[HPFGU-OTChatter] Hairy hijinks, personality permutations, Don't Boys Cry?

[Sean Dwyer]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 12:39:55PM +1100, Tabouli wrote:
[snip discussion of blondes, brunettes and redheads]

I'm being careful here, so I'll just restrict myself to quoting Thomas Dolby's
AirHead: "People say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her
hair" <quiet cough>.


> I'm not saying it's a good thing (which it certainly isn't), but aren't
> these two children likely to develop very different personalities and
> behaviour?  The girl will probably grow up feeling that expressing herself
> through tears when she's upset is OK, and will probably continue to do so,
> considering herself sensitive and gentle; the boy will learn that expressing
> himself through tears opens him up to social ridicule and will struggle to
> control them, considering himself weak and pathetic.
>
> This particular issue has always haunted me.  I have never, ever seen my
> father cry, not even at his father's funeral; my brother boasted to me that
> he hadn't cried since he was 13, *except* when my grandfather died (he
> confessed grudgingly, hastening to add that it was only a few tears alone in
> his room).  I, on the other hand, am soggy as a wet tissue.  And terribly,
> terribly susceptible to a man in tears.  Too much so, I sometimes think.
> Maybe I need to borrow a leaf from the Tough Book of Sin D.C. ...
 
This issue concerns me too, since I come from a long line of Men Who Don't Cry
Visibly. When I was a child, I forgot this maxim and was punished accordingly
by parents, schoolmates and teachers, all of whom were male. I have only known
my father to cry on one occasion: when he telephoned his parents to tell them
Mum had died (I didn't actually *see* this, but hearing it was bad enough). It
was a huge shock.

But since then I have kept the tears to private emotional pain, with the
occasional drunken embarrassment thrown in. I note that the tears are just as
much due to the excruciating pain of a swollen Adam's Apple at times of
emotional stress as to the stress itself. I never understood the coughing of
fictional male characters until this experience. I wonder, Tabouli, whether
your father complained of a cold or something similar, and cleared his throat
frequently? That's a giveaway, anyway.

Is there a cure for this? Is it a problem? Depends on your perspective, but
it's something so fundamental to most malekind, you'd have to rearrange your
culture from the bottom up. I know that most Polynesian cultures don't have
this problem (there's a lot they get right, actually), if it can be defined as
one.

Sean

-- 
Sean Dwyer <ewe2 at can.org.au>
Web: http://www.geocities.com/ewe2_au/