Disclaimer: This post contains statistics about sexual violence.
I’m sitting here trying to find a way to start this without sounding crazy or mad or resentful. The irony is not lost on me that this is an exact example of where all of my anger and fear comes from, and it makes me feel so done. I’m done with hearing how lucky women are because we get to be emotional. We get to be sensitive.
I imagine there’s a subset of men who think that’s exactly what I’m being right now: sensitive.
I find this myth undermining and simply inaccurate: that as women, we should acknowledge and revel in our “privilege” that it is “socially acceptable” for us to cry in public. That women are permitted to be “in touch” with our emotions without the threat of being called a “bitch” or a “pussy.” This is a myth perpetuated by sexism and chauvinism. It’s a myth that attempts to minimize the degradation, abasement, and violence towards women. Women are gaslit into thinking that we have a leg up on men in this way. In reality, women are incessantly, unabatinly, and interminably mocked, shamed, belittled, denied our rights, and crucified for showing our “emotions.” We’re not called “bitches” and “pussies” for crying because we already are bitches and pussies—meaning, an insult to a man is to be called a woman.
And why? To give men a pass. A pass when they punch a wall instead of saying “I’m angry, I need some space.” A pass for when they cheat on us because they “don’t know” how to say that they’re unhappy. A pass when they regularly go on killing sprees in our stores, schools, and places of worship (speaking of which, there have been 160 mass shootings in 2021 as of April 26th) because they “don’t know how to ask for help.” Through the myth that women have the upper-hand when it comes to expressing emotions, a burden is placed on women to coddle, take care of, and excuse men’s inappropriate actions.
“Boys will be boys” has the same connotation as “women get to express their emotions.” Both of these concepts give a false sense of a psychic advantage, while also invalidating systemic oppression and despotism by men. We simultaneously are told that we’re not rational creatures, while we’re also asked to accommodate men’s “inability” to deal with their emotions. Women are held to an impossibly high double standard of behavior that is often enforced through childhood phrases like girls mature faster than boys. We are also told that boys shouldn’t cry/run/fight/act like girls. Pick a lane, misogynists, pick a lane.
And before I get ahead of myself, let’s take a second to step back and define what we mean by “emotions.” How did “emotional” become synonymous with “dramatic” and “hysterical”? (Hysterical, by the way, is its own sexist term stemming from the Greek word for womb/uterus – hystera.) Our society ridicules the reactions that women have instead of the actions that men commit. The focus is on the woman’s “ridiculous” reaction of kicking her boyfriend out of her home for cheating instead of on the deceptive, immature, and callous actions of the boyfriend.
The literal definition of “emotional” is simply “displaying emotions.” It’s not an inherently negative or derogatory term, but it has absolutely become one in our argot. We use the word “emotional” to define only the emotions that are considered feminine. And because these emotions have historically been viewed as feminine, they have historically been viewed as weak, cretinous, feeble, and stupid. When our culture uses the term “emotional,” we do not actually mean “emotional”—we mean “inferior in the way a woman is inferior.” Our culture picks and chooses what is classified as emotional.
When I was 14 years old, I was at summer camp, and because God loves me, I came down with extreme heat exhaustion while trying to impress my crush on the volleyball court. I stumbled over to the shade, and while a counselor handed me a water bottle, he asked, “You have brothers?” “Yes,” I said. “That explains why you’re not crying,” he retorted. He was clearly insinuating (well—not exactly insinuating as much as straight up saying) that if I was a girl without a brother I would have shown “weakness” in crying. But lucky for me (!), I had one who taught me how to “take it like a man.” (And by the way, my brother didn’t—that just happened to be a non-cry worthy moment for me.)
Another time, when I was 20, I awoke with horrific pain in my pelvis that had me curled into the fetal position. My then-boyfriend, John* (you shitface), wanted to go for a walk and didn’t like that I couldn’t go with him. He asked me if I ever found myself noticing that I overreacted to a situation that was not actually happening. He asked if that was happening right now, if maybe I wasn’t actually in pain, but rather, making it up in my head. Turns out, I had a raging UTI (and if you’re reading this—it was from your gross, underperforming dick) and needed to go to the hospital.
Ask any woman. She will be able to list off dozens of times when she’s been gaslit by a man into believing that she was exaggerating, or on the other hand, being told by a man that the only reason she was not exaggerating was because of…a man.
Women are told that we can’t hold positions of power because we are too “emotional.” For example, does anyone else remember the slew of sexist headlines that persisted throughout both of Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaigns? If I remember correctly (I do), ABC News wrote an article titled “Can Clinton’s Emotions Get the Best of Her?”. Instead, we elected a man who will, no doubt, go down in history as the most reactive, impulsive, temperamental, and erratic President of all time.
And even when women show more “masculine” emotions like anger, we are still penalized and criticized far worse than our male counterparts. For example, Serena Williams was fined $17,000 during the 2018 U.S. Open because she hit her racket on the ground and called the umpire “a thief” after he hounded her throughout the sets. But last time I checked, the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, had neither been fined nor removed from office. Yet, he has been accused of sexual assault by 26 different women and he has incited a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, leaving 5 people dead. And speaking of Serena Williams, the portrayal of black women as aggressive and angry makes the intersectional issue of emotions and women exponentially more difficult to navigate. My skin tone exempts me from this level of persecution, but in all conversations about women, our rights, and our maltreatment, we must always be speaking about all women—not just the ones the media decide to highlight.
Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) reports that one in six women will be the victim of attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. A recent study by U.N. Women showed that 97% of women aged 18-24 in the U.K. have experienced a form of sexual harassment. The CDC reports that one in four women will experience intimate partner violence in her lifetime.
Violence towards women is an epidemic that has existed since the beginning of time. Daily, we are being attacked, persecuted, and hunted. Yet, our society continues to act as if we have this benefit over men—that we get to feel our feelings. Through this twisted logic, women become responsible for a man’s “inability” to recognize and reconcile his own unacceptable and biggoted emotions.
It’s time that we look at the facts. It’s time that we dissect what we mean by “emotional.” It’s time that we stop putting reason aside in order to find ways that women supposedly hold a kind of “power” that is actually actively used against them. Women and girls are suffering and dying across our nation at the hands of men, and society’s unrelenting and unabashed fight to keep men both emboldened in, and unaccountable for, their emotions and actions. I don’t know about you, but I can’t find any privilege in that.
*Name has been changed for anonymity.