The two twins are fighting again. Identical twins, age four, I can only tell them apart from their name tags and the different clothes they come to camp in everyday. They’re upset because someone wouldn’t share his chips. Or maybe because someone hit someone. Or was it that someone took a toy without asking first? Whatever the case may be, they’re upset. They have opposite reactions when their emotions start to kick in: Twin #1 shuts down completely and takes a nap in the corner of a room while Twin #2 starts kicking everything he can find. Chairs, block towers, camp counselors, everything’s fair game when he’s upset.

These are the two sides of toxic masculinity. One twin has completely shut off any sort of emotion, while the other one has directed it straight towards aggression. One would rather sleep off the feelings and wake up numbed while the other is perfectly content taking his sadness out with bruises and bumps.

This is what they’re taught, even before entering elementary school, is the only way to handle their emotions. Fight or flight — either they have to fight their own emotions or flee them in the best way they know how, to shut down entirely. It’s something we’ve all seen before, the same thing we’ve seen the males in our own lives do. Dad had a bad day at work? Four drinks and a thrasher movie will surely make him forget what was bothering him. Brother comes home from school with bruises? He got a bad grade on a test and instead of talking with his teacher he took it out on the football field. It’s anger and isolation.

And this sort of toxic masculinity isn’t a new concept. Cavemen were taught the role of the protector while the women were left vulnerable to take care of their children. Men have been taught for countless generations that their best weapon is their fists. So what happens when this carries through past our hunter-gatherer ancestry?

Well, to name a few outcomes: WWA, schoolyard fights, gang violence, pack mentalities, gang rape, sexual assault, concussions, gun fights, homicide, depression, anxiety, self harm and suicide.

American men are terrified of what will happen if they show their emotions. Be a man, stop being a pussy, what a pansy, you throw like a girl, man up, you don’t have the balls, nice guys finish last, friend-zoned, stop crying, pick yourself up, be cool and be kind of a dick, don’t let women run your life, keep your mouth shut, nobody likes a tattletale, bros before hoes, you gotta conquer that bitch, she only fucks real men, be a man, be a man, be a man!

In what ways have we failed our boys? Well, just like our girls, an easy way to see failure is to look at the toy aisles of any store across the country. For the girls everything is pink and sparkly, dolls divided by brand with different shoes and different dresses. Some of the dolls sound when you press buttons, catchy melodies about girl power and light sing song voices pushing for delicacy and beauty in the female form. For the boys, the aisle is more of a mishmash of army gear, camo, dark blues and blacks and reds. There are fake swords and guns everywhere you look. Power Rangers Mystic Force! Terminator! Transformer! all echoed in that familiar, gravely and hyper aggressive announcer voice you’ve grown so accustomed to hearing in the background of TV commercials, sports games and WWA fights.

When the little boys fight at camp, you can see this coming through. The younger ones start to cry when someone’s mean to them until an older boy comes by. Then they stop. Immediately. Like someone hit a weird, hidden off switch on them that I can’t seem to find. They start to posture to each other, slowly mimicking what the older boys are doing. Don’t cry when you’re mad, hit. Hit everything you see. Hit, hit, hit, until you’ve hit so much you can’t feel your fingers. And all of a sudden, the little boys around me aren’t little anymore. Sure, they’re still shorter than the rest, but they’re posturing to fit the exact same molds of their older peers. I’m surrounded by tiny bundles of anger, and I’m not even sure when it happened.

It’s scary, how fast they learn from each other. I remember seeing it for the first time myself when I was 9. I have two younger cousins, both boys. The younger one took a liking to one of my dolls and started carrying it around his house when I visited. She was a soft, small babydoll with a pastel colored dress. I remember his older brother making fun of him for holding the doll, for showing even the slightest interest in it. I’m not sure if I said anything, but something about this interaction registered as so unthinkable to my 9-year-old self that, after the older brother left the room, I whispered to the younger brother that he could keep the doll. This probably didn’t make much of a difference in their lives. I doubt he still has the doll or that either of them even remember it. But growing up as an only child, this stuck in my head as my first real example of male culture.

Former NFL defensive lineman Joe Ehrmann seems to agree: “The three most destructive words that every man receives when he's a boy is when he's told to 'be a man.’”

I don’t have many solutions to this. I’m not a parent or older sibling of a little boy, not an educator or even remotely qualified to be a counselor. It’s an uncomfortable sort of confusion when you can’t practice what you preach. I guess for right now, the best I can do is tell the men in my life that it’s okay to be vulnerable around me — that their emotions aren’t only welcome, but that they’re important. So for now, I’ll tell people to cry when they need to. To let themselves break down in front of me. And if I ever have a son of my own, I’ll be sure to let him know too.