So why is it exactly that this stereotype continues to hold true for most people all over the globe? I don't even know where it came from. All I know is that its chauvinistic as heck. Even misogynistic. How so? Because guys who cry are falsely equated with actin' like a girl, wimp, sissy, or something else that could be comparable with "behaving the way a girl does" in society's stupid definition of that.
I guess I thought about this yesterday because I balled my eyes out over an orientation that should have happened but didn't because I failed to confirm it prior to its occurrence as the service chairman of the volunteering department requested for me to. I think what happened is that I got this request mixed up with a different one and never called her. Its not like she refused to give me a second chance.
I get to retry this again close to the very beginning of next month. It wasn't the actual mistake I made that prevented me to attend this orientation that caused me great upset. No, the real problem that really grinds my gears is my father's annoyingly incessant habit of putting me down lower than dog crap and be passive about it at the same time, if I tell 'em I screwed up stuff like this. He'll play detective and demand an answer on why something didn't fall thru with ruthlessly persistent interrogation until I give him the narrow truth or end up lying, which in this case I gave him the very broad truth but the words I wanted to convey would not leave my mouth out of crippling anxiety and I ended up lying and telling him that I did not know why I could not attend the orientation. Yeah, seeing that I really hate lying, I really suck at it too even at times like these when I feel its almost necessary to do so. :(
I became so distraught after returning home on foot that I called up a hospice representative to admit me. I spoke with my therapist also, who couldn't do much for me at the time in such an agitated state of being. My only salvation came from a good, long nap. Somehow, even from this, I managed to bounce back to my old self. :)
Honestly, since I've been on testosterone, I can barely cry. I've cried once in 4 months. I'm not sure it's a stereotype, to me it's the physical aspect of seriously not being able to cry.
Quote from: jlaframboise on December 08, 2015, 11:39:12 AM
Honestly, since I've been on testosterone, I can barely cry. I've cried once in 4 months. I'm not sure it's a stereotype, to me it's the physical aspect of seriously not being able to cry.
I think you have a point. Could very well be physical. But why do men come under such fire if they do or can cry?
Quote from: jlaframboise on December 08, 2015, 11:39:12 AM
Honestly, since I've been on testosterone, I can barely cry. I've cried once in 4 months. I'm not sure it's a stereotype, to me it's the physical aspect of seriously not being able to cry.
I think you have a point. Could very well be physical. But why do men come under such fire if they do or can cry?
That is situational. Men can cry quite freely without anyone saying anything for serious things like deaths or even less serious things like the last football game someone will ever play on a team. For trivial things it's considered a sign of being weak willed. Also, men don't give each other near as much crap over it as people think with the exception of those stuck in perpetual adolescence.
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Two things: Culture and physiology.
Our culture is masculine, so being feminine in any way is seen as bad. But go to a country like India, and you'll see big differences.
Also, jlaframboise and I share the same experience. Granted, before T I rarely cried (maybe twice a year at best) but after T, it just seems near impossible even when you know it would relief you.
Ditto'ing the "since I started T I can't cry" point. I was an angry/anxious crier pre-everything. Get me mad enough, and I'd just burst into tears. Now, nothing. At most, I'll feel a tightness in my chest when I get upset. I haven't cried in almost a year at this point.
What Deborah said holds true in my experience.
Add one more to the "can't cry club". I was always crying with any strong emotion before T. Now, I hardly cry at all. I think I had one time in the last two years where I actually really cried and it took a lot to get me to that point.
I do agree that there is some degree of expectation with regards to crying (or more accurately - lack of crying) but I do think it is also partly physical.
Last time i cried was due to a mental breakdown after being awke working for 3.5 days straight, i eventually hit a wall of hopelesness and actually broke down on the phone with my equipment manager lol.
He told me to sleep it off for a few hours then get at it again, gotta love prototype equipment thats "properly tested" before sent to the field lol.
Surprisingly i felt great after, sometimes you gotta let it out to start fresh!
~Shan~
Oh how I wish I could still cry. When I was young, I cried all the time, but when adolescence hit it stopped. The only time I can remember almost crying was when our 18 year old cat died. I've been to funerals and not a teardrop.
Take care,
Paige :)
Also joining in. Pre T, I used to cry over the stupidest ->-bleeped-<- around shark week ( a TV commercial could set me off)... or when I got really angry. I haven't shed a single tear since I started T. I love it. I hated that I used to cry a lot, especially when I would cry when angry. It would make me even more mad that I was crying, which in turn equalled more tears haha
I'm certain I would still cry if something truly emotional happened to me, like the loss of a family member or something, but other than that I would prefer to never shed another tear again.
