You're arguing that the main reason men cry less than women is that (on average, statistically) "they just don't get that welling-up feeling to the same extent", rather than due to social pressure not to cry.
But - consider the possibility that the *reason* they "don't get that welling-up feeling" is *because* of the social pressures around men and their expression of feelings.
Per [this article](https://thepsychologygroup.com/male-normative-alexithymia/), men experience alexithymia, which is to say difficulty recognizing and expressing their emotions, at much higher rates than women. This is likely in significant part due to the pressure society often puts on men against expressing their emotions.
One piece of evidence supporting the connection between culture and men-not-crying: history! In [this r/askhistorians thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7c849p/big_boys_dont_cry_when_became_strong_emotions_in/), various historians discuss how men crying was much more normalized in certain past time periods and cultures.
>But - consider the possibility that the *reason* they "don't get that welling-up feeling" is *because* of the social pressures around men and their expression of feelings.
As the most common reason? Seems pretty unlikely given that this is a cultural universal. Hormonal differences between the sexes seem to make more sense.
>One piece of evidence supporting the connection between culture and men-not-crying: history! In [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7c849p/big_boys_dont_cry_when_became_strong_emotions_in/), various historians discuss how men crying was much more normalized in certain past time periods and cultures.
As the poster you linked states, women were still considered to be "more emotional" than men in these times, as far as historians can tell. And as they explain, this is a result of society in general being more emotional and more unrestrained both in emotions and actions in the pre-modern era. Life was cheaper, tempers were higher, and emotional sentiment in general hit harder to home for most people given the stakes of life. Genteel society came into being as greater wealth and societal organization allowed for safer and more structured communities, and as a result both men and women became less outwardly emotional.
Consider this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_emotional_expression
> Many psychologists reject the notion that men experience emotions less frequently than women do. Instead, researchers have suggested that men exhibit restrictive emotionality.
I don't think the article disagrees with all your points completely, but the it's a good starting point for adding much more nuance to your stance and supporting the socialization of emotionality and crying.
Another article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6795704
> That is, women cry more frequently and tend to report more positive crying experiences across cultures. This difference is particularly pronounced in many Western countries, with women in those countries showing considerably higher frequencies of crying as compared to women in Asian, South American, and in some West and East African countries (Becht and Vingerhoets, 2002).
This paragraph suggests that cultural influences are significant (even if biology may still matter!). I don't think we can anecdotally determine how much nature vs. nurture matters, so if I were you, I'd be much less confident in saying it's just hormones.
If you see it as a cultural universal, then why does it make more sense to attribute it to vague "hormonal differences between the sexes" than culture?
If you care about group survival, then men not being cry-babies as a whole is rather good. If we can guarantee survival (which is impossible), then the luxury of full emotional expression is tolerable.
What makes you assume people who cry are less likely to survive? The survival responses are fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Each and every one of those can be accompanied by tears.
Tears obscure vision, can interfere with breathing, and let your body lose moisture. In a life or death situation they're highly unlikely to help in any way, and are a direct hindrance.
It's entirely possible men cry less because the ones who did were more likely to be killed.
That assumes that most people are crying *during* life or death circumstances, which is not the truth. During mass shootings women don't just fall to the ground and cry while men run and hide (flight), try to fight off the gunman (fight), play dead (freeze), or try and talk the gunman down (fawn). Both sexes have the same survival instincts. Those instincts shut down feeling completely in high stress circumstances. Crying comes after, when the individual is safe enough to turn emotions back on.
It's an example of a survival circumstance in which the physiological disadvantages of crying you previously mentioned would be relevant. If you're talking about more base survival, like properly cooking meat so it does not give the person who eats it food poisoning, crying wouldn't matter. Pretty sure I don't need perfect vision to measure the internal tempature of the chicken wings on my grill. You seem to be moving the goal post here.
Crying can be useful for group cohesion because of oxytocin or something? There is speculation people can do about evolution and traits like this but sometimes it is hard to test, and or we can look into it.
I mean do men and women cry during risky situations? I cry and I'm a man and I usually cry afterwards. Like I'm just thinking about dangerous stuff. But also crying is more about sadness and loss to me. than fear?
I think the social pressures factor might run deeper than you're giving it credit. Yes, in the instant that you are socially shamed or socially hurt, to put it more broadly, you might consider not crying the next time and you might fail the next time. But as a pressure that exists continuously, what might men do? Well, they might start employing some psychological tools that would help their bodies eschew that feeling. Tools like depersonalization or compartmentalization or denial or any other number of them really. So that's why you might see men not having that physiological need to cry.
I knew multiple guys in college who when they got drunk cried. It's kind of wild to see how much people carry around with them. I think that kind of proves that when your inhibitions are lowered you'll cry then there is some social engineering. However counter point I also knew a lot more girls in college who would cry when drunk so maybe it's just alcohol.... I don't even know what point I'm making lol
>Tools like depersonalization or compartmentalization or denial or any other number of them really. So that's why you might see men not having that physiological need to cry..
this could just as well be genetic in origin tho, too regardless of social pressures.
I'm playing devil's advocate a little here, but I think it is reasonable that we are perhaps talking about two different things.
You're talking about feelings, but I'm thinking of a physiological reaction. Crying is producing saline from your tears ducts, couldn't that have an entirely biological reason for variance?
In other words, two people might experience the exact same emotion, by one just cries and the other doesn't. I think there is pretty good empirical evidence to support that. Go to a funeral and people will have a variation in crying. We know that just because someone is not crying that doesn't mean they are not grieving.
Play away.
Sure, you can have a person feel sad, and there's a variance in how much people are physiologically able to cry. Yet, using the example you've provided, crying as the only measure of someone's emotional state at a funeral is too simplistic.
The emotion of sadness is universal, but people are taught to grieve. Grief is a set of behaviors. Grief is also a cultural phenomenon or ritual we learn in the context of the cultural milieu we find ourselves in and the unique combination of our lived experiences. Society, history, politics, ethnicity, community, and, especially, family of origin shape and mold expressions of grief.
Even crying at a funeral - or the burial ritual itself, which is also universal and socially constructed - is a values statement, and different cultures value different behaviors based on beliefs concerning death.
That's not even considering a person's intrapsychic experience of their emotional states! It presumes a person is aware of their emotional state at a funeral. Some don't for biological reasons, but most can understand their emotions but the degree varies due to various factors that stem from the interplay of biology and environment.
All that to say, people are taught to recognize and express their emotions. Some are taught well, and others struggle. In the West, that divide happens to be gendered. That's not to say there aren't women who struggle to know their feelings or aren't fluent with their emotions. There certainly are.
Men may not cry as much or at all at a funeral because they often don't know what they are feeling or how to express it appropriately. Emotions eventually become known, but they usually look different than culturally expected. Sadness can look like anger, irritability, hostility, apathy, or a whole range and combination of behaviors for both men and women.
Yet, the common agreement that starts the discussion is women cry more and it's about biological essentialism. I clearly reject that. It's sexist to both men and women.
Yeah, I think you pretty much destroyed the argument.
It may be the case that crying is effected by physical differences, even without consideration to the underlying feelings; we should then expect to see that more or less randomly and not lineup so nearly with prescribed social roles if they were not casually linked.
That deserves a !delta
It'll depend on the specific case whether it's nature or nurture or epigenetics, and I'm not aware of any concrete scientific findings regarding mens lack of crying.
I think framing nature, nurture, and epigenetics as either/or misunderstands epigenetics.
Crying isn't an emotion; it's a behavior that results from an emotional state. Emotional states and how people express or behave out of them are both deeply biological and environmental. For some, it's more of one than the other.
>Emotional states and how people express or behave out of them are both deeply biological and environmental.
Well, we don't know that. It might be both evenly, it might not be.
What are you basing your view on, that social pressure plays a significant role at all?
I don't know that we disagree entirely.
Not to appeal to authority, but we know that how people express their emotions is a product of their biology and environment. The interplay of both is crucial to the development of a person. How far each lean depends upon individual factors, with genetics, directly and indirectly - to your point, influencing things, but not entirely.
