Key Themes In The Other Side Of Sexism

Daphne Strong

Howard

APELAC

7 December 2016

The Other Side of Sexism In this day and age, it would be nearly impossible to find a person that has not heard of sexism or feminism. As the name would imply, feminism is the strive for equality for women, for whom situations have improved drastically over just the last 100 years, and will likely continue to improve long into the future. To most people, sexism is a word that means discrimination strictly against women—but this is not entirely true. Men, and especially young boys, are susceptible to stigma as well. The majority of a boy’s childhood, and possibly even into adulthood, he will be surrounded by seemingly harmless phrases such as: “Be a man,” or “Man up.” These subtle phrases slowly but

An actor that delivers his lines in a monotonous voice will bore the audience to tears, but one that is lively and despairing at the appropriate times will suck viewers in. Men on stage that are seen weeping are revered for their ability to act, but men that cry in day-to-day life are seen as weak and feminine. A boy that cries after a heartfelt scene in an action movie is picked on by his friends. They call him things like “sissy”, “pansy”, and others that are much worse. Teenage boys are taught through jokes on TV that a man’s job is to be sturdy, strong, and reliable. The boy will almost immediately straighten up his act and shrink back inside his manliness square in the hope of ceasing the taunting. The fear of being considered feminine is stronger than his need to express his feelings. It is simply idiotic to hold men to such an impossible standard; every person on this earth has emotions and men cannot be expected to be strong when women are allowed to show weakness. Men break sometimes, too, and it is completely okay. Emotion is a part of being human, and men should not have to worry about losing their masculinity by feeling things that are hardwired into their

Women are given more leniency with emotions like sadness, whereas men receive much less backlash for expressing anger than women do. It is almost like men are expected to always be angry and looking for a fight, which is, of course, not true. According to PsychCentral, anger is seen as a primary male emotion and sadness is seen as a female emotion. Men and women have ample access to both of these emotions, but why are they so gendered? Pacific Standard conducted an experiment over different reactions towards male and female anger and found that male anger made the participants lose confidence in their opinions, while opposing female anger made them gain confidence. This shows that men are more respected for being angry, but what about sad? Surveys show that crying female children, on average, would be comforted much sooner than their male counterparts. This may be because the guardians wanted the boys to learn to control their emotions, but didn’t expect the same from the girls. This mindset seems to be carried throughout adulthood as well; women’s grief is widely accepted, and men’s anger is widely