In a society that continually impresses on us the notion that men are not free to express their emotions, we have fallen into the habit of seeing repression of feeling as being a male-centric issue. In doing so, we have rarely given consideration as to how women are taught to set their emotions aside for the good of someone else, as well as the invalidation and consequences women face when they do emote. This dialogue about being emotional creatures in a logic driven world needs to expand beyond just the experiences of men.

I believe the first thing that we must address is the opposite side of the tarnished boys-don't-cry coin. This rule is so enforced that when men cry, we often consider it a sign of great emotional depth and strength. While that certainly poses a variety of problems for men, we must also not that a woman will never, ever, be congratulated on her strength for 'showing her emotions' when she cries. It is assumed that her distress, her incapacity to 'handle' her emotions stems from her womanhood, and not because of something she is going through. When a man cries, it is because he is in pain. When a woman cries, it is because she is a member of a 'weaker' gender. The phrase 'cry like a little girl', apart from implying that a little girl is a shameful thing to be, also furthers the idea that women and girls cry over nonconsequential things and that the concerns and pains of women are fickle and dismissable.

When a man cries, even if this is seen as a showcasing of weakness, it is only considered to be so on an individual basis. It is considered to be representative only of him. Think of this past election. When Hilliary Rodham Clinton stood on the stage and made her concession speech, she was flanked by two men. Her husband and the would-be vice president. Both men were crying openly. Hillary, on the other hand, who had more at stake than anyone, who had been striving for this her entire life, was giving a concession speech to an incredibly unqualified fascist with several accusations of sexual assault, did not. Not because she didn't care, or because she didn't know what a Trump presidency would mean, but because she knew that crying, in that moment, would be seen by so many, (consciously or unconsciously) as proof that women are unfit to lead.

The dismissal of women's grief and sorrow goes further than just the invalidation of outward expressions, however. Men who have problems with their fathers are the subject of 'introspective' oscar award winning movies. Women who have issues with their fathers are the subject of jokes. A man, pinning after a woman for years is a tortured romantic hero. A woman, pinning for years after a man is an idiot.

Going a step further in the same vein, if a man is yearning after a woman while she wants someone else, she's either deluded or a selfish bitch. We see that played out over and over again in films. A woman is attracted to an aesthetically pleasing jerk, while the "nice guy" is head over heels for her. The movie always ends the same way. With her coming to her senses, finding out that the nice guy was really the man for her all along, usually with a complete disregard to any of the time that she has wasted, or the heartbreak she may have. Just once, I'd like to watch a film that doesn't act as a commentary on how stupid women are for being interested in someone else.

While women certainly must curtail the pronunciation of pain and disappointment, the feeling of anger is all but outright forbidden for women. We see anger as an unquestionably masculine trait and we punish women for its expression. Though multiple studies have concluded that women who get angry at work are seen as incompetent and are consequenced to a degree that their male colleagues would never be, I particularly want to draw attention to the 2015 VitalSmarts study. They found that 'assertive' women were likely to have their 'perceived deserved compensation' go down by $15,088. For women, even calm dissident can sometimes career suicide, let alone outright anger.

In 1993 the Women's Anger Study conducted by Doctor Sandra Thomas found that women were very likely to feel negatively towards their anger and to be ashamed that it even existed internally. However, women pushing down their anger doesn't mean that the emotion will not manifest in a different fashion. Because women are not 'allowed' to lash out, they go behind people's backs. They hold grudges and go on missions to destroy one another. The 'cattiness' of women is more often than not an incredible anger that has no place to go.

It can also show itself in much darker and much more dangerous ways. For me personally, it manifested in cutting. I was in so many relationships and situations where I felt or was powerless and unallowed to disagree or speak up. The anger and frustration I suppressed would boil over, and I would hurt myself. Self-mutilation functioned as a way to be angry and hateful, while still fulfilling the societal role of selflessness.

Needless to say, most examples aren't quite so extreme. But situations that err more towards dire than towards difficult certainly do exist. Multiple studies have shown that repression of anger has a strong correlation to alcoholism and chronic pain.

I do not mean to argue that men are not also emotionally repressed, and the issue becomes much more complicated when you insert the factor of race and cultural norms. Sure, black men ar more open to express their emotions than black women, but are black men as likely to be able to express their emotions as a white woman? I doubt it. Certainly, they are not as safe expressing anger as I am.

Emotions are more than a part of being a human animal. In that sense, the failure to include women and girls in the discussion about emotions and emotional repression in our culture is a remarkably dehumanizing act. Women are just as much a part of the world as anyone else. It is far beyond time that we start treating them like it.