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Popular discussion on women’s roles in the world and the workplace has long examined the question of whether equality might effectively imperil a man’s masculinity. We call it emasculation: the idea that one can be less of a man when he performs—or fails to perform—certain activities. I’d call it patriarchy wrapped in a bright blue “It’s a boy!” bow. As a feminist, what some call the “emasculation of the modern man,” I call a social shift in which we all must necessarily adapt to living in a culture where men and women are not categorically defined as either muscles or mothers. Yet, until I was staring down a plate of my boyfriend’s steaming empaneled, I never fully understood how much patriarchal punch I’d sampled myself.