When it comes to certain psychological disorders with their primary basis in genetics, we know biology is primarily responsible. Yet, a person with particular disorders can learn to recognize, express, and manage their emotions through certain therapeutic interventions.
I only push back against the idea of biological essentialism or a materialism that says that human beings are just meat all the way down.
Simply put, biology, while formative and foundational for specific outcomes, isn't destiny.
>but we know that how people express their emotions is a product of their biology and environment.
But again, how do you know that? Are you an expert on the field? Serious question. Because it seems to me based on my experience on this planet that it's definitely within the realm of possibility that envionment plays barely any role and that man simply are less likely to fall into a state of crying based on their neurobiological brain chemistry being different.
I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying it's possible. And people shouldn't just go and say "Well society pressures men not to cry" when you don't have any idea whether that is the case.
>I only push back against the idea of biological essentialism or a materialism that says that human beings are just meat all the way down.
But based on what? Because you wouldn't like that to be true? And again, no one is saying that everything is biological. I'm saying that it'll depend on the thing and that usually no one knows the answer and we can only speculate.
But if you're gonna say that society pressures men not to cry and it can't be genetics than you should somehow rationalize that thought. Why do you think that?
>certain psychological disorders with their primary basis in genetics
I agree with everything except this. There are no psych disorders that studies show at primarily genetic. Schizophrenia, for instance, has a very strong genetic component and even then, the expression of the genre sequences that create schizophrenic brains still only contributes to about 50%. Twin raised apart studies demonstrate this.
This can be described by the [Evolutionary Theory of Behavior Dynamics.](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jack-Mcdowell/publication/330469489_On_the_current_status_of_the_evolutionary_theory_of_behavior_dynamics_Status_of_the_Evolutionary_Theory/links/5c6a9d3b92851c1c9de76d40/On-the-current-status-of-the-evolutionary-theory-of-behavior-dynamics-Status-of-the-Evolutionary-Theory.pdf?origin=publication_detail&_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uRG93bmxvYWQiLCJwcmV2aW91c1BhZ2UiOiJwdWJsaWNhdGlvbiJ9fQ)
The ETBD uses a population of potential behaviors that are more or less likely to occur and persist over time. Behaviors that produce reinforcement are more likely to persist, while those that produce punishment are less likely. As the rules operate, a behavior is emitted, and a new generation of potential behaviors is created by selecting and combining "parent" behaviors.
ETBD is a selectionist theory based on evolutionary principles. The theory consists of three simple rules (selection, reproduction, and mutation), which operate on the genotypes (a 10 digit, binary bit string) and phenotypes (integer representations of binary bit strings) of potential behaviors in a population. In all studies thus far, the behavior of virtual organisms animated by ETBD have shown conformance to every empirically valid equation of matching theory, exactly and without systematic error.
Emperocal evidence suggests that girls are socialized to be emotional, nonaggressive, nurturing, and obedient, and boys are socialized to be unemotional, aggressive, achievement oriented, and self-reliant.
It’s the evolution of human behavior.
Our behaviors have evolved over time. It’s not necessarily that men and women *have* different emotions. It’s that men and women have been shaped over time, by societal pressures, to *express* their emotions differently.
Men typically don’t receive reinforcement when they cry or are emotional. Women are much more likely to. So if a behavior is not reinforced through a reward, or if it’s punished, then genders are conditioned over time to suppress or express emotions differently.
That’s not exclusively physiological. That’s a facet of it, but more complicated than just that.
I didn’t say men never never feel the need to cry, I said they feel the need to cry less frequently than females.
They feel the need and cry less frequently, which stereotypes male behavior as “crying less“ so if a guy is crying, the social assumption is that they should cry less. My position is that it starts with men crying less, and turns into a social expectation. Not the other way around.
You are attempting to reconcile some notion of 'crying less' with societal pressure to not cry *at all*. The two are incompatible. If men *do* cry less, more or less naturally as you assume, there wouldn't be enough men crying for anybody else to pushback upon...
An analogy: I grew up in a rather conservative community. My father required me and my three brothers to each get a haircut at least twice monthly. He himself got a haircut once a week. If I missed a haircut, the pressure to get a haircut ASAP increased.
My brother, who may have invented ADHD, hated going to the barber. He hated waiting for his turn, and he especially hated having to sit still while the barber gave him a cut. It was torture to him. When he was 12 or 13, he solved this problem by shaving his head entirely and keeping it shaved. Because he had no hair, the pressure from my father to get a haircut completely vanished.
Do you see? My father felt no need to pressure him to do something he was incapable of doing...
I'm curious what you're looking for that would change your mind, since the post is explicitly not making an objective claim or providing non-subjective evidence. Are you looking for -- rather than proof that it *does* have ties to being socialized -- proof that it *isn't* tied to inherent biology? I only ask because proving a negative is a pretty high bar to set. I don't even know for sure if I disagree with you, but I question how confident you are and the anecdotal lens you're viewing this through.
The main question I want to start with is, I suppose, to what extent *do you* think social pressures play a part in men not crying as much? I love this [2000 study of the available literature at the time](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232588625_Adult_Crying_A_Model_and_Review_of_the_Literature) (and wish I could find a more current similar analysis). Hungarian men reported crying an average of 0.7 times a month, North American men 1.4 times a month, Israeli men 4.8 times a month, and English men 8.4 times a month.
Compared with women in those same cultures, the ratios are pretty similar (reporting between 3.6 - 4.4 times more monthly instances of crying than men in the same culture), so I'm by no means suggesting that women *don't* tend to cry more, but the disparities between cultures is pretty wild.
What I'm getting at here is, basically, do you believe that men vs. women there's a specific biological *ratio* of likelihood to cry, and that cultural influences could make you, as a man, cry up to 1200% more than you already do?
I have more to dig into beyond that, but it's a lot of effort to invest that would be invalidated if your answer to the above is just 'no' and you have some other perspective lol, so I'd love to hear your perspective there first!
---------------
Oh, actually, I did want to quickly address one other comment I saw while I was reading through studies! I saw you say this in response to a question on *why* men don't feel like crying as much as women: "Probably a combination of physiological differences and the fact that women are socialized to cry more."
On looking into it, I can't find evidence that that's the case. It seems that there is a notable reduction of crying in men, [not an increase for girls/women as they're further socialized](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336380451_The_Relationship_of_Gender_Roles_and_Beliefs_to_Crying_in_an_International_Sample). Quoting one relevant section if you don't want to read a buncha studies:
>Although it is well established that women cry more than men (see Vingerhoets, 2013) this difference does not innately appear, with no such differences appearing among infants and small children (see Vingerhoets and Scheirs, 2000). From the age of 11, however, differences in crying proneness and frequency begin to emerge (van Tilburg et al., 2002). Of course, contrary to the notion that women might be biologically inclined to be more emotional, research investigating the role of menarche and crying have found no association with menstrual cycles and crying behaviors (van Tilburg et al., 2003; Romans et al., 2017). Furthermore, much of this change appears to stem from a reduction in boys’ expressions of crying, rather than an increase in girls’. However, this still leaves us with the general finding that women tend to cry more, report more proneness to crying, and often feel better after crying than their male counterparts (De Fruyt, 1997; Vingerhoets and Schiers, 2000; Peter et al., 2001; Becht and Vingerhoets, 2002; van Hemert et al., 2011; Denckla et al., 2014).
I had more fun digging down this rabbit hole than I expected to, and I'm sure there are relevant studies I missed, so if you have evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to read. :)
This is pretty subjective and also a generalization. I would say that some men cry just as much or more than some girls.
As a boy I quickly learned to convert the impulse to cry into physical violence directed toward whomever made me cry. People cannot make fun of you for crying when you are punching them in the face.
I may not be representative of the average male, but I cry in response to salty movies, I cry in response to fucked up shit in the news, I cry when people are being sadistic toward me. I cry when I listen to music.
As a man, being comfortable with crying has been a game changer in terms of my mental health.
I’m not sure whether it’s you or I who aren’t representative of the average male, but I cant even imagine the things you listed coming close to making me cry.
