Dozens of posts on this blog so far, and we haven’t talked directly about what I see as the most pervasively damaging issue affecting men in our culture. It’s the one at the root of many of the other problems we suffer, and is perhaps the most intransigent and resistant to change.
Depicted: adorable kitten, with the caption “go cry, emo kid.”
So yeah. Let’s talk about the fact that men aren’t allowed to have a full emotional range.
Yes, okay, “allowed” may be putting it strongly, but I think we here are all hip enough to know what I mean. We can agree that men in our culture are… let’s say “strongly discouraged” from experiencing or expressing most emotions.
The “boys don’t cry” meme is incredibly pervasive, and the most obvious manifestation of this appalling phenomenon. As seen in every action movie ever (and we’re told action movies are the epitome of male values), a Real Man has only two stages of grief. The Big No:
Wolverine screams “no” while cradling the body of his dead girlfriend.
And then FURIOUS VENGEANCE:
Wolverine angry and ready to fight.
The furious vengeance, of course, is driven by the one emotion men are required to have: anger. Anger is manly, it’s motivation, it’s what a Real Man is supposed to feel, especially if someone has touched his stuff. (For “stuff” read “women”.) In many, many situations, lack of sufficient anger is evidence of failure to perform masculinity. Don’t think anger is the healthiest emotional response to a situation? Tough shit, penis-boy, it’s what you’re allowed.
Of course, the substitution of anger for grief is about more than the shamefully small amount I was able to cry over my mother’s death. (Over my lifetime, I may have spent more time choked up by the “Marseillaise” scene in Casablanca. And no, you don’t have to tell me how appalling that is; I’m way ahead of you.) It’s about the obsession with avoiding weakness.
A man is strong, we are told, and emotions are weak. They’re weak because they represent vulnerability, and “vulnerability” is synonymous with “weakness” when you’re talking about being protected.
And men, naturally, must always be protected, so that means that all feelings of fear, sadness, loss, regret, love, pain, weakness, uncertainty, and damn near everything else must be repressed. Expressing any of these is a failure to sufficiently perform masculinity, and this will be enforced. All you’re allowed to feel are anger and, if you must, wry detachment.
It may be impossible to calculate how much damage this repression does to men. Add up all the suicides, the stress-induced heart attacks, the alcohol-induced liver damage, and the deaths in fights between guys who weren’t allowed to not be angry, and all you’ve done is scratch the direct mortality rate. The subtler forms of damage, the loneliness, the uncommunicative relationships, the desperation, the repressed pain and regret and fear that OMG NO ONE MUST EVER KNOW ABOUT… there’s no way to measure all that. There’s no way to tell when someone is suffering in silence.
Sure, we have clichés like “real men aren’t afraid to cry”, but somehow those never quite get the traction of “Chuck Norris’s tears cure cancer, too bad he never cries”, do they? As often as we’re told that it’s okay to show our emotions, that never sinks in as well as all the times we’re told that no, it’s really not okay.
Guys, back me up on this. Picture two guys in a painful situation, and the first guy is openly showing his pain and vulnerability, and the second guy is sitting there stoically, one eyebrow cocked. Notice how you can’t help feeling that the second guy somehow won. Hell, I feel that way, and I know that’s insane. I’m the guy writing this post about how insane it is, and I still can’t disentangle that notion from my psyche.
I don’t know how to reverse this meme. Seriously, picture some kind of “It Gets Better” project where men, the manliest men available, openly confess their deepest pain and vulnerability in YouTube videos. Got it? Right, now picture the comments on those YouTube videos.
If you’re attempting to recoil from your own brain in horror right now, you’re picturing the comments correctly. That’s a hint of how deep and weird this problem is.
What have been some of your experiences with emotional repression or expression? What other problems arise from this root issue? What do you think can be done? This isn’t a strictly-moderated thread, but if you have some evo-psych theory about how cavemen evolved not to have emotions because saber-toothed tigers can smell tears, it would be nice if you’d spare us.
