“WRT boys’ emotional states. To avoid stereotyping and misandry, we’d have to assert that boys and girls have not only the same number of emotional states, they have exactly the same ones and in the same proportions. Anybody got anything empirical on that?”
I can see what you’re trying to do, except it fails miserably. Mad, Sad, Happy are what they tend to feel? Fear, jealousy, impatience, excitement, curiosity, anxiety, love, compassion, affectionate, all states that even young boys have. Tom’s description limited them to feeling a lesser variety of emotions and paints the female gender in such a way that it really sounds like they’re far more varied in their emotions, have far more of them.
I’m sorry but on the average, I find it a total crock of %*#). I distinctly remember a very wide range of emotions of both sexes throughout my childhood, and see it in other boys and men today. Continuing this whole women have far more emotional states bullshit simply reinforces the macho bullshit of boys don’t cry, it’s extremely easy to understand the link. Boys are expected to bury their emotions, if we continue beating out that both genders are very different in their emotional response to the point of thinking men have a very limited ranged of emotions compared to women it simply keeps that silly idea going on.
There’s a reason people get happy, sad, or mad….it’s OTHER emotional states feeding into it. What makes you sad? Pain, fear, jealousy, envy, What makes you mad? pain, fear, jealousy, What makes you happy? Fulfillment, love, affection, care, excitement, accomplishing goals, and other positive interactions. It’s about time people started opening their mind and getting in touch with their emotions and actually trying to UNDERSTAND THEM.
Tl:Dr, continuing to teach generalizations that are incorrect contributes to stifling the emotional development of our boys and men. This site is filled with stories of men who are directly harmed by this restricted thinking of male emotions. It’s really an easy concept to understand.
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As I said, have we got anything empirical on the question of whether men and women, boys and girls, have identical emotional states, both as to category and intensity?
Until we have that, disparate displaying of emotion by men and women in all cultures and all millenia has, as a least hypothesis, the probability that there is not an identity.
Wow, blast from the past!
As to gender symmetry on emotions: (going to generalize a bit) I believe both genders feel the same emotions, the levels may vary a bit though especially at different stages of life. From what I gather from women a period/around that time of month can be quite stressful and for men their sex drives do appear to be pretty quick and easier to engage so there seems to be some biological differences which can influence emotions, but still we both get mad, sad, happy, horny, jealous, etc.
Another thing influencing emotions would be how we raise our kids, “boys don’t cry” will lead to men internalizing their pain and doing their best not to show “weakness” which leads to quite a lot of women asking why men don’t open up for example. Doesn’t mean the men don’t feel those emotions but they can be pretty damn good at hiding them, which can lead to perceptions that men aren’t as “emotional” as women.
I have a pretty neutral face at times, and don’t show much on the outside, I can appear to be annoyed or disinterested yet internally I could be excited, happy, or sad, angry, anxious. I still hate crying in front of others because of the message I got when growing up in our society was boys/men don’t cry. Now previously hiding your emotions would have been beneficial so your predators didn’t know you were in a weakened state, but these days we’re generally safe which gives us the privilege of being more open with our emotions.
What is the purpose of treating our kids differently based on gender? Do boys act like y and girls like x because of instinct and nature? Is it because we teach them to act like that? I’d say it’s a mix of nature and nurture but I don’t see the need to limit our children or ourselves to gender stereotypes.
I am forever lamenting the gendered divide in how we talk about emotionality. Females do tend to be more emotionally expressive, but it doesn’t mean that they experience more emotions and it is not because they are inherently more emotional. We live in a culture that teaches and expects men and boys to suppress their emotional range; the only culturally acceptable emotions for men to express are anger and joy, and perhaps sadness in sanctioned contexts – like when their sports team loses or when they’re grieving. Emotionally limited expression is imposed on males, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t actually experience the full range of emotions. Part of my concern in working toward gender equality has been to break down this very real barrier that men face in emotional expression. I want for males to be able to express what they’re feeling when they’re feeling it without fear of reprisal, or without fear of having their masculinity attacked. It does very real harm to teach one gender to limit their emotional expression. If I were to ever have a son, you better bet he’d get the same emotional education my daughter has.
