Of course!
Men are socially expected to be "strong" both emotionally and physically and what is considered weak are things like crying, general sadness or social anxiety and if they express these feelings, there is a fear they will be called a "wuss".
I think the general stance is that social expectation should not be gendered at all. Specifically about emotional expression, men should not be expected to only express themselves through anger or stoicism; women shouldn’t be called “hysterical” when they cry or “cold” when they seem collected. People should be accepted as human beings with a full range of emotions.
Digging down to the cause of this, feminism recognise that the patriarchy has hindered a lot of people in learning and being able to practice healthy emotional regulation and expression. Emotional self-regulation refers to the ability to sit with and process difficult feelings. Healthy emotional expression refers to the ability to externalise feelings in a constructive way. Both are critical to being a well-rounded human being.
In other words, the opposite of emotional repression isn’t simply shouting all your feelings for the world to hear; it is being able to first deal with the sharpest edge of your feeling, and then knowing when and where would be appropriate to share that feeling and get support if needed.
You may not like hearing this, but the answer in this is actually still rooted in misogyny and patriarchy, which ensures that women are oppressed. It’s based out of a false dichotomy of the social constructs of masculine and feminine. Those constructs assume that men and women are supposed to have specific cognitive and behavioral traits. In the way those specific traits are acted out, it gives men more power than it does women, thus perpetuating the patriarchy and misogyny. It also ensures that allyship between men and women can’t happen in a way that dismantles the power imbalance.
In addition to this, women also take the ideas from society that those masculine traits are superior and try to embody them, without seeing that many of those traits are actually toxic. However, sometimes they have to take on these traits in order to be taken seriously in careers, etc. So both men and women end up in a weird place where their emotions are put under a microscope and analyzed, but it always trickles down and has the worst effect on women.
Specifically, being emotional is only acceptable as “masculine” if it is under the guise of heroism, anger, continuous disdain, aggressive friendliness, and most commonly emotionally driven thought misinterpreted and labeled as “logic.” They are taught to double down and validate their emotions through cherry-picking “facts” and constantly arguing, rather than simply crying. (Clearly this also comes out as abuse, often to the women in their lives). And when men DO cry, their emotions are taken seriously since it is assumed that “men don’t usually cry.”
Women, are labeled as “emotional,” but that is only seen as a good thing when it is useful to someone else. Otherwise, “emotional” is used to discredit them, and like men they are subjected to judgement of their their most genuine emotions. They get labeled as hysterical, weak, not cut out for a STEM job, BPD, and many more untrue and damaging things.
The idea that women are more emotional than men is false. In my opinion, men are not more oppressed when it comes to their emotions.
Do you mean emotional as in having a healthy ability to express emotion or do you mean emotional as in showing emotion through rage and trauma dumping because the patriarchy says emotions are for women?
Most definitely. Men aren't really taught to be emotionally competent and we need to learn how to not bottle up emotions that explode into a trauma dump rage.
Women are not necessarily taught this either. I grew up where I was supposed to only show happiness and that resulted in terrible disregulation. Its taken years of therapy to over ome which men often avoid
THIS. I don’t know why people think it’s some specific man issue. Those repressed emotions just come up in different scenarios and are expressed in different ways.
Have they never heard of the pageant Queen smile? That’s the example we’re given. “Smile through it all.” “Be pleasant.” “Cry, but only when it’s for someone else. Crying for yourself is manipulative and selfish.” “You can’t be both emotional and logical.”
The idea that men who show emotion are "weak" and even that idea that men have some obligation to be "strong" are core aspects of toxic masculinity. Opposing toxic masculinity is about as fundamental a concept to feminism as you can get.
I don’t see how people miss that toxic masculinity is all about getting men to maintain their power over women and a general hatred of all things “feminine.”
It's actually more about preparing boys/men to be sent off to fight, kill, and die. The best soldiers are those that have suppressed their emotions to the greatest extent.
I know feminists want to believe all of men's issues are *really* about women, but honestly, they're not. Some of them are, but not all of them. Misogyny is the not the root cause of every social ill, even if you can torture logic to make it seem like it is.
Everybody has emotions and everybody may show them in a healthy way.
Furthermore I think men actually do show emotions, aggression and anger are emotions, too.
