Opinion: Dear young men, look to leaders who keep respect as a core value

Editor’s Note: We acknowledge that gender is a spectrum — not a binary. These letters are written to all kids. It is our addition to the post-election open letters written to future generations.

We’re sorry. The outcome of last week’s election will affect you very differently depending on who you are and where you are from. But regardless of your background, the men who voted in this election have failed you all. The past eight years have been very difficult, and on a lot of things people have disagreed more than they have agreed. Yet through all of that anger and distrust, our nation has been led by a man with honor and charisma, a man who always treated women as his equal. The same cannot be said for the man who was elected on Tuesday.

This is very important for you to understand. You see, in the coming months, and, yes, the coming four years, you will hear a lot about President Obama and how he may or may not have set our nation on the path toward prosperity. I want you to tune that out for now, and consider what he taught us about how to be a man.

By now, you’re probably familiar with that phrase. Be a man. You probably think it means you’re being too emotional, or that you’re in pain and you need to suck it up. It does not mean that, and I hope you will realize that anyone who uses the phrase in that way is blinded by their narrow understanding of masculinity.

Our president-elect is, unfortunately, an example of someone who has grown up misunderstanding the phrase — with terrible consequences. Our current president has instead shown us what it actually means to be a man.

It means you can be smart, without being arrogant. It means you can be emotional, without being worried. And, most importantly, it means you can be kind to other people, without being disingenuous.

It does not mean you should objectify women to assert your dominance over them.

By treating women with respect, President Obama exemplified what it means to be a man. And it is for that reason that so many of us looked up to him — not as a politician, but as a person — during his eight years in the White House.

The forces that have given power to Donald Trump have shown that we need to be vocal in order to put down the dangerous parts of our culture.

Unfortunately, a Trump presidency could mean that male voices are the only ones that are given a fair shake. And for that reason you must speak out against injustice when you see it.

You will not get the same luxury growing up that we have had the past eight years, when we could look to our leader as a role model. And that means it is on us all to stand up so we can make sure that this injustice does not happen again.

So what we ask of you is this: Be a man.