Below you say “emoting like women”, but I think that that is also part of the problem – it reinforces that the way women emote is somehow excessive or inappropriate (especially for men). Everyone emotes in different ways, within and between genders. I, for example, have a very masculine pattern of emoting (so I can fully empathize with males on this issue). It’s not that I don’t experience emotion, but my expression of it is often limited.
As a student of Clinical Psychology, I also become concerned about the implications this has for mental health. Females are more likely to receive diagnoses that describe them as excessively emotional, yet males are often suffering and because of their reticence to talk about or express emotions that are perceived as ‘weak’, they either don’t seek the help they need, or when they do their symptoms are overlooked because they present differently than in women. I don’t know that we can undo years of inculcation, of males being taught that emotionality is not masculine, but we can certainly pave the way for future generations to unlearn these lessons and teach them to be able to healthily express a myriad of emotions!
I agree, lets take it further: Unless we have empirical evidence that people called richard have the same emotional states than everyone else then its at least possible that they don’t.
Peter. Precisely. And that means any concern that I don’t emote like somebody else because of my upbringing, that I’ ve been oppressed suppressed repressed and depressed by the awful patriarchy needs to examine the actual basic emotional capacities of one Aubrey.
And since that can’t be done…where’s the fun?
Archy. you “believe”. Anything empirical?
In the meantime, I’d like somebody to support the uncontesed assertion that men would be better served to emote like women. Is it not possible that women would be better served to emote like men? If not, why not?
Nothing empirical, just personal observations. I can’t see how men would have less emotions as in the range (we all feel fear, jealousy, happiness, and all the others). There is the possibility that men are more likely to hide emotion, both as instinct and also passed down in culture.
As for women emoting like men, opening up is helpful for dealing with stress, depression etc. I’ve seen these effects where men hide their pain on the inside and drink it away for example, women here in Australia I believe are more likely to go to the doctor and seek help for things like depression, whilst the suicide rate for males is 4x higher.
Is it helpful to pigeonhole each other into certain roles? I think instead of emoting like women, we both find a common ground or simply let people emote however they want. Why do men have to emote like men, women like women? Why can’t it be individual?
Archy. If we were letting people emote at their own speed, as individuals, conversations like this would stop before they started, leaving innocent pixels unmolested.
Agreed, it’s sad that I feel quite restricted in expressing myself emotionally as a man because of silly stereotypes and gender roles. I am finding more confidence in expressing emotion these days but it has led others to question me as a man before…
I found it quite troubling when trying to relate with children, women seem far more relaxed and at ease when dealing with kids but I felt like it was only acceptable for me to show little interest in them, not go too much on the awww that’s cute, etc. I see men and women act quite differently with kids, pets, each other and wonder how much of that is nature and how much of that is from them watching their own parents dealing with various things. Do our kids follow the same gender parent more so in developing their identity and how to act?
We are molded into our genders from the time we’re small. Ever heard the way grownups talk to male infants versus female infants? It’s a nuanced sociological process that begins at birth – the pronouncement that “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl”. Just as you may have felt restricted in your (acceptable) emotional expressions, I’ve been characterized as strange or unusual for my non-feminine emoting style. I don’t think it’s merely emulating a same-gender parent that inculcates males and females into their respective roles. Parents also actively shape their children into gender-conforming beings (I’ve too many times heard parents tell their boys to “suck it up” and “stop crying” even going so far as to call them “princess” as motivation to get them to desist from emotional displays). Clearly this can be harmful. Girls, on the other hands, are often rewarded for emotive behaviour. This isn’t just something that happens at home, though. Children police one another’s gender incessantly. These are a few reasons why I think the gender binary is detrimental to males and females. It’s got us pigeon-holed into these roles that often inhibit our ability to express ourselves fully. Men are not inherently unable to express a full range of emotions, and females aren’t inherently emotionally expressive. These are things we learn along the way (apparently I didn’t get that memo, though).