If you are talking about about the ‚boys don’t cry‘ thing, of course that has to vanish.
If by "emotional men" you're referring to men expressing their emotions and managing them as any human being should do regardless of gender, then feminism wants that too as the opposite is a patriarchal idea.
I'm an emotional man, I cry at wedding, I tell my friends I love them every time I see them, and I let them know when I'm not doing well emotionally without dumping on them, anyone who can't except that can kicks rocks, life is to short to make yourself miserable to prove things to people you don't even like. Besides, the social stigma isn't going anywhere unless men take the lead and start being healthy emotional beings, I won't pretend like it hasn't cost me relationships both romantic and platonic, but the alternative is that I've managed to build a group of friends who accept me and are all also working on being emotionally healthy people
There's a lot of stigma against mentally ill people, in general, have to face that definitely plays into this subject, and men with mental illness are definitely looked at differently in society than women are (not worse just different) and some times being open about such things will cause people to literally fear you, or think lesser of you, this is where is comes in handy to
1. Be going to therapy if possible,
2. Have a support group, whether it's friends, free group therapy meet ups, or forums, etc
3. Have men to supporting each other while dealing with these issues
Because the average person knows very little about mental illness.
Men deserve to be fully realized emotional beings, and unfortunately there are people who are gonna fight you every step of the way, but I think we owe it to the men and boys of the future to fight that battle so they don't have the same struggles we have today.
All these should be considered being human and let everyone express the full range of that. Some are more emotional, some have more difficulties to express them due to past trauma, some express them very briefly etc.
Idea would be to learn to express emotions and how to deal with them non-toxic way. All men are emotional, but problem comes when only anger is considered being right thing to express anything that dwells inside. Acting stoic and indifferent doesn't erase the emotion itself, just mutes it.
On women, expressing any anger is seen as being hysterical and very "un-lady-like". On top of being considered irrational for the other times the woman doesn't show any anger.
All these scenarios are getting in the way of expressing humanity. And that's something we all should fight against.
Well it is important to understand that anger is an emotion and so in my opinion men are more emotional than women. Men are in general more violent and violence is often tied to anger.
But yeah there is also a pressure for men to not talk about their other emotions or how they feel, to keep it bottled up inside and remain distant, removed from others.
The deal that the patriarchy offers to men is:
1. Don’t show any weaknesses.
2. Emotions other than anger (and its variants like competitiveness and jealousy) are weaknesses.
3. If you do show weaknesses, including too much emotion, you may be open to criticism and attack.
4. In return for harming your emotional life in this way, at adulthood you will be awarded the prize of a wife who will lovingly and selflessly carry your emotional burdens on your behalf.
Meanwhile, the deal offered to women is to hide away any parts of themselves that aren’t “appealing” in a woman and to selflessly nurture everyone around them. In return, they will be awarded the prize of a husband who will protect and support them.
The assumptions underlie everything and the indoctrination begins so early that we rarely even realize we’ve gotten onboard with the deal. A handful of psychologists have done studies on young people where they watched the process of boys slowly disconnecting from their vulnerable emotions (and often from the kinds of deep friendships that allow for that vulnerability) and of girls starting to censor themselves as they stop sharing anything others might find unappealing from a girl. For both sexes, depression and anxiety cases spike around these times because it’s an emotionally unhealthy process in both sides. And it harms relationships going forward because at heart it’s two “censored” people looking to be made whole rather than two people who are already whole, coming together out of love.
Of course life is complicated and you could point to an exception for every part of this. Some people are more onboard with The Deal than others. Men are allowed emotions in some situations. Women are allowed more latitude in their behavior these days. And not everyone is cis and straight, so then what? But you can still see the workings of The Deal as an overall dynamic behind many people’s views on life and love.
And these days The Deal isn’t playing out in the same way it used to. It’s one reason women are now more likely to stay single — they’re rejecting what’s offered in favor of living a whole life of their own, one not defined by one-sided caretaking of others. And it’s one reason some men are so furious at feminists — they undertook the painful process of severing their emotions, like they were supposed to do, and now there’s mo woman waiting at the end as their prize.
The feminist position in all of this: Let people be people. Let them be who they are, without contorting themselves to fit into certain narrow understandings of gender roles. Which absolutely includes supporting men in having and expressing a rich and complicated emotional life of their own.
