It was the early 2000s. Teachers would say things like “you’re acting like a girl, show everyone you are a man” and whatnot. Guess you got lucky and I’m glad to hear it.
My parents and school teachers and peers made it very clear to me that if you show emotion such as sadness, jealousy, frustration, fear, or anxiety, you were not living up to being a male and thus are weak and deserving of punishment, physical violence, and social isolation and ridicule.
My government is mostly privatized. We even hired a consulting firm to figure out how the government could lower consulting fees. The consultants found that if we consult less, we will have lower consulting fees. We paid over half a million for that single report: