The perfect example for boys to emulate isn’t some transgender icon like Ellen Page or a cross-dressing pop star like Harry Styles, as the U.K.’s Streatham Wells Primary School teaches. The perfect role model for boys is Jesus Christ, which is why they should look to men who emulate His characteristics — righteousness, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, self-control, courage, and integrity.
When you think of masculine men, who comes to mind?
Maybe you picture Clint Eastwood, cast as a reluctant but willing gunslinger in one of his classic Westerns.
Or maybe you think of professional athletes. Larry Csonka, fullback for the Miami Dolphins in the 1960s and 70s comes to mind for me, crashing through tacklers like an elephant crashing through brush.
Hall of Fame coach Don Shula told the story of Csonka getting the only known unnecessary roughness penalty on a ball carrier in NFL history. “Look what 39 did to that poor tackler” the official told Shula as he marked off the penalty yards.
But when we really think about what masculinity means, it isn’t just physical strength or toughness. Masculinity is also about character, courage, and righteousness; taken together, a man with these traits is clearly a role model of masculinity.
Men like George Washington, known for his physical strength and military leadership but also his kindness, hospitality, and integrity. A man so humble that when the military tried to install him as king, he refused.
When King George III learned that Washington planned to return to private life after the Revolutionary War, the king said, “If he did, He would be the greatest man in the world.”
Washington did just that until his nation called upon him again to serve as its first President. After leading America for two terms, he quietly returned to Mount Vernon.
Across the Atlantic, however, the nation that America gained its independence from is now facing what it claims is a masculinity “crisis.”
As violence, particularly sexual violence, by men against women has risen sharply in the U.K., political leaders are blaming one thing: misogyny.
When Netflix released its show “Adolescence,” centered around a white teenage boy shaped by toxic masculinity who murders a girl, Prime Minister Keir Starmer hailed it as “must-see TV.” He even urged schools to show it as a teaching tool against misogyny.
One British school, though, took a different approach to targeting misogyny: They want to teach boys about the positive role models of masculinity that they should emulate.
Streatham Wells Primary School Headteacher Sarah Wordlaw wrote this about the school’s plan:
“[W]e need to be mindful when educating children about this issue. This is so that the message given to children isn’t women = good, men = bad.
It is important to teach pupils about harmful stereotypes about masculinity. However, if the first time we teach and name masculinity is calling it toxic, that could do more damage than good to our boys.
It is extremely important to teach about positive masculinities.”
Sounds great, right? So who are the examples of “positive masculinity” that boys should pattern their behavior after, according to Wordlaw?
Well-known figures “such as Harry Styles and Elliot Page. They show that masculinity can mean softness and strength, and everything in between.”
There are just a few problems with Wordlaw’s pinnacles of masculinity: Harry Styles is a pop singer who is a cross-dresser and Elliot Page is not a man.
That’s right. Elliot Page is actually Ellen Page, an Oscar-nominated actress who first identified as a lesbian over10 years ago but later underwent surgical procedures and hormone therapy in order to identify as a male.
Not exactly Csonka or Washington.
So, what Wordlaw means is that positive masculinity is really femininity.
She might talk a good game, but Wordlaw gets her ideas from the same woke, leftist ideology that’s underlying the premise of the fictional “Adolescence.”
“For any project to be successful, it has to lie deep within the fabric of the school’s vision,” she wrote. “Our curriculum vision statement is simple — to be actively anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist, anti-ableist, and to acknowledge intersectionality.”
See anything in that vision statement about educating students in reading, writing, or arithmetic?
Me neither.
This is the reality of much of Western education today. Schools are no longer simply educating, they are actively indoctrinating. One of their favorite tools? Gender ideology rooted in Marxist thought.
When someone like Wordlaw talks about “harmful stereotypes,” she doesn’t mean what you and I might mean.
To most, correcting harmful stereotypes means teaching that a little girl who likes blue and prefers fishing to dolls is still a girl — not a boy trapped in the wrong body. Or that a boy who prefers reading to rugby is still a boy, not gay or in need of puberty blockers.
But for the intersectional idealogue, the goal is reversed. To reject gender stereotypes is to impose new ones. Tomboys must be boys. Sensitive boys must be gay. Real freedom, they say, is found in rejecting one’s biological sex and embracing a made-up identity.
It means that women should strive to be men and men should strive to be women. It means that women should emulate the feminist girl boss in seemingly every action movie and cut their hair short, date women, and kick butt, literally.
These idealogues believe that boys should have gay mentors, wear dresses, and be more emotional.
And if he picks up a Barbie doll one time as a two-year-old, he should have gender transition surgery because, you guessed it, he’s actually a girl.
While Wordlaw may claim that labeling masculinity as toxic is harmful, what she really means is that masculinity is healthy, so long as it’s feminine.
But let’s be honest: The U.K.’s real crisis isn’t masculinity, it’s immigration.
The U.K. opened its borders to waves of mostly military-age males from Islamic cultures where violence and sexual abuse are normalized and women are treated as property.
When you import men who believe a woman showing her ankles justifies assault, you don’t have a masculinity problem, you have an Islam problem.
At the same time, figures like Andrew Tate rise to prominence, exploiting a generation of confused young men, capitalizing on the growing divisiveness between the sexes and teaching men to be “alpha males” who reject monogamy and embrace sexual conquest.
That’s not the answer.
But neither is Ellen Page.
The real answer — the only answer — is Jesus Christ.
Virgil Walker wrote a strong article last week on biblical masculinity and how it contrasts with Tate’s philosophy. I encourage you to read it.
Like Virgil, I believe the pinnacle of masculinity, perfect masculinity, isn’t found in alpha provocateurs or even historical heroes like Csonka or Washington, as admirable as their traits may be. It’s found in the righteousness, restraint, and glory of Christ Himself.
You cannot combat sexual immorality with more sexual immorality.
You cannot combat aggression with wearing dresses.
But you can fight sin with holiness.
Jesus was offered the world by Satan, yet He resisted.
The Bible tells us that He was tempted in every way we are tempted, yet He never gave in.
He was arrested by men He could have crushed, stood trial before hypocrites He could have exposed, and endured the wrath of God for sins He didn’t commit, all to fulfill His Father’s will and redeem a people for Himself.
This is the man that men should model our lives after. As Paul wrote in Philippians 2:5-8,
“Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
But Christ is not meekness alone. He is also powerful and strong.
Boys need masculine role models. Not caricatures of masculinity. Not counterfeits. They need men who embody the characteristics of Jesus Christ, not alpha male provocateurs or cross-dressing icons or women pretending to be men. They should look to men who have emulated characteristics epitomized by Christ — righteousness, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, self-control, courage, and integrity.
In short, the world doesn’t need more men who dominate or men who disappear. It needs men who kneel before the cross, rise in holy boldness, and stand unmoved in the face of cultural collapse.
As seen in this article, many K-12 schools now embrace the secular woke agenda and are hostile to Christian beliefs and parental rights. Fortunately, parents don’t have to settle for this. Liberty University Online Academy is a K-12 program designed to educate your children in the ways of the Lord while preparing them to stand firm in their faith when they graduate. Our flexible online curriculum ensures that your student is trained at your convenience and keeps YOU the ultimate educator of your children.
