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My father was pretty stoic. Most of the time. Except when he was angry. Then he wasn’t stoic at all.
Send us your stories of how those expectations have molded the world, and how changing them can change it.
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I thought that was just my Dad. Until I realized that wasn’t my Dad, it was just what was expected of my Dad. That’s what his Dad expected, and his before him. It was what his peers expected, and what his employers expected. And in time, that’s what I expected of him too. Before he died I realized that he deprived himself, all of his life, of all the other strong emotions that made him who he really was.
My Dad is one of the reasons I’m here. We’re doing what we can to change those expectations. To help men stop depriving themselves of their full expression.
And we need your help.
Send us your stories of men who wore their hearts on their sleeves and you’ll inspire men to do the same.
Send us your stories of what it meant, or would have meant, to the other people in a man’s life if they had been able to see what he was feeling.
Send us your stories of how YOUR life has been impacted by the expectations we’ve put on men to show no emotion but anger.
Send us your stories of how those expectations have molded the world, and how changing them can change it.
Send us your stories—we’re looking forward to reading them.
When you’re ready to submit, click the red box, below.
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It’s a shame that some people perceive that men should only express the emotions that women give us permission to have. That’s not encouraging expression, it’s a call to massage the collective feminine ego for the sole benefit and comfort of women. It does not and is not designed to benefit men.
What emotions are these? That women supposedly keep not allowing men to express (and the ones that they allow them to)…
The ones who shame men the most about their emotions are men themselves. There’s a whole “language of shame” that men created to shame each other.
Anamarie, you’re womansplaining. I suffer from severe depression. It’s usually women who tell me to “man up” and grow a set – sometimes women I do not know feel they have a right to tell me how I should act to make them feel comfortable about my mental illness. A former partner who herself suffered from mental illness, didn’t like how I expressed my depression and attempted to shame me into acting more like her when in a low mood. That’s what I meant by massaging women’s egos in male emotional expression. Thankfully I now have a loving partner who… Read more »
You see Anamarie, this is part of the problem – the knee-jerk reaction from women whenever any man points out his own negative experiences with women. We’re never going to have a conversation and how men and women can move forward together when one side feels that the other is responsible for everything bad that happens.
Ending the shaming of men for showing emotion would be a good start. Ending the judgement on a man’s dateability if he dares Express publicly anything beyond the limited range of “approved Guy emotions”.
So much for starting a conversation……..
How about we stop making men feel like there is something wrong with them for being men. A “healthy range of emotions” according to whom? Albert Einstein said that if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will always think of itself as a failure. Most men who feel like they have to seek out other ways to “express” themselves are driven to that idea by someone who wants to complicate and confuse them rather than accept them for who they are. We are what we are. Stop treating men like there is something wrong… Read more »
“Most men who feel like they have to seek out other ways to “express” themselves are driven to that idea by someone who wants to complicate and confuse them rather than accept them for who they are.”
Source, please?