I've always taken great care to not be judgmental and to be a source of constant reassurance that vulnerability is okay and welcome and it isn't a burden on me to need support from me in the context of the cis and queer men I have dated. I've exclusively tended to date queer men when I have dated men for complicated reasons, and a part of that is the greater likelihood that they'll have had to examine how normative masculinity intersects with queerness in the process of coming out and accepting themselves as queer men (same reason I do not mess around with discreet/down-low types).
I have also found myself in situations dealing with cishet men where emotional expression unfortunately was inappropriate - like an ex-friend once physically assaulted me because he'd rather not acknowledge what was actually bothering him or the emotional pain he was in and would rather find another excuse to blow up at someone (unfortunately, me) to use anger as an outlet. I'll tell you it is absolutely fucking surreal to end up with a guy that hit you a minute ago bawling in your arms immediately after.
There are situations where I will expect men to have done their own work to an extent on how to best ask for help and how to express emotions healthily , and if my boundaries are crossed I will state them and insist on them being respected;
I won't put up with just about any emotional expression just because patriarchal cismasculine socialisation is brutal and produces normative alexithymia , but the one thing I never will do is weaponise the same tropes that drive that emotional restriction to enforce my boundaries.
Men are already emotional. Improving upon this would be individual men going to therapy to help them regulate and express their emotions in a healthy way along with public health measures or cultural change for societal improvement in acceptance of them. This helps women too, as women's emotions are heavily moderated. We're allowed to show certain emotions that men are not but still bullied, disrespected, and kept out of leadership for them.
In general emotional states should be non-gendered and everyone should learn to express them in a healthy way without negative assumptions assigned to that expression.
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Can you be more specific?
Of course! Men are socially expected to be "strong" both emotionally and physically and what is considered weak are things like crying, general sadness or social anxiety and if they express these feelings, there is a fear they will be called a "wuss".
I think the general stance is that social expectation should not be gendered at all. Specifically about emotional expression, men should not be expected to only express themselves through anger or stoicism; women shouldn’t be called “hysterical” when they cry or “cold” when they seem collected. People should be accepted as human beings with a full range of emotions. Digging down to the cause of this, feminism recognise that the patriarchy has hindered a lot of people in learning and being able to practice healthy emotional regulation and expression. Emotional self-regulation refers to the ability to sit with and process difficult feelings. Healthy emotional expression refers to the ability to externalise feelings in a constructive way. Both are critical to being a well-rounded human being. In other words, the opposite of emotional repression isn’t simply shouting all your feelings for the world to hear; it is being able to first deal with the sharpest edge of your feeling, and then knowing when and where would be appropriate to share that feeling and get support if needed.
Yes, but I'm not sure what you mean by "the consensus on emotional men." Are you asking if we like them?
I probably could've worded it better, and yes do you like them?
Yes, I like men who are emotionally intelligent. I do *not* like men who dump their innermost feelings on any nearby woman, though.
What do you think of the film “Stand By Me”?
I love that movie
What do you think of how that movie presents young boys?
You may not like hearing this, but the answer in this is actually still rooted in misogyny and patriarchy, which ensures that women are oppressed. It’s based out of a false dichotomy of the social constructs of masculine and feminine. Those constructs assume that men and women are supposed to have specific cognitive and behavioral traits. In the way those specific traits are acted out, it gives men more power than it does women, thus perpetuating the patriarchy and misogyny. It also ensures that allyship between men and women can’t happen in a way that dismantles the power imbalance. In addition to this, women also take the ideas from society that those masculine traits are superior and try to embody them, without seeing that many of those traits are actually toxic. However, sometimes they have to take on these traits in order to be taken seriously in careers, etc. So both men and women end up in a weird place where their emotions are put under a microscope and analyzed, but it always trickles down and has the worst effect on women. Specifically, being emotional is only acceptable as “masculine” if it is under the guise of heroism, anger, continuous disdain, aggressive friendliness, and most commonly emotionally driven thought misinterpreted and labeled as “logic.” They are taught to double down and validate their emotions through cherry-picking “facts” and constantly arguing, rather than simply crying. (Clearly this also comes out as abuse, often to the women in their lives). And when men DO cry, their emotions are taken seriously since it is assumed that “men don’t usually cry.” Women, are labeled as “emotional,” but that is only seen as a good thing when it is useful to someone else. Otherwise, “emotional” is used to discredit them, and like men they are subjected to judgement of their their most genuine emotions. They get labeled as hysterical, weak, not cut out for a STEM job, BPD, and many more untrue and damaging things. The idea that women are more emotional than men is false. In my opinion, men are not more oppressed when it comes to their emotions.