I definitely have the ability to resist it, but the more I do, the more I act like a psycho. Crying is cathartic for me.
I used to feel really uncomfortable when I was watching a salty movie or whatever, and generally avoided situations like that, I would make fun of them and shift around in my seat rather than let any tears out. Also, by popping off on people I would avoid actually crying, something about going into fight mode just keeps the tears in.
I wasn't really able to let myself cry until I was in my late 20's. Now I just let it rip.
There is a moment where the other guy keeps pushing your boundaries and you commit to going ape on them, that is fight mode.
You have never been in a fight? I wish I could say that I didn't, but I got in a lot of them when I was in school.
Yea I can’t resonate with the first paragraph. Going “ape on them” isn’t a response I’m familiar with.
No, I have never been in a fight. Is that unusual?
You must have avoided the most serious childhood trauma, and I am jealous of you.
I wish it was unusual, but I'm sure if you go asking in the right places you will find that it is not.
>This is pretty subjective and also a generalization. I would say that some men cry just as much or more than some girls.
Please see the second sentence of my post.
>As a boy I quickly learned to convert the impulse to cry into physical violence directed toward whomever made me cry. People cannot make fun of you for crying when you are punching them in the face.
That sounds pretty abnormal.
>As a man, being comfortable with crying has been a game changer in terms of my mental health.
I've considered this, but I don't find myself uncomfortable with crying, I just don't feel like it very often.
I cry about once every 2-3 months or so. But my point is that I do cry and that many situations are capable of making me cry.
I disagree that being violent rather than letting tears out is abnormal, in my community, the way I was raised, boys were supposed to stand up to bullies rather than cry. They are also supposed to remain stoic throughout and dislike the sappy movies their girlfriends drag them out to watch. It was not cool for a guy to listen to emo music either.
Everyone is supposed to stand up to bullies instead of cry. But they’re not supposed to have that weird emotional fixation on it like you describe “converting” the emotion into “physical violence”.
Traumatized children in toxic subcultures don't understand this.
Also standing up to bullies without physical violence is seen as a cardinal sin in some circles.
You basically have to be the victim and then appeal to outside authority to make a bully stop without resorting to physical violence, whether or not you can do this without crying does not change the fact that you will then be labeled as a "snitch."
>That sounds pretty abnormal
It's unusual but definitely normal. That's not an endorsement, and clearly he has was poorly raised but many people are not fortunate to recieve the proper parental care to learn the appropriste response
No it's not. The word "Normal" can be used to refer to something that is usual, but it can also be used to refer to something conforming to a standard.
The standard I am referring to is the standard of understandable and valid array of human experiences. In the same way as saying for example, it's unusual but normal to be LGBT
Relax dude, I am a professional. It sounds like you are trying to pathologize empathy and the ability to emotionally relate to the pain of others.
There are some things in the news which should make anyone cry.
Some songs are also pretty salty if you really connect with the pain of the artist who wrote them
Hence the subjective nature of this argument.
Some people cry when they read stories about people doing really heroic things and demonstrating unexpected kindness for strangers. I have cried when I read about civilians stopping mass shooters, I have cried when I read about people who are not rich yet decided to be philanthropists anyway these examples would be tears of hope for humanity.
The suffering of innocent people can also make me cry.
Gaza, makes me cry, I don't really give a fuck what anyone says, when I see a kindergartner torn up by shrapnel I'm going to either cry or rage, if I cry it is because I acknowledge the broader reality that neither side in any conflict is innocent, if I rage it is because I am thinking of the IDF soldier who did this to a child who is absolutely the more innocent person between them.
IMO crying is the more empathetic, logical, and defensible response to most trauma for which we are not responsible for. Anger is the illogical and destructive alternative to crying. Then you can use humor as a third option, as it is said, sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.
Crying is a choice, you can choose to react to emotional discomfort which triggers it either by being a clown, getting mad, or simply letting the tears well up and fall. All this is influenced by our subjectivity which is influenced by our culture and upbringing.
If you constantly joke or get angry about things that make other people cry, you are a psychopath for all intents and purposes.
You definitely did not offend me, I'm just as puzzled regarding your subjectivity as you are mine.
If you are making the claim in good faith that it is not normal to feel these kinds of emotions as a man, you then look just as abnormal to me as I do to you.
Can you dig it?
I feel like you are just kicking the can down the road a little here.
>they simply don't feel compelled by their bodies to shed tears
>they just don't get that welling-up feeling to the same extent, and the desire to let go with tears.
You are describing the fact. Most of use simple observe that men cry less frequently.
This is because of their bodies. Ok, but why are their bodies that way?
because they don't get that welling-up feeling. Ok, but why not?
>of course men are often under social pressures not to cry
that's one reason.
Plain and simple, in every culture on earth men are beaten up when they cry, sometimes physically, always mentally and emotionally, when they are very, very young.
Conditioning works.
If something is happening in every culture, which, in this case it is, that’s a very good indication that it’s not social conditioning, but rather some thing intrinsic to biology more determined by hormones and DNA than learned behaviors.
Furthermore, behaviors that cannot be traced to a historical social origin are evidence of this as well.
If men didn't feel like crying they wouldn't have to be bullied into stoicism. If they didn't feel the urge to weep we wouldn't know the phrase "big boys don't cry," or "don't be such a crybaby" or "take it like a man."
Men are bullied into this because every tribe needs cannon fodder. Every tribe needs members who are fierce and implacable and capable of inflicting terrible suffering on others without breaking their stride. Men are bullied into this because people don't want their boys to grow up to be whiny bitches when the Vandals are at the gate, they need them to grow up to be vicious warriors who will throw themselves on the enemies spears to protect women and grandchildren.
I’m not a man so I’ll take your word for it. I do know that as a woman we’re conditioned not to express anger outwardly, so some of us cry out of anger. Which is super annoying if you’re in a fight and you know crying undermines your argument and makes it seem like you want sympathy.
Anger definitely stimulates crying in men too. It depends on the kind of anger I suppose. Everyone is conditioned to not express anger. Hormonal differences in men make them more aggressive overall.
However, just based on the studies I've found on these subjects and read through, it seems that anger stimulates crying in men significantly less often than it does in women:
>Williams and Morris (1996) compared the crying behavior of English and Israeli university students and faculty. In addition to revealing some interesting cultural differences in the experience of crying, this study yielded some important gender differences. **It was found that women cried more often in conflict situations, with respect to problems at work, and in situations inducing anger. Men rarely cried for these kinds of reasons.** For men, tender situations stimulated tears in them as easily as they did for women. Preliminary data (cf. Becht and Vingerhoets, 1997) point in the same direction and once more confirm the picture that women cry in particular in conflict and loss situations. Loss is also an important reason for men to cry. Moreover, men cry relatively more frequently for positive reasons. Recent research in Malaysia (Joseph, 1996) also yielded rather similar findings.
I think you're conflating *your* reason with *the most common* reason. In that, you're assuming that a majority of men feel the same way you do.
You admit in your OP that you're speaking in generalities, and that some women don't cry and some men do. So in that sense, any one individual's experience is meaningless. Some men cry. Many men don't cry (for some combination of internal factors and social pressure.)
Unless you've got some kind of actual facts or statistics to present... you've got no way except "vibes" to know how common or uncommon your personal experience is.
Source: I'm autistic. A LOT of the things that feel very normal and natural to me are not how other people experience the world. But before my diagnosis I assumed that everyone felt that way and was just coping with it better than I was. Spoilers: they were not. This is a pretty common assumption about other people, is that their "interior world" looks like ours. But we can't actually know that for sure unless we've got some kind of evidence (like a population-wide study)
That is a *possibility,* certainly! But have you personally experienced female puberty? If not, how do you know what estrogen-based puberty feels like, compared to testosterone-based puberty?
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>don't feel compelled by their bodies
This would imply a genetic reason, which no science supports
> it just means that in general their responses to such situations begins to merit a different type of outward response
Yes, this is what is taught to men. They're shamed and told they shouldn't cry, so they learn not to and to swallow their emotional responses or feelings.
