The other day I praised my son for being "manly". He'd handled a situation with a maturity beyond his nine years, showing honour, courage and responsibility. It seemed a fitting compliment. Yet he looked shocked. "I don't want to be that," he told me. "That's a bad thing." I reminded him of his school motto, right there on the crest of his uniform: "Viriliter Age", meaning act manly. It was sad, as a mother, to have to reassure a boy his innate being is, in fact, a good trait. Not something to feel ashamed of, or guilty about.
That any child should feel bad about their gender identity is particularly rotten in a supposedly progressive society. Yet it wasn't wholly a surprise, considering the cultural brainwashing from a radical left agenda that is being force-fed to younger generations in the form of cinema.
It seems impossible to go to a kids' movie nowadays without being lectured on Hollywood's twin pillars of liberalism: political correctness and identity politics. I just want to bring them out for an afternoon of innocence and pleasure, not ideology and propaganda. Instead it's like being at mass.
Worryingly, the constant message being transmitted is one of emasculation. Boys are inept imbeciles who require eye-rolling, risk-taking, can-do girls to come to their rescue. They're to be ridiculed, chastised and denigrated. Males are weak, females are cool and powerful - in every film. It was wrong when Disney always portrayed princesses as helpless victims whose main talent was attracting princes, but it's equally wrong to go to the other extreme.
Take The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, in which the protagonist Emmet Brickowski is shown in a personality assessment to be "weak, naive, simple, powerless". The supposedly oppressive patriarchy, for which all boys need to apologise, is highlighted when an alien asks his girlfriend Wyldstyle: "So you fought and built and kicked butt - and the hapless male was the leader?"
The villain of The Lego Movie 2 appears to be toxic masculinity. Emmet loses his way when he falls in with a loner tough guy action hero called Rex Dangervest; and Finn, the real-life boy in the movie, triumphs only after he gets in touch with his feminine side.
Ralph Breaks the Internet was such insidious dogma I nearly walked out of the theatre. Ralph is a manipulative, controlling bully who wants to possess the female lead Vanellope. He turns from a needy, clingy sap into a giant monster of his own "bad" feelings. At the end, we get to point and laugh at Ralph when he's dressed up as Snow White and kissed by a frog.
Hollywood is telling us there is no place in society for masculinity. What might this do to boys' mental health, and self-esteem, at a time when we pride ourselves on such concerns? I can't decide which outcome is worse: that our boys grow up to be self-loathing male feminists, or react with resentment.
What kind of sexist attitude does it engender in young girls when all their heroines are hard-bitten female leaders who, for all their independence and achievements, are obsessed with men and competing against them? Women in the movies get everything their own way. That's not equality.
It has left me questioning whether it is irresponsible to bring children to what should be "family-friendly" cinema while this plague is infecting screens. Am I, worse, allowing it?
Professor M Keith Booker, author of Disney, Pixar and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films, believes it is right to be vigilant. "The complexities and responsibilities associated with being a parent to kids who watch movies need to be dealt with, by all parents, whatever their political persuasion," he says. "Films do not function in a vacuum but rather reinforce lessons children receive from other cultural influences."
Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist, worries that our children are not being educated, "they are being indoctrinated, and there's absolutely no excuse for it". There's certainly no justification for millionaire movie bosses reprogramming children in order to make a fashionable political point.
Peterson's advice on what to do as a parent of boys is to instill courage, and teach them to rely on themselves to prevail, step forward with confidence, and shoulder the burden. In other words, act manly.
Comment: It's not just Hollywood - even the American Psychological Association apparently thinks men acting like men is inherently toxic. Painting boys behaviors as something bad, and encouraging them to act more like girls will inevitably lead to a lost generation of men.