What happened to the noble art of the manly cry?

http://aeon.co/magazine/society/is-there-anything-wrong-with-men-who-cry/

by magda_wang • 11 years ago

25 18 11 years ago

michaelwww2• 11 years ago

It's interesting to me that last week I saw an article on HN that bascially asked the question "Is it ok for men to cry?" And now this article asking "What happened to the noble art of the manly cry?" It's interesting to me because I used to be a young man who didn't cry, and now I am older (late 50's) and I cry. I feel no shame at all and think it's a sign of sanity. What happened? Life happened. The older you get, the more things that make you want to cry happen. Speaking in general terms, parents pass away, you get divorced, you lose your house, you get fired or layed off, your best friend dies of a heart attack, your kid OD's on drugs; any number of things can and often do go wrong. I think Joe Biden is currently a great example of a man who cries. If I could send a message to my younger self I'd say go ahead and cry, because you will and you'll be better off for it.

thowmeinariver2• 11 years ago

It's more likely that your declining testosterone is to blame.

edit: Please explain the downvotes, I'm trying to offer a more scientific explanation.

michaelwww2• 11 years ago

Could be or it could be more existential than that. The inscription on Robert Kennedy's memorial across from his grave in D.C. comes to mind: "Aeschylus...wrote, Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God" This is from a speech he gave on the night of MLK's assasination.

jschwartzi• 11 years ago

Well, OP is trying to explain that, as a man, it's okay to cry, and here you are saying that real men don't cry, and if he were more of a man he would be able to go through life stoically ignoring his feelings. It's basically the exact attitude that the article decries.

thowmeinariver2• 11 years ago

I disagree, I found OP's statement to be very egotistical. He was painting himself as superior to younger men because "they haven't experienced much, that's why they don't cry!". Should younger men whose hormones don't allow them to cry feel bad about themselves? Are they subhuman for what they are? Have they not had enough "real life experiences"? This is obviously false. In fact, the majority of young men who experienced far worse than OP would still find themselves less likely to cry, and the reason is simply: biology.

edit:

and think it's a sign of sanity

Right, only OP is sane. Men who don't cry are lunatics.

pherq• 11 years ago

Just because you mention testosterone doesn't make your explanation scientific. Given that the article in question brings up that men not crying is a relatively recent thing, and seems to be largely cultural, assuming that it must be caused by testosterone (rather than just socialisation) seems unwarranted (and, given that it disagrees with observation, unscientific).

dang• 11 years ago

We detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10218815 and marked it off-topic for trolling.

beloch• 11 years ago

Over the last century men in many parts of the world (but not all) have become substantially more restrained in how they convey emotion physically. Watch a hollywood film from the 30's and you'll see men hugging, slapping each other on the back, holding hands, walking arm-in-arm, etc. in a very casual manner. Man hugs still happen in movies, but only in times of extreme emotion. Think back to the last time a co-worker gave you a hug. It was probably quite a while ago!

Some cultures still show a lot of emotion and have a lot of physical contact (e.g. Turks). People in these cultures also tend to stand much closer when talking. Put a Western European or North American in their midst and he'll feel very uncomfortable. Showing strong emotions is also generally more acceptable in these cultures. I may have fist pumped a couple times when my team won the Stanley Cup, but I've seen Turks do cartwheels, flop on the ground in hysterics, get up and start hugging everyone in the room because their soccer team won a quarter-final!

So, what happened? Why, in less than a century, did we become so aloof and restrained? Homophobia may be one possible reason. If two men unconsciously stand too close to each other while looking at the same thing someone (a woman did this to me once) will exclaim "ARE YOU TWO GAY!??". Physical contact, sharing emotions, etc. are things that, in the last century, have become off-limits for heterosexual men, and women enforce this as much as men do despite the fact that the same standard does not apply to women.

The psychological effects of this on men are probably not good. It's something that we should honestly make an effort to reverse, but how do we do so? What are things going to be like in another century if we don't?

foiboitoi2• 11 years ago

You bring up good points. But...

