Tragedy is not a template for masculinity

The killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis is a tragedy. A 37-year-old intensive care nurse is dead. His family is grieving. Nothing written afterward should lose sight of that human reality.

But tragedy does not require us to suspend judgment, nor does it obligate us to turn a contested incident into a moral lesson about masculinity.

That is exactly what parts of the media have attempted to do. In a recent MSNBC essay, Pretti’s actions were framed as a model of “true masculinity”: courage, protection, and moral clarity opposing state power. The author declared that Pretti “demonstrated an admirable model of masculinity” and concluded that “if more men were like him, the world would be a better place.” The implication is that physical intervention, even against