Mr. Colicchio,

I agree with most of what you said, and great to see you taking responsibility for being more vigilant (we all should).

What we are facing is a crisis of socialization based in failure to properly educate boys about emotional intimacy and consent buttressed by a constant stream of entertainment and marketing messages that construct women as object bodies before they are recognized people (if they are recognized as people at all). We also live in a society that teaches boys that asking for help is weakness and that the worst thing a man can do is to show emotion (unless the emotion shown is anger).

I mention this because I am not sure your “real men” and “real man” comments are helpful (just seems like another example of creating the same binaries you are criticizing in other parts of your article). It is not helpful to put the “good” folks in one corner and the “bad” folks in the other because shame is at the core of many of these problems in the first place (shame is an accelerant for most of the problems you are describing and has nothing to do with education, change, or healing). The whole point is that how we construct each other through language matters and that you can’t create much change through dialog when you start the dialog by defining the very people you seek to change out of moral consideration.

Thanks again for your thoughtful article!