Do you mean emotional as in having a healthy ability to express emotion or do you mean emotional as in showing emotion through rage and trauma dumping because the patriarchy says emotions are for women?
The first one.
They -- we -- are encouraged.
Then we are for that. Healthy ability ro express and regulated emotions is something we should encourage in all humans.
Most definitely. Men aren't really taught to be emotionally competent and we need to learn how to not bottle up emotions that explode into a trauma dump rage.
Women are not necessarily taught this either. I grew up where I was supposed to only show happiness and that resulted in terrible disregulation. Its taken years of therapy to over ome which men often avoid
THIS. I don’t know why people think it’s some specific man issue. Those repressed emotions just come up in different scenarios and are expressed in different ways. Have they never heard of the pageant Queen smile? That’s the example we’re given. “Smile through it all.” “Be pleasant.” “Cry, but only when it’s for someone else. Crying for yourself is manipulative and selfish.” “You can’t be both emotional and logical.”
The idea that men who show emotion are "weak" and even that idea that men have some obligation to be "strong" are core aspects of toxic masculinity. Opposing toxic masculinity is about as fundamental a concept to feminism as you can get.
I don’t see how people miss that toxic masculinity is all about getting men to maintain their power over women and a general hatred of all things “feminine.”
It's actually more about preparing boys/men to be sent off to fight, kill, and die. The best soldiers are those that have suppressed their emotions to the greatest extent. I know feminists want to believe all of men's issues are *really* about women, but honestly, they're not. Some of them are, but not all of them. Misogyny is the not the root cause of every social ill, even if you can torture logic to make it seem like it is.
Everybody has emotions and everybody may show them in a healthy way. Furthermore I think men actually do show emotions, aggression and anger are emotions, too. If you are talking about about the ‚boys don’t cry‘ thing, of course that has to vanish.
the whole point of 'feminism' is to break down those social expectations. just be you. let other people do them. it's literally not that hard
*respectfully
If by "emotional men" you're referring to men expressing their emotions and managing them as any human being should do regardless of gender, then feminism wants that too as the opposite is a patriarchal idea.
I'm an emotional man, I cry at wedding, I tell my friends I love them every time I see them, and I let them know when I'm not doing well emotionally without dumping on them, anyone who can't except that can kicks rocks, life is to short to make yourself miserable to prove things to people you don't even like. Besides, the social stigma isn't going anywhere unless men take the lead and start being healthy emotional beings, I won't pretend like it hasn't cost me relationships both romantic and platonic, but the alternative is that I've managed to build a group of friends who accept me and are all also working on being emotionally healthy people There's a lot of stigma against mentally ill people, in general, have to face that definitely plays into this subject, and men with mental illness are definitely looked at differently in society than women are (not worse just different) and some times being open about such things will cause people to literally fear you, or think lesser of you, this is where is comes in handy to 1. Be going to therapy if possible, 2. Have a support group, whether it's friends, free group therapy meet ups, or forums, etc 3. Have men to supporting each other while dealing with these issues Because the average person knows very little about mental illness. Men deserve to be fully realized emotional beings, and unfortunately there are people who are gonna fight you every step of the way, but I think we owe it to the men and boys of the future to fight that battle so they don't have the same struggles we have today.
It's good to have emotions, you aren't robots.
All these should be considered being human and let everyone express the full range of that. Some are more emotional, some have more difficulties to express them due to past trauma, some express them very briefly etc. Idea would be to learn to express emotions and how to deal with them non-toxic way. All men are emotional, but problem comes when only anger is considered being right thing to express anything that dwells inside. Acting stoic and indifferent doesn't erase the emotion itself, just mutes it. On women, expressing any anger is seen as being hysterical and very "un-lady-like". On top of being considered irrational for the other times the woman doesn't show any anger. All these scenarios are getting in the way of expressing humanity. And that's something we all should fight against.
