Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History owns them. These men were petrified in both senses of the word: paralyzed and turned to stone. Their refusal to express feeling killed them. Anachronistic men. Those poor, poor boys.

As a culture, we perceive men not as sacred or sensitive, but as things to be hurt, repeatedly and violently, in order to test their mettle. Manhood is a prize awarded to the most scarred.

Suicide has overtaken car accidents, heart disease and cancer as the biggest killer of British men under the age of 45, and male rates of substance abuse, violence and imprisonment are eye-watering. And yet dysfunctional emotional regulation continues to be aligned with alpha masculinity.

Our culture is now one of masculine triumphalism, in which transhistorically feminine expressions – empathy, sweetness, volubility, warmth – are seen as impediments to a woman’s professional trajectory in many sectors.

The penis is always depicted assufficient in itself, the genital equivalent of the Eye of Sauron.

Strauss admits to being obsessed by his mother's rejection, and with the resultant rents in self-esteem. The Game echoes with disturbingly abusive comments leveled at his adolescent self, a self he feels was unacceptable. With bravado, he expresses regret that he didn’t rack up more sexual conquests in his teens; in person, he expresses a truer regret that he was intimidated by life itself.