In praise of male courage

The heroes of Bondi Beach should be celebrated in an era of 'toxic masculinity'.

- Jemima Kelly

Sunday, Dec 14, was a day of horrific male brutality: a father and son slaughtering 15 innocent people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, on Sydney's Bondi Beach. But it was also a day of astonishing male courage.

Two men (one of them the Holocaust survivor) died while protecting their loved ones; another was killed while trying to disarm the attackers before they began shooting.

Still another, an unarmed 43-year-old shop owner and father of two named Ahmed al Ahmed, has become a global hero after being filmed managing to wrestle one of the gunmen's weapons away, saving the lives of an unknown number of people.

"I'm going to die," he said before taking on the attacker, according to his cousin. "Please see my family (and tell them) that I went down to save people's lives." He was shot five times in the arm and shoulder, but survived.

Our largely peaceful, rather decadent age offers few opportunities for such acts of great physical courage and heroism. We spend as much time talking about "psychological safety" as physical safety; silence is equated with violence on issues in which only one opinion is deemed morally acceptable.

Yet when physical bravery is needed, it is often one particular group of people who are ready to risk their lives and sacrifice their bodies for the sake of others: men.