Why do you need someone else to tell you who you are and to determine whether or not that is an acceptable thing to be? How on earth can that possibly be healthy or beneficial? This sort of thinking has resulted in nothing but discrimination and abuse as well as sadness and despair for those who don't fit the mold. The current high rate of suicide for men is directly attributable to the social isolation that is demanded of "real men."
"Young men’s mental health is in a worrisome state. Their bravado masks deep insecurities, depression, and frequent thoughts of suicide. Men in the Man Box in the US and UK are statistically significantly more likely to meet a screening standard for depression than men outside the Man Box. Furthermore, all young men’s rates of suicidal ideation are troubling, with particularly high rates among men in the Man Box.
Young men are more likely to report providing emotional support to others than they are to report being emotionally vulnerable or seeking help themselves. In line with the Man Box rule that young men be self-sufficient, study participants tend to grapple with emotions with little or no support from others. When they do seek support, it is from women in their lives — almost never from their fathers. We also see that fear of appearing vulnerable or gay still has a powerful influence over young men’s behaviors, particularly for men in the Man Box.
The Man Box is also a place of extremely risky behaviors, particularly binge drinking and reckless driving. Too many young men associate being a “real man” with alcohol abuse and dangerous driving, putting themselves and others at risk when they try to meet this harmful standard."
Human beings are on an enormous spectrum and the best thing in the world would be to allow everyone to simply be who they are, where-ever they may fall on that spectrum without trying to shoehorn them into an absurd artificial binary.
