As a feminist, I’m pretty focused on equalizing life for women. I want equal pay, respect and whatever else will truly balance the playing field. I don’t believe that women should reap the rewards of feminist thought and not truly experience equality, an accusation that is often tossed out - and too often well-founded.
This consideration has led me to analyze patriarchal ideology on two fronts: how it affects both women and men. There’s support and distaste for this, and while I would debate the validity of all complaints about the patriarchy hurting men, where emotions are concerned, real damage is inflicted on both sides.
While it’s true that men and women are different, we all have emotions. Casually, emotional experiences and expression seem lumped into two categories. Women feel very frantically and are driven by excessive emotion; men feel very little and are not always encouraged to express themselves.
Communication is pretty damn central to human existence. Emotions are also core components of our lives. In the wake of these general expectations for emotional behavior based on gender norms, a disconnect often arises.
I know more women than I can count that apologize for their emotions; I know more men than I can count that don’t want to discuss emotions to begin with. Both groups are being criticized for experiencing emotion (which, let’s not forget, is human - not based on gender).
Subsequently, the aftermath of these approaches is often a mess. When women aren’t allowed to communicate emotions without shame, they don’t learn how to emote effectively. Simultaneously, men who aren’t comfortable or encouraged to share emotions often miss out on the opportunity to practice healthy methods of communication.
When emotion displayed by women isn’t validated and is singularly dismissed as excessive/feminine/irrational/etc., it perpetuates the stigma that emotion isn’t worthy of communicating. In turn, when emotion that’s regarded as excessive is attached to femininity, it can be used against any and all women who display it. That’s the first level of damage, albeit generalized.
In turn, this patriarchal put-down wounds the emotional lives of men. Encouraging masculine traits basically excludes emotional expression (once again, I’m generalizing to tackle the large issue), particularly by coloring emotion as... feminine. So, for men to express emotion, they’re committing a double-wrong. They’re opposing masculinity and displaying a feminine quality.
It’s incredibly unproductive to shame both genders for a shared human experience; it’s even worse to shame women for having excessive emotion and then use that idea to steer men away from expression whatsoever. Feminism calls for a united front to heal emotional imbalance. We have to learn how to promote healthy emotional expression in both genders and base it off of the individual’s needs, not unhealthy and unrealistic gender expectations. Together as feminists, men and women can adapt the human approach to emotion for the betterment of everyone.