Jim, Orange: I certainly hear queer men using the word “butch” for themselves and each other constantly. The butch/femme *culture* certainly doesn’t exist among queer men as it does among queer women, but have you considered that if queer men don’t use the word “femme” as much as the word “butch,” perhaps it’s because femme men are less discussed, or certainly, less apt to be discussed in a neutral/non-insulting tone of voice, because femmeness is less valued than butchness among queer men? http://femmeguy.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/how-can-i-still-be-invisible-just-look-what-i%E2%80%99m-wearing/
I think that maybe the cause and effect of this issue has become confused. We have more respect for those who are in control of their emotions, particularly when we don’t know them particularly well. If a man is unable to express his pain to his close family and friends, then that is a problem, and I have deep sympathy for those in such a situation. However, I do not believe that it is a common problem. In the situation you describe where we observe the two men suffering, I would respond more favourably to the stoic if I didn’t… Read more »
Personally I think repressing emotions is a good thing. I can’t respect anyone who cries in public, men or women, unless it’s a funeral or something. I don’t understand why most people give women a free pass on this; it’s awkward and horrible to watch a woman cry just as it’s horrible an awkward to watch a man cry. It’s just like, get a grip. Holding back your emotions in a public setting is just part of being an adult, and showing tears will lose you respect in my book. Perhaps I just grew up knowing too many people who… Read more »
I think the distinction is not the emotions themselves, but the response they motivate. Specifically, it has to do with action versus passivity. Men can grieve, but to be “in mourning” is seen as the domain of women. Men can be angry if some act of (at least symbolic) vengeance ensues, but to merely be passively frustrated is a sign of being too weak to act on the feeling of having been wronged. Even revelry and other highly physical or conspicuous displays of happiness are considered more masculine than feminine. Confronted with fear, men are depicted as fighting or running,… Read more »
“I remember I was talking about this with some trans men on this exact topic” would probably read better as “I remember I was talking about this exact topic with some trans men”. Oops.
Indeed, no, we are the potent, dangerous, beings of agency after all. I remember I was talking about this with some trans men on this exact topic, one of them being a PoC, he said he’d never really thought about his anger much until one day, after he’d been on T long enough to pass well but was still new to the social role of “Man”, he got into a fender-bender with a young white woman. Behaving as he normally would have (or how he was socialised) he got out of his vehicle and slammed the door and was about… Read more »
I just wanted to point out that anger is not the “safe haven” for men’s emotions and that there are “rules” at play there as well which puts constraints on the anger and rage men can express.
And I’m glad you point that out Tamen. Some people like to think that men just have a blank check on anger to use as we please when that is very much not the case.
Yeah, acknowledging privilege oneself have can’t be said to be offensive and wrong in any way. However, trying to assign privilege to other persons whom one barely knows anything about outside nickname and some comments and perhaps gender would be bad form in my eyes. I agree that other than men also experience oppression when it comes to anger – maybe even more so as you said. Women’s anger is socially oppressed and a woman would be considered less feminine and more man-like for expressing anger outright (I guess that would make oppressions of women’s anger to be misandric according… Read more »
I don’t think it’s possible to come up with a better word for that piece of jargon. After all, what is meant by it (that is, “because of the current social structure certain in-born traits advantage you in specific social spheres (implied: and the lack of those traits disadvantage others”) is simply not a concept we have a word for in English. So, finding a new word would require trying to apply that meaning to a pre-existing word of similar meaning (as was done with “privilege” and therefore would likely be equally misleading to those unfamiliar with the second meaning)… Read more »
Just a note here:
Don’t worry too much about using the word “privilege”. (Especially not in the layman’s sense that you’re using it in.) It’s admittedly not the best jargon term but that doesn’t mean we have anything better yet.
Other than that, good post.
@Noah Brand: Great post i like it very much, and generaly agree (even if I have been quite lucky in my life to not experience that much pressure into not expressing my emotions, “acting like a guy is supposed to” and so on… people around me (family and so on) have accepted me the way I am, and besides do not seem to have trouble with men expressing various emotions). I had just to add something about it… Well, Tamen has already said part of it (July 30, 2011 at 5:30 pm): “noahbrand: You forgot to mention the duality when… Read more »
. Its not that they are women its that they are failed men.(Danny)
I think there is some truth in that. 🙁
Titfortat: An interesting point about the terms fag or gay is that they arent necessarily used to describe all homosexual men. It is generally used as a slur against an effeminate(feminine being weaker) man. The misconception is that homosexual men are generally effeminate, which obviously is completely erroneous. I can see how some people could twist that to mean hatred towards women but it is pretty clear that they are just generalizing about the average strength of a woman compared to a man. Oh I can understand how it happens but I still think that people are putting in extra… Read more »
Isnt DSC a man?
