The End of Oak Street Isn’t “Feminist Propaganda,” You’re Just Sexist

The latest take on the new film, The End of Oak Street, circulating in the YouTube commentators’ circle is that the film is “feminist propaganda.” The question I’m asking is “Why do they think that?” It seems that the answer is even more frustrating than the idea itself.

Denise (Anne Hathaway) is a stay at home mother who is struggling with her husband’s desire to spend more time working than being with them on the one day she asked for a family day. That was, as we learn, the last day they had before their entire neighborhood was taken to the prehistoric times and they had to fight off dinosaurs. For 90% of The End of Oak Street, Denise and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are clearly working together to try to keep their family safe.

But when Denise has to carry on alone with their children, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), she does what any mother would do and protects her family. Seem like a normal kind of reaction to outrageous circumstances. And yet some online have turned a perfectly fine moment of character development into another cry about “woke culture.”

“The End of Oak Street Is Ashamed of Every Man in It,” one YouTube video title says. An entire Reddit page for “Geeks & Gamers,” the right-wing publication and organization that uplifts incel ideals, allowed people to call the film “a woke disaster.” Right-Wing YouTubers like The Critical Drinker used the word “girlbosses” in his title. Why?

Apparently, we're big enough to get dragged into "culture war" BS pic.twitter.com/I6eM2xHXiE

— 🦖 Dino Kia 🦖 🏳️‍🌈 Oak Street hype (@YutyTyrant) August 16, 2026

While watching The End of Oak Street, those with a critical brain recognize Denise’s storyline for what it really is: A woman realizing that she cannot live without her husband and her family. She doesn’t change her dreams or who she is but she doesn’t diminish her husband either.

Remembering why they fell in love

A lot of the journey for Greg and Denise was about protecting their children. Both from the issues in their marriage as well as from the dinosaurs threatening to eat them. It meant that most of their growth and understanding came from the brief moments when a T-Rex wasn’t trying to eat them. Both were keeping secrets, both were unhappy, but neither knew how to talk about it to the other one.

Greg lost his job and didn’t know what to sayg to his wife so he just picked up shifts delivering pizza to try to make up for it. Denise had dreams of being a writer but didn’t want to let her family in on it. They were trying to protect themselves and their kids and they lost elements of their relationship as a result. But Denise never looked at Greg as weak and he never saw Denise as anything but his love. To act as if the movie emasculates Greg shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both The End of Oak Street as a whole and how character development works.

The “death” of Greg in The End of Oak Street was in an act of bravery to protect his family, the same kind of act that Denise was willing to do for their kids but Greg sacrifices himself for. To act like the movie is “woke” or about girlbosses when Greg literally did the bare minimum of what a father and husband should think to do in that situation doesn’t actually say anything about the movie itself. It does, however, show that the argument is just rooted in sexism.

Is this anger because of the movie or sexism?

Brian, Audrey, Denise, and their dog Starbuck have to continue the journey to survive. Denise and Greg found a way out and now without Greg at their side, they must carry on. Ultimately, Denise saves Greg and it’s a happy ending but there still isn’t anything in The End of Oak Street that comes across as shoehorning a “female empowerment” moment into it. So the angry cries about this movie are simply one thing: Sexist.

Often the argument against modern films with female leads goes back to these types of men saying they “can’t be sexist” because they love characters like Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. Denise is, in many ways, a new addition to that archetype. A seemingly regular woman thrown into an impossible situation and figuring it out as she goes to protect the ones she loves. This argument is like getting mad that Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) survives the raptors. It makes no sense.

What it is though is a group of men who have made a living off of being furious women exist. They’ll try to tell you otherwise but it is the truth. A woman in a movie with agency? Better call the AI thumbnail police, we have a new grift video to film. There is nothing “woke” about The End of Oak Street. If anything, it is a movie about a woman realizing that she does need a man (if you need it dumbed down like that to understand it). But hey, anything to make these YouTube incel grifters a buck, right?