When you talk to people about feminism, “emotion” is usually not the first thing to come to mind. However, if you hang around me long enough, you will begin to realize that emotions are a feminist issue that I bring up a lot.
Emotions are a feminist issue because society uses emotions to oppress both women and men in different ways. Women are looked down on for being emotional and men are taught to repress their feelings. But here is the thing.
We are society.
When we say that society is doing something, that society is made up of all of us. So, it is our job to fix it. We have to redeem human emotion, and that starts with the way we understand and talk about them. My friends will attest to the fact that I say something every time someone makes a gendered comment about emotions because I think it is critically important that we change the way we talk about them. Here are a few misconceptions that we all have about emotions and some truths that we need to start embracing.
Misconception #1- Men Don’t Have Emotions
How many times have you heard someone say things like, “men are not emotional, they are the logical sex, they do not know how to handle/express/have emotions?” It’s all utter nonsense.
Men have emotions just like women have emotions. Emotions are a human experience. Everyone has them. Emotions are frequently your body’s way of telling you that your needs are not being met, so actually, emotions are sometimes the key to survival.
Anger is an emotion, and violence is the expression of that emotion. So, when a man says something like he was so mad that he had to punch a wall (or another person), that is him having an emotional breakdown. Men’s anger is particularly dangerous for women and the rest of the world, but anger is not the only emotion that men experience.
The excitement that you feel when your favorite team makes the playoffs is another example of emotion. Men also feel sad. They get anxious when they face a lot of pressure at work. They get lonely. And there is nothing wrong or feminine about a man experiencing those emotions. How they express those emotions matter, and we need to do a better job of teaching boys and men to express their feelings in a healthy way, but it starts with giving men permission to feel things.
The problem with raising men to believe that they are logical is that they have come to believe that anything they feel is logic. They can no longer tell the difference between their emotions and logic, which makes them even more unstable. They become angry and defensive when other people do not see things their way because they believe that their experience is the logical one, even when it is really based on their emotions.
So, stop telling boys that they cannot be emotional. Stop calling them crybabies when they express their emotions. Stop telling them to “man up” when they express sadness, fear, or vulnerability. Teach boys and men to reflect on their feelings and express them appropriately.
Misconception #2- Women Are Emotional Because of Their Period
The world loves to tell women that they are only emotional because they are PMSing. We use this as an excuse to write women off and to prevent women from taking on leadership positions. First of all, it is wrong, and second of all, if you are using PMS as an excuse to shut a woman down it is only because you have no other argument.
Women do experience hormonal cycles, but that does not work the way people think it does. The time when women experience PMS is at the beginning of or just before they start their period. At this point in their hormonal cycle, a woman’s body knows that it does not need an excess of female hormones to support a pregnancy. So, that is when their body has the least amount of estrogen.
To put it simply, women who are PMSing actually experience hormones that are the most similar to men’s hormones all the time. If women are emotional because of their periods, men must be emotional all the time.
Even when hormonal changes do affect women’s emotions, it does not make those emotions less valid. It does not matter if it is hormones or life that is making me feel something, I feel it just the same. Feeling guilty or irrational because of those feelings just makes it harder to deal with them in a healthy way.
In my experience, people only blame women’s emotions on hormones when they do not like how those emotions make them feel. If a wife tells her husband that she is feeling angry because of something he did, he might claim that her feelings are hormonal because he does not want to take responsibility for the things that he did that upset her.
Stop making women feel bad for having emotions just because you don’t want to take responsibility for your actions. Respect women’s feelings and give them space to express them in a healthy way, no matter whether they are influenced by hormones or not.
Misconception #3- We Only Cry When We Are Sad
Crying is considered a sign of weakness, and it is supposedly something that we only do when we are sad. But the truth is that crying is your brain’s way of dealing with any emotion. Emotions cause chemical reactions in your brain, and your brain is always trying to maintain balance. When you experience a particular emotion quickly, your brain needs a way to release those chemicals, so it signals your tear ducts to open and release the floodgates.
The fact that society tells us that we only cry when we are sad creates an incredibly frustrating, and sometimes dangerous, experience for women. We cry because we are angry, but then we get written off as emotional. People who are uncomfortable with emotion stop listening to you when you start crying no matter what emotion is causing those tears.
When you force yourself to stop crying, as many women in abusive relationships do, you end up creating a chemical imbalance in your brain. Your body has to get those chemicals out somehow, and when you refuse to cry, it finds alternatives. Sometimes, that chemical imbalance leads to self-harm.
Other times, you just repress your emotions to the point that you are one instance away from an emotional breakdown. That is why we talk about the “straw that broke the camels back.” You end up crying over something as silly as spilled milk when, in reality, you are letting yourself feel all of the grief, anger, sorrow, and fear that have built up over time.
