Men and Emotions

The Male Dilemma - If you conform to the male stereotype, you pay the price physically because suppressing emotions is unhealthy. Emotions do not just go away. They need to be dealt with and if they are not processed cognitively, they will be absorbed into the body and produce physical dis-ease. On the other hand, if you deviate from the male stereotype, you pay the price socially through teasing, judgment, isolation and loneliness. Men are taught to be competitive and superior.

Proof of North American SocializationWhile feminism is teaching women to be more assertive, 143 studies over the last twenty years in North America still show that boys in this culture are more aggressive than girls. However, outside of North America, in 31 cross cultural studies, boys were more aggressive in only 6 countries, girls more aggressive in 5 countries and in the remaining 20 countries, males and females were equal. Also, Haviland and Malatest in 1981 did 12 studies of children up to age six months that showed boys to be, "substantially more emotionally reactive and expressive than girls." and "male infants startle, cry, become more excited and change emotions more rapidly than female infants."

If these studies are true, males are not born emotionally inferior to females in function and capability. Rather, they learn to behave this way in our culture. Dr. Levant believes that consistently stopping the emotional process at step three, before the cognitive stage, has left many men with an inability to function emotionally because they do not have the cognitive portion of the emotional experience to draw upon. In fact, in some men, the experience is so limited that they do not even have the vocabulary to talk about the different emotions. What is the result of this condition? The North American male tends to interpret the challenge of validation as a threat. The male learns to deal with this threat by being angry, aggressive and even violent. The opportunity for men is to realize that this limited range of emotions is something that can be changed. Men can develop emotional intelligence and at the same time be fully a man in the process because they possess just as much potential for relating emotionally as women. In fact, in our world today, the role of men is changing. They are expected to work in teams, commit to relationships, communicate intimate feelings, nurture children and integrate sexuality with love. Skills such as the ability to listen and the ability to relate emotionally are needed to succeed in the 21st century. Some of the traditional traits of malehood are worth preserving such as:

-         willingness to work hard and sacrifice for the family

-         the ability to withstand hardship and pain to protect others