Yep, I see this quite a bit. Even listening to friends speak of the other gender, how women are this, how men are that yet I know plenty of people that don’t fit those molds of their gender?
That’s why like the Princess Free Zone facebook page a mother setup for her child that doesn’t fit the gender roles, one of the most awesome pictures was the daughter using powertools and doing the “manly” job. There’s clearly a lack of female engineers for instance, and male teachers, etc, many roles in society do seem to be suited to gender before skill, individuals exist but not enough in my eyes. We don’t have to reinforce these roles after birth, if they exist then let’s treat out kids in similar ways and let nature take care of the rest. I have female cousins who are quite hands on, do quite manly jobs n tasks, one was a butcher that is very strong and doesn’t take shit from anyone. I know of guys that are quite “effeminate”, I myself have an interest in fashion, I’ll gladly listen to a group of women talk about fashion, makeup, all manner of “feminine” things because they are quite interesting. I’ll also listen to the guys talk about the car stuff, etc, yet I see guys who seem to run at the talk of fashion because it’s not manly? How is it going to hurt them?
Such restricted views can’t be good for anyone, especially those who don’t follow their gender stereotype. Some of the strongest people, with the least amount of emotional volatility I know are female, the stereotypes of men and women I hear about just don’t fit everyone. Some of the biggest aggravations I hear men speak of women are of their emotional state, and I wonder how much of that is due to women being raised one way, and men in another? I recently underwent an experience of reflecting on my life, learning as much as I could about humans, emotions, psychology, and I started to understand both genders better than I had previously. Before I saw women to be different to the guys, emotionally volatile, but these days I feel that isn’t the case at all. The guys have those emotions, they’re just buried more but I spot them easy now, the only major difference I find is the women are more willing to show their emotion, more willing to speak of it, and their speech is slightly different in how they express themselves. This of course is a generalization because I do know men and women that differ.
There is the men are from mars, women from venus books which CAN help explain the differences a bit but I don’t believe they are locked in stone, nor fit everyone. Once I stopped thinking of people based on their gender alone and realized they’re individuals it became easier to understand them, men are not X, women are not y, they’re individuals and whilst some of a gender might be similar there are others who vary a lot. The most common theme is trying to fit a gendered role and identity, masculinity and femininity, and in some respects that is ok but others it feels quite restrictive.
Anyway I am rambling and having trouble expressing my mind atm, still learning how to put thought to paper/keyboard since all of this emotional talk, deep n meaningful talk was discouraged heavily where I grew up in my childhood and it took a major battle with depression for me to dare say fuckit and move away from the stoic macho male persona.
One thing I can say on how this macho male shit really became apparent was at a funeral recently, I was crying heavily and the one thing I noticed was how many men were fighting to “remain strong” and not show the tears whilst the women were far more open. The women and children seemed to be embracing and hugging each other more than the guys who sorta sat/stood alone and I felt that was quite sad. I felt very self-conscious and didn’t want people to see me crying but also realizing that I need to let go of that behaviour and let my emotions be free. It was a sad event, it’s normal for people to cry at a funeral so why should I feel bad as a male?
I’ve heard the boys don’t cry line so many times, the insults of being called a girl for having tears thrown at people, seen how this goes to extremes where men are less likely to ask for help and don’t goto the doctor to remain manly. They want so badly to fix it themselves, they’ll hide in the mancave to cry if they ever do, and what for? To deny ourselves comfort in the arms of a loved one? To appear stronger? How is it strength to suffer alone instead of getting help? If something has you crying, obviously you’re emotionally in need so why not seek comfort? I denied myself the help, I saw many men do this and how it tore them down, this stubborn mule attitude to their mental health which is why they have untreated depression right now and their life suffers for it.
