Quote from: King Phoenix on December 08, 2015, 11:57:01 AMBut why do men come under such fire if they do or can cry?
Perhaps because almost all societies have been successful due to a dichotomy of male-female roles.
I'm not saying these are good or necessary anymore, but in the past, in caveman times, men hunting wild animals for food and protecting the women/children of their tribe from animals or other tribes was probably highly essential. This required a willingness to go out and face danger and stress, without buckling under the thought of it. I just can't see a heavily pregnant woman or children being able to bring down large wild animals for food or protect from other grown men as efficiently as grown men. And even today, people's brains are still wired the way they were back then on the instinctual level. When a girl comes into this world, she isn't told she needs to "toughen up" and compete, nor is she usually expected to put herself in harm's way. Society still believes, probably as it did thousands of years ago - that being tough and taking the hits is a "man's job", and in order to be seen as a capable man, boys are socialized from a young age to distance themselves from feminine traits as quickly as possible. Men who display visual signs of weakness such as crying or showing fear are still viewed as wimpy - or more succinctly "incompetent" of doing men's jobs (as women were frequently viewed as being unsuitable for). Now I know men who cry, and men who are afraid of things (because almost certainly all men have cried and have been afraid of something at some point), but they will hide it from almost everyone because displaying these emotions to the 'tribe' is gonna say what? It's gonna say: "you're no good to us, what kind of place do you have in this group? What good is a man who breaks down under pressure when we need him to stand between harm and the tribe, etc." If you imagine how successful a man who couldn't fulfill the male role - or be perceived as competent in his role - in caveman times would have been, you can see why men try to hide their weakness and why society punishes them for showing it. In the past, our survival partly depended on men being able to go do dangerous tasks and not showing weakness and succumbing to stress while doing them.
In nature after all, the mode of female mammals (on the whole) is to invest in and nurture young; the mode of males (on the whole) is to fight each other for access to mates. Females choose the males that are the most successful at this, perpetuating in the DNA the traits in males of greater strength, competitiveness, aggression, etc. because they are either good at shelling out resources to their mates, or have already beat out all the competition by being the strongest. Not all mammals do this, but even with those that don't, a male can't feed the young and has to make himself useful some other way by finding food or protecting the family. Or in some cases male mammals are cut out altogether from the raising process and live almost entirely alone, defending their territory from other males who try to wander in.
Again, I'm not saying it's
right to punish men for showing weakness, but this is why it happens. People's brains are still operating in a subconscious and sometimes conscious level to perpetuate the idea men should not act "weak", because those that didn't were generally more evolutionary successful, or were more useful to the survival of their group. This is also why men and women tend to want to differentiate themselves from each other, but particularly men wanting to distance themselves from women. Because society generally views women as more passive, less strong, less proactive, less brave, more emotional and therefore prone to stress, etc. to distance yourself from that as a man in society's eyes is to better suit to your "role" as a man - or the things men are expected to do: i.e. fight, do dangerous jobs, protect people, etc. and fit in better within your social group as a result. For women it's reversed - an emotionless, aggressive woman is seen as some kind of 'bitch' and probably "not a good mother", because women are supposed to be caring and empathetic, right? Those are traits that would make them good mothers. So society encourages it in them - until very recently that is.
That said, testosterone is a factor. All evidence suggests it makes crying more difficult for men, and this may well be something natural selection has found benefited them, so it was passed on to the kids of successful males. Or maybe not, and it could just be a side effect of higher testosterone levels in the male body. I do think though that given society's expectations of men, being emotional or fearful too much of the time
would be a liability. It sure wouldn't be of much use to a soldier to get emotionally upset when under fire, or a builder building a high-rise to be so stressed out by heights and danger that he can hardly bear to turn up to work each day.
Society generalizes a lot though. Some women are not suited for what it thinks they should be doing and some men aren't suited for what it thinks they should be doing either. But to answer the question, this is why society jumps upon men for crying, in my opinion.
As some have said, showing or experiencing vulnerability is not necessarily an actual weakness. But, openly showing too much vulnerability too often would be, I suggest.
I mean have you ever wondered why society is so hostile to transwomen - i.e. what it sees as men who are acting like women? I think much of the hostility is indeed subconscious rejection of a man - or what society still believes to be a male person - taking on the role of a female. To primitive societies, such a man might be quite a conundrum to them. They already reject men showing signs of weakness, but male to female persons would also not have been capable in the ancient past of bearing children, making them unable to fill the role of a female, either. They would fit neither basic role, being 'useful to the tribe' in neither. Now I do know that people can of course be useful in other ways than having kids or fighting, but in very ancient times, when survival was paramount, you can see how a group of humans would not be wired to deal with such a situation. They wouldn't know what to do with it. They
still don't, and still act with tribe-like hostility toward what they can't see as productive to them.