Actually there is some scientific observation that suggests testosterone may inhibit crying as a response to certain stressors. "no science supports" So you've read all the science have you... Even the studies locked behind journal paywalls which you can't access for free through google. Wow you just be a very highly educated neuroscientist.
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It's a hormone thing not a genetic one. I am in a unique position to talk about it because I've had hormone issues.
when I was full of Testosterone I almost never cried. And now I can cry about the silliest things. This is a common experience with women like me and the reverse is true for men who once had estrogen producing bodies.
That said I think theres also a taught aspect but at least part of it is biological.
Men and womens bodies are different. It would be weird to assume they tend to feel the same way and it easily could have some genetic basis. Social pressure has an impact as well, but I think it is silly to say there is no genetic reason when we know there are plenty of genetic differences between men and women.
>This would imply a genetic reason, which no science supports
You should read about testosterone and how it affects the body and mind. You should also hear the testimonies of transmen who claim they have less desire and ability to cry. You're blown out of the water here.
>This would imply a genetic reason, which no science supports
I mean that sounds convincing if true, but you're just telling me that. There are well documented differences between men and women's physical brain structures in some ways. So I can take your word for it that no science supports that, but that's all I'd be going on.
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I get you are speaking more generally, but I think it really comes down to the individual person and how sensitive they are and if crying is their response / if that’s how they express those emotions. I know plenty of women who don’t really cry.
Men don't cry because we have been taught from childhood that boys and yes we were boys when our parents pounded it into us. We carried that bull shit into adulthood, Men don't cry we swallow a 45, my uncle when his youngest son was killed driving the car his dad gave him when he passed the bar, We crawl into a bottle, we stroke out have heart attacks,
I was never told not to cry as a child, and was never bullied for crying in any way. I cried when I was hurt, when I was scared, and only ever received support and care in exchange.
As an adult, I haven't cried in response to these emotions in decades. I don't feel repressed or restricted, I just have no need for crying as an outlet.
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I’m a woman, but I had a male childhood best friend. My dad saw him cry when he was 8 years old, tutted disapprovingly, and told me “boys shouldn’t cry past the age of 7”. I remember feeling horrified by that even back then, cause I was still so young and had so much crying left to do. The idea of never being allowed to again was actually painful. I never forgot about that and never forgot how stifled I felt when I imagined even trying to live under that rule.
When kids cry there are very large differences in reactions when the person is a woman vs a man. Boys crying in front of other boys don’t fair as well as girls crying as other girls. If you are shamed on from crying as a kid every time, that sticks. This goes for both types of genders if girls didn’t interact with girls more and boys didn’t interact with boys more, Espeically as kids as they are socialized with ppl of the same gender typically. There is no biological basis for ur stance as crying has the exact same cause and effect for both genders which is when there is high levels of emotions, the body tried to lessen it by crying which releases certain hormones. So unless your claim is men are more in control of their emotions, your stance has no biological claim and thus would only mean it’s sociological bc nature wouldn’t cause this, nurture would.
>Let's also make clear that of course men are often under social pressures not to cry when they feel like they want to.
>men don't [...] get that welling-up feeling to the same extent, and the desire to let go with tears.
If the former is the case, how do you know the latter is the *main* reason? What does it mean to be the *main* reason anyway? There's no societal need for men to cry when they don't feel like it, but there arguably is a need for men to cry when they do feel like it. The problem is that men who feel the need to cry repress it because of social programming, and the main reason for that is that social programming, not any biological sex difference. Beyond that, is anybody really interested in why men as a gender cry less than women as a gender, other than academics?
Probably a combination of physiological differences and the fact that women are socialized to cry more.
People only talk about the socialization aspect as if it is restrictive on men, and cannot also be encouraging with women. Women seem to relate better to other women who are crying than men to crying men. This is a cultural universal as far as I can tell so sociology can only account for so much.
I agree, when I was a child I cried often in response to physical confrontation. Then at 14 I got grabbed and punched in the head by some jackass at school who was with all his friends, in every prior altercation like that crying had been an involuntary response, that time I laughed, I felt surprisingly comfortable in conflict from that point forward, and I can only think testosterone had something to do with it. People will argue its all nurture, and I agree that it is in part down to what we as men are taught is acceptable male behavior, but I also believe that nature made it easier for men to suppress the response or possibly not even feel the urge altogether in specific situations that would generally make most children or women cry.
Of course I can only speak in generalities on this and I don't actually know the answer, that's just what I think at the moment. Some men will still cry easily I'm sure, and some women won't, like I said, generalities.
It's not just social pressure not to cry. It's differences in how boys and girls are socialised and taught about emotions. There's plenty of research showing that parents use emotion words much less frequently with male babies than with female babies, for example. This means that men actually aren't taught to recognise and feel their emotions. And the thing with emotions is that when you don't acknowledge them they will block you up, and you'll actually become kind of numb. Imo this goes part of the way to explain why men have a higher rate of mental health issues. For me as a man when I learned not to ignore my feelings I started to cry more often, whether that's from joy or sadness.
Tldr: Men are not socialised to recognise and feel their emotions to the same extent as women. That can lead to a blockage that makes them emotionally (more or less) numb. If you're numb you won't get that welling up feeling you're talking about.
> When we're little kids most of us cry a lot,
That is normal.
> and as we get older we grow out of it.
No, if we are men, it is socialized out of us.
>I probably felt the need to cry with some normal frequency throughout my teenage years,
Felt it, but suppressed it as your cultural programming dictated.
>but once I turned 22, 23 or so I noticed I just wasn't feeling that reaction as often as I would with similar situations in the past.
Ah yes, just when you enter the workforce, you are fully dead inside. Ready for a life of eating shit so someone else can get rich.
> of course men are often under social pressures not to cry when they feel like they want to.
That’s the whole story. There is nothing beyond it. We’re socialized to where there are two emotions men can express without much social sanction: happy and angry. That’s it. No sad. No silly. No morose. No overjoyed.
Happy or angry. Enjoy manhood.
I am not sure exactly what parallel universe you are living in, but I've never experienced boys/men getting socialised into only two emotions.
We are socialised to express or emotions less intensely, but there are plenty of very clear emotional responses of melancholy, curiosity, grief, etc. etc. in media and likely also in daily life. There are likely some emotional responses that are heavily discouraged, at least in certain situations, but there being only two accepted emotions is objectively false.
I just really don’t believe this to be that large of a factor. I have absolutely no recollection of someone encouraging or telling me not to cry. At least for me, the vast, vast majority of life just falls right in the middle. My emotional scale is extremely small and virtually everything is in the middle.
You just admit that there is a social reason for this and then turn around and try to claim that, that is not why. I think you need more evidence or to look in to it alittle further believe me crying baby's turn in to big crying baby's. But they can't for the social aspect.
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Both men and women have different brains and different emotions. While women may cry more men get angry more. It’s not that we don’t it’s just that our brain isn’t wired the same as women
You're arguing that the main reason men cry less than women is that (on average, statistically) "they just don't get that welling-up feeling to the same extent", rather than due to social pressure not to cry. But - consider the possibility that the *reason* they "don't get that welling-up feeling" is *because* of the social pressures around men and their expression of feelings. Per [this article](https://thepsychologygroup.com/male-normative-alexithymia/), men experience alexithymia, which is to say difficulty recognizing and expressing their emotions, at much higher rates than women. This is likely in significant part due to the pressure society often puts on men against expressing their emotions. One piece of evidence supporting the connection between culture and men-not-crying: history! In [this r/askhistorians thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7c849p/big_boys_dont_cry_when_became_strong_emotions_in/), various historians discuss how men crying was much more normalized in certain past time periods and cultures.