I wish I could but I can't do it very often. I'm afraid I've become too hardened. The last time was when I saw Dad in hospital and knew he wasn't coming home.
Quote from: King Phoenix on December 08, 2015, 11:14:07 AM
So why is it exactly that this stereotype continues to hold true for most people all over the globe?
My dad was my very best friend in the entire world. He was the healthiest, fittest, toughest son of a ... baker ... that ever did live. Got cancer, we all expected him to pull through fine, and he died after a year. I didn't cry the day that he died because it was an incredible event; people from all over the place just serendipitously showed up... it was a crazy happy family gathering, and he was finally done with the pain. But man... I was broken after that day.
For two years, I was in the pits with grief. Every day was the longest of my life, and I'd come home and collapse into a lump, maybe growl something friendly like "I'm too pissed off to talk but it's not about you" to my darling, patient, supportive wife. I'd sob once and a while. Two sobs. Maybe 3. Maybe 3 tears, too, if I got lucky. I needed to cry. Oh boy, did I want to cry. I felt like crying. I couldn't, and it was frustrating to no end. I became self-conscious of the fact, and it became even harder to cry. I noticed that if I wanted to bring a genuine tear to my eye, I just had to say the words "my dad" but I could not cry.
Some men don't have this problem. It's a problem; it's a weakness that some men are fool enough to be proud of. My dad could cry and cry, and he raised me to cry without shame. But it really does seem like my tear ducts shriveled to nothing as I aged, and came back when I started HRT.
Ohhhh... my... god. Estrogen is the BOMB. I got tears flowin' like a river. I'm never going back to testosterone. Peace!
Quote from: King Phoenix on December 08, 2015, 11:14:07 AM
I guess I thought about this yesterday because I balled my eyes out over an orientation
??
I hope you mean "bawled." :o
I used to be an emotional crier. A bad emotional crier. A famously bad emotional crier. As a kid, I would burst into tears at the slightest provocation: embarrassment, empathy, anger, hurt, whatever. I swear, I spent half my school years in the bathroom wiping my face, haha. It wasn't cute!
So, I decided... not to be that way. I worked extremely hard to stop being so sensitive and stop being so prone to tears. I'm not on T or anything. I just chose to stop showing my emotions so freely... and I've found that over time, I don't feel as strongly either. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy -- it was the most work I've ever put into personal change, and it took borderline masochist amounts of effort -- but it was a true shift in my emotional processing. It makes me wonder how much of the reduction in crying amongst trans men is due to T, and how much is due to our perception that such a change is possible? And if it's all T, how much I might change in the future.
I am a MTF trans and been living in a male body over 23 years, trust me, natural Cis males can cry and testosterone does NOT affect your ability, the thing affecting it is probably your own personal views.
Actually, Skylar, it DOES effect your ability to cry. Not the literal physical ability but the emotional reactions you have to things. Many, many, MANY FTMs used to cry over everything (like sappy stuff, too) and then after taking T no longer have the same emotional reactions. Instead of being sad, I find myself getting mad or frustrated. It is partly hormones how we react to things.
Quote from: Skylar1992 on December 09, 2015, 05:40:05 AM
I am a MTF trans and been living in a male body over 23 years, trust me, natural Cis males can cry and testosterone does NOT affect your ability, the thing affecting it is probably your own personal views.
Trust me, if I could physically cry, I would like to sometimes. It would be a good stress reliever.
Your experience is not universal. Please keep that in mind.
I agree, I have to respectfully disagree with it having no physical nature. I cried at everything pre T. Any strong emotion brought on tears. I was sometimes embarrassed by it because I had no control over it. But that embarrassment didn't stop it from happening, and I always saw myself as a man pre T. Since being on T, my emotional response to things does not usually include crying. It wasn't my view changing or feeling like I "shouldn't" cry because I don't ascribe to those stereotypes at all. In fact, there were times early on (before I found other release mechanisms) where I wished I COULD cry. So there must be something biological there somewhere. At least that has been my experience.
Men cry. Manly men cry. It's usually over emotionally moving moments from what I've seen.
Cindi
I think there is more to it than just hormones. My daughter for instance doesn't cry unless things are serious and she gets very frustrated with co-workers who do cry a lot. My wife doesn't cry excessively either, just once in a while. HRT hasn't made me cry more at all although I always shed some tears at movies involving the combination of love, death, and the afterlife.