Remember that the way we treat our kids from birth will help define them in adulthood, we’re willing to teach our men to seek help for their car and fix it yet not teach them to learn of their emotions, study them, find out what they mean, accept them and embrace them to the point where they’re less likely to seek help if something is wrong? There’s a reason men SUCCESSFULLY commit suicide more even though more women attempt it, women are far more likely to seek help whereas men want to go it alone too much and we end up with men dying 4:1 from suicide. It’s funny we’re told to man up, eat cement n harden the fuck up yet so afraid to ask for help/show emotion/goto a doctor. I don’t call that strength, I call that weakness.
Yes! It is all those things you speak of having experienced that make me so adamant in my pursuit of dismantling the gender binary. I’m tired of men having to be macho and stoic, and women being considered emotionally unstable. I’m tired of the ways gender constructs can seriously harm both males and females.
My daughter is very androgynous, but even more than that, I’ve provided her with the language to counteract the deeply embedded assumptions of her peers about gender. She may not revolutionize her grade 2 classroom, but she is able to combat gender stereotypes when they arise, and perhaps make even one child think differently. It actually makes me quite upset when I hear children other than my daughter talking because I can notice their very gendered language. It doesn’t have to be that way.
If I had a son, I would teach him how to be aware of and express his emotions just as I teach my daughter (it’s actually not something we’re born knowing how to do – we have to learn appropriate language to articulate our emotions). It’s been a bit of a struggle to teach my daughter because I can give her the language, but I because I’m not overly emotionally expressive (in fact, I can be extremely emotionally repressive, so I do have some insight on how harmful this can be), she hears me telling her how to do these things, but she’d have to observe others to see how to appropriately express her emotion.
In fact it seems young boys often have more varied emotions than adult men in some cases are much more likely to vocalize emotions that are considered to be effeminate and innapropriate according to our societies gender roles, crying expressing love towards a friend of the same sex actually talking about their emotions despite an obvious tendency to be impulsive and immature in some ways young boys can seem more emotionally mature than some of us adult men. Which just goes to show how badly we all get miseducated in this society.
“in some ways young boys can seem more emotionally mature than some of us adult men. Which just goes to show how badly we all get miseducated in this society.”
I would say the opposite. First both women and men display less emotions as they get older across almost all societies and cultures. That is normal. It is a sign of maturity. People realize that their views of the world and their emotional states do not necessarily reflect reality. They become less selfish and less egotistical. This is emotional maturity.
“WRT boys’ emotional states. To avoid stereotyping and misandry, we’d have to assert that boys and girls have not only the same number of emotional states, they have exactly the same ones and in the same proportions. Anybody got anything empirical on that?”
Actually I think the only assertion that needs to be made is that boys and girls should be free to take on whatever emotional states they take on (barring any harmful ones of course). They don’t have to have the exact same emotional states, ranges, and proportions. They just need to be free to develop without being corraled into having ranges, states, and proportions based on their gender.
The only place they should be “the same” per se is that both boys and girls should both be able to emotionally develop as they see fit.
Danny. They aren’t free. If men/boys don’t emote like women/girls, Something Is Dreadfully Wrong and must be addressed.
The implication must be that they are, by nature, endowed with identical emotional states and each in identical intensity. Otherwise, there would be nothing that is Dreadfully Wrong, and where would the viewers-with-alarm be?
“Something Is Dreadfully Wrong and must be addressed.”
Why? Can’t men be Stoic. Your hypothesis is that since men and women show emotional disparity this implies men have few and less intense emotions. It could also be that men are trained not to display emotions, to control themselves and not to show weakness. Whereas women are also trained but to a lesser extent. This is a cultural stereotype every bit as strong as the women are more emotional stereotype. You have many movies where the guy tears up and explains that he just got something in his eye.
But what is wrong with stoicism. Why do we have to show emotion and dwell on emotions. To me emotions are nothing more than a rough guide to whether something is wrong, right, good or bad. Often they are unreliable and sometimes they are deadly (suicidal depression). But they simply aren’t that important and they are definitely not worth getting all worked up about.