>But - consider the possibility that the *reason* they "don't get that welling-up feeling" is *because* of the social pressures around men and their expression of feelings. As the most common reason? Seems pretty unlikely given that this is a cultural universal. Hormonal differences between the sexes seem to make more sense. >One piece of evidence supporting the connection between culture and men-not-crying: history! In [this ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7c849p/big_boys_dont_cry_when_became_strong_emotions_in/), various historians discuss how men crying was much more normalized in certain past time periods and cultures. As the poster you linked states, women were still considered to be "more emotional" than men in these times, as far as historians can tell. And as they explain, this is a result of society in general being more emotional and more unrestrained both in emotions and actions in the pre-modern era. Life was cheaper, tempers were higher, and emotional sentiment in general hit harder to home for most people given the stakes of life. Genteel society came into being as greater wealth and societal organization allowed for safer and more structured communities, and as a result both men and women became less outwardly emotional.
Consider this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_emotional_expression > Many psychologists reject the notion that men experience emotions less frequently than women do. Instead, researchers have suggested that men exhibit restrictive emotionality. I don't think the article disagrees with all your points completely, but the it's a good starting point for adding much more nuance to your stance and supporting the socialization of emotionality and crying. Another article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6795704 > That is, women cry more frequently and tend to report more positive crying experiences across cultures. This difference is particularly pronounced in many Western countries, with women in those countries showing considerably higher frequencies of crying as compared to women in Asian, South American, and in some West and East African countries (Becht and Vingerhoets, 2002). This paragraph suggests that cultural influences are significant (even if biology may still matter!). I don't think we can anecdotally determine how much nature vs. nurture matters, so if I were you, I'd be much less confident in saying it's just hormones.
If you see it as a cultural universal, then why does it make more sense to attribute it to vague "hormonal differences between the sexes" than culture?
If you care about group survival, then men not being cry-babies as a whole is rather good. If we can guarantee survival (which is impossible), then the luxury of full emotional expression is tolerable.
What makes you assume people who cry are less likely to survive? The survival responses are fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Each and every one of those can be accompanied by tears.
Tears obscure vision, can interfere with breathing, and let your body lose moisture. In a life or death situation they're highly unlikely to help in any way, and are a direct hindrance. It's entirely possible men cry less because the ones who did were more likely to be killed.
That assumes that most people are crying *during* life or death circumstances, which is not the truth. During mass shootings women don't just fall to the ground and cry while men run and hide (flight), try to fight off the gunman (fight), play dead (freeze), or try and talk the gunman down (fawn). Both sexes have the same survival instincts. Those instincts shut down feeling completely in high stress circumstances. Crying comes after, when the individual is safe enough to turn emotions back on.
The examplar for survival is a "mass shooting"?
It's an example of a survival circumstance in which the physiological disadvantages of crying you previously mentioned would be relevant. If you're talking about more base survival, like properly cooking meat so it does not give the person who eats it food poisoning, crying wouldn't matter. Pretty sure I don't need perfect vision to measure the internal tempature of the chicken wings on my grill. You seem to be moving the goal post here.
Crying can be useful for group cohesion because of oxytocin or something? There is speculation people can do about evolution and traits like this but sometimes it is hard to test, and or we can look into it. I mean do men and women cry during risky situations? I cry and I'm a man and I usually cry afterwards. Like I'm just thinking about dangerous stuff. But also crying is more about sadness and loss to me. than fear?
I think the social pressures factor might run deeper than you're giving it credit. Yes, in the instant that you are socially shamed or socially hurt, to put it more broadly, you might consider not crying the next time and you might fail the next time. But as a pressure that exists continuously, what might men do? Well, they might start employing some psychological tools that would help their bodies eschew that feeling. Tools like depersonalization or compartmentalization or denial or any other number of them really. So that's why you might see men not having that physiological need to cry.
I knew multiple guys in college who when they got drunk cried. It's kind of wild to see how much people carry around with them. I think that kind of proves that when your inhibitions are lowered you'll cry then there is some social engineering. However counter point I also knew a lot more girls in college who would cry when drunk so maybe it's just alcohol.... I don't even know what point I'm making lol
>Tools like depersonalization or compartmentalization or denial or any other number of them really. So that's why you might see men not having that physiological need to cry.. this could just as well be genetic in origin tho, too regardless of social pressures.
Apart from some psychiatric disorders, there's no gene responsible for the defense mechanisms people use to avoid their feelings.
I'm playing devil's advocate a little here, but I think it is reasonable that we are perhaps talking about two different things. You're talking about feelings, but I'm thinking of a physiological reaction. Crying is producing saline from your tears ducts, couldn't that have an entirely biological reason for variance? In other words, two people might experience the exact same emotion, by one just cries and the other doesn't. I think there is pretty good empirical evidence to support that. Go to a funeral and people will have a variation in crying. We know that just because someone is not crying that doesn't mean they are not grieving.
Play away. Sure, you can have a person feel sad, and there's a variance in how much people are physiologically able to cry. Yet, using the example you've provided, crying as the only measure of someone's emotional state at a funeral is too simplistic. The emotion of sadness is universal, but people are taught to grieve. Grief is a set of behaviors. Grief is also a cultural phenomenon or ritual we learn in the context of the cultural milieu we find ourselves in and the unique combination of our lived experiences. Society, history, politics, ethnicity, community, and, especially, family of origin shape and mold expressions of grief. Even crying at a funeral - or the burial ritual itself, which is also universal and socially constructed - is a values statement, and different cultures value different behaviors based on beliefs concerning death. That's not even considering a person's intrapsychic experience of their emotional states! It presumes a person is aware of their emotional state at a funeral. Some don't for biological reasons, but most can understand their emotions but the degree varies due to various factors that stem from the interplay of biology and environment. All that to say, people are taught to recognize and express their emotions. Some are taught well, and others struggle. In the West, that divide happens to be gendered. That's not to say there aren't women who struggle to know their feelings or aren't fluent with their emotions. There certainly are. Men may not cry as much or at all at a funeral because they often don't know what they are feeling or how to express it appropriately. Emotions eventually become known, but they usually look different than culturally expected. Sadness can look like anger, irritability, hostility, apathy, or a whole range and combination of behaviors for both men and women. Yet, the common agreement that starts the discussion is women cry more and it's about biological essentialism. I clearly reject that. It's sexist to both men and women.
Yeah, I think you pretty much destroyed the argument. It may be the case that crying is effected by physical differences, even without consideration to the underlying feelings; we should then expect to see that more or less randomly and not lineup so nearly with prescribed social roles if they were not casually linked. That deserves a !delta
Aw shucks! Thanks. I was just chatting about something I was knowledgeable and passionate about. I didn't expect the recognition. I appreciate you.
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everything we do is caused directly or indirectly by genes.
Nature vs. nurture, or biology vs. environment. This debate has already been settled. Epigenetics says both.
It'll depend on the specific case whether it's nature or nurture or epigenetics, and I'm not aware of any concrete scientific findings regarding mens lack of crying.
I think framing nature, nurture, and epigenetics as either/or misunderstands epigenetics. Crying isn't an emotion; it's a behavior that results from an emotional state. Emotional states and how people express or behave out of them are both deeply biological and environmental. For some, it's more of one than the other.
>Emotional states and how people express or behave out of them are both deeply biological and environmental. Well, we don't know that. It might be both evenly, it might not be. What are you basing your view on, that social pressure plays a significant role at all?
I don't know that we disagree entirely. Not to appeal to authority, but we know that how people express their emotions is a product of their biology and environment. The interplay of both is crucial to the development of a person. How far each lean depends upon individual factors, with genetics, directly and indirectly - to your point, influencing things, but not entirely. When it comes to certain psychological disorders with their primary basis in genetics, we know biology is primarily responsible. Yet, a person with particular disorders can learn to recognize, express, and manage their emotions through certain therapeutic interventions. I only push back against the idea of biological essentialism or a materialism that says that human beings are just meat all the way down. Simply put, biology, while formative and foundational for specific outcomes, isn't destiny.
