I’ve heard it said quite often of late that ‘bitches be
crazy’. I’m willing to concede the point. I’ve overheard a girl threaten to
commit suicide if her boyfriend left her. I’ve also heard the usual tales of
girlfriends secretly browsing their boyfriend’s phones, and personally
experienced the girl who thinks you are wildly in love after two dates.
But let’s not think for a minute that men aren’t just as
crazy. Some men seem to think that if they stalk a girl she will eventually
like them or forgive them for major indiscretions. Many men think it perfectly
normal to engage in a brawl on Friday night to ‘let off steam’. And then
there’s domestic violence.
Many also have ludicrous double standards. ‘I want a
freedom to flirt clause’, he says, but doesn’t like her talking to other
blokes. ‘We aren’t in a relationship’ he says, but doesn’t like her fooling
around.
I contend that most men are loonier than the bloke who
yells at the family court on a bi-weekly basis. So why don’t they have the same
reputation as ‘bitches’?
I have two reasons. First, it is socially unacceptable
for men to be seen as crazy, while women have some kind of sanction arising
from their frequent depiction as crazy in popular culture. Male crazy is thus
forced underground. Men cannot and will not admit to their capacity for crazy,
while women do concede, to their female and
male friends, that they can go nuclear.
This changes the discursive space. Men pass off their
crazy behaviour as ‘letting off steam’ or ‘getting a straight answer’; or the
worst: ‘stopping her being stupid’, which disguises crazy as policing
rationality. Men are the ninja’s of crazy; women prefer the Godzilla
method—it’s more honest.
Another explanation is to be found in how the genders
control their social environment. When men go crazy they typically harm
outwards. When women go crazy they typically harm themselves. The best example
I can think of is the male and female crazy response to being dumped. Men say:
if you leave me I will beat you.
Women say: if you break up with me I will kill myself.
There are milder examples as well: men often smash things
when they are angry, or get blind drunk and act obnoxiously in bars after break-ups.
Women frequently have very dramatic public meltdowns and force their friends to
care for them.
‘Crazy’ is a malicious means of controlling your
environment, and it should never be tolerated. All forms of manipulation,
whether physical, mental or a combination of both, are villainous. We must
accept that sometimes things don’t go the way we want and be reasonable.
Perhaps more importantly, we must recognise that men go crazy
as often as women, and we must not accept it when they do.
P.S. I apologise for the hetero-normative underpinnings of this article. It was easier this way.
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