Disclaimer: This meme may include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then, and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, I want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it, and spark a conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
There’s a book called “Self Made Man” wherein a butch looking woman disguised herself as a man with the help of some professionals, back when this was a wild and uncommon thing to do, and then went and did extended lengths of time in exclusively male environments (bowling league, high pressure sales) to covertly observe men in their natural environment. It is in all seriousness the best book I have ever read on gender psychology and the differences and communication troubles between the main genders.
I won’t even try to summarize, but what she came away from it with is that the standard cliche of “on a different wavelength” is exactly the right metaphor. She wasn’t coming from any kind of deliberately ignorant perspective but she did have the pretty common perception that man are just sort of these cavemen, and was actually very shocked and surprised to discover that the average man has a whole complex emotional life of his own, but that it happens in a way and in a language that’s mostly invisible to the average woman unless she is very very deeply involved in his life.
Like I say, it sounds like a pretty corny premise especially in today’s supposedly more enlightened times, but to me it was extremely insightful and real.
Was she the one who later killed herself in part because of how terrible it was to be a man for that period of time?
Whoa, what the fuck
You are correct apparently that she did kill herself legally in Switzerland after a lifetime of treatment resistant depression, but she said the thing that really messed her up was treatment with SSRIs, not the stress of having been a man.
Although, she was hospitalized for a depressive breakdown during research for the book. She identified the reason as “the burden of deception,” though, not specifically being treated as a man. From what I remember, she said that in a lot of ways being a man was actually less inherently stressful than being a woman (not having guys make eye contact with her, sort of play dominance games with her or try to interact with her, but just kind of let her go around and be left alone – also that male friendships are more unconditionally supportive and friendly with each other than female). But yeah, I’m sure she couldn’t fully “enjoy it” so to speak because of having to lead the double life full time or not feeling like she could really be friends with the people she was friends with.
Cool, thanks for the info, I never really looked into it
Yeah, I didn’t even know she died – I only looked it up because you said
As a non-binary trans person I gotta say that lines up. A lot of women are not well equipped to intuit men’s emotions as they are set behind a veneer of distance and a lot of men often aren’t able to apply appropriate empathy to women because they don’t afford them the same level of respect and attention as people who have that same veneer. So women get coded to men as over emotional and men often feel angry and isolated because women aren’t trying particularly hard to empathize and there is a lot of times when their feelings are dismissed as not as important. Then everything becomes extra strained when anxieties about heterosexual extra partner sexual liasons means one gets separated from a general population into strictly people whom your partner feels you may safe being around.
I am very lucky. I exist in an excellent personal community. The cis folk I am friends with are all friends across any concept of gender and there’s other trans folk in my cohort which create additional inroads to understanding different experiences. We also don’t specifically gender anything, nobody is ever teased for not living up to gendered expectations and discussions are frank and open. I only experience this anxious distance between the genders in groups of co-workers or at family functions.
As soon as you described the book I could only picture Phil and Lil’s mom from Rugrats lol.