In “American Men Don’t Cry,” Ashley Montagu showed us his opinion about the American culture that forced men not to cry. At first, he explained the American culture. Generally, women were delicate and dependent sex in the culture, so that they should cry in specific situations. Nevertheless, even in the case of children, when men cried, they were regarded as effeminate and infantile. Crying men were un-American. This culture is applicable to male children; Montague called them “A little man”. Since they were children, the training started. They were not allowed to cry whenever they wanted to cry. In all situations they had to avoid crying. Therefore, the culture always trained all American male not to cry. Then Montagu started to condemn the culture. Crying was a natural ability that only humans had. Bearing not to cry was damaging to all American males. Of course, they should not cry whenever they wanted to cry, but there were some times that they should cry. It was also good for their health. Because a man was human, he was made to cry. We had to consider about the necessity of crying.
I support his idea because of the reasons that Montague showed us in his article. In Japan, there is the same cultural attitude as in America, especially among old people. They insist that men not cry and they must accept that. However, this attitude is getting weaker and weaker recently. There are many reasons, but I would like to talk about only one reason, changing the idea about gender. For decades, equality between women and men has been claimed. As a result of it, we have many opportunities to learn about it. For example, we have studied about the gender problem since we were elementary school students. We are all human, though we have many physical differences. There are some appropriate situations to cry, and in these situations we can cry and no one criticizes us. Describing our honest emotion has been becoming common. Of course, it depends on individuals but if we want, we can do that. Therefore I agree with opinion of Montague.
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