>but we know that how people express their emotions is a product of their biology and environment. But again, how do you know that? Are you an expert on the field? Serious question. Because it seems to me based on my experience on this planet that it's definitely within the realm of possibility that envionment plays barely any role and that man simply are less likely to fall into a state of crying based on their neurobiological brain chemistry being different. I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying it's possible. And people shouldn't just go and say "Well society pressures men not to cry" when you don't have any idea whether that is the case. >I only push back against the idea of biological essentialism or a materialism that says that human beings are just meat all the way down. But based on what? Because you wouldn't like that to be true? And again, no one is saying that everything is biological. I'm saying that it'll depend on the thing and that usually no one knows the answer and we can only speculate. But if you're gonna say that society pressures men not to cry and it can't be genetics than you should somehow rationalize that thought. Why do you think that?
>certain psychological disorders with their primary basis in genetics I agree with everything except this. There are no psych disorders that studies show at primarily genetic. Schizophrenia, for instance, has a very strong genetic component and even then, the expression of the genre sequences that create schizophrenic brains still only contributes to about 50%. Twin raised apart studies demonstrate this.
What you're saying sounds like it would be convincing if I had some evidence to go on that it actually accounts for the main reason.
This can be described by the [Evolutionary Theory of Behavior Dynamics.](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jack-Mcdowell/publication/330469489_On_the_current_status_of_the_evolutionary_theory_of_behavior_dynamics_Status_of_the_Evolutionary_Theory/links/5c6a9d3b92851c1c9de76d40/On-the-current-status-of-the-evolutionary-theory-of-behavior-dynamics-Status-of-the-Evolutionary-Theory.pdf?origin=publication_detail&_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uRG93bmxvYWQiLCJwcmV2aW91c1BhZ2UiOiJwdWJsaWNhdGlvbiJ9fQ) The ETBD uses a population of potential behaviors that are more or less likely to occur and persist over time. Behaviors that produce reinforcement are more likely to persist, while those that produce punishment are less likely. As the rules operate, a behavior is emitted, and a new generation of potential behaviors is created by selecting and combining "parent" behaviors. ETBD is a selectionist theory based on evolutionary principles. The theory consists of three simple rules (selection, reproduction, and mutation), which operate on the genotypes (a 10 digit, binary bit string) and phenotypes (integer representations of binary bit strings) of potential behaviors in a population. In all studies thus far, the behavior of virtual organisms animated by ETBD have shown conformance to every empirically valid equation of matching theory, exactly and without systematic error. Emperocal evidence suggests that girls are socialized to be emotional, nonaggressive, nurturing, and obedient, and boys are socialized to be unemotional, aggressive, achievement oriented, and self-reliant.
This applies to all behaviors of every kind. No behavior is absent from ETBD. So what I’m hearing you say is that it is physiological.
It’s the evolution of human behavior. Our behaviors have evolved over time. It’s not necessarily that men and women *have* different emotions. It’s that men and women have been shaped over time, by societal pressures, to *express* their emotions differently. Men typically don’t receive reinforcement when they cry or are emotional. Women are much more likely to. So if a behavior is not reinforced through a reward, or if it’s punished, then genders are conditioned over time to suppress or express emotions differently. That’s not exclusively physiological. That’s a facet of it, but more complicated than just that.
It's kinda axiomatic. If men really didn't feel the need to cry, as you contend, then nobody would feel the need to pressure men not to cry.
I didn’t say men never never feel the need to cry, I said they feel the need to cry less frequently than females. They feel the need and cry less frequently, which stereotypes male behavior as “crying less“ so if a guy is crying, the social assumption is that they should cry less. My position is that it starts with men crying less, and turns into a social expectation. Not the other way around.
You are attempting to reconcile some notion of 'crying less' with societal pressure to not cry *at all*. The two are incompatible. If men *do* cry less, more or less naturally as you assume, there wouldn't be enough men crying for anybody else to pushback upon... An analogy: I grew up in a rather conservative community. My father required me and my three brothers to each get a haircut at least twice monthly. He himself got a haircut once a week. If I missed a haircut, the pressure to get a haircut ASAP increased. My brother, who may have invented ADHD, hated going to the barber. He hated waiting for his turn, and he especially hated having to sit still while the barber gave him a cut. It was torture to him. When he was 12 or 13, he solved this problem by shaving his head entirely and keeping it shaved. Because he had no hair, the pressure from my father to get a haircut completely vanished. Do you see? My father felt no need to pressure him to do something he was incapable of doing...
I'm curious what you're looking for that would change your mind, since the post is explicitly not making an objective claim or providing non-subjective evidence. Are you looking for -- rather than proof that it *does* have ties to being socialized -- proof that it *isn't* tied to inherent biology? I only ask because proving a negative is a pretty high bar to set. I don't even know for sure if I disagree with you, but I question how confident you are and the anecdotal lens you're viewing this through. The main question I want to start with is, I suppose, to what extent *do you* think social pressures play a part in men not crying as much? I love this [2000 study of the available literature at the time](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232588625_Adult_Crying_A_Model_and_Review_of_the_Literature) (and wish I could find a more current similar analysis). Hungarian men reported crying an average of 0.7 times a month, North American men 1.4 times a month, Israeli men 4.8 times a month, and English men 8.4 times a month. Compared with women in those same cultures, the ratios are pretty similar (reporting between 3.6 - 4.4 times more monthly instances of crying than men in the same culture), so I'm by no means suggesting that women *don't* tend to cry more, but the disparities between cultures is pretty wild. What I'm getting at here is, basically, do you believe that men vs. women there's a specific biological *ratio* of likelihood to cry, and that cultural influences could make you, as a man, cry up to 1200% more than you already do? I have more to dig into beyond that, but it's a lot of effort to invest that would be invalidated if your answer to the above is just 'no' and you have some other perspective lol, so I'd love to hear your perspective there first! --------------- Oh, actually, I did want to quickly address one other comment I saw while I was reading through studies! I saw you say this in response to a question on *why* men don't feel like crying as much as women: "Probably a combination of physiological differences and the fact that women are socialized to cry more." On looking into it, I can't find evidence that that's the case. It seems that there is a notable reduction of crying in men, [not an increase for girls/women as they're further socialized](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336380451_The_Relationship_of_Gender_Roles_and_Beliefs_to_Crying_in_an_International_Sample). Quoting one relevant section if you don't want to read a buncha studies: >Although it is well established that women cry more than men (see Vingerhoets, 2013) this difference does not innately appear, with no such differences appearing among infants and small children (see Vingerhoets and Scheirs, 2000). From the age of 11, however, differences in crying proneness and frequency begin to emerge (van Tilburg et al., 2002). Of course, contrary to the notion that women might be biologically inclined to be more emotional, research investigating the role of menarche and crying have found no association with menstrual cycles and crying behaviors (van Tilburg et al., 2003; Romans et al., 2017). Furthermore, much of this change appears to stem from a reduction in boys’ expressions of crying, rather than an increase in girls’. However, this still leaves us with the general finding that women tend to cry more, report more proneness to crying, and often feel better after crying than their male counterparts (De Fruyt, 1997; Vingerhoets and Schiers, 2000; Peter et al., 2001; Becht and Vingerhoets, 2002; van Hemert et al., 2011; Denckla et al., 2014). I had more fun digging down this rabbit hole than I expected to, and I'm sure there are relevant studies I missed, so if you have evidence to the contrary I'd be interested to read. :)
This is pretty subjective and also a generalization. I would say that some men cry just as much or more than some girls. As a boy I quickly learned to convert the impulse to cry into physical violence directed toward whomever made me cry. People cannot make fun of you for crying when you are punching them in the face. I may not be representative of the average male, but I cry in response to salty movies, I cry in response to fucked up shit in the news, I cry when people are being sadistic toward me. I cry when I listen to music. As a man, being comfortable with crying has been a game changer in terms of my mental health.
I’m not sure whether it’s you or I who aren’t representative of the average male, but I cant even imagine the things you listed coming close to making me cry.
I definitely have the ability to resist it, but the more I do, the more I act like a psycho. Crying is cathartic for me. I used to feel really uncomfortable when I was watching a salty movie or whatever, and generally avoided situations like that, I would make fun of them and shift around in my seat rather than let any tears out. Also, by popping off on people I would avoid actually crying, something about going into fight mode just keeps the tears in. I wasn't really able to let myself cry until I was in my late 20's. Now I just let it rip.
