The hosts examine how masculinity norms teach boys that crying is weakness, leading men to hide anxiety and depression. Suicide rates stay higher for men while mental health issues go under-reported. Some women lose respect when men show vulnerability, creating a cycle that harms both genders.
Chapters
Growing up in the boarding school that I went to, you can never toast a girl successfully and she will say yes. If they pitch you on assembly ground, you cry. Are you joking? Where are we? Where are we? Where are we now? You are toasting me?
I cannot even toast Mr. King Shark with cane.
You are toasting me? Wow. How do you know? They say that guy is a big boy. Woman, don't take back. And when they beat him, when they beat him, he's a macho man. And then, you know, so it starts getting ingrained inside the head of the young male man that showing weakness is— it is— no, no, no, no, no, is anti-manliness. And we have women who Femi Lazarus have openly said to me that the day I saw him cry was the day I lost respect for him. Wow. Which is bad. But what I know is this: many ladies now, bringing it to now, cannot handle the vulnerability of a man. And it's not their fault.
Could that be the reason why many boys are attracted to women that reminds them of their mom. Because a woman, a mother in the life of a son, has demonstrated that role of that person that can bear the vulnerability.
I think so. And guess what? Women— statistics have shown that women report cases of anxiety and depression, mental health issues. Now men don't. We don't see that. Again, that's a problem. It's not that it does not— it is not more in men. Because of how the society has wired us to think about men, men keep to themselves. They don't share their struggles, so they don't report their cases of depression and anxiety problems. But we have women— because they don't even know. So women report more of those cases. But what we've seen in research is that men— we have men die more of suicide than women. So the disconnect in that data is as a result of the narrative that has been So men don't do this. Men don't cry. Men— so when women come out to say, oh, the society is not serving them, the society— that same society is unjust to men too, in certain ways.
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