause.
He doesn’t dominate rooms —
he stabilizes them.
He lifts others onto his shoulders
and takes pride in watching them surpass him.
That’s not softness.
That’s strength with direction.
And when you define it clearly —
men don’t run from it.
They rise to it.