Please, Stop Telling Me to Cry: The Feminisation of Emotion

Let’s get straight to the point of this – I don’t cry. Actually, that’s a rather sensationalist and, more importantly, rather untrue statement to make. I do cry, I’ve cried a handful of times in my life and I’m sure I’ll cry a handful more when the occasion calls for it. I cried when I was 17 and we had to have my cat put down. I cried when I was 27 and we had to have my other cat put down. I cried when I was 10 and my nana died. I cried when I was 29 and my grandad died.

I didn’t cry when I moved away from home to go to University. I didn’t cry when I got my degree. I didn’t cry when I qualified as a teacher. I didn’t cry when my best friend asked me to be his best man. I didn’t cry when my other best friend asked me to be his best man. I didn’t cry when I broke up with my girlfriend of 3 years.

I suppose what I really mean is, simply, crying is not the best way for me to express emotion. Yes, it happens, it happens when I’m at the extreme breaking point of what I feel I can handle. I loved my nana and my grandad, I equally loved both my cats and was utterly heartbroken when they all died. I’m not denying that crying is a good way to express emotion and I’m not for one second trying to suggest I’m some superhuman that doesn’t feel anything. On the flipside, I’m an incredibly emotional person and I’m sure people have seen that side of me. But here’s the thing, I express emotion in an entirely unique and personal way, the same way everyone does.

So, why the obsession with crying? Well, you know how it is, there’s this theory that if you don’t cry, or if you feel like you shouldn’t cry in public, you’re a fucking horrible human being. Cue all the crap about toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and other such bullshit buzzwords.

It’s something that’s never sat right with me, this ‘feminisation’ of emotions. As men, we’re told that we need to be more open with our emotions, be more willing to cry and appear vulnerable, that bottling everything up leads to problems later on. That’s absolutely true, you don’t have to look very far to see what happens when people bottle up their emotions, and I absolutely think people, especially men, should be more open with their emotions. But here’s the thing that bugs me — men already are open with their emotions, they just don’t do it in the way that new society expects them to. It’s no surprise that the people I see most espousing the idea that men should cry more are people who have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be a man – women. And that’s not a dig against women, or even a claim that men don’t share this view, it just seems that the people most in favour of men crying are those who aren’t even men.

I have a theory for this, and it’s really simple – women want men to express emotions in ways they understand. And again, that’s not a dig at women at all, it’s just an observation that I’ve encountered numerous times. Women want men to be more open and expressive with their emotions, but they want them to do it in a way that they can relate to and connect with. I don’t cry, I express my emotions in a plethora of different ways and I know, for a fact, that some women just don’t see that as being expressive.

When my grandad died, I cried my eyes out. I saw my dad, my uncle, and my cousin cry. I saw absolute heartbreak etched on every single person’s face. I was there when he took his last breath, I was there a week earlier the day before he left hospital. I saw the absolute degeneration of a man who I’d always seen as strong. An ex-miner, ex-military man reduced to a shell of his former self as he struggled to breathe before dying, surrounded by his family. From diagnosis to death took about six weeks. Six weeks, that’s it.

I went to work the next day; my sister didn’t. Does that make me a cold person; does it make me less in touch with my emotions? No, it simply means we deal with things in different ways. I also went back to work in the afternoon after having my cat put to sleep in the morning. Why? Because the thought of sitting in my flat and dwelling on what had just happened is impossible for me to do. I knew I couldn’t do it, so I busied myself and got back into my routine.

How did I get through it all? Did I bottle it up? No, I talked about it, I shared my feelings, and I allowed other people to get close. The day after my grandad died, I got a hug from 2 co-workers. Despite the fact I’m not a hugging person, I needed it and it felt good. That afternoon, I spent an hour talking about my grandad. I talked about the memories I had of him, the things he did, even up until his last days, that made me laugh, about how we didn’t always see each other that often but still I loved him and missed him. It wasn’t a sad hour, it was a happy hour, reflecting on the life of a man who I had just assumed was gonna be around forever.

I got through that day, and the days after his funeral, by talking about him. I didn’t bottle up my feelings, but I didn’t express them in the ‘normal’ way; I expressed them in a way I felt comfortable with. Whilst the people in my office were a great support, they weren’t shy in telling me they expected me to ‘be more upset’ and that I was ‘handling it very well’. I was upset, I was heartbroken. I was heartbroken not just because my grandad had died but because I saw my dad and my uncle utterly crushed. The fact I wasn’t crying or didn’t take time off work didn’t mean I wasn’t upset. Not at all. I was handling it well because I was working through my emotions right in front of them. The fact they couldn’t see that puzzles me.

