Stop Calling It Sexism. It’s Cowardice.

Everyone is piling on the U.S. men’s hockey team for laughing at Trump’s joke about “having to” invite the women’s team to the White House. The word flying around is sexist. And sure, it’s not false but I think that framing is actually way too generous. It implies these men were making a power move. They weren’t. What happened in that locker room was something far more embarrassing, not for women, but for men. What I saw in that locker room wasn’t sexism, it was submission. A group of grown men, at the peak of their physical power, having just won olympic gold, completely fell to their knees trying to impress a man the whole world is laughing at.

Think about what they were actually doing. They weren’t laughing because they hate women. As many people have pointed out, these guys actually have publicly praised their female teammates. And yet, they still laughed at them if it meant getting the validation of one man. They put their entire dignity and reputation on the line and publicly mocked women that they seem to actually respect, to get the approval of a 79-year-old man in diapers. They wanted him to like them. They wanted to be in on it. They needed the approval so badly they couldn’t manage the bare minimum of just... not laughing. Not pushing back. They couldn’t even be quiet. Just silence, truly the lowest possible bar, and they couldn’t clear it. Every instinct they had, including the one men love to brag about, the male protector instinct, the one they dust off whenever it’s convenient, evaporated the second a man they wanted to impress made a joke at the expense of women they claim to actually respect.

That’s not dominance. That’s desperation.

And here’s the thing about this locker room video. It’s not surprising. Women are not shocked that sexism exists. We have lived inside it our entire lives. It has never hidden from us. It announces itself in small humiliations and large ones, every single day. What’s devastating isn’t the cruelty, it’s the fragility, the spectacle of men who built their identities on strength revealing how little of it they actually possess. These were supposed to be the exceptional ones, Olympic athletes, the physical and psychological peak of American manhood, and yet they folded the moment another man’s approval was at stake. This wasn’t a display of power, it was an exposure of its absence. Women aren’t angry because we’ve been confronted with overwhelming male strength, we’re angry because we’re watching how weak men are when we’re not in the room. I didn’t see monsters in that video. I saw cowards.

These are men who couldn’t bring themselves to not laugh at a joke made by someone currently being accused, in documents his own Justice Department tried to bury, of raping a 13-year-old girl and using the most powerful office on earth to cover it up. That’s who they needed to impress. That’s who they couldn’t say no to. That’s who owns them. That’s so embarrassing.

And here’s what this viral video makes clear. Patriarchy was never about us. Women are almost incidental to it. Patriarchy is a performance men put on for other men. It’s a constant, anxious audition, are you man enough, are you one of us, do you get the joke. The straight men who most loudly perform dominance over women are often the ones most pathetically devoted to male approval. They will humiliate themselves, compromise themselves, abandon every value they claim to have…all to get a nod from the guy at the top of the hierarchy they made up where the most awful one dominates. If that’s not homoerotic, I don’t know what is. Patriarchy makes men beg silently to be accepted by the very hierarchy that degrades them.

Patriarchy’s greatest trick is convincing average men that proximity to power is the same thing as possessing it. I would actually posit that it functions less like a hierarchy and more like a pyramid scheme: degrade yourself for the men above you, then reclaim the feeling by exerting control over the women below you. Masculinity, as it’s sold to most men, is a multilevel marketing scheme where the buy-in cost is your own dignity. It is also intensely homoerotic in the truest sense: the fixation, the longing for approval, the total emotional submission to another man’s gaze. The hockey players mirror him, laugh when he laughs, bend when he bends, mistaking devotion for strength. The locker room video was gayer than Heated Rivalry!!

Meanwhile, consider who they were so casually diminishing to earn his approval. The U.S. women’s hockey team went undefeated, won gold in overtime against their fiercest rival, and became the most watched women’s hockey team in history. By every meaningful measure, they were the more dominant, more disciplined, more accomplished program. And when they received their invitation from the same man, they refused it. They accepted the consequences, the pushback, the loss of proximity to power, and kept their integrity intact. So if these men want to learn anything about being a man in 2026, they should look to the women who walked away from power instead of kneeling toward it. The women turned down the most powerful man in the world. The men couldn’t even turn down a joke.

So no, the men’s hockey team aren’t woman-haters. They’re something more pathetic than that. Patriarchy doesn’t need monsters. It just needs men who need approval more than they need to be decent. If the men’s hockey team want a lesson in how to be men in 2026, they should study the women. The women’s hockey team who refused an invitation from an abuser. The Epstein survivors who kept speaking and risked their lives to do so. The female reporters who never stopped chasing the story, even when powerful men wanted it buried. If the men’s team wants tips on strength, american women are giving a masterclass on it right now.

So no, women aren’t tired of powerful men. We’re exhausted by weak ones. We don’t fear male strength. We’re appalled by the absence of it.

If you want some hope, listen to our latest episode of Boy Problems!! We talk about how to keep your heart open and yourself intact even when things feel terrible. It’s honest, a little tender, and meant to remind you that you’re not alone in any of it. And send me your boy problems and I might answer yours on the show!!