Crying and talking about your feelings is not the same thing

The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare calculates that men commit suicide at roughly four times the rate of women. Part of the blame perhaps lies with our cultural tendency to encourage men not to talk about their feelings. 

Josh Thomas made that point on Q&A:

Tony Porter made similar comments in a TED talk back in 2010. He too specifically singled out crying. In talking about his two children when they were around 5 years old he says:

“She could come to me, it didn’t matter what she was crying about; she could get on my knee, she could snot my sleeve up just cry, cry, cry it out, daddy’s got you that’s all that’s important”

“now [my son] on the other hand, he come to me crying, as soon as I seen him crying it’s like a clock would go off, I would give him about 30 seconds, which means that by the time he even got to me I would already be saying things like ‘why are you crying?’, ‘hold your head up’, ‘look at me’, ‘tell me what’s wrong?’, ‘why are you crying?’, I can’t understand you when you’re crying’.

Porter’s speech is much broader and more sophisticated than just this juxtaposition and is worth a listen. I want to focus just on this contrast because it is instructive.

Do you think Porter should say the same thing to his son as he says to his daughter?

I don’t.

He should say the same thing he says to his son to his daughter. 

There is nothing in the second set of statements and questions that discourages anyone from talking about their feelings. Rather, there is an emphasis on talking about your feelings rather than letting them rule you.

That came out a little strong. There are times when it’s all just a bit too much and you need to shed a tear. But there is nothing in and of itself good about doing so. If you’ve got feelings you should admit that to yourself and then go and investigate where those feelings are coming from and whether you should do something about it. 

Crying makes you fragile. What's good about that? Shouldn't we be encouraging everyone, girls and boys, to be resilient? 

Thomas says 'this idea that men should be resilient'. I say: everyone should be resilient. Resilience isn't the same as being unfeeling or cold as ice. Let's not flip from one extreme to the other. 

Women are caged by the idea that they are emotional beings who can’t react calmly and rationally and talk it over. Men are caged by the notion that they aren’t allowed to have feelings. The solution to both problems is not to turn men into sensitive, hysterical, teary eyed feelers but to encourage men to talk about and articulate their feelings, and encourage women to work with and rationalise their emotions.

Crying, and emotions more generally, can be highly manipulative. This is precisely because they’re irrational. For centuries we’ve forced women to be emotionally manipulative because they were excluded from rational power. Let’s not encourage more people to opt for that path to what they want.

Crying is fine while you’re a child. All sorts of stuff happens when you’re a kid that’s overwhelming because everything is so alien—pain, regret, loss, frustration, embarrassment, all of it—totally alien and frequently overwhelming. So you cry. That’s fine. Maybe even for a whole minute and not just 30 seconds. 

But once you’re not a kid anymore you shouldn’t cry unless shit gets real. Crying doesn't help fix anything. 

And let's be clear: putting a moratorium on crying doesn't mean people aren't allowed to talk about their feelings. 

Less than a century ago 18 year olds stormed the beaches on D’day and ran headlong into machine gun fire. Now they demand safe spaces to protect them from Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Germaine Greer. One college in the states recently cancelled a screening of Stonewall because contemporary LGBTI students might be confronted to learn that they weren’t always so accepted by society (peak derp). 

Now perhaps talking about your feelings is important so your wounded pride and misdirected search for identity doesn’t produce Nazism. But crying is just the other end of the crazy stick.

We need to encourage our sons to talk about their feelings, and we need to stop being soft on our daughters, and nobody needs to cry.