This House Robbery Attempt Shatters the Claim ‘Men Are Protectors’ in One Fell Swoop

I have got another banger of a story for you folks who love parroting the “men are protectors of women” rhetoric.

Because every time I ask one of you guys what exactly you mean by “protect,” I’m always met with some fantastical narration about a potential midnight home invasion in which you, as the man of the house, single‑handedly karate chop each and every assailant, instantly incapacitating them, all while your wife and kids sleep soundly throughout the whole ordeal.

And how this one selfless, but potentially life-threatening act, entitles you to women [insert prescriptive, patriarchal, gender-reductionist comment of choice here].

Of course, this is all pure hogwash.

The odds that any of you would experience combat during a home invasion are slim to none.

In 2023, 839,563 homes in the US experienced a burglary. A figure that, when compared against the total number of homes (about 148 million), comes to less than 1%. And of that, 72% of burglaries occur when no one is home.

I couldn’t find data on home invasions involving confrontations, but I would hazard a guess that most intruders would run away upon realizing they are not alone.

And yet this narrative about men, John Wick-ing home intruders, keeps getting perpetuated.

This is how a house robbery likely goes down

Now, it’s not every day you witness a situation that truly calls for the male protector card to be played in earnest. However, once in a blue moon, it does happen, and even rarer is it caught on camera.

This little clip right here of a Calgary couple in an attempted house robbery should be all the proof anyone needs to dispel the idea that protection is never a straightforward affair.

Don’t worry, the video is relatively safe; no gratuitous violence is shown.

It’s nearly impossible to protect in real time

The reason I wanted to show this robbery attempt was to highlight just how difficult it is to fight off an assailant when you least expect it. The husband could have been a jujitsu grand master, and he still wouldn’t have fared any better, all because of the bear spray.

That was the wildcard, something he could never have foreseen, and it took him out of the fight before it could even begin.

If it were not for his wife coming to his aid, he most likely would have lost the laptop or worse.

This is what most home confrontations look like. They are almost always sudden and unplanned, giving you very little time to respond.

More often than not, it actually makes more sense to team up with your wife, making the whole “men protect” argument moot.

Protection is not about brute force

Make no mistake, the husband absolutely failed his wife, but not because he couldn’t single-handedly subdue those two thugs; instead, his failure was being blind to the danger of allowing two masked strangers into his house. That was a dumb move. Fortunately for him, all they had on them was a bear spray.

Had he used his brains and conducted the transaction in public, that would have been the embodiment of what it means to be a protector, and you don’t need to be a man to do that.