It is time for the “girls and boys are the same” gang to get a clue. Boys and grils have always been, still are, and will always be different. It doesn’t matter how much the feminization of America continues. Yeas we all feel the same emotions. We, as men, just dont typically FEEL the need to spend the next 3 hours talking about it. Maybe its that males process their emotions in a different manner more than that they have different emotions. Regardless, what the author is saying is that men are different and need to be treated that way.
It is time for the “boys as a class are different from girls as a class” gang to get a clue. ALL individuals have always been, still, are, and always will be different. The average difference between gender-defined classes for most characteristics is dwarfed by the variation within each gender.
assman.
My point is where is the empirical work demonstrating that, absent nasty social conditioning, men and women would display emotion in the same way?
A sub-question is where is the empirical work demonstrating the validity of the planted axiom that it would serve men better to emote like women do, rather than it would serve women better to emote as men do.
Kirsten. True, as regards tails of the normal distribution. Point is all those folks in between.
In regards to the question of empirical evidence that social conditioning constructs the way men and women display emotion; you may want to look into anthropological studies of the way men and women “naturally” behave.
Four tribes, with very different cultures, come to mind:
The Arapesh: both men and women are equally socialized to be non-violent, emotional, and nurturing. There is no noticeable difference between the genders in emotional expression, and men are equally considered naturally nurturing when it comes to raising infants.
Tchambuli Tribe: the women are unemotional, business-like, and are considered the “family providers”. The men gossip, put on make-up, and hope the women find them pretty enough. Women, not men, pursue and initiate sexual contact.
Kaluli Tribe: Men are expected to express grief, anxiety, and sadness openly. The more dramatic his display of emotion; the more “manly” he is considered to be.
The Mundugamor Tribe: Both genders are conditioned to be equally unemotional and aggressive. There is no noticeable difference in emotive behavior between the genders; that includes child rearing. The women are not naturally nurturing, and disdain the job of mothering their infants.
If men are unemotional because they have a Y chromosome; and women are naturally better parents because they don’t; then why are these other cultures so immune to the effects of natural biology? If men in other cultures “naturally” emote like women; and women in other cultures are “naturally” unemotional…. Then it stands to reason that social conditioning is what creates the “natural” behavior. Your behavior is a direct result of social conditioning: not your Y chromosome.
As for the sub question; would society be better if men were allowed the freedom to express emotion like women? Or if women were conditioned to emote like men?
Among the (emotionally repressed) Mundugamor tribe: rape and wife beating are common, and violence between men is a fact of life. Men do not touch their children, children are beaten daily, misbehaving children are punished by being left to die alone, and many infants (mostly boys because they are considered to have low-value) end up being thrown in the river.
In the other three tribes: Men “emote like women”, the role of fathers is considered equally important to mothers; and men are believed to be as naturally nurturing (and competent in childcare) as women. Violence is minimal between men, and violence towards women (rape) is virtually nonexistent.
Among Kaluli men, in four years of close observation, psychologists failed to find a single case of depression or serious repressed anxiety.
I know which society I would prefer.
The Ugly Girl
As Kirsten points out, there is overlap at the extremes. As I point out, this doesn’t refer to the folks in between the extremes.
Nextly, brutality or its lack is not the same as freedom to emote.
Last, back in the day, BA ’66, when I studied psychology, the steam-boiler interpretation of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was only for undergrads. It was easy to understand. Keep the safety valve screwed down and something was going to blow. Not necessarily true, and usually those who were repressing–nasty, awful repressing–something or other had some other outlet that acted as a relief valve. So even if the steamboiler analogy reflected reality, it didn’t do much but justify the mantra of the day, “if it feels good, do it”, as a therapeutic technique.
