Popular culture denigrates masculinity. In one moment, Corey Comperatore showed why it’s so important.

On Saturday, a would-be assassin took aim at former President Donald Trump. A bullet hit Trump’s ear, missing his brain by inches. It’s sobering to think about how close our country came to a much darker outcome. If Trump didn’t move his head at that specific point. If the wind blew differently. If the shooter had slightly better aim. Trump surviving was an act of God. 

But Comperatore didn’t survive. He was attending the rally with his wife and daughter. After hearing gunfire, he dove on top of his family.

“The media will not tell you that he died a real-life super hero,” his daughter Allyson Comperatore wrote on Facebook. “They are not going to tell you how quickly he threw my mom and I to the ground. They are not going to tell you that he shielded my body from the bullet that came at us.

"He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us.”

Corey Comperatore is a hero. Notice something. No one questions why Comperatore shielded his wife and daughter, instead of trying to save himself.

He did it because he was a man. A man’s job is to protect those he loves — even if it costs him his life.

In a tragedy, this all seems obvious. But think about how often society sends young men the opposite message.

It starts in childhood. Society pushes the belief that there aren’t innate differences between boys and girls, men and women. Children receive that message early. In 2021, California passed a law requiring large retail chains to have a gender-neutral toy section.

“The segregation of toys by a social construct of what is appropriate for which gender is the antithesis of modern thinking,” Assemblyman Evan Low, one of the bill’s sponsors, said at the time.

Translated: If society treated all kids the same, boys and girls would play with dump trucks and dolls in equal proportions. Leave aside how far removed from reality that is. For instance, boys’ brains develop differently in the womb than girls’ brains. Plus, as a group, boys are more energetic and violent than girls.

The implication of that message is that men don’t have an obligation to protect women. After all, any difference between the sexes comes from society and should be eliminated.

Then boys go to school. It’s hard to imagine a worse environment for a rambunctious boy than sitting and being quiet for most of the day. When I went to school, we had three recesses, plus lunch. Today, many schools only have one and it’s combined with lunch. And when boys don’t sit still like the girls do, the societal fix is to put them on Ritalin. Millions of boys have been drugged for acting like boys. They receive the message that their energy is a disease to cure, not a gift to tame and use productively.

The natural tendency of males to succeed in math and the hard sciences isn’t celebrated. It’s proof the patriarchy is alive and well. Society pushes girls into STEM while ignoring that boys have fallen behind girls in almost every academic measure. Boys learn their success is shameful because it’s holding back girls.

Then puberty hits. Society tells young men that masculinity is “toxic.” Their strength, their energy and their interests are inherently destructive. As New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd entitled her 2005 book, “Are Men Necessary?”

Comperatore’s life and heroic death shows the answer is a resounding yes. Society needs men like Comperatore. Not because he was strong, but because he used his strength to protect. Not because he was perfect, but because he rejected passivity and took responsibility for those he loved. Not because he died, but because he lived expecting a greater reward for what he did on earth.

Allyson Comperatore said her dad “was a man of God, loved Jesus fiercely, and also looked after our church.” He was a man worth emulating.

Instead of telling men to reject masculinity, point them to Corey Comperatore, who lived out heroic masculinity.

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