“Boys don’t cry.” “Men are supposed to be strong.” “Only girls talk about their feelings.”
These are the words that young men across the world hear every day. In our society, men are supposed to be the providers. They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and to do that, they have to be strong. We, as a society, put a lot of pressure on men to be the solid rock on which we stand, even though they never asked for that job. They feel an obligation to provide for us, fight for us, and die for us. And in return we tell them not to cry. By the age of 12 almost every boy in the nation is socialized to not cry, at least not in public. They are told that it is inappropriate for boys to cry, because it’s not “manly.” We tell boys that they aren’t allowed to talk about their feelings, they aren’t allowed to expression their heartache and woes. They must keep it bottled up, and it builds and builds, until it explodes. It has a greater impact than we realize. The warning signs are there, but they go virtually undetected because they seem to be the norm. Their hyper masculinity develops when they try to “out man” each other, when they yell louder, and when they push harder. They are also at risk for depression, but it goes unnoticed because their silence is taken as just silence and nothing more. The mass violence, the abuse, the assault. 98% of mass shootings are committed by men, and I have to believe that the “boys don’t cry mentality” plays into the reasoning behind a few of those shootings. For example, take the Columbine shooting. Those boys were bullied and outcasts, and they had no to outlet in which to talk about their feelings because why should they talk to their feelings? All of this lead to 13 deaths. How much of it could be avoided if we just told our little boys that it is okay to cry. Why wouldn’t it be okay? It’s okay for girls to cry, and for a society that is hell bent on gender equality, we aren’t providing equal opportunity. There’s a difference between supporting the patriarchy and supporting men. Supporting men will lead to more compassion and less heartache. If we truly cared about our men, we would let them cry.