I was talking this past week with a girl who was telling me that it was absolutely unacceptable for a man to cry: she had been with a “crier” and it did not go well. Now, granted, she went on to explain that this fellow she’d dated had cried over everyday things—stuff that the average Joe or Jane would deal with fairly adeptly, so I can understand her distaste. But then I asked her personally:
I: So, when my girlfriend [of significant time] and I broke up a few months ago, I cried: is this acceptable or unacceptable?
She: hesitant, pensive Well, I mean, I guess….
I: a bit incredulousOkay, okay, how about this, a hypothetical for you: My mother dies. May I then cry at her funeral?
She: Well I mean, I guess—under her breath—but even then….
I have to laugh at this, really. I mean, I can understand that it’s not really the manly thing to do to cry, and I would agree that in matters of everyday things, it’s nigh unto acceptable—the man or woman who cries about every little thing is tantamount in my mind to the man or woman who gets so pissed off about everything that s/he’s ready to throw things and spit blood when things don’t go his or her way. But realistically, however obnoxiously iconoclastic I might be, I cannot stand people who hold to such strict stereotypical gender roles that when a man’s own mother goes to her grave, he is to keep it to himself. When a man does that, in my eyes, he is either (1) the unfortunate slave of what other people—viz. his friends or significant other/wife, God forbid—think of him, or (2) schizotypal (think Muersault, of The Stranger).
This is the main reason men die, on average, seven years earlier than women. I gave up cigarettes because I wanted to feel what I was supposed to feel, thanks!
What do you think, should tears on a man, irrespective of circumstance, be anathema, or acceptable in some circumstances?
