If you're wondering why I wrote my new book, A BETTER MAN: A (MOSTLY SERIOUS) LETTER TO MY SON, this tweet kind of sums it up.

I'm often asked my interviewers if I'm optimistic about the next generation. I tell them I am but then I see shit like this and I just kind of throw up my hands. First and foremost, it's a hack joke, which irritates the comedian in me.

Second, though, is how a comment like that demeans men *and* women. It's as if she's saying, "Real men don't care about their lives."

Of course, the follow-up thought is that "Nor do they care enough about their loved ones to make the barest effort to protect *them*".

It's suggesting that only a *woman* would be - what - weak enough(?) to care about her health and the health of her loved ones. One of the central themes of my book is that love requires enormous strength, for men and women, because it requires the ability to let down our guard.

To admit our own fallibilities, our vulnerabilities, our need for intimacy. Think about the strength required to allow yourself to be that open with another person. When we diminish men for allowing themselves to show their vulnerability (to a fucking disease of all things)...

We rob them of the fullness of their humanity. We say, "You are only allowed to be one thing, the tough, invulnerable (and purseless) man." We don't grant him the space to say, "I'm concerned about getting sick" AS ANY RATIONAL HUMAN would be concerned.

I understand the pithy spitfire girl thing Tomi is going for, but it's dumb. And it's hack. And she sucks.