A general poll - for chicks mostly

[jeanvieve]

Okay gals. This is a litmus test of a concept I mulled over for years. It was sourced in things like my mother always being the one to flush the goldfish, hold us when we sobbed over the dead cats, our first school day crushes that were crushed in turn by life and circumstances. And perhaps it is a stereotype, of woman the caregiver.

It deals with generalities. I expect you all will know shining exceptions to the rule, stay home daddies etc. But:

Do you, in your heart and mind and based on experiences you personally have, believe that men as a general rule are emotional cowards?

Not physical, not how well they dare to face bombs and bullets and will race to the building to pull out the screaming baby. I have nothing but deep respect and admiration for the bravery of the male race, when it is their life on the line.

But when it is their feelings? Or the feelings/tears of others?

Lay it on me. Have men grown bold and modern, capable of dealing with death and pain and sorrow while I wasn't looking? I wait upon your words to determine if I should review my convictions.

Comments

[answers-within.livejournal.com]

I have generally found that men still have more trouble coping with emotion, theirs and others', than women...but not by much, and I truly wouldn't call most of them cowards. To me that implies an expectation of emotional proficiency that frankly I just don't think most of them have ever been given, so I don't really expect it of them unless they've been around me for a good long time. Dealing with emotion skillfully and with compassion is a *learned skill*, and there are precious few places to learn it.

Really, though, I find that MOST people have difficulty with emotion. I know just as many women as men who stubbornly go "LALALALALALICAN'THEARYOU" in the face of their own difficult feelings, or who change the subject or stop returning calls when someone close to them is having difficult feelings. I know just as many women as men who, if they can stand to listen to the difficult feelings, immediately need to "fix" what's causing them, and get impatient and angry if the person on the receiving end doesn't immediately follow their advice. I certainly know just as many women as men who are incapable of really listening to anything about anyone else, and will steer the topic towards themselves with every breath, so that only their complaints and gossip are focused on, and nothing of substance in themselves or anyone else.

In terms of your example of a mother's reactions, I do think it's easier for most people to cope with a child's emotions than another adult's. Among other things, when dealing with another adult's emotions it tends to point us back at our own stuff we don't want to look at, while most kids' stuff seems "simple" and less triggering - they're very different classes of issues.

I do agree that we have an extremely powerful cultural expectation that a mother will "nurture" in that stereotypical "feminine" fashion, and I do think most mothers are programmed with that expectation and try to live up to it (where we don't have the same expectation of fathers), but many of them fail. My mother was and is quite impatient and intellectual, with very little patience for emotions - her first reaction to feelings is to come up with an intellectual reason why one shouldn't feel that way. I see this in a lot of my friends who are mothers too, so I know it's not just my mom I'm projecting on everyone. Now, granted, my dad was like that too, and I still think men are more prone to be that way in the face of feeling, but I think it's more widespread on both sides than we might think.

Dunno if that really addresses your question, but that's my shilling. :-)

[jeanvieve.livejournal.com]

It's a fine shilling, thanks! Good points.