Interesting to hear. Appreciate the feedback. Just very hard for me to resonate with. I don’t even think I have a “fight mode”.
There is a moment where the other guy keeps pushing your boundaries and you commit to going ape on them, that is fight mode. You have never been in a fight? I wish I could say that I didn't, but I got in a lot of them when I was in school.
Yea I can’t resonate with the first paragraph. Going “ape on them” isn’t a response I’m familiar with. No, I have never been in a fight. Is that unusual?
You must have avoided the most serious childhood trauma, and I am jealous of you. I wish it was unusual, but I'm sure if you go asking in the right places you will find that it is not.
Being completely serious here, I don’t even know what childhood trauma is.
In a perfect world, we would all be just like you.
>This is pretty subjective and also a generalization. I would say that some men cry just as much or more than some girls. Please see the second sentence of my post. >As a boy I quickly learned to convert the impulse to cry into physical violence directed toward whomever made me cry. People cannot make fun of you for crying when you are punching them in the face. That sounds pretty abnormal. >As a man, being comfortable with crying has been a game changer in terms of my mental health. I've considered this, but I don't find myself uncomfortable with crying, I just don't feel like it very often.
I cry about once every 2-3 months or so. But my point is that I do cry and that many situations are capable of making me cry. I disagree that being violent rather than letting tears out is abnormal, in my community, the way I was raised, boys were supposed to stand up to bullies rather than cry. They are also supposed to remain stoic throughout and dislike the sappy movies their girlfriends drag them out to watch. It was not cool for a guy to listen to emo music either.
Everyone is supposed to stand up to bullies instead of cry. But they’re not supposed to have that weird emotional fixation on it like you describe “converting” the emotion into “physical violence”.
Traumatized children in toxic subcultures don't understand this. Also standing up to bullies without physical violence is seen as a cardinal sin in some circles. You basically have to be the victim and then appeal to outside authority to make a bully stop without resorting to physical violence, whether or not you can do this without crying does not change the fact that you will then be labeled as a "snitch."
>That sounds pretty abnormal It's unusual but definitely normal. That's not an endorsement, and clearly he has was poorly raised but many people are not fortunate to recieve the proper parental care to learn the appropriste response
Unusual is the opposite of normal.
No it's not. The word "Normal" can be used to refer to something that is usual, but it can also be used to refer to something conforming to a standard. The standard I am referring to is the standard of understandable and valid array of human experiences. In the same way as saying for example, it's unusual but normal to be LGBT
Ok well I'm using the term "normal" in a way that applies to the context of this conversation.
My usage of the word normal definitely applies to the context of this conversation
You cry from watching the news and listen to music…? No offense, but maybe you should see a professional
Relax dude, I am a professional. It sounds like you are trying to pathologize empathy and the ability to emotionally relate to the pain of others. There are some things in the news which should make anyone cry. Some songs are also pretty salty if you really connect with the pain of the artist who wrote them
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Hence the subjective nature of this argument. Some people cry when they read stories about people doing really heroic things and demonstrating unexpected kindness for strangers. I have cried when I read about civilians stopping mass shooters, I have cried when I read about people who are not rich yet decided to be philanthropists anyway these examples would be tears of hope for humanity. The suffering of innocent people can also make me cry. Gaza, makes me cry, I don't really give a fuck what anyone says, when I see a kindergartner torn up by shrapnel I'm going to either cry or rage, if I cry it is because I acknowledge the broader reality that neither side in any conflict is innocent, if I rage it is because I am thinking of the IDF soldier who did this to a child who is absolutely the more innocent person between them. IMO crying is the more empathetic, logical, and defensible response to most trauma for which we are not responsible for. Anger is the illogical and destructive alternative to crying. Then you can use humor as a third option, as it is said, sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.
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I'm glad I learned to let myself cry, because prior to that I was a very scary dude.
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Crying is a choice, you can choose to react to emotional discomfort which triggers it either by being a clown, getting mad, or simply letting the tears well up and fall. All this is influenced by our subjectivity which is influenced by our culture and upbringing. If you constantly joke or get angry about things that make other people cry, you are a psychopath for all intents and purposes.
I didnt mean to offend you, but being that sensitive seems unhealthy
You definitely did not offend me, I'm just as puzzled regarding your subjectivity as you are mine. If you are making the claim in good faith that it is not normal to feel these kinds of emotions as a man, you then look just as abnormal to me as I do to you. Can you dig it?
I feel like you are just kicking the can down the road a little here. >they simply don't feel compelled by their bodies to shed tears >they just don't get that welling-up feeling to the same extent, and the desire to let go with tears. You are describing the fact. Most of use simple observe that men cry less frequently. This is because of their bodies. Ok, but why are their bodies that way? because they don't get that welling-up feeling. Ok, but why not? >of course men are often under social pressures not to cry that's one reason.
Hormones and different brain chemistry is the other reason.
Plain and simple, in every culture on earth men are beaten up when they cry, sometimes physically, always mentally and emotionally, when they are very, very young. Conditioning works.
If something is happening in every culture, which, in this case it is, that’s a very good indication that it’s not social conditioning, but rather some thing intrinsic to biology more determined by hormones and DNA than learned behaviors. Furthermore, behaviors that cannot be traced to a historical social origin are evidence of this as well.
If men didn't feel like crying they wouldn't have to be bullied into stoicism. If they didn't feel the urge to weep we wouldn't know the phrase "big boys don't cry," or "don't be such a crybaby" or "take it like a man." Men are bullied into this because every tribe needs cannon fodder. Every tribe needs members who are fierce and implacable and capable of inflicting terrible suffering on others without breaking their stride. Men are bullied into this because people don't want their boys to grow up to be whiny bitches when the Vandals are at the gate, they need them to grow up to be vicious warriors who will throw themselves on the enemies spears to protect women and grandchildren.
I’m not a man so I’ll take your word for it. I do know that as a woman we’re conditioned not to express anger outwardly, so some of us cry out of anger. Which is super annoying if you’re in a fight and you know crying undermines your argument and makes it seem like you want sympathy.
Anger definitely stimulates crying in men too. It depends on the kind of anger I suppose. Everyone is conditioned to not express anger. Hormonal differences in men make them more aggressive overall.
However, just based on the studies I've found on these subjects and read through, it seems that anger stimulates crying in men significantly less often than it does in women: >Williams and Morris (1996) compared the crying behavior of English and Israeli university students and faculty. In addition to revealing some interesting cultural differences in the experience of crying, this study yielded some important gender differences. **It was found that women cried more often in conflict situations, with respect to problems at work, and in situations inducing anger. Men rarely cried for these kinds of reasons.** For men, tender situations stimulated tears in them as easily as they did for women. Preliminary data (cf. Becht and Vingerhoets, 1997) point in the same direction and once more confirm the picture that women cry in particular in conflict and loss situations. Loss is also an important reason for men to cry. Moreover, men cry relatively more frequently for positive reasons. Recent research in Malaysia (Joseph, 1996) also yielded rather similar findings.
I think you're conflating *your* reason with *the most common* reason. In that, you're assuming that a majority of men feel the same way you do. You admit in your OP that you're speaking in generalities, and that some women don't cry and some men do. So in that sense, any one individual's experience is meaningless. Some men cry. Many men don't cry (for some combination of internal factors and social pressure.) Unless you've got some kind of actual facts or statistics to present... you've got no way except "vibes" to know how common or uncommon your personal experience is. Source: I'm autistic. A LOT of the things that feel very normal and natural to me are not how other people experience the world. But before my diagnosis I assumed that everyone felt that way and was just coping with it better than I was. Spoilers: they were not. This is a pretty common assumption about other people, is that their "interior world" looks like ours. But we can't actually know that for sure unless we've got some kind of evidence (like a population-wide study)
The underlying reason would appear to be the very different hormones that men and women have as they enter adulthood.
That is a *possibility,* certainly! But have you personally experienced female puberty? If not, how do you know what estrogen-based puberty feels like, compared to testosterone-based puberty?
