Emotions

Being a black man is hard in America. We hear this everyday, no? And, as a therapist once told me (yup…been to one before) :

How you think, how you react to situations, how you treat your loved ones, what your morals are, and basically you in general is a DIRECT result of what you were TAUGHT as a child, taught being by example and by direction.

I really believe that. I think that is why a lot of women are told “look at how a man treats his momma…..you can bet he’ll treat you that way”. I know you all have heard that many times before. The meaning of that is clear: if he were TAUGHT to respect women, more than likely he will do just that for the rest of his life (yes, there are exceptions I know..). But I firmly believe, what you are taught to value in your VERY early, formative years sticks with you.

So, since we have some basics outta the way here’s my topic of the day, How, why and when is it O.K. to chastise little boys for not liking “manly” things or for exhibiting less than “manly” ways when it comes to displays of emotion.

Lemme ‘splain. If a little girl (say 3 years old) cries….we comfort her and we soothe her , but if a little boy cries, he may be told to “shake it off” or to (in some instances which I think are wrong) told something as harsh as, “stop crying like a little bitch!” or they get called names, or “since you cry like a little girl, I’ll treat you like a little girl….wanna Barbie little girl….”. I think it is TOTALLY wrong to degrade little boys and to dog them for showing that they have feelings. That puts it in their head that displays of emotiona are WEAK and they eventually tie it into thinking that those who do it (mostly women) are weak too! I heard this man going off on his LITTLE 3 year old son the other day, calling him girlie names and dogging him because he was crying. To me, that coulda been handled another way. But I also saw him talking to his wife in a rough, dictatorial kinda of way too. Yeah, O.K……. that shit woulda gone over like a STANKIN-ASS fart in church with me! You WILL NOT dog me or my baby to make your point!

Now, I also understand that you do now want your young man to grow up and be ridiculed by OTHER “macho men” for having too showy of a display of feelings. No doubt there is a fine line on how to raise little boys to be sensitive and manly at the same time, because in our current society , those terms are oxymoron’s.

I still do not believe that it is O.K. to make a boy feel bad about being somewhat sensitive towards others and showing that he cares. It simply gives them a complex and makes them less able to deal with conflict in the future through sharing (typically a way of dealing attributed to women, but effective in NOT letting shit be all pent up) and MORE likely to resort to frustration, internal confusion and just shutting down in general. This is another reason (in my opinion) that so MANY men must LEARN to “talk about it”. Women are taught it from birth. And in today’s society you hear all the time “don’t let stress stay pent up….stress causes heart attacks, strokes, diabetes…..shortens your life span…”. So, why would RELEASING those frustrations through emotion or feeling be bad????? OHHHHH , I forgot…only “gay men” do that right? No. I would PREFER for my man to talk to me and not clam up and shut me out and be able to DEAL with it in a healthy way (other than punching a boxing dummy’s brains out). Knowing how to deal with YOURSELF and teaching a boy how to effectively deal with his emotions is FAR more important than satisfying some “macho code of the wild: that most men subscribe to.

So, do I want my son to be called a punk? No. Do I want my son to be disadvantaged in terms of his being able to assimilate with other men as an adult? No. But do I want him to KNOW how to handle emotions healthily? FUCK YES!.

In my (unofficial) opinion, I think that little boys being INCORRECTLY taught how to respond to their feelings is WHY there are so many misogynistic, macho, sexist, a-womans-place-is-in-the-kitchen-or-the-bedroom type of men. After all, if the fathers or the mother’s are TEACHING or SHOWING their sons that it is O.K. to dog any type of display of emotion and women in general, how do you think they’ll turn out as men? Probably not nice or it will just take them A LOT of “work” being done on themselves to RELEARN how to deal! I understand, as I said before, that you do NOT want your young man (or young woman for that matter) to go around crying at every little bump or slight of their feelings. But I do not think degrading them or beating them because they SHOW feelings is good either. I think parents that do that are disadvantaging them more than not.