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It was easier for me to cry pre-T but even so it required some effort to get the waterworks going. Still, stuff like stress and frustration could set me off pretty easily. After I started T, crying became significantly harder but now I seem to start wailing over the most ridiculous things like fricking documentaries, movies and games. ??? Otherwise it requires a LOT to get me shed a tear. Last time it happened was when we had to put our cat down. I cried for several weeks after that.
I have been crying a lot more since I got in terms with actually being a girl.
Then again, I have plenty of reasons to cry nowadays, and having the wrong kind of genitals between my legs and not being able to do anything about it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Quote from: FtMitch on December 09, 2015, 09:49:18 AM
Actually, Skylar, it DOES effect your ability to cry. Not the literal physical ability but the emotional reactions you have to things. Many, many, MANY FTMs used to cry over everything (like sappy stuff, too) and then after taking T no longer have the same emotional reactions. Instead of being sad, I find myself getting mad or frustrated. It is partly hormones how we react to things.
Again, I disagree with you and I have the perfect grounds to do so. Yes men cry less or express sadness in other ways but in no way does it change the ability to cry. I (still pre hormone bare in mind) can easily cry at sad videos, sad movies, sappy love movies.
Your also using the stereotype that most FTMs were all super sappy and cry at everything which really is not the case, in fact many people I know who are FTM were always very tomboyish and were always quite hard emotionally before and after transition.
What I could agree on , if this were the topic but its not, that is more normal / acceptable for girls to cry then yes. There are many, many times I feel like crying as a man but are not able to at the moment due to stereotypes. For example if I was in a cinema and started crying over a film, people would be like ''WTF is wrong with that guy'', if it was a girl no one would mind.
I spent my first 55 years as a male, then I became hypogonadic (low testosterone) and eventually began taking estradiol.
I can report first hand that the change in hormones makes all the difference in the world. I NEVER cried tears of happiness or when seeing or hearing something beautiful when I was operating on testosterone.
When on testosterone I could easily suppress my tears as needed. Not so when the estrogen is dominant.
Quote from: Skylar1992 on December 09, 2015, 02:16:13 PM
Again, I disagree with you and I have the perfect grounds to do so. Yes men cry less or express sadness in other ways but in no way does it change the ability to cry. I (still pre hormone bare in mind) can easily cry at sad videos, sad movies, sappy love movies.
Quote from: FTMax on December 09, 2015, 09:55:12 AM
Trust me, if I could physically cry, I would like to sometimes. It would be a good stress reliever.
Your experience is not universal. Please keep that in mind.
True that (ymmv).
I'm on innate testo, not by choice for what it is worth.
And I cry a lot. Is it a happy or a sad thought, it summons tears. I get that itch between the eyes and there come tears. Oh my, how I like to give it a facial expression too.
I like it if I am alone, but in public it can be quite embarrassing. And I have been like that since being a kid. Same story as many... being beaten and teased to "man up". Aged 32, I actually have the full freedom to safely cry all I like.
In my case, testo doesn't 'help' at all involuntarily block it. But, granted, generally it may be helping to voluntarily control crying, since I am not even trying to control it. In my experience, even with it, all boils down to actual wish to control crying.
I hope to learn one day how it is on the other side. I actually rarely see cis women crying. It must be alright.
I cried before estrogen and i cry a bit more/easier after it. I think it is all individual. I have seen many males in my life cry. Vulnerability and humanity actually increases someone's personal power instead of weakening it.
I think the traditional issue with men crying is about vulnerability, like someone is going to come in and take the club and rocks from the cave if you show it. The opposite is usually true.
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.
Quote from: Skylar1992 on December 09, 2015, 02:16:13 PM
Again, I disagree with you and I have the perfect grounds to do so. Yes men cry less or express sadness in other ways but in no way does it change the ability to cry.
Um, I read a clinical study a couple of years ago that confirmed that T has the effect of damping the ability to cry. This result does not mean that all men cry less than women or that all trans people on HRT will experience a change in their ability to cry.
I wish I had noted the specifics of this study--what it was called, who wrote it, and so on. I suspect that it's not the only one, but it explains a lot of FTMs' experiences. It certainly explains why my waterworks dramatically dried up. I usually don't like to cry, but I sometimes want to as a way to express my feelings and relieve my tension. Usually, nothing happens unless I'm triggered by something really horrible. It's maddening. There's no lack of desire here, just a dramatic hormonal shift.