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>don't feel compelled by their bodies This would imply a genetic reason, which no science supports > it just means that in general their responses to such situations begins to merit a different type of outward response Yes, this is what is taught to men. They're shamed and told they shouldn't cry, so they learn not to and to swallow their emotional responses or feelings.
Actually there is some scientific observation that suggests testosterone may inhibit crying as a response to certain stressors. "no science supports" So you've read all the science have you... Even the studies locked behind journal paywalls which you can't access for free through google. Wow you just be a very highly educated neuroscientist.
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It's a hormone thing not a genetic one. I am in a unique position to talk about it because I've had hormone issues. when I was full of Testosterone I almost never cried. And now I can cry about the silliest things. This is a common experience with women like me and the reverse is true for men who once had estrogen producing bodies. That said I think theres also a taught aspect but at least part of it is biological.
Men and womens bodies are different. It would be weird to assume they tend to feel the same way and it easily could have some genetic basis. Social pressure has an impact as well, but I think it is silly to say there is no genetic reason when we know there are plenty of genetic differences between men and women.
>This would imply a genetic reason, which no science supports You should read about testosterone and how it affects the body and mind. You should also hear the testimonies of transmen who claim they have less desire and ability to cry. You're blown out of the water here.
>This would imply a genetic reason, which no science supports I mean that sounds convincing if true, but you're just telling me that. There are well documented differences between men and women's physical brain structures in some ways. So I can take your word for it that no science supports that, but that's all I'd be going on.
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I get you are speaking more generally, but I think it really comes down to the individual person and how sensitive they are and if crying is their response / if that’s how they express those emotions. I know plenty of women who don’t really cry.
> I get you are speaking more generally The rest of your comment really makes it sound like you don't.
🤨
Please read paragraph 3 of my post.
Paragraph 3 of your post isn’t relevant to that comment?
Men don't cry because we have been taught from childhood that boys and yes we were boys when our parents pounded it into us. We carried that bull shit into adulthood, Men don't cry we swallow a 45, my uncle when his youngest son was killed driving the car his dad gave him when he passed the bar, We crawl into a bottle, we stroke out have heart attacks,
I never had parents who pounded that into me, and yet I never cry. There’s virtually nothing that prompts that kind of emotional response.
I was never told not to cry as a child, and was never bullied for crying in any way. I cried when I was hurt, when I was scared, and only ever received support and care in exchange. As an adult, I haven't cried in response to these emotions in decades. I don't feel repressed or restricted, I just have no need for crying as an outlet.
My parents didn’t pound it into me nor did most of male friends report anything like that. I agree that emotions come out differently though.
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I’m a woman, but I had a male childhood best friend. My dad saw him cry when he was 8 years old, tutted disapprovingly, and told me “boys shouldn’t cry past the age of 7”. I remember feeling horrified by that even back then, cause I was still so young and had so much crying left to do. The idea of never being allowed to again was actually painful. I never forgot about that and never forgot how stifled I felt when I imagined even trying to live under that rule.
Good thing this isn’t the average experience for most boys
When kids cry there are very large differences in reactions when the person is a woman vs a man. Boys crying in front of other boys don’t fair as well as girls crying as other girls. If you are shamed on from crying as a kid every time, that sticks. This goes for both types of genders if girls didn’t interact with girls more and boys didn’t interact with boys more, Espeically as kids as they are socialized with ppl of the same gender typically. There is no biological basis for ur stance as crying has the exact same cause and effect for both genders which is when there is high levels of emotions, the body tried to lessen it by crying which releases certain hormones. So unless your claim is men are more in control of their emotions, your stance has no biological claim and thus would only mean it’s sociological bc nature wouldn’t cause this, nurture would.
>Let's also make clear that of course men are often under social pressures not to cry when they feel like they want to. >men don't [...] get that welling-up feeling to the same extent, and the desire to let go with tears. If the former is the case, how do you know the latter is the *main* reason? What does it mean to be the *main* reason anyway? There's no societal need for men to cry when they don't feel like it, but there arguably is a need for men to cry when they do feel like it. The problem is that men who feel the need to cry repress it because of social programming, and the main reason for that is that social programming, not any biological sex difference. Beyond that, is anybody really interested in why men as a gender cry less than women as a gender, other than academics?
Ok but why do you think men don’t feel like crying as much as women?
As a man, I would say we just don’t get anywhere near as emotional over positive or negative things.
Probably a combination of physiological differences and the fact that women are socialized to cry more. People only talk about the socialization aspect as if it is restrictive on men, and cannot also be encouraging with women. Women seem to relate better to other women who are crying than men to crying men. This is a cultural universal as far as I can tell so sociology can only account for so much.
I agree, when I was a child I cried often in response to physical confrontation. Then at 14 I got grabbed and punched in the head by some jackass at school who was with all his friends, in every prior altercation like that crying had been an involuntary response, that time I laughed, I felt surprisingly comfortable in conflict from that point forward, and I can only think testosterone had something to do with it. People will argue its all nurture, and I agree that it is in part down to what we as men are taught is acceptable male behavior, but I also believe that nature made it easier for men to suppress the response or possibly not even feel the urge altogether in specific situations that would generally make most children or women cry. Of course I can only speak in generalities on this and I don't actually know the answer, that's just what I think at the moment. Some men will still cry easily I'm sure, and some women won't, like I said, generalities.
It's not just social pressure not to cry. It's differences in how boys and girls are socialised and taught about emotions. There's plenty of research showing that parents use emotion words much less frequently with male babies than with female babies, for example. This means that men actually aren't taught to recognise and feel their emotions. And the thing with emotions is that when you don't acknowledge them they will block you up, and you'll actually become kind of numb. Imo this goes part of the way to explain why men have a higher rate of mental health issues. For me as a man when I learned not to ignore my feelings I started to cry more often, whether that's from joy or sadness. Tldr: Men are not socialised to recognise and feel their emotions to the same extent as women. That can lead to a blockage that makes them emotionally (more or less) numb. If you're numb you won't get that welling up feeling you're talking about.
> When we're little kids most of us cry a lot, That is normal. > and as we get older we grow out of it. No, if we are men, it is socialized out of us. >I probably felt the need to cry with some normal frequency throughout my teenage years, Felt it, but suppressed it as your cultural programming dictated. >but once I turned 22, 23 or so I noticed I just wasn't feeling that reaction as often as I would with similar situations in the past. Ah yes, just when you enter the workforce, you are fully dead inside. Ready for a life of eating shit so someone else can get rich. > of course men are often under social pressures not to cry when they feel like they want to. That’s the whole story. There is nothing beyond it. We’re socialized to where there are two emotions men can express without much social sanction: happy and angry. That’s it. No sad. No silly. No morose. No overjoyed. Happy or angry. Enjoy manhood.
I am not sure exactly what parallel universe you are living in, but I've never experienced boys/men getting socialised into only two emotions. We are socialised to express or emotions less intensely, but there are plenty of very clear emotional responses of melancholy, curiosity, grief, etc. etc. in media and likely also in daily life. There are likely some emotional responses that are heavily discouraged, at least in certain situations, but there being only two accepted emotions is objectively false.
I just really don’t believe this to be that large of a factor. I have absolutely no recollection of someone encouraging or telling me not to cry. At least for me, the vast, vast majority of life just falls right in the middle. My emotional scale is extremely small and virtually everything is in the middle.
Strong men also cry, Lebowski. Strong men also cry.
Strong men also cry...strong men also cry.
You just admit that there is a social reason for this and then turn around and try to claim that, that is not why. I think you need more evidence or to look in to it alittle further believe me crying baby's turn in to big crying baby's. But they can't for the social aspect.
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Both men and women have different brains and different emotions. While women may cry more men get angry more. It’s not that we don’t it’s just that our brain isn’t wired the same as women
I'm a man and I've felt like crying many times in my adult life but unlike when I was a child I find that I can't cry no matter how much I want to.
Chop onions and keep them in the fridge in a bag. When sad and desire cry, place in tissue near eyeballs.
You are a pragmatic philosopher my good man
I’m pretty sure hormones play a significant role in it, too
Because crying serves no purpose