So let yourself cry when you experience any emotion. We, as a society, need to get comfortable with tears. We need to allow ourselves to cry tears of joy, anger, sadness, and love. We need to rewrite the mentality that crying is a sign of weakness because it is really a sign of human connection.
Truth #1- Everyone Has Emotions. How You Express Them Matters.
Everyone has emotions, all the time. They are a beautiful part of the human experience. We need to stop demonizing emotions and begin to accept that they are what separate us from the rest of creation. Your feelings are valid.
However, emotions are not the same as behaviors. It is okay to feel angry. It is not okay to become violent because of that anger. We all feel lonely sometimes, but that does not mean that it is a good idea to drunk dial an ex or run back to a crappy relationship.
Allow yourself to feel your emotions, but learn how to express them in a healthy way so that they do not take control of your actions. Here are a few healthy ways to express emotions.
- Talk to a therapist.
- Journal.
- Talk to a friend or family member, but make sure that they have the mental space to support you at that moment.
- Do something creative or artistic. Write, sing, draw, dance.
- Exercise.
- Identify solutions to the problem.
- Meditate.
- CRY! (see above)
Everyone has emotions, and those feelings are valid. But we must learn to express emotions in a healthy way because emotions are not an excuse for poor behavior.
Truth #2- Emotions Have Layers- Sometimes You Have to Dig Deep to Find the Real Reason
Emotions are layered, and sometimes you need to give yourself time to identify what you really feel. When you are going through a break-up, you will experience a lot of complicated emotions. You will experience sadness and grief because of the loss of the relationship, as well as despair and insecurity for the future, and sorrow over the loss of the future you thought you would have.
If you act on the base emotion of sadness, you might think it is a good idea to go back to the person that you broke up with. However, just because you are sad does not mean that the relationship isn’t broken. Simply going back to that person because you are unhappy and lonely is not a solution.
Work is another environment that causes a lot of people to deal with a lot of complicated emotions. What we call stress is really a combination of feelings of insecurity, the pressure to do or be the best, and feeling unvalued. You can quit your job and try to find another one that has less of those feelings, but if you have not identified the genuine emotions that cause your stress, every job is going to be the same.
It is difficult to sift through your emotions because often, they carry over from one situation to the next. Your body does not distinguish feeling insecure because of a break-up and feeling insecure because of a bad review at work. The more that you take the time to think through your own emotions, the better you will get at figuring out what the root cause is. But it takes time and it takes work.
Take time to express and examine your feelings. Recognize the surface levels and the real feelings underneath them. Emotions are often your body’s way of telling you that something is wrong, but you need to do the work to figure out what it is that is wrong. Way too many of us simply focus on the symptom instead of discovering the deeper cause.
Truth #3- Emotions Are Essential for Intimacy
Intimacy is defined as close familiarity or friendship, but you cannot be intimate with someone without expressing your emotions to them. Real intimacy is when you are so close to someone that you feel the same things that they do. I could not care less about sports, but I root for the Kansas City Royals because they were my Granddad’s favorite team.
I feel sad when my friends feel sad, and I feel angry about the injustices that they face. But the only reason I have those intimate relationships is that I share my emotions with my friends and they share theirs with me. Emotions are essential to intimacy because you cannot be close with someone if you do not know what they are feeling.
Given how many men think that emotions are a weakness, it is no wonder that so many women feel disillusioned with their marriages and relationships. If your wife has not expressed her feelings to you in a while it is not because she has stopped feeling them. It is because she has learned not to express her emotions with you because you might get angry with her or because she knows that you will write her off as “emotional” and “crazy.”
Those same men will be the first to comment that their marriage is doing just fine, but trust me when I say that your wife is finding emotional intimacy elsewhere if she can’t get it from you. I am not implying that your wife is having an affair. She is most likely turning to friendships with other women to supply their emotional needs. I know because I am the friend that many women turn to.
It is good to have a variety of intimate friendships, but one relationship should not make up for lack of intimacy in another.
Relationships are built on human connection and emotion. If they lack emotion, they are nothing more than a transaction. If you want a strong and lasting relationship, whether it is romantic or not, you have to learn to express emotions and listen to people when they express theirs.
Conclusion
Emotions are a beautiful and complicated part of the human experience. Men are not weak when they have and express their feelings, and women are not irrational because of them. We need to flip the narrative that we have believed about emotions and learn to value them.
Let’s raise children to express their emotions in healthy ways, and let’s learn to do so ourselves. Let’s allow ourselves to feel emotions without allowing emotions to dictate our behavior. Let’s redeem
human emotion and celebrate it for what it is.