I have a vivid memory of being genuinely upset about the death of my Grandma's dog. I understand this is hardly, as tragedies go, massive but I was young and I loved that dog! I was crying, and perhaps a friend could have suggested that I was overreacting or that worse things happen etc. No, I was told simply to 'Man up'
I have two problems with this phrase:
1) It suggests that men don't have emotions, that men are always tough. And this is bollocks. Moreover, it's wrong to suggest that to be manly, a man must be strong and silent. Men have emotions and should be allowed to express them.
2) Why should a woman be told to act like a man? What's wrong with being a woman? And why does showing emotion make you a 'woman'? Why does being strong make you a 'man'?
OK I know it's only a phrase and maybe I should 'lighten up', but it's not so much the phrase but the values the phrase promotes. The idea that to be a respected and successful woman, women should take on more stereotypically 'male' characteristics. Perhaps the most prevalent issue for me is the fact that I feel so uncool saying these things. Feminism isn't cool or sexy. But, really, what's cooler than standing up for your rights? What's sexier than having an opinion?
I have to go to work now so I can't develop this argument as much as it warrants, but I would implore you all to read 'Female Chauvinist Pigs- Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture' by Ariel Levy. It pretty much presents the same argument I've attempted in this blog but much more articulately. Levy is the modern day, post-feminist answer to Friedan, and she's excellent.
'What a woman was criticized for doing yesterday she is ridiculed for not doing today.'-Edith Wharton, 1915
I shall shamelessly plug myself here, only because it is my favourite thing I've ever written.
2 comments:
Oh God I completely agree with you, 'man' as a synonym for 'tough' really gets my goat! Good on you fellow feminist :)
It's not just femminists that hate that phrase.
I'm a bloke, but it pisses me off as well. Being tough (or even desiring to be tough) has little relation to one's gender. There are times when being over emotional is a bad thing (for example if you're hysterically whingeing about a cut to your little finger while the person you're with is trying to navigate both of you off a mountain in a snow storm). When though there is a genuine reason for being upset, and when it isn't doing you any harm (yes you're mother has just died, but if we don't move we'll get eaten by this rather large lion) then telling someone to "man up" could easily do more harm than good in the long term (and even if you are about to be eaten by a lion, there are a lot better ways to get the grieving person moving than telling them to man up). Grief is necessary and needs to happen.
Not all of us men are muscle-bound jocks - most of us don't want to be. But even the most macho of men have emotions they need to express.
You're possibly too young to remember, but there was a really good example at the 1992 Olympics. Garry Herbert was the cox for the two Searle brothers in the men's coxed pairs rowing event. They won gold. At the medal ceremony he was so overcome with emotion that he cried.
I've not managed to find a video of it online but I've found an interview with him at http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/herbert-out-to-add-to-his-crying-gains-1330105.html that shows he isn't ashamed of it at all.
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