As with the vast majority of men in the world today, it is easier for me to give hugs than to accept them. This is not my doing, but rather centuries of men before me who were taught that the outward expression of emotion, in any aspect, was a direct form of weakness. This has led to negative effects towards a new generation of men from whom I now find myself apart. This belief has forged a lack of feeling in men, all in the name of “being a man”. Don't take this the wrong way, as if to say that a lack of compassion is a bad thing, they teach young people. In reality it is the opposite in a growing market economy. As we move towards a more global marketplace, empathy of any kind is the cog in the wheel that holds a man back from trying to fully achieve certain standards of living (or at least the ones the world has established). Lack of emotion can easily be perceived as a competitive advantage. “Emotions will get you killed,” is what they said in my neighborhood when I was growing up. Passion has been replaced by apathy in the hearts and minds of many of my colleagues who grew up in an urban area. And this identical message is shared, perhaps in different ways, all over the world; for young men are continually bombarded with this suggestion that somehow any feminine quality should be repressed. Society, through the media and other propaganda, has formed a way of thinking for men that causes them, despite always having these feelings internally, to enact an act that inhibits them from openly expressing any type of femininity, especially in public. Michael S. Kimmel's work, Masculinity as Homophobia, reveals the great secret of all men: we are afraid of other men. Kimmel urges the reader to realize that the men are grouped int... middle of the sheet... 1983. Print.Gonzales, Marco. "Like most men." Def Poetry Jam. New York. May 1, 2014. Reading.Kimmel, Michael S. “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity.” Theorizing masculinities. Ed. Harry Brod and Michael Kaufman. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 1994. 119-42. SAGE knowledge. Network. Research series on men and masculinity. May 5, 2014.Lorde, Audre. "An Open Letter to Mary Daly." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984. 66-71.Parker, J. A. Angela Davis: The Making of a Revolutionary. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1973. Print.Steinbeck, John. Of mice and men. New York: Penguin, 1993. Print.Thorslev, Peter. "Closet Epistemology. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick." Nineteenth-Century Literature 46.4 (1992): 557-61. Press.