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There have been quite a few crying men that became iconic: Mandela, I seem to remember, and also Helmuth Kohl (and, simlar: Willy Brandt on hus knees). Didn't Obama cry at one of the many church services for victims of gun violence?

And I don't believe these instances derive their power from stigma. None of these people became less respected. In fact I don't remember any man hurt by crying.

The closest is probably Boehner (former Speaker of the House). It was actually his shtick and he would cry at two or three events every week, but the worst he got for that was some mild and sympathetic mocking by Jon Stewart.

And if you want to enlist women in your fight for the right to cry, I don't quite know what you expect from them? It seems they already care rather little about performative manliness, as evidenced by the growing partisan voting gap.

It's the difference between weeping "at a distance" versus weeping out of emotion. All the situations you mention involve a man weeping at some tragic part of the world, which I agree is broadly accepted. Same applies to, e.g., crying at a sad movie.

However, it ignores the reality that the most important kind of weeping isn't where you weep because you're recognizing something is socially coded as sad, but where you weep because you're feeling sad. Maybe you lost a job; maybe you feel like a failure; maybe you got your heart broken. And for all of these there's a substantial stigma, in that to be a Real Man(tm) you are forced to embrace your agency and act instead of feel.

A single controlled, manly tear is celebrated; messy weeping is deeply stigmatized, and many women would consider a man who does so weak and unsuitable for a relationship.

I like to describe as when a real man cries, he does it alone, in a dark, empty room.

The thing is you're speaking entirely about men of influence.

I would have a heck of a time finding the citation but I recall one study where subjects were shown one of two people. The general idea of it was that one of the subjects was shown to get better answers on a test and generally was more successful. The other was a neer-do-well. Then both of these subjects tripped. The neer-do-well who tripped was judged even more negatively. The achiever was judged more positively. Almost as if the mistake had "humanized" them.

I also notice that when people talk about men who are in touch with their feminine side, and open about things like being sexually assaulted, we see Terry Crews types who are built like a brick shithouse and are oozing with exaggerated masculinity and success. Can man who is already judged as weak and effeminette get away wiht crying and be treated well? I don't think that's the case and in fact I think the reverse is true. If a woman in the military trying to make a name for herself bursts into tears regularly will she be seen as strong enough to not break down in the midst of battle?

On top of that point... I think you're missing that the crying in all the cases you're talking about is quite controlled. To the point of Jibes about both Boehner and Obama playing up the waterworks to drive sympathy. Neither of these men are sobbing "I can't do this job... I'm not good enough". They're sobbing at some vague distant injustice to show how much they care about something. So I'm not even sure these examples demonstrate that crying is culturally accepted... and instead they merely show that specific circumstances allow for crying (high-status man, tragedy not caused by yourself, etc)

>Mandela

I think old men get an exception from cultural expectations around crying and i'm not sure why.

> I fully support the premise, but it clearly ignores the reality. A man has to first be convinced that the environment around him will not reject him for crying, before expecting him to be vulnerable in such an unfamiliar way.

I dunno, I guess my conception of manliness is different because I think what makes "manly weeping" different from conventional weeping is precisely that emotion has so moved a man as to make social consequences irrelevant.

In my experience, women react very negatively to my tears.

(And as for "toxic masculinity", wouldn't this be better described as "toxic femininity"?)

>(And as for "toxic masculinity", wouldn't this be better described as "toxic femininity"?)

No. It's modern masculine culture that doesn't allow men to express their emotions for fear of appearing weak or "beta." The toxicity derives from that pathological aspect of masculine culture. Women doing what men do and reinforcing this toxic aspect of masculine culture are also engaging in toxic masculinity.

The point the person is trying to make is describing masculine behaviours as toxic, by simply prefixing toxic, is an example of what they are describing. Thus, it is really a toxic attidude towards masculinity and those that are male. You are even trying to describe women that "adopt" these behaviours as being bad for being more male. Thus, guilty and worthless. As if they are not A True Woman.

>The point the person is trying to make is describing masculine behaviours as toxic, by simply prefixing toxic, is an example of what you are describing.

No, that's not what toxic masculinity describes. But I've been down this rabbithole before on HN, and I'm not going to waste time trying to convince you otherwise.

>You are even trying to describe women that "adopt" these behaviours as being bad for being more male. Thus, guilty and worthless. As if they are not A True Woman.

That's not even a remotely charitable or accurate interpretation of my comment. Good day sir.

This is the standard blanket denial of an enormous number of mens' lived experiences.

The vast majority of heterosexual women lose respect for a man who shows weakness, and it's certainly not "women doing what men do", as the man displaying a stiff upper lip for his partner is substantially more likely to weep with his male buddies.

At risk of sounding like an MRA, we live in a society which accepts, prima facie, the lived experience of women as incontrovertible evidence of how the average man reacts to the average woman, for good or for ill. But the lived experience of men must be handwaved away as some sort of Occam's Razor-defying Rube Goldberg contraption of transitive culture.

Why is it so difficult to believe that this is something that actually happens?

>The vast majority of heterosexual women lose respect for a man who shows weakness, and it's certainly not "women doing what men do", as the man displaying a stiff upper lip for his partner is substantially more likely to weep with his male buddies.

I'm not certain women are as emotionally simplistic as this. Plenty are attracted to emotional vulnerability. A man who hides his emotions too much seems more likely to commit violence, after all. Then again, some women like that. Women, like men, are complex beings but unfortunately threads about masculinity and feminism here tend towards reductionism.

