For at least 50 years now western feminism, among the million other things and agendas that it promotes, has been saying that "the Patriarchy" is also bad and harmful for men because this patriarchal society teaches men to be stoic, to not show emotion, to not cry. And this, according to these feminists, causes men to suffer inside, to become violent and suicidal.
They have been pushing this notion so strongly that, like so many other similar notions (such as that being a "stay-at-home mother" is a horrible thing), the vast majority of people, even men, just believe it without question.
Without question and without evidence, I may add.
There is no evidence that men "opening up" and not being afraid to show emotion somehow reduces suicide rates, for example. Or violence.
The whole notion being pushed is wrong on so many levels.
For starters, the notion is that men are not naturally stoic, and that they are taught, even coerced, by society to be so.
This is completely false. Men are on average more stoic than women by nature, innately. The primary affecting factor behind this is testosterone, which makes a person more stoic among other things (a fact that many a women who has started taking testosterone has found out, often to her own surprise).
The ultimate reason for this is in our evolutionary past: Over millions and millions of years it has been a survival advantage for women to be more empathetic, emotional and caring (primarily because they take care of children, and it's advantageous from even a pure survival point of view if they can outright see if there's something wrong with their children or family members), and for men to be more stoic and more able to concentrate on the task at hand without being overwhelmed by emotions like fear, shock or sadness (because men have always been the ones to hunt for food and to fight off threats, wild animals and enemies).
Of course a trait having an evolutionary background behind it and reason for its existence doesn't automatically mean that it must be taken as a good thing that should not be suppressed. There certainly are many innate instincts and traits that have an evolutionary origin that are good to be suppressed in a modern civil peaceful prosperous society.
However, I would posit that male stoicism is not one of those. That it's actually a good thing for men to keep being stoic.
A working prosperous society requires a significant portion of its population to be stoic instead of being easily overwhelmed by emotion and crumbling at the first sign of trouble or stress. If everybody was emotionally fragile, the entire society would eventually collapse because nothing would work. It would become a complete wild west wasteland.
In order for things to be done, some people need to be in charge and organize others, so that they can cooperate and everybody knows what to do, to synchonize work, to work together in a productive manner. When things go bad, when things get messy, stressful, dangerous and scary, some people need to likewise take charge of the situation and put it under control. They need to shove their fears and emotions aside and do the responsible thing and to organize people and tell them what to do and how to act. When there is a troublemaker, someone needs to step up to calm the situation and de-escalate, or if nothing else works, do something about the problem (rather than crumbling under the pressure and becoming an emotional wreck who is incapable of doing anything productive).
Even in as small groups as just a spousal couple, it's good if one of them is steadfast and reliable, a pillar of the relationship. (It is a quite known paradox that many women think they want a man who is not afraid to show emotion, when in fact what she wants is a more courageous stoic man who will stand beside her and protect her in the face of adversity and danger instead of crumbling emotionally and cowering in fear.)
Without stoic responsible leaders and pillars of the community the society would just crumble. We need those people! The people who are naturally most suited for that role because of their biology and evolutionary past should be encouraged to be such reliable pillars. They should not be encouraged to cast their natural stoicism aside and replace it with emotional fragility. That's just a recipe for disaster, including for those very men themselves.
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