When Tenderness Becomes Anger

I’ve come to believe something that runs against the story we’re usually told: men may actually be the more emotional sex and somewhere along the way, that truth got twisted.

Growing up in our house, my brother was the crier. One of my brothers cried over the simplest things like having to do the dishes, being told no, feeling overwhelmed. My mom would tell us that he was her biggest crybaby. My dad would say, “Your sister is a bigger man than you.” Those words stuck with me. Not because they were kind but because they revealed how early we start policing emotion, especially in boys. And I’ve seen it again and again since then. 

Recently we were at a gathering with families that together, had three younger kids: two boys and one girl. By the end of the night, both boys had cried. One because of candy. One because he couldn’t do something he tried to do. The girl? She was fine, observant, regulated and watching the world unfold. 

This isn’t about saying all boys are more emotional than all girls. It’s about noticing a pattern we rarely allow ourselves to name. 

Historically, this actually makes sense. Ancient cultures didn’t see men as absent of emotion. Quite the opposite. Greek heroes wept openly. Achilles cried in the Iliad. Kings in the Hebrew scriptures tore their clothes and sobbed publicly. Medieval men wrote poetry drenched in longing and grief. Even early medical theory believed men were more emotionally volatile because they were “hot-blooded,” while women were thought to be steadier and more restrained. 

The modern idea of the emotionally silent man is surprisingly recent. It grew out of industrialization, militarization, and empire times when men were needed to work long hours, fight wars, and suppress fear to survive. Emotion became a liability. Tenderness was reframed as weakness. Boys learned the lesson early: feel it, but don’t show it. 

So, what happens? 

Those feelings don’t disappear. They just lose language. They lose softness. They harden. Grief turns into anger. Fear turns into control. Sadness turns into silence and/or rage. 

I don’t see angry men as emotionless men. I see them as deeply emotional boys who were told, too young, to shut it all down. 

And maybe the work now isn’t to teach boys how not to feel but to give them permission to feel without shame. To cry over dishes. To be disappointed about candy. To fail at something and fall apart a little and feel like you are in a safe space like the parents allowed at this party. Because suppressed emotion doesn’t make strong men. Felt emotion does.

Are we passed a time when we could change this? Anymore, it seems like that may be the case. There is almost entirely too much access to information that just increases the issue. There are so many men in media today that use the anger, already present, to keep angry young men bitter and lonely while enriching their own pockets and blaming women. 

I don’t know what could calm the roaring lions but I know we are in some scary territory.