Homophobia may be one possible reason. If two men unconsciously stand too close to each other while looking at the same thing someone (a woman did this to me once) will exclaim "ARE YOU TWO GAY!??".

Is that really fear of homosexuals? Or more a heterosexual desire to appear available. Even among other males who make those "accusations", the counter-reaction to not appear gay is also an attempt to appear available to women and not decrease your odds of that (you don't want false rumors to spread).

To me "ARE YOU TWO GAY!??" is more flamboyant curiosity than a homophobic behavioral condemnation.

foiboitoi2• 11 years ago

Downvotes? Guess that's what I get for being honest & speaking from my own experience... I brought that up because you can only solve a problem when you understand what's gone wrong. And pinning it on homophobia is a swing and a miss IMHO. If there's a real single answer, it'd more likely be about male reputation & maintaining respect in our corporate focused culture. Which I think isn't that far removed from honor culture.

Qantourisc• 11 years ago

How do we do so? Find real men, brave enough to cry and express emotion! From a social pressure point it will be hard.

More seriously: you reverse things one step at the time. Creating awareness and correcting media would be the first step I think.

terravion2• 11 years ago

The article seems to be exhorting for more crying, but isn't it more likely that the Scandinavian / English / global business culture is spreading and will take over more and more of the world.

Maybe the "advantageous" solution is for more people to gain more control over their emotions and learn to mitigate the negative effects of fewer outward expressions. The article claims English speaking men have only learned to do this in the last few hundred years, but it seems to coincide with exponentially increasing size and power of that group.

Moreover, own little tech industry seems to be much less expressive than the industries that we are supplanting and replacing. And frankly, I think that lowered emotional availability is attractive to many of our most talented members and promotes their success.

rsfern• 11 years ago

I agree that coping skills are an advantage, but you seem to be suggesting that a decline in emotional expression has led to or somehow enabled industrialization.

Causality probably runs the other way around. The author suggests a plausible mechanism for this massive cultural shift: factory owners and managers discouraging emotional display in the name of productivity. Do you have an alternative viewpoint?

Your statement that lower emotional availability (relative to contemporary office culture) is attractive and beneficial seems counterintuitive to me. So much of our work is done in teams that it seems the stereotypical inscrutable, unapproachable engineer personality is more of a liability. How would you define 'emotional availability', and what makes less of it attractive?

norea-armozel• 11 years ago

It's about making everyone's psychological patterns more similar. Look at how women are forced to conform into a narrow definition of beauty and feminine autonomy to the point of erasing all ethnic and national variation. Same with childhoods which revolve around certain activities and even brands of products.

It's not so much an intentional but a side effect of mass production where goods sold are dependent on regular consumption. No regular consumption within tolerances then no goods produced. Men are no less victim to the structure of production than any other demographic. Only the richest members of society may be free to live what we think of today as eclectic life styles (where consumption is a tertiary concern).

terravion2• 11 years ago

I think that low level of emotional expression favors the kind of personality with great technical creativity--think the quiet (dare we say, Aspie) nerd, vs. a similarly driven but relationship oriented personality.

Is it better to be in world where the CEOs are wearing power suits, crying, and throwing things to negotiate better and the engineers have to keep up, or a world where few emotions are expressed and the CEOs dress down so they don't upset the engineers?

I don't think that management all got together one day put out a memo to say no emotions at work, because they felt like it. This article doesn't address that low expression has to be actually beneficial or the stoic Northern Europe / North American economy would not have become dominant over more Southern Europe / global south, which was probably a bigger economy at the time the article identifies as the start of the emotion suppression shift.

xiaoma• 11 years ago

According to the Isaacson biography, Steve Jobs used to cry in business meetings.

EliRivers• 11 years ago

I routinely weep in the quarterly sales meeting.

What happened to the noble art of the manly cry?

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