Who's allowed to cry?

KHARLI MANDEVILLE

When I was a young girl, most especially during my years as a teenager over-wrought with hormones I often couldn't control, I used to cry.

I was also a very passionate person. I still am. During these surges of hormonal panic, every emotion was exaggerated. But I've always been a passionate person – not because I’m a woman, but because I care about a lot of things, well, a lot.

My brother and I grew up talking politics at the dinner table. In fact, religion, philosophy and politics were commonplace in most family conversation. It didn't take long before I was able to articulate the ideas of goodness and morality I’d grown to see as truths. I’d argue them fiercely at home and in the classroom. My brother grew to be the same. Tears often flowed, for the both of us, during these bouts of passionate conversation.

Where we differed was how we learned not to display emotion. My dad was realistic with me: As a woman, if I wanted to debate intellectual ideas, I’d have to keep my emotions in check. Though this is standard practice in debate, it isn't right that these rules applied to me more so than for boys. My dad realized this, but it was, and unfortunately still is, a sad truth of the world we live in. No one, especially men, would take me seriously if I reacted to debate with emotion. I’d be deemed “crazy,” someone with which debate was laughable.

It took time, probably until my early years of college, but I learned to suppress the tears that welled in my eyes anytime a peer argued in favor of any injustice in the world.

My brother learned this, too, but for him, it wasn't so easy. When the passion he felt during classroom debates brought tears to eyes, his peers reprimanded him for it, rather than our parents. Young boys can be so ruthless to other, vulnerable little boys.  Media and society propagandize to them that if they cry, they are not men, that they are worthless, and boys learn to single each other out earlier in life than we probably realize. My mom, a teacher, says she sees this behavior in her kindergarten students.

My brother and I learned not to cry as defense mechanisms against a world that shuns emotion for varying sexist reasons:

Girls who cry are crazy – as well as stereotypes, and boys who cry are weak. Now, I hardly ever cry anymore – and neither does my brother.

But if crying is so wrong, then why does it come so naturally to us?