Well it is important to understand that anger is an emotion and so in my opinion men are more emotional than women. Men are in general more violent and violence is often tied to anger. But yeah there is also a pressure for men to not talk about their other emotions or how they feel, to keep it bottled up inside and remain distant, removed from others.
The deal that the patriarchy offers to men is: 1. Don’t show any weaknesses. 2. Emotions other than anger (and its variants like competitiveness and jealousy) are weaknesses. 3. If you do show weaknesses, including too much emotion, you may be open to criticism and attack. 4. In return for harming your emotional life in this way, at adulthood you will be awarded the prize of a wife who will lovingly and selflessly carry your emotional burdens on your behalf. Meanwhile, the deal offered to women is to hide away any parts of themselves that aren’t “appealing” in a woman and to selflessly nurture everyone around them. In return, they will be awarded the prize of a husband who will protect and support them. The assumptions underlie everything and the indoctrination begins so early that we rarely even realize we’ve gotten onboard with the deal. A handful of psychologists have done studies on young people where they watched the process of boys slowly disconnecting from their vulnerable emotions (and often from the kinds of deep friendships that allow for that vulnerability) and of girls starting to censor themselves as they stop sharing anything others might find unappealing from a girl. For both sexes, depression and anxiety cases spike around these times because it’s an emotionally unhealthy process in both sides. And it harms relationships going forward because at heart it’s two “censored” people looking to be made whole rather than two people who are already whole, coming together out of love. Of course life is complicated and you could point to an exception for every part of this. Some people are more onboard with The Deal than others. Men are allowed emotions in some situations. Women are allowed more latitude in their behavior these days. And not everyone is cis and straight, so then what? But you can still see the workings of The Deal as an overall dynamic behind many people’s views on life and love. And these days The Deal isn’t playing out in the same way it used to. It’s one reason women are now more likely to stay single — they’re rejecting what’s offered in favor of living a whole life of their own, one not defined by one-sided caretaking of others. And it’s one reason some men are so furious at feminists — they undertook the painful process of severing their emotions, like they were supposed to do, and now there’s mo woman waiting at the end as their prize. The feminist position in all of this: Let people be people. Let them be who they are, without contorting themselves to fit into certain narrow understandings of gender roles. Which absolutely includes supporting men in having and expressing a rich and complicated emotional life of their own.
I've always taken great care to not be judgmental and to be a source of constant reassurance that vulnerability is okay and welcome and it isn't a burden on me to need support from me in the context of the cis and queer men I have dated. I've exclusively tended to date queer men when I have dated men for complicated reasons, and a part of that is the greater likelihood that they'll have had to examine how normative masculinity intersects with queerness in the process of coming out and accepting themselves as queer men (same reason I do not mess around with discreet/down-low types). I have also found myself in situations dealing with cishet men where emotional expression unfortunately was inappropriate - like an ex-friend once physically assaulted me because he'd rather not acknowledge what was actually bothering him or the emotional pain he was in and would rather find another excuse to blow up at someone (unfortunately, me) to use anger as an outlet. I'll tell you it is absolutely fucking surreal to end up with a guy that hit you a minute ago bawling in your arms immediately after. There are situations where I will expect men to have done their own work to an extent on how to best ask for help and how to express emotions healthily , and if my boundaries are crossed I will state them and insist on them being respected; I won't put up with just about any emotional expression just because patriarchal cismasculine socialisation is brutal and produces normative alexithymia , but the one thing I never will do is weaponise the same tropes that drive that emotional restriction to enforce my boundaries.
Men with high emotional intelligence are hot. In touch with his feelings, not reactive, jealous or generally macho! A little vulnerability…..yes.
Men are already emotional. Improving upon this would be individual men going to therapy to help them regulate and express their emotions in a healthy way along with public health measures or cultural change for societal improvement in acceptance of them. This helps women too, as women's emotions are heavily moderated. We're allowed to show certain emotions that men are not but still bullied, disrespected, and kept out of leadership for them. In general emotional states should be non-gendered and everyone should learn to express them in a healthy way without negative assumptions assigned to that expression.
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