The disaster that was Gillette’s recent attempt at being the next “woke” company to attempt to improve society by using men as a patsy for continuous societal problems was a major flop, and it’s no wonder why. Insulting your entire customer base by describing their very nature as toxic isn’t going to endear you to buyers.

For those who haven’t seen it, the entire video is a slap in the face toward the very nature of men by painting us as guilty of the extremes social justice activist groups claim are so common of the sex. The video is rife with men acting like pigs toward women, and showing far too much aggression toward weaker individuals. Basically, it paints men as being the stereotypical misogynist from every movie that features one.

That’s insulting enough as it is, and would have caused backlash enough if left alone. It wouldn’t have even needed to throw in a clip from The Young Turks to already be bad enough.

But the most insulting part actually comes at the latter half of the ad, when it begins to show men acting as they should. A friend interferes with another friend before he’s able to *gasp* hit on an attractive girl. A father steps in to stop a mob of teens from beating up another kid. A total white knight interferes at a party with a man trying to tell a girl to smile, which as I’m sure we all know, is a major epidemic in today’s society.

Side note: I’ve never experienced a man telling a girl to smile more. I’ve seen women do that to other women, but not a man. I’m not saying it has never, or still doesn’t happen, but in my 35 years of life, I’ve yet to experience a single male member of our species advise a girl to smile more.

All of these non-toxic things happen as heroic and hopeful music begins to play in the background. This is followed by a very simple message that our sons are watching and we need to set a good example for them.

And herein lies the most insulting part of this message from Gillette.

Not only does it set up the idea that men are inherently problematic because of their “boys will be boys” described nature, but it gives off the idea that some of the innocent things we do are wrong as well.

Depicted are two boys roughhousing on a lawn, and somehow this is depicted as not good. Also, a man wanting to talk to an attractive girl is just wrong. It’s not depicted what his intent was, it’s just assumed by the commercial that he’s up to no good by wanting to talk to the girl. It stops us at: “He’s going to try to talk to her! Quick! Stop him!”

But Gillette seems to send the message that we can be better by being the men who heroically intervened in these various scenarios. The man who stops his friend from hitting on a girl, the guy who angrily prevents a man from telling a girl to smile, the man who rejects the idea that treating women as objects is okay.

Thing is, the vast majority of men are those guys. We typically are the men who intervene, and we’ve been doing it without swelling music or ridiculous commercials long before this ideological filth Gillette promoted infected our society.

Men are the primary keepers of the peace, and will likely be such until the stars go out. It was men who kept both the literal and proverbial wolves in the hills even before the invention of fire. It’ll primarily be men who put on badges, or don helmets to make sure you sleep safely in your beds at night. It’ll be men who lie in graves in pursuit of this peace.

What’s more, the majority of us are taught to respect women as children and we grow up with that in mind. Generally, we don’t act like a bunch of morons who only think with our junk and believe the idea of bullying is a societal plus. The vast majority of us don’t assault women or treat them as objects. We don’t go out of our way to make them feel inferior. That’s not how the lion’s share of us were raised at all.

The most insulting part of this entire campaign from Gillette is that it’s trying to attribute these good actions and habits, not to the code of conduct men have been obeying and upkeeping for eons, but to a social justice ideology that has made itself the arbiter of all things moral since it arrived on the scene. It has billed itself as the guide for all things right and proper, and credited itself with the creation of an idea that has been in practice for centuries.

Gillette may have delivered the message, but in the end, the company is just a useful idiot in the delivery of the suggestion on behalf of the current crop of moral busybodies calling themselves “progressives.”

The reason the commercial feels so insulting is only partly due to the false depiction of men, the exaggeration of behaviors some men exhibit and the panting it as a full-blown societal problem, or the labeling of some of the sexes natural tendencies as evil. The hatred for the ad has a lot to do with the idea that the good things we do as a sex can be attributed to an ideology that has always written men off as problematic, stupid, and dangerous, and is now heroically here to correct us. We hate it because it’s a virtue signal from these “holier than thou” modern-day Pharisees that men will continue to be a net negative on society without their guidance.

This is asinine, and the reason why this video is so vilified by public is that the message behind it is a villainous one.