Life & Wisdom Quote by Andrew Cohen

The sting in Andrew Cohen's line is the phrase "never had the freedom to question" - a quiet reversal of the default story we tell about masculinity. Men are usually framed as the beneficiaries of a gender system. Cohen tilts the camera: whatever power men may hold, many have been drafted into a role so rigid it passes for nature. The "two-dimensional picture" isn’t just limiting; it’s flat in the way a cartoon is flat, all hard angles and primary colors: stoic, dominant, sexually assertive, emotionally mute. A simplified sketch that reads well in advertising, locker rooms, and politics because it’s easy to enforce and easy to punish deviations from.

The intent is diagnostic, but also strategic. By describing conformity as coercion rather than personal failure, Cohen offers men an off-ramp from shame. He’s not excusing harmful behavior; he’s explaining the pipeline that makes harm feel like belonging. The subtext is that masculinity has been policed so successfully that it masquerades as choice - men "choose" silence, "choose" aggression, "choose" self-reliance - when the alternatives have been socially priced as humiliation.

Contextually, the quote sits comfortably in the post-2010s churn: #MeToo, rising mental health talk, backlash politics, and a culture newly fluent in the idea that gender is a script. Cohen’s point lands because it treats that script as institutional, not individual: a narrow definition of manhood doesn’t just restrict men; it keeps everyone else living inside its shadow.