Empathy and Masculinity: Why Caring Is Not a Failure of Manhood

On James Talarico, compassionate masculinity, and refusing to become smaller to satisfy someone else’s definition of a man.

James Talarico is being called “low-T” in Texas politics. Think about that for a minute. Not wrong. Not misguided. Not ineffective. Not even merely too liberal for Texas. The insult is that he is somehow not enough of a man.

But it wasn’t a lack of a male role model. It was just who I was.  When my father was alive, I remember being a first grader, upset at dinner as I told them about a boy who was constantly picked on, every day, to the point of his crying as he walked from the bus stop to his apartment – every day. My father, along with my mother, encouraged me to defend him, that not joining the group of bullies wasn’t enough.  I needed to be his friend. 

Maybe people were right. I did need a man in my life—it was that man at the kitchen table, it certainly was not the one they imagined. He died not too long after, but in the short time he was in my life he taught me more about manhood than anyone ever could have. And it was my mother who gave me strength and endurance in the face of hardship and my grandmother who gave me hope and faith when all else failed.

I was artistic and spent a lot of time drawing and painting. I liked clothes and expressing myself with them.  I went to an art focused college where I was encouraged to be me. I liked to dress differently and wanted to look nice. I was animated when I spoke and expressive with my hands. I wore earrings and various jewelry. Those things were treated as evidence in a case against my masculinity.

And that narrow definition comes with rules: Be hard. Be loud. Don’t care too much. Don’t show feelings. Don’t dress too well. Don’t move too freely. Don’t try to understand people whose lives are different from yours.

The Cost of Hiding My Empathy to Fit In

In my twenties, that criticism became tiresome—and sometimes turned into harassment. As I approached my thirties I started to edit my appearance.

The earrings came out. My clothes became quieter and more “masculine.” My mannerisms became more restrained. Without fully realizing it, I began trying to occupy less space as myself.  Worst of all, I lost the empathy that came naturally to me.  More accurately I didn’t lose it, I just pushed that kid—the one who felt everything so naturally—deep into my gut.  As Hank in Family Guy said, “swallow another emotion”.  I avoided anything that would make me feel.  Refused to be open to anyone about what I thought.  I wouldn’t let myself feel anything and allowed myself to appear empty on the outside.  All the while, there was still me inside.  I kept caring but didn’t show it.  It all weighed heavily on me.  At least I never became one of those types that hated feeling so much that they treated others like shit.  I just avoided any emotional contact.

I lost something.

What society was telling me was that a man’s job was to provide, to be tough, to protect his family, and to never look too closely at the pain of other people. I never really believed it and lived a life as husband and father that I believe was anything but that.  I was still hung up on the financial support, but I think that came more from watching my mother struggle. I believe I was open with my wife and a caring man for my children.

A good father is not just someone who pays bills. A good father is there. He picks his children up when they fall. He does not tell them not to cry.  He listens. He teaches his son how to ‘be a man’.  He protects his daughter through encouragement not bravado that fills his own ego. Most importantly he teaches both his son and daughter how to become caring human beings.

My adult son eventually told me something simple that I needed to hear: “Just be you.”  I don’t think he meant anything epic in saying it, but an impact was made.

So the earrings came back. The clothes came back. More importantly, after decades, I’ve decided that I’ve put enough time in and just don’t give a fuck about what the haters say.

Empathy Is Not “Woke”—It Is Basic Human Decency

My first instinct when I see someone living differently from me is usually simple: let them live their life.  I do not need to make their story my own. And I do not need to see them as people waiting for my approval, assistance, or support.

A single mother trying to raise a child and earn a living deserves support, not contempt. A gay man looking for love and belonging deserves to live openly. A trans person deserves the same basic freedom every one of us wants: the freedom to move through the world as themselves without being singled out, humiliated, or turned into a political prop.

