E-mail:

“I am not a weeper or a gusher, nor do I “feel people’s pain” with any regularity. However, 20th Century notions of manhood as not publicly weeping, are just that — 20th Century. Women have always gushed more than men, but it is also true that only since 1900-1920 or so has public crying become off limits to men. The notion that deep anguish equals weakness (in men) is quite recent.

Don’t know what happened then, but historical and personal narratives going back long before the founding of the Republic clearly evidence that men, noble men, leaders of men, did cry, publicly, and often enough to be noticed and commented on not as aberrations, but as an honest and heartfelt expression of personal suffering.”