During the 2020 presidential campaign, then–vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, was adored in the media for being the epitome of a supportive husband. Vox deemed Emhoff a “wife guy extraordinaire” and said he “could be a new role model for men.” Marie Claire ran a profile of him headlined “The Good Husband.” The Washington Post, in an adoring piece, called Harris and Emhoff “a match made in Hollywood” and quoted a professor who described Emhoff’s effort to usher a protester away at his wife’s campaign event “superhero-ish.”

Emhoff, so the narrative went, was the antithesis to toxic masculinity. He had set aside his career as a lawyer so that he could support his more successful wife, and he had no problem playing the secondary role. Emhoff embraced this narrative and on numerous occasions spoke out against “toxic masculinity.” In an interview with MSNBC, he said, “There’s too much of toxicity — masculine toxicity — out there, and we’ve kind of confused what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine.” He asserted that true strength is “how you show your love for people.”