The thing is you're speaking entirely about men of influence. I would have a heck of a time finding the citation but I recall one study where subjects were sho

The thing is you're speaking entirely about men of influence. I would have a heck of a time finding the citation but I recall one study where subjects were shown one of two people. The general idea of it was that one of the subjects was shown to get better answers on a test and generally was more successful. The other was a neer-do-well. Then both of these subjects tripped. The neer-do-well who tripped was judged even more negatively. The achiever was judged more positively. Almost as if the mistake had "humanized" them. I also notice that when people talk about men who are in touch with their feminine side, and open about things like being sexually assaulted, we see Terry Crews types who are built like a brick shithouse and are oozing with exaggerated masculinity and success. Can man who is already judged as weak and effeminette get away wiht crying and be treated well? I don't think that's the case and in fact I think the reverse is true. If a woman in the military trying to make a name for herself bursts into tears regularly will she be seen as strong enough to not break down in the midst of battle? On top of that point... I think you're missing that the crying in all the cases you're talking about is quite controlled. To the point of Jibes about both Boehner and Obama playing up the waterworks to drive sympathy. Neither of these men are sobbing "I can't do this job... I'm not good enough". They're sobbing at some vague distant injustice to show how much they care about something. So I'm not even sure these examples demonstrate that crying is culturally accepted... and instead they merely show that specific circumstances allow for crying (high-status man, tragedy not caused by yourself, etc) >Mandela I think old men get an exception from cultural expectations around crying and i'm not sure why.