You just read an entire story about how men have been socialized and "allowed" different things at different periods of time - specifically around expressing emotion - and you still revert back to "men are naturally more able to suppress their emotions." I'm dumbfounded!! It's 1000% cultural!
Have you ever heard or read about any of the machines that are now available where men get to experience period pains or labor pains? Most of them cannot handle it AT ALL. Women throughout time have had to deal with this sort of pain on a routine basis and be brave about it. Why on earth would you think that was a uniquely male trait? Believe me, in Paleolithic cultures (which I have studied extensively) everyone had to be tough and resilient and routinely deal with discomfort.
This culture is full of unhappy men because the current demands of "masculinity" are antithetical to the deeply social nature of human beings. Patriarchy is entirely to blame... and although we've had that social system for a few thousand years, in the past men were expected to be a part of church communities and Elk's lodges and such. There wasn't nearly the same level of social isolation - something that our culture is feeling widely, but it's really crushing men.
https://medium.com/remaking-manhood/why-do-we-murder-the-beautiful-friendships-of-boys-3ad722942755
"A survey published by AARP in 2010 found that one in three adults aged 45 or older reported being chronically lonely. Just a decade before, only one out of five said that. And men are facing the brunt of this epidemic of loneliness. Research shows that between 1999 and 2010, suicide among men age 50 and over rose by nearly 50 percent. The New York Times reports that “the suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.”
[Boys] became more distrustful and less willing to be close with their male peers and believe that such behavior, and even their emotional acuity, put them at risk of being labeled girly, immature, or gayT. ther than focusing on who they are, they became obsessed with who they are not — they are not girls and not children, nor, in the case of heterosexual boys, are they gay. In response to a cultural context that links intimacy in male friendships and emotional sensitivity with a sex [female] and a sexuality [gay], the boys “matured” into men who are autonomous, emotionally stoic, and isolated. The ages of 16 to 19, however, are not only a period of disconnection for the boys in my studies, it is also the period in which the suicide rate for boys in the United States rises dramatically and becomes four times the rate for girls.In America, men perform masculinity within a narrow set of cultural rules often called the Man Box. One of the central tenets of the Man Box is the subjugation of women and, by extension, all things feminine. Since we Americans hold emotional connection as a female trait, we reject it in our boys, demanding that they “man up” and adopt a strict regimen of emotional independence, even isolation, as proof they are “real men.” Behind the drumbeat message that real men are stoic and detached is the brutal fist of homophobia, ready to crush any boy who might show too much of the wrong kind of emotion.
Let’s take a moment to connect the dots. Boys feel fierce love for their best friends → Add homophobia, the Man Box, etc. → Boys disassociate from loving best friends → Boys and men become emotionally isolated → Men enter the epidemic of loneliness → Men die."
