It’s Okay To Be Angry

I was a quiet kid. Soft-spoken. Sensitive. I cried easily and clung too long in hugs. I wanted connection—desperately—but didn’t have the language, safety, or cultural permission to ask for it.

Other boys sensed this difference in me. So did adults. And the world, built on an economy of dominance and detachment, didn’t reward softness. It punished it.

What I didn’t understand then was that I was being cast out of masculinity. Policed out of it. Any way I tried to step toward it—through camaraderie, leadership, or physicality—was met with either ridicule or rejection. Too eager, too emotional, too needy, too “gay.” And later, when I found a voice and came into queer manhood, I faced a different kind of exile: the myth that all masculinity is inherently toxic. That all men are dangerous. That being a man is something to apologize for.

But I don’t buy that. Not anymore.

I am a cisgender queer man. I am also an anthropologist. My work explores how people make meaning through power, ritual, and community. And I’ve come to believe that masculinity is not inherently violent or broken—but it is deeply wounded. And if we’re ever going to heal it, we need to stop pretending that the wound doesn’t exist.

The Wound Is the Way In

We talk a lot about toxic masculinity, and rightly so. The systems of patriarchy have done immense harm. But rarely do we talk about the pain of masculinity—what it costs boys and men to live in a system that both elevates and empties them.

Men carry wounds. Some are invisible. Some are inherited. Some are self-inflicted. And most of us are never given permission to grieve them.

The absent father.
The closed-off mother.
The coach who said “man up.”
The pastor who said we were broken.
The friend who vanished when we came out.
The unspoken rules that reward silence, competition, stoicism, and shame.

These wounds aren’t just psychological. They’re cultural. We learn to amputate parts of ourselves to be seen as “real men.” Then, once those parts are gone, we’re told we’re hollow, unfeeling, unreachable.

Is it any wonder that so many men lash out, break down, or go numb?

As an anthropologist, I study initiation and myth, and one of the oldest frameworks we have for understanding transformation is the hero’s journey. The structure is ancient and simple: departure, ordeal, return. A boy leaves the known world. He enters the unknown, faces trials, slays monsters, finds something precious, and brings it back home.

But what no one tells you is that the hero is wounded along the way. And it’s the wound—not the sword or the prize—that marks him. The wound is what makes him human.

And yet in our modern world, most men are sent out on the journey without a map. No elders. No rituals. No community to return to. They wander the wilderness of masculinity alone, believing the lie that to be hurt is to be weak—and that weakness must be hidden at all costs.

Anger Is A Compass

Anger, when left without expression, curdles into destruction. It implodes or explodes—on the self or others. But anger itself is not the enemy. Anger is a compass. It tells us where the injury is. It signals a boundary, a need, a truth that’s been ignored.

I’ve been told I shouldn’t be angry. That my feelings are too much. That as a man, especially a white queer man, my anger is suspect—always on the edge of entitlement or violence. But that’s a trap, too. Because when anger is denied, it doesn’t vanish. It metastasizes.

What I’m angry about isn’t just the rejection I experienced as a child. It’s the erasure I face as an adult queer man trying to reclaim masculinity as something beautiful and whole. I’m angry that so much of the discourse reduces manhood to caricature. That any desire to honor masculinity is seen as a step backward rather than a necessary reckoning forward.

But here’s the truth: masculinity isn’t toxic. Disembodied masculinity is. Unexamined masculinity. Masculinity without initiation, without care, without kinship.

We Need Brothers, Not Bystanders

What saved me wasn’t perfection. It was people. Not just chosen family, but chosen kin. Men who held space for my grief. Brothers—blood and otherwise—who reminded me that masculinity doesn’t need to dominate to be strong. That healthy masculinity is about presence, not posturing. That a “bromance” isn’t just a punchline—it can be sacred. Tender. Real.

As an anthropologist, I see that across cultures and throughout history, masculinity has had shape, structure, and responsibility. Rites of passage weren’t just hazing rituals—they were invitations into adult responsibility. They said: You belong. Your strength matters. You’re part of something bigger.

But when that structure disappears, masculinity becomes directionless. Either it implodes into shame, or it explodes into violence.

That’s why kinship matters. That’s why community matters.

Because no one gets through the hero’s journey alone. You need allies. You need witnesses. You need someone to look you in the eye and say: You’re not broken. You’re just bleeding. Let me help you bandage that.

So yes, I am a queer man. I am also a man who wants to feel strong. Who wants to protect, to guide, to build. Who wants other men—not in spite of my queerness, but because of it. And I am not broken for wanting that. I am not toxic for holding that desire.

It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to grieve the father who never came. The rites you never had. The boyhood you were shamed out of. It’s okay to want more from manhood than a script of silence and control.

Anger isn’t a flaw. It’s a flare in the dark.

Follow it home.