And what I mean by "doing what men do" is reinforcing the stereotype that a man can't be masculine and also display emotion (or "show weakness") as you put it. This isn't a behavioral trait created by women and forced upon men against their will. Plenty of men who spent their childhood getting beaten by their fathers or their classmates for being too "sissy" will attest that this is an aspect of male culture created by and largely reinforced by men.

No, most men wouldn't weep to their male buddies, they wouldn't dare.

>Why is it so difficult to believe that this is something that actually happens?

Why is it so difficult not to blame women for everything? Men aren't puppets, they have agency, they are responsible (really, far more responsible) for the nature of modern masculine culture and identity, good and ill.

It's always interesting that, when men express their lived experiences, people will say that they're stupid and crazy.

Society as a whole polices men's emotional expression. But some feminists are extraordinarily unwilling to recognize that women are at the very least coequal perpetrators of this. Hell, some (and apparently you) are unwilling to concede that women play any role at all in this.

In my lived experience, my mother and female family members were much more critical of me expressing emotion than my father and male family members. Moreover, female partners police my emotional expression a lot more than male friends (or partners) do.

But, go for it, keep on denying women have any agency at all in gender politics and saying it's all men's fault.

>But some self-proclaimed feminists are extraordinarily unwilling to recognize that women are at the very least coequal perpetrators of this. >Hell, they (and apparently you) are unwilling to concede that women play any role at all in this.

The point of my original comment was literally that women bear some responsibility for reinforcing the harmful stereotypes of male culture. I merely suggested that women weren't entirely to blame, rather that both men and women were complicit in perpetuating toxic masculinity.

That attempted nuance has apparently gotten lost because I made the mistake of trying to engage with one of HN's trigger phrases and now this thread is locked into a fetal position of incel rage and defensiveness.

Serves me right, I guess.

> The point of my original comment was literally that women bear some responsibility for reinforcing the harmful stereotypes of male culture

Unfortunately, that doesn't really jive with this:

> Men aren't puppets, they have agency, they are responsible (really, far more responsible)

Women have agency. Many women do bad things, including enforcing toxic gender norms. It probably makes as much sense to call that "toxic femininity" instead of "toxic masculinity" when women do it, but you do you. Neither phrase is useful, because they focus on putting blame on one gender or another when toxic gender norms are really a collaborative effort.

All of the people that have shamed me or threatened me for crying during my life were women. I'm going to give them credit for making their own decisions.

Toxic masculinity means everything that is wrong with the image of a man in society.

Men, women and children all participate in society. Thus, the problem affects everyone.

It is the same reason that feminism is not solely about women. It is about changing societal perceptions of women in ways that ends up affecting everyone participating in society. Men, women and children alike.

>I fully support the premise, but it clearly ignores the reality. A man has to first be convinced that the environment around him will not reject him for crying, before expecting him to be vulnerable in such an unfamiliar way.

It's irritating to read recommendations for people to effectively martyr themselves in the sake of progress.

>People talk about toxic masculinity as though it is a problem created only by men.

"Toxic masculinity" is an unfortunately named term that leads to a lot of people talking past eachother since what the term means academically, and what it means colloqually/what it implies are fairly different. I think the issue is intractable enough to justify doing away with the term entirely and eventually coming up with a euphemism that means the same thing.

> Will a crying man be deemed as someone unsuitable for being the emotional pillar in a relationship ?

> Will a crying man be seen as someone who can't deal with crisis ?

> Will a crying man be seen to be a child ?

When faced with questions like these, I'm reminded of Richard Feynman and the question "What do you care what other people think?"

It seems we've reached a point where we allow our insecurities drive our actions more than anything else.

The problem is that we do not deal with our insecurities at all - they aren't even seen as a problem to fix, but something we just live with. They are not tested, because the risks are deemed too great.

Some of the greatest things in life come from damning those insecurities and just fucking doing [X].

This is a thought I've gone through the motions of many times. I have gone from caring -> not caring -> to realizing that the ability to care or not is not in my hands at all.

You cannot run from nature. Humans are social animals. Everything we do is informed by society. There is no 'you' in isolation from society.

As technical/math oriented people, it is very tempting to derive humanity from 1st principles like a derivation or posing our decision making process as a controlled trial.

However, I find that to be a fallacy. Often, people who claim to not care, merely turn a blind eye to the influence of things they care about, and ironically end up being most strongly influenced by them.

An insecurity is like a squatter in your house. You can claim to not care but that only give it more licence to destroy. The real way to deal with the squatter is to be fully cognizant of it and take deliberate steps to kick the squatter out. That is a lot of caring, yet is the best way to deal with the insecurity.

Yeah, addressing the insecurity does take care, and I did not mean to suggest that one should not care about their insecurities. They are things to work on and make better, not things to just live with.

The biggest problem with something like "what do you care what other people think" is that we want to read it in an absolutest manner. But that's not how it should be read.

The question should be used as part of addressing the insecurity. Do you really need to care in this instance?

A healthy friendship means caring about what the other person thinks. I imagine marriage makes that even more important.

Caring about what some rando might think if he sees me crying? That's not important.

A key thing is being mindful and purposeful about it instead of just letting whatever your current view of society is dictate your actions.

I cried in public one time while discussing my dead brother with my mom. It was a foreign country as well so who knows what people were thinking. Would do it again!

> Men can't be the only ones battling it.

Literally everyone else but men are battling it, and very publicly. #metoo is a great example.