When I asked James Chadwick, a local therapist, about the consequences of men failing to address our collective emotional intelligence and challenges with vulnerability, he paused.
"It's really scary," said Chadwick, a licensed independent clinical social worker who specializes in sexuality and relationships at the Sexual Wellness Institute and Radiant Living Therapy in Plymouth.
Every day, men come into his office and seek help to understand who they are now and to view masculinity as something that's unlike the version many of us learned through 1990s action movies and the men we knew in our youth. The damage of those toxic views is not difficult to see.
Today, men in their 30s, 40s and 50s have become celebrities by peddling sexism and trafficking in misogyny. They have decided to fuel the false notion that men are under attack. They think about these things on the way back to their cul de sacs, and they pass those ideas to teenagers and men in their 20s.
I don't connect with those dudes.
The men in my circle talk about therapy and growth and generational trauma and a desire to evolve. But I do think I am culpable in what ails the next generation of young men. I think we've failed to address the pitfalls of a problematic definition of masculinity and its impact on those who've turned toughness and apathy into violence and destruction.
I think the young men who occupy our headlines because of shootings and killings believe they have achieved some ultimate level of manliness, a willingness to eliminate another human being and the dominance attached to that. Their philosophies on masculinity are corrupted. We are their teachers.
I know men who live paycheck to paycheck, and I know men with private jets. The bond between them is a constant need to win. Too often, our perception of our value is based on the number of wins we attain. That desire to gain power and to do what so many of us think a real man must do to matter — if left unchecked — is the seed of abuse, mistreatment, the devaluing and objectifying of women, anger and violence. Too many of us pass that on to our sons, nephews, neighbors, the athletes we coach and the young men in our communities. That's dangerous.