What does it mean to be a man? More specifically, what does it mean to be a man in the U.S.? In Spain? Among Native American communities? There are so many different factors — both cultural and otherwise — that are embedded in this question. But what does masculinity look like around the world and what similarities present themselves? And, more importantly, what does how we talk about it — and attempt to explain away behaviors using biology or speak of men in terms of Alpha and Beta — say about us?

In, Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short, anthropologist Matthew Gutmann, a professor of anthropology at Brown University who has spent 30 years exploring notions of masculinity across the United States, Latin America, and China, describes how the ways society can speak about men and explain away their behavior through bad science — such as when, during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, testosterone was associated with negative male behavior — limits men’s emotional expression and denies them agency and accountability over their actions. For Gutmann, using such terms and phrases as “testosterone,” “boys being boys,” and “just being a guy” is tantamount to when doctors 30 or 40 years ago would say that women can’t be leaders because their periods made them too unpredictable. In other words, he says, such talk paints men into a corner.

"There is a widespread tendency to say, well, boys will be boys. So in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court justice hearings, it was remarkable how many times I read the word ‘testosterone’ associated with male teenage behavior. As if other boys didn’t have testosterone as teenagers; as if testosterone surging through your blood, if you’re a teenage boy, accounts for sexual assault against women. That, to me, is very disturbing, when we assume that teenage boys almost can’t help themselves from assaulting."

[msn.com]

[This is not yet another tract explaining how put-upon men are; it's a discussion of how society tends to pigeonhole men in gender roles just as it does women, and pointing out how both have been & are being sold short by these stereotypes.]