dreadful disease

Males in Western culture tend to project their emotions outside of themselves. They don't integrate them as part of their personalities. This approach to life actually tends to make them feel more vulnerable, less whole, than if they were actually to become more emotional beings. They often do not know what their reactions to something are. Can you imagine how alienating this must be, to feel this way? Japanese men, by contrast, are generally quite aware of what their reactions are, to any particular circumstance. They often find something mirthful or ironic about various situations. The irony is not that, which is particularly Western -- the irony of emotional detachment. Rather, they are quite aware that they are required to do things that they don't especially want to do. They are quite natural in the ways that they acknowledge this.

What I have concluded is that the problem of detachment is not one that relates to males as such, but to the peculiar cultural disposition of Western males.

The not listening mode, the not paying attention, if taken too far, can put these men into real danger as they become further and further alienated (not just from others, but) from themselves. I really learned a lot from Ashis Nandy's work:

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Sociology/IndividualinSociety/?view=usa&ci=9780195622379

Although it is about the relationship between the colonised and the colonisers, the psychological dynamics of this relationship can be applied to gender.

What Nandy says is that those who refuse to affirm the dignity of the gentler, childlike aspects in others (the colonised are viewed as inferior and in some ways as children) also cannot affirm it within themselves.