“”The very reason for punishment of “cross gendered” presentation is a set of class distinctions in regards to sex and gender. The punishment makes no sense unless the segregation system predates it. Homophobia, transphobia, and sexism have areas that overlap a lot, and areas that don’t overlap too much, but this punishment of disobeying the class lines only occurs because one class is socially placed above the other and the boundaries between the upper and lower are preserved to ensure it stays that way. Think about it, if the feminine were truly as socially desirable as the masuline in cultural… Read more »
@ darksidecat
This is something that baffles me. You’ve said there is absolutely no benefit to women in being marginalized as vulnerable, weak, victims.
And yet, here you are, promoting the very view of women-that they are vulnerable victims-that you say is misogynist and offers women no benefit.
Perhaps your consciousness, as a woman, is not as raised as you think it is, since you’re promoting the patriarchal model of womanhood.
Yeah, it’s like Ballgame of Feminist Critics says:
Sexual oppression is not unidirectional so a class analysis really doesn’t fit it.
darksidecat, you are making a real effort to show how hopelessly uninformed on this subject. First you have the kind of arrogance that only come from ignorance to dispute with two gay men here, OrangeYouGlad and me, how the slur “fag” is used and what the exact shape of the gender norm it is used to police. This is a gender norm that unlike you, he and I were socialized into and which we understand in ways you can never hope to. Our understanding is experiential while yours is quite obviously theoretical. Guess which one is more valid. You confirm… Read more »
@ Darksidecat Your analogy is deeply flawed. How many Shudra gave their lives to save untouchables? Or worked so that an untouchable could live in relative security and safety(modern convenience reducing the average home workload from 12 hours a day six days a week to 3 hours a day, even more if you include daycare, domestic help, etc.) And while the Shudra and the Untouchables have a wage gap, I highly doubt the spending gap favors the Untouchables. Nor do the Untouchables hold a proportionate(or greater) share of the wealth. Nor are the Untouchables equally represented in the best jobs… Read more »
@Jim, there is an entire blog called “femme guy” which primarily focuses on queer femme guys (http://femmeguy.wordpress.com/) fairly mainstream areas of discussion include usages of the terms (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080226130555AAfKvxM http://www.afterelton.com/askmonkey/uncaged-butch-versus-femme http://www.queerty.com/chris-crocker-wants-all-you-masculine-gays-to-stop-hating-on-the-femmes-20110505/). It’s not at all hard to find contemporary usages of these terms by queer men in discussion, particularly of “femme”. Maybe you should recheck your assumptions about what words all queer communities use. Also, the fact that queer men of a variety of presentations experience homophobia is totally relevant to discussion of homophobic slurs. I am a feminist, and definitions of sex and gender are circular. Society assigns sex based… Read more »
“I don’t recall ever making the claim that all homophobia is sexism, oh, wait, that’s cause I didn’t. ” I don’t recall any of saying you did, because, oh, wait, we didn’t. You equated it with misogyny and that is what we are discussing. It is not and it appropriation to say it is. That’s all I am saying. “In addition, the claim that femininity is not heavily associated with women is pretty absurd. ” Another starwman, since no one hears denies the “association.” We deny the equation of feminity with womanhood. see the diffnernce? And I would have thought… Read more »
Innocence and moral purity are things we also associate with children.
Not pulling your weight, being a freeloader, ergo, failing to meet your responsabilities.
@Schala
There may be some people who equate femaleness with children but I think the more common usage in regards to gay men is because of strength. It(imo) is more of a slur on the man for seeming weaker than, not because of child level responsibility.
“Fag” is used as an insult against straight effeminate men because effeminate men are the most visible of queer men when not doing somethine else that would merit the insult (notice how a perfectly masculine man could also recieve this insult if he displaying too much emotion, affection, closeness, etc. towards men* or displaying an interest in something that is typically thought to be homosexual in nature (i.e. show tunes)). Accusing men of being “girly” or otherwise like a woman when showing gender varience is a display of transphobia and homophobia**. Cross-gender expression is the problem here, not “womanliness”. Which… Read more »