Quote from: Skylar1992 on December 09, 2015, 05:40:05 AM
I am a MTF trans and been living in a male body over 23 years, trust me, natural Cis males can cry and testosterone does NOT affect your ability, the thing affecting it is probably your own personal views.
Since most trans* folk have been on both sides of society, you'll notice we tend not to completely subscribe to gender norms, if that's what you're implying. Many of the responses in this thread--I haven't counted, but possibly even MOST responses--report a physical change in the ability to cry while on HRT. It could be argued that those who see no physical change are the exception, not the rule. Yes, men can cry, but the truth is that it's often more difficult for some people with T as the dominant hormone. Some, not all.
Quote from: jlaframboise on December 08, 2015, 11:39:12 AM
Honestly, since I've been on testosterone, I can barely cry. I've cried once in 4 months. I'm not sure it's a stereotype, to me it's the physical aspect of seriously not being able to cry.
Amen to this. It's not like I actively avoid crying, it just doesn't happen. If I do "cry" now, it's never bawling like it would before T; it's like my eyes well up for a second, then I blink, and it's done.
Quote from: ltzct on December 10, 2015, 04:49:09 PM
Amen to this. It's not like I actively avoid crying, it just doesn't happen. If I do "cry" now, it's never bawling like it would before T; it's like my eyes well up for a second, then I blink, and it's done.
Yes! It's not that I avoid my emotions. Cause I don't. It's more of a "I'm upset but it'll be over in 10 minutes if I cry."
Quote from: ltzct on December 10, 2015, 04:49:09 PM
Amen to this. It's not like I actively avoid crying, it just doesn't happen. If I do "cry" now, it's never bawling like it would before T; it's like my eyes well up for a second, then I blink, and it's done.
Yup I'm exactly the same way. I can't bawl anymore. I get more frustrated or stressed and just laugh it off.
At 40 yrs old, when I had just started my questioning and exploration of gender, I had cried exactly 2 times in my entire adult life. After about 6 years of personal inquiry, as I was beginning to identify feminine aspects of myself, I began to find occasions to cry, mostly in private, but sometimes in public (movies, etc..). I wasn't and haven't taken any hormones, so if there was a chemical aspect to this, it would have to have been triggered psychologically. Today I am probably more likely than my wife to cry during a movie, although it depends upon the style and subject. But she may be more likely than I to cry over personal struggles with career, family, etc...
My internal inquiry certainly did change my perception of crying, and I consciously gave myself permission to cry, setting aside cares over societal judgments. In fact, I guess in my process of feminization (or maybe more correctly my acceptance of my femininity), I almost found crying to be a kind of validation that I was on the right track, so to speak.
More general, this is about how emotions come to you and what is their effect.
For instance, have you ever heard some music and began to dance just because it was the right tune and moment? Happens to me often despite being loaded with T. :angel:
Quote from: Martine A. on December 13, 2015, 12:13:32 PM
More general, this is about how emotions come to you and what is their effect.
For instance, have you ever heard some music and began to dance just because it was the right tune and moment? Happens to me often despite being loaded with T. :angel:
Thank you for that.
That's why I don't understand why alot of people think T is why guys can't cry. But there are guys who
can cry. And those are the guys who get bashed on for "acting like a girl." So stupid....
Testosterone does not effect the ability to produce tears.
I've been on T for 7 years. I can cry whenever I feel I need to, it doesn't take effort it just happens. And I think that FTMs who subscribe to the "men can't cry" thing are trying all that much harder to fit into a society that doesn't make sense to begin with. People born with testicles cry, everyone cries.
Tears aren't ovary dependent.
When someone says they can't cry, it's more than likely a psychological block than anything to do with hormones.
Again, I have to respectfully disagree. Everyone's experience is different. There are men with testicles that can cry easily and some that can't. There have been times that I have wanted to cry, felt it in my chest, but literally nothing happens. This is not anything that I am trying to do to fit in, it just is what it is. I was more embarrassed by my drop-of-the-hat crying before I started T and that did not stop the waterworks. If it were purely psychological, I feel that I would have had easier control over it prior to T when I didn't want to cry. Not because I felt like "men don't cry" or any societal stereotypes like that. I am my own man and I don't care much what other people think about the type of man I am. I enjoy being sensitive and romantic and showing my wife how much I care about her. So I don't believe in my case it is psychological. Everyone is different. You may not have experienced any difference in how you feel emotions and how your body expresses those emotions, but I don't think that's everyone's experience. T has many, many changes and none of them are consistent amongst all men.