Last week, Nicki DeMarco at The Washington Post hosted an episode of the “Post Reports” daily podcast on the topic “Nearly all mass shootings are committed by men. Why isn’t masculinity a bigger part of the debate?”

Well, nearly all those who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944 were men. According to the statistics website Areppim, since 1901, over 94 percent of all Nobel Prize winners have been men. Did we ever ask if masculinity was part of the issue? Of course not.

Perhaps we should ask why we keep telling our young boys that there’s something wrong with masculinity. We call it “toxic masculinity.” Boys are criticized if they open a door for a young lady.

No wonder some boys don’t want to grow up to be men.

Masculinity has nothing to do with the cowardice of mass violence. Let’s stop pretending that it does.

Allan Neff

Scarborough