"The problem is emotional, not intellectual": Why Men Don’t Cry
Reflecting on his own experiences of masculinity and of his male role models, Ralph Jeffreys argues it’s time for men to start collectively doing the work to challenge toxic forms of masculinity.
Ralph Jeffreys
Throughout my life, throughout the lives of my male friends and the men who I grew up around who first showed me what ‘male’ means, we have all grappled with a discomfort around vulnerability and emotion. Above all, this is manifested in a lack of tears. This problem has deeply impacted the moments in my life that I have found the hardest to cope with and all the moments when I have hurt those around me. It is for this reason that I have wanted to write this article for some time, and ask what helps to maintain the harmful masculinities that continue to plague our society.
The fact that men struggle to express emotion is not exactly revelatory. ‘Boys do cry’ has been a standard slogan for some time now. However, this phrase in itself is reflective of the way in which this issue is not always treated as seriously as it should be. The repression of emotion that many men perform is a function of incredibly deep socialisation, a socialisation which does not operate on a conscious level. For most men, repressed emotion is not like a dam waiting to burst. It is not a case of holding back the tears; we are so embedded within this process that there actually is no longer the impulse.
As we know, however, crying is a key means of releasing emotion. A failure to be able to experience this emotional release leads men consistently to opt for poor coping mechanisms, meaning this form of masculinity is actively damaging their mental health. A 2013 study of Canadian college men with depression found that their identification with this form of masculine identity produced three common responses: reactive anger, deliberate isolation and substance abuse. Participants showed a difficulty in understanding their behaviour. One man noted his angry displays felt “really out of character” for who he felt he was. Reflecting on his actions, another asked “why did I behave like that?”. Yet many failed to draw the connection between this, and the masculine ideals they felt they had to live up to, admitting they would probably not change their relationship to these ideals. When asked how they might respond to another man’s depression, one stated “I [would] definitely judge him”. Another suggested it was “a good thing really to aspire to that ideal'' - namely a traditional masculinity.
Socialisation is something that conditions us all, encouraging us to act according to a script we are not aware of. But the way we understand the issue and how we seek to treat it has to change. The problem is emotional, not intellectual.Take the fact that most men do not cry publically. The last time I saw any of my male friends cry would have been early on in secondary school. They might be mocked for it or simply left alone to get over it in an atmosphere of general discomfort. Certainly there was not the positive caring response we would hope to see towards a person in distress. Perhaps most importantly, I have never witnessed any older men in my life cry, barring a few minimal tears at funerals. The effect of this is to teach boys, on an emotional level, that we do not cry. Only when boys and men are shown emotionally, not by slogan but by action, that they too can cry will this problem start to shift.
This raises the important question of how this shift might be brought about. Whilst women and other gendered minorities in feminist struggles have played a powerful role in showing men the privilege they may be blind to and the importance of alternatives to a toxic form of masculinity, men have to do the work themselves to change this. On one level, it is clearly no one else's burden. On another, there is no one else fully capable of it. As those who have the collective experience of this emotional suppression, men are able to express exactly what it feels like and speak to the full range of male identity beyond it. And, as I have suggested, it is their practical example of living and demonstrating vulnerability that will be vital.
So on one level it must look like a constant effort by men to try - and it is an effort - to be more honest about when they are struggling. But we can do more. Mem Fox suggests that children's writers need to become more aware of how they might be suggesting to boys that they cannot cry, that they must be strong. This is an attitude that we can push in all of our institutions from where this problem stems, schools in particular. Politically we must begin a process of recentering discussions around toxic masculinity, to see it as (mostly) the product of deep pain, not a consciously wielded weapon. We must begin to see it seriously as a function of socialisation, not an individual problem that men must solve on their own.
What is essential is for us to take the issue more seriously, because its influence is still much deeper than many of us would like to think. If our goal is, as it should be, the liberation of everyone in society from the damage of patriarchal systems, then the issue of male identity is, rather sadly, central. After all, with men remaining the primary beneficiaries of patriarchy, as long as negative narratives of masculinity continue to dominate, the fight against it will be harder.
