Boys Don't Cry

Recently I logged onto facebook to find a post by BBC Radio 4 advertising an episode of 'The Male Room'. For those of you who don't know the male room, it is show on radio 4 dealing with men's issues. Sort of like women's hour but for men, I suppose. This particular evening's episode of the male room was on the topic of anger, and 'what makes men angry? are men actually angry?'

I thought this would be quite an interesting topic and I have one or two views on this myself, as a middle aged and some what famously grumpy man who spends a portion of my time more than a little ticked off about one thing or another.

Lately, one thing that has been making me angry is the persistent attitude surrounding men's emotions and their expression thereof. Now before I go any further I should probably explain exactly what about that makes me angry. There is a clue in the title of this piece, but to be fair that clue could just as easily lead you to the opposite conclusion than to the correct one when trying to divine what it is that I find so irksome about the whole thing. So I think it is best to begin by making my position clear. What makes me angry about the prevalent attitude to men's emotions is that we aren't supposed to display any, or at least that if we do then there are a few prescribed situations under which to do so and a few emotions that are permissible while others must be suppressed at all costs. Ironically, anger is one of the few that we have traditionally been told is the most acceptable of emotions for a man to show. None of those 'soft' namby-pamby ones, what are we sissies? OR worse still, women? Because yes, like it or not, in the great majority of our societies there is still a taboo about men behaving 'like women'. Showing the 'softer', kinder, gentler emotions, except in a very few circumstances is seen as feminine and to be avoided.

Now I know some of you are already composing your rage-email to me, but hear me out first. You can still rage-send your email calling me a feminazi sympathiser and a cuck later on. It's not like there is any great hurry, we both know I'm not going to read it anyway.

Some of you may be sceptical of my claim, and that's good. Approach all things in life with a healthy dose of scepticism, except for cats and any novel by that B F Irving chap, his stuff is always great. Anyway, think for a moment about the prevalence of memes on the internet directed at 'Millennials' and 'Hipsters' and berating them for their 'Safe-spaces' their emotional expressiveness and their willingness to cry. How often do you hear them told to 'Man up' or 'Grow some balls'? Most days, probably, depending, of course, on he sorts of people you know and the parts of the internet you visit. It's hard to miss though. From memes that admonish them for not having grown up in our imagined harsher times, to the recent one complaining that neck tattoos used to mean 'I'm dangerous' but now mean 'I'd love to hear your poetry about my vegan bicycle' as if that is some how a sign of weakness or ridicule.

While I am on putting my cards on the table, let us add these ones. I'm middle aged. I grew up in a north eastern mining town in he 70s and 80s when the decline of British industry, Thatcherism and of course the miners strike basically obliterated our way of life, industry and wealth (such as it was). We went from a passingly prosperous working class town to economically and socially devastated over the course of my childhood and those conditions breed a certain level of toughness in even the least macho of us.

As I grew older I became a goth in the days when standing out and being different would likely get you a punch in the mouth at random and unexpected moments. I've been in more bar fights and fights in pizza shops than is strictly healthy and I'm ashamed to admit that I started at least one of those myself. That's not something I'm proud of, it's just something that is relevant to what we are talking about now.

Bullying was not uncommon at school then, just as it is far too common now, and we were often expected to 'sort it ourselves' or 'stand up to them' just so long as we weren't caught doing it (that would mean the teachers having to discipline both parties). So coming home with a few bruises or black eyes would usually elicit a jocular “I hope the other guy looks worse.” I'm not telling you this to make myself look tough, I'm not tough and we are going to see why I'm not in just a moment.

Now what all this did was, it left me and most men of my age and older emotionally stinted. We spent our lives in emotional straitjackets being told that 'boys don't cry' and that saying things like 'I love you' to other men for whatever reason, be it romantic, platonic or be it because they were our closest relatives, was 'gay' and in those unenlightened days, that meant bad and to be avoided.

If you think that made us tough, then I'm about to burst your bubble. It didn't. It made us emotionally and socially retarded. Now that is a hard word for many of you to hear, I appreciate that and I apologise, but there really isn't another one that fits the situation well. It left us emotionally stunted in ways humans were not born to be. It impeded our social and emotional development so that we never reached the levels that we should have. I am not using that uncomfortable word figuratively, I am using it literally.

It is part of the reason why men's suicide rates are traditionally higher than women's. We bottle things up. That isn't normal, it's not healthy and it's not natural. We socially conditioned ourselves to that. Generations, nay, centuries, of social conditioning and norms demanded it and we went along with it and did it to ourselves. That's why I'm angry, that's what ticks me off. I was in my 30s before I was able to tell my Grandfather that I loved him. The man I loved more than almost anyone else in the world, the man who brought me up. The man who looked after me as a child, took me places, taught me to climb and to fish and to do a host of other things. The man who encouraged me to be what I wanted to be. Who was always there for me no mater what. Who, even when he didn't understand my choices supported them as long as it made me happy. It took me that long to say, 'Granda' I love you' because men aren't supposed to say that sort of thing to other men. Oh children can, but there came an age at which it started to be seen as no longer appropriate. So from the age of about 19 or so till my 30s I didn't say it. I still had trouble telling him tha right up until the day he died! I know it's all an immense sham we bought into and I still struggle to break the conditioning.

How screwed up is that?

What's more, I'm a writer. A certain amount of baring ones sole to the world is expected of us. It's sort of what we do. Yet, I find it easier to do it in the written word than to say it. That's what decades of conditioning does. Nor can I blame my Grandfather, who brought me up. He wasn't the one perpetuating the conditioning. Society was. Teachers were. Other, older men – and women for that matter. Oh he may have done occasionally, he was, after all, a product of the same broken system I was, but he was an uncommonly enlightened man for his age. The pressure to conform to these stereotypes of manly men with stiff upper lips who where in tight control of their emotions was everywhere.

We still haven't swept all that aside, it's still there, it's just not going unchallenged anymore.

When feminists say that 'The Patriarchy hurts men too' that is exactly what they are referring to, and do you know what? They are right.

It's time we stopped dismissing it and listened to what they are saying because they have a point. Many of the younger generation already are. Thank god for the hipsters and the millennials who are embracing their emotions and throwing off the old attitudes. Its not a signs of weakness, it's more a sign of strength. Do you think they don't see the scorn heaped upon them? The mockery? The memes? The insults? They do, they see it, they just shrug it off and be themselves anyway because while others rage importantly at a generation of 'Weak' men, these supposedly weak men are doing what we didn't dare to do. They are telling us to take our toxic masculinity and our outdated patriarchy and to shove it sideways and if we don't like that we can either lump it or scream impotently at our smartphone screens or post furious but impotent missives and memes to our social media. What are we going to do about it? Write a meme?

It's not them that are the weak ones. It's us.

For all our swaggering false bravado, our bar-fights or brawls outside the pizza shop, we are the ones too afraid to cry in public, too worried about doing our own thing in case we are seen as less manly.

That's what makes me angry.

What we did to ourselves.

What we let the weight of past social expectation do to us.

That we didn't stand up and say 'I'm a boy, and I'll cry if I bloody well want to. What are you going to do about it?'.

That's what makes me angry and it's what I think should make you angry too.

We could have made a better world, but we were too frightened to.

I'm angry alright.

I'm angry at myself. But I shouldn't be. I should be weeping instead. Even now, I still find that hard. This damn stiff upper lift keeps getting in the way.