If nobody was trying to take those freedoms away, we would not need to fight so hard to protect them.  And that right there is why Talarico and people like us need to say something.  Because all of these strong freedom lovers are constantly demonizing or passing legislation to take freedoms away from others.

That is the part so many people miss—or refuse to see. The reason we talk about LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, civil rights, and the humanity of immigrants is not because someone is asking for special treatment. It is because there are people working every day to restrict those rights, make those lives more dangerous, and declare some Americans less worthy of dignity than others.

Then empathy gets rebranded as “woke.” Not in the original sense of being awake to racial injustice, but as a sneering political insult: snowflake, weak, soft, unmanly.

It is bullshit.  I can tell you all the manly things I do, for the bona fides of it, but at almost sixty I no longer give a fuck.   I can appreciate self-reliance and still believe in helping people. I can be a man without needing to dominate everyone around me.

That should not be controversial.

You can see the errors of your country, your family, and yourself—and still love all three.  Understanding the truth of our past is to move beyond it with improvement.  Wanting to correct some of the wrongs of yesterday today is a good thing.  It’s not anti-American.  You don’t teach American exceptionalism the Trump way, by washing it away from history.  You teach by remembering and changing.

So please, rather than tell me, ‘America, love it or leave it,’ stop and think: MAGA? If it sucks so much, you get the fuck out.

Real Weakness Is Fear of Other People’s Freedom

The loudest defenders of traditional masculinity often seem deeply afraid of difference. In their minds empathy and masculinity are opposite sides of a coin.

They are angry at women who will not submit to them. Angry at gay people who refuse to hide. Angry at trans people who insist on being seen. Angry at Black Americans who say Black Lives Matter—not because the phrase diminishes anyone else, but because it forces the country to confront the fact that too many people have acted as though Black lives mattered less.

Making room at the table for someone else does not mean you lose your seat.

Yet there is a whole political culture built on the feeling that equality is theft. That if women have autonomy, if immigrants have opportunity, if queer people can live openly, if Black Americans demand equal treatment, then white Christian men must somehow be losing power.

The truth is more uncomfortable: some people do not want equality. They want hierarchy. They want a world where they get to decide who belongs, who is respectable, who is masculine enough, American enough, Christian enough, or deserving enough.

That is not strength. It is insecurity with a microphone.

A Bigger America Requires Compassionate Masculinity

I am a first-generation American. I do not take this country for granted, but on the other side also do not have any sense of entitlement for when my family arrived or where I started from.  The American Dream is for each generation to do better than the previous, it’s an aspiration, not a right.  It takes work… and luck.

The best thing about America is that no single heritage owns it. We are not bound by one bloodline, one religion, one culture, or one idea of what a “real” American looks like. People come here because they want to work, raise families, contribute, and take part in a promise that is bigger than any one group.  As Trump leaned into white middle-age fear he claimed of immigrants that ‘some are good people’, he was dead wrong – the vast majority are what I describe above – it’s smaller than ‘some’ that are bad.

Ronald Reagan famously described America as a place where anyone can come and become an American. That is one of the country’s most powerful ideals.

And yes, it is also one of our great struggles. We are constantly tempted to retreat into tribes and decide that people who arrived later, worship differently, love differently, or look different are somehow less entitled to the American dream.

They are not.

James Talarico may be the latest target of this particular style of political attack. But the issue is much larger than one Texas politician. When a man is attacked as “low-T” because he has empathy, supports freedom, and refuses to dehumanize people, the insult says much more about the attacker than the target.

Masculinity is Caring, I Will Not Shrink Myself to Prove I Am a Man

I am done shrinking myself to satisfy that kind of masculinity.

I do not need to prove I am a man by becoming harder, colder, or less compassionate. I do not need to become someone else to make insecure people more comfortable.

I am not less of a man because I care.

I am more fully myself because I do.

In 1999, George Bush called it Compassionate Conservatism. In 2026 we can call this expanded idea Compassionate Masculinity.