I’d suggest that, as to suicide, we note that women try four times as often as men but don’t succeed nearly as often. We can lay this to a difference in suicidal competence, or to the likelihood that women find it all too much long before they reach the state that men do. Or perhaps that a larger portion of women’s suicide attempts are the result of depression which is an internal issue while men’s attempts are as a reason to escape otherwise inescapable external issues. Failing in the latter case is a real failure, while failing in the former case might not be.
ht tp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/11/981112075159.htm
RE:Suicide – It seems men see no hope and choose methods which are far more likely to succeed, whereas women do it more as a cry for help.
“But before they ever get to the point of considering suicide, Murphy says, women are much more likely to seek help with their problems. The classic example is asking for directions when driving. Many men refuse to do that, perhaps seeing it as an admission of weakness. They believe they are supposed to be competent in all areas. Because they are not, they are at risk. Women, on the other hand, are much more likely to seek advice and take it. ”
This stands out, it makes me wonder if we’re teaching women to ask for help and men to be more independant vs it being instinctual. We don’t have to be the same but I believe in teaching both genders in similar ways whilst allowing for deviations to exist, not having boys do x, girls do y. I as a man actually ask for help a lot and value the contributions others give me and have found this has made my life better overall. Being independent is good but if you need help ASK FOR IT.
Richard,
You asked, “My point is where is the empirical work demonstrating that, absent nasty social conditioning, men and would display emotion in the same way?”
Studies of different cultures show that the way men and women express emotion are a direct result of their social conditioning. The way men and women express their emotions in Western cultures are conditioned. Brutality, or its lack, is as socially conditioned as “boys don’t cry”. I agree the differences among the genders are more significant than the differences between them; but the reality is we are all judged by the yardstick of “socially acceptable expectations” and the ideology that “women are emotional but guys aren’t” is a social expectation that teaches men not to emote.
My point was not “pressure release” that caused the lack of depression; but rather that men in that culture are socialized to publically emote to garner social support. Social psychologists have found a direct correlation between social supports, increased coping skills and reduced depression in Western cultures. Sorry, I wasn’t very clear on that.
But that misses the point entirely; my entire point was that the way men and women express emotion in this culture is a direct result of social conditioning rather than biological determinism.
As to suicide: Sadly, we cannot ask men who kill themselves what drove them to it. But I would venture that most were experiencing depression (whether organically or externally caused). Depression, in this culture, is often seen as a “woman’s problem”. True, women experience more depression than men; but studies have shown that when men do experience depression it is more severe, and takes a longer recovery time. And yet men talk about their depression much less often. I mean, women are allowed to be depressed, and allowed to talk about it. But for a man, just admitting you’re depressed is a stressor in itself. The mantra of “man-up” causes depressed men to socially isolate at a time when social support systems would help a man cope with what seems to be a hopeless situation. Women do not have to bear that burden, they can freely express their feelings and get help long before things get to that point. Suicide attempts are often a cry for help; which women are socialized to do. Socially acceptable expectations say that men should suffer quietly and “just get over it”; if one cannot “cry for help” or “just get over it” then suicide seems, to the depressed person, the only option. I think that kind of conditioning is very harmful to men.
Understand I’m not calling for all men to sit around crying and yapping about their feelings. I come from an emotionally repressed background and display little emotion myself. But if I want to, I’m socially allowed. I believe that men should be allowed to, and feel comfortable, expressing emotion without having their manhood called into question. But again, that’s if they want or need to; not because they have to.
Hard to say about asking directions It may be a trope used in this area of discussion, as opening doors is in discussions of chivalry or related issues.
To the extent the situation has arisn for me, I usually figure make a couple of more turns will be succesful and less time consuming than finding somebody to ask. This has been reinforced by my experiences where I did ask, and find that folks in the counry don’t have the same words as normal people. A swamp is a “crick”, and Maple Ave was changed to first street ten years ago, along with the signs, but if you’re from out of town, it’s still Maple and good luck to you.
The connection between this and suicide is weak, imo.
In addition, the difference between horrid depression (which could even be organic) and life situations which are without hope and inescapable has not been sufficiently discussed.,