Martha Beck Quotes

I don't like crying. I'm a country boy, and we're the product of our upbringing. As a boy, I was told that men don't cry.

Black men struggle with masculinity so much. The idea that we must always be strong really presses us all down - it keeps us from growing.

I figured out, I guess, that the job just makes me happy if it's not number one. So if it all works, great. If it doesn't, I still go home, look at my kids, and I have a big smile on my face.

If you're embarrassed because you have some notion about how men are supposed to behave, and it doesn't include weeping, then you have some personal work to do.

Men are recognizing that they have been forced to conform to a very narrow and rather two-dimensional picture of maleness and manhood that they have never had the freedom to question.

The Cure wrote 'Boys Don't Cry,' and it's the same today: as a boy, you're not meant to show your emotions, but if you don't have a job or any prospects, you're going to be depressed, and it will be much worse if you can't express that. I hate the term because it's become a buzzword, but it's toxic masculinity.

I don't think you have to be this macho man all the time, just because you play sport.

In today's society, a lot of males think you have to be strong all the time, and you're not allowed to show weakness. That's just so false.

I think a man is a man, and a man has a hairy chest, so let that be!

I've worked in television long enough to know that when you stop enjoying that type of thing you go home and do something else.

I don't think men were meant to be interviewed.

I hate men who are in touch with their feminine side.

Once boys' and men's challenges are clear, the question 'why now' quickly becomes 'why didn't we see this sooner?' The answer? Virtually every society that survived did so by socializing its sons to be disposable.

I don't think families can earn enough money with one wage-earner any more. I also think there are a lot of men who don't want to bust their butts and do that kind of work. They want to stay home with the kids, but guys who do want to do that aren't looked up to as the masculine kind of guy, and that's a shame.

When I'm talking to groups that are all men, we talk about how the masculine role limits them. They often want to talk about how they missed having real fathers, real loving, present fathers, because of the way that they tried to fit the picture of masculinity.

Most men have an insecurity of some sort. But we're brought up to believe that we can't show them.

A lot of guys have muscles. A lot of strong men in this world. I think it's important to show that even under all this strength there's a fragile side, a side that can be affected.

The only men who aren't in fear of women's reactions are usually men who aren't born or who are dead.

Women may think men have it all, but only because we've been socialized to express the emotions that are tied to this reality differently, which is to say, men are not to express the emotions that are tied to it.

I don't really relate to certain blokey men who just want to talk about blokey things. I never really know what to say and I always feel I have to act blokey in order to have them not say, 'You're a weirdo.'

Most men act so tough and strong on the outside because on the inside, we are scared, weak, and fragile. Men, not women, are the weaker sex.

It's a really skewed part of our culture that happiness is the end-all be-all. The people that force themselves to be happy all the time often end up being the most broken.

I realised one day that men are emotional cripples. We can't express ourselves emotionally, we can only do it with anger and humour. Emotional stability and expression comes from women.

Men walk this tightrope where any sign of weakness illicits shame, and so they're afraid to make themselves vulnerable for fear of looking weak.

Men can't bear to see women cry.