I see women struggle to comprehend the ways men express emotion, I see women claim ‘I wish my other half was more open’ only to then struggle to cope with it when that expression is not what they expected. I see women express a desire for their men to be more open, only to then lament the fact he’s being too open and actually becoming a bit annoying. Hell, there was an entire episode of Friends devoted to the misandrist storyline of a man eventually being too emotional.

That’s a great thing — women wanting their men to be more open is wonderful, but at the same time people need to understand that emotions are not at all predictable, and the obsession with crying as a way of expressing emotion is just one way out of so many.

Why the obsession with crying? When did we decide that crying was the best way of letting all that emotion out? When did we decide that everyone needs to be able to express emotion in this way to be comforted? Why does crying seem more accepted as a display of emotion than me talking about my experiences? Why does my way seem cold or lacking in anything resembling emotion? Why does me going quiet and being introspective about an experience not fit the bill the same way as if I was to start crying?

So, in an entirely unscientific way, I did some research. I asked the men and women on my Facebook page how they express emotion and whether or not crying was a big part of it. Do you know what’s interesting? From all the women that commented, I didn’t get a single response that was identical to another. Women express their emotions in different ways as well. Shocking, I know. When it comes to crying, some of them cry out of frustration, some out of despair. There were any number of reasons: anger, shock, happiness, sadness, helplessness, isolation, loneliness. They all dealt with their feelings in different ways, some preferred to be on their own, some preferred to be confrontational. There are so many things that are related to expressing emotion, it’s not just about feeling happy or sad. Trying to get people, especially men, to open up only in ways you feel comfortable dealing with is not helpful. Being supportive is about an awareness of individuality and a willingness to just be there for another, no matter how those emotions come out. Claiming to be supportive while really holding an agenda of how a conversation needs to transpire is pretty much the opposite of supportive.

I know this is only a drop in the ocean of humanity, but the point is that crying is not the de facto expression of emotion. It’s a useful way of expressing emotion, sure, you only need to check out videos of men either talking about their families or soldiers being reunited with loved ones to see that; but it’s not the only way and the sooner we begin to realise that, the better. It’s not like crying is even that rare in men anyway. Films and TV shows often show men crying when they experience heightened levels of emotion — I mean, even Rambo cried at the end of First Blood. But men being shamed for their emotions is also used frequently in TV shows and films. Quite apart from the Friends episode where we are supposed to sympathise with Rachel because her man has opened up now can’t stop opening up, the focus on male emotion is often used as a way to gain sympathy for the other characters. Either that, or the very concept of men showing emotion is seen as making them less ‘manly’. The theory of masculinity being damaged by showing emotion is often claimed as something that men are unnecessarily paranoid about; yet, there are women who want their men to inhabit the ‘strong, rugged’ stereotype, the same stereotype that pigeon-holes men and keeps them in an emotionless void. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s women who seem unable to accept that other women are part of the culture that creates the reluctance of some men wanting to be more open. The idea that it’s men, and only men, that are responsible for the shaming of male emotions is simply not true.

The whole point of this isn’t to try shame women who aren’t helpful in their attitudes towards male emotion, or indeed to shame those men who do struggle to show their emotion, it’s simply to say that the incessant need for ‘emotion’ to involve men crying is so counter-productive that it actually becomes as damaging, particularly to people like me, as men not opening up in the first place. Men being comfortable displaying vulnerability isn’t an opportunity for us to say ‘this is how you do it’, it’s simply for us to say ‘find your own way and I will be here for you when you’re ready’. You can’t force emotion out of someone and you certainly can’t pigeon-hole the ways in which they do it. By employing ridiculous buzzwords to try and explain it you take something entirely personal and make it nothing but a generalised, agenda-driven reach for superiority. I’m not going to try and argue that men don’t find it troublesome when talking openly, but it’s not helpful when those troubles are watered down to simple catchphrases that supposedly come from a place of help and support. I don’t know about anyone outside of my social circles, but myself and a lot of men around me want nothing to do with the kind of people who are willing to dilute insecurities and problems in order to fit them in with their own pre-conceived notions of why I feel the way I do.

People emote differently. When a simple, unscientific, piece of research on why people cry yields as many different results among women, the supposed beneficiaries of less social restriction, as there are participants, then it’s impossible to expect men to behave in the same way.

Being supportive isn’t about telling men what they need to do in order to open up, it’s not about telling them how they should go about it and it’s certainly not about labeling them “toxic” when they find it difficult to express their feelings, it’s about creating that atmosphere where men don’t feel forced, it’s about making them feel like their emotions are worth expressing and will be treated as important.

You want men to open up? Stop calling them toxic, stop making them feel like they are inherently bad for not opening up in the way you want, simply be there for them when they are ready and you may find that, actually, men are more emotive than you’ve been lead to believe.