Lately I have been feeling very sensitive to the issue of emotional mutilation in boys and men. By focusing on it, I am realizing that it is an important personal reason why I am interested in men's issues in general, and also that it underlies many of the problems that disproportionately affect men.

By emotional mutilation I mean the practice of explicitly or implicitly discouraging the expression of certain basic emotions in boys. In particular, sadness and fear. Of course, emotions cannot just disappear. They demand to be expressed, and if you cannot do so directly, you do through the proxy of another emotion. Typically, that's the role of anger, which is often an outlet for repressed sadness and fear.

The problem is that anger is a repulsive emotion. It drives people away. And if it's used as an expression of fear and sadness, that's not a desirable effect. You scare people away just when you need them the most. And this feeds loneliness, which in turn feeds sadness, which grows into more anger. The ending point of this cycle is violence, either against others or against oneself.

I picked up, for the first time, a book by Bell Hooks the other day. She was a famous second-wave feminist who also wrote about the problems men and boys suffer from, especially in the book “The Will to Change.” According to her, under patriarchy, the emotional mutilation of boys is perpetrated by both sexes to mold boys into dominant patriarchal men. Although I do not agree with her frame of reference (for reasons I might elaborate in a dedicated post), I still see and appreciate her general point of view.

She points out how women, consciously or unconsciously, also play their part in perpetuating this system. Moreover, in my experience, it is a mechanism that has no political color. Both traditional and progressive people take part in it. People on the left might say they want men to be softer. But they usually mean “more empathetic, more caring, more sensitive.” I emphasize the word “more” because it is indicative of the underlying bias. Empathy, caring and sensitivity are all wonderful qualities. But what men need is to recover the ability to express the “lesser” part of them. Fear, helplessness and sadness without the mediation of anger. And not only to express these emotions, but also to feel seen and validated.

One thing I have noticed is that whenever, throughout my adult life, I have let go of the facade and burst into tears, the response of the people around me has been neither clearly positive nor clearly negative. There have been no hugs and support, but neither has there been bullying and contempt. The most common response is a somewhat embarrassed silence. Followed perhaps by an invitation to go to the bathroom to calm down. It's a very cringe and unpleasant experience that will most likely deter you from expressing those emotions again. Your plea for help falls on deaf ears, and the answer to your distress is silence. Calling for help into the void feels even worse than not calling for help at all.

Of course, the discussion could be endless. There are the biological factors (it's not all about socialization, and expecting men to behave 100 percent like women is unreasonable). There are the ... political factors (despite our technological advances, we are still a tribal species; and unfortunately, the stronger, scarier tribe tends to prevail over the softer, more peaceful one). And, of course, not everything is black and white (many women feel emotionally repressed; and many men do not feel emotionally mutilated at all).

What are your experiences, reflections and perspectives on this topic?