By Annabel Rice
Reflecting on the grief of losing her brother, Annabel investigates the privilege in being able to express your emotions publicly.
I was in an Uber, turned to the window, crying
“Cheer up, love.”
I shot the driver a glare in the rear-view mirror.
“What, boyfriend troubles?” His voice softened. A gentleness that bristled with an empathy misinformed, displaced.
“Umm,” I muttered, not knowing how to answer. Once I say the words, everything will shift. I wanted to stay the broken-hearted girl, forlorn at two blue ticks, two veins not yet cut open.
“Don’t worry, plenty more out there. Besides, the sun is shining and…” - he carried on nonchalantly.
“No, umm, it’s not that,” I mumbled.
My tears quickened. I felt a double breath rising, a reverb of an intake.
“There, there. No use crying over…”
I nodded.
“… boys your age….”
“No, really. It’s not that. I’m fine.”
“… I remember when-”
I cut him off.
“My brother died.”
Silence.
His face reddened as his vocabulary lapsed. He struggled to find the words. I will soon get used to this- how death takes away language.
Silence, punctuated by hyperventilatory inhales. After a right turn, a left, another left, a small roundabout, he clumsily tried to hold my gaze in the rearview mirror.
“I’m so sorry.”
I got out of the cab under the Westway. Out of the AC, the air was gelatinous. I turned to another audience, an audience I hadn’t explained myself to. Rushing past loud, vendors, cars, horns, music, bassline, Ladbroke Grove tube announcements, and I’m standing there. Suddenly embarrassed again. Tired, ready to get into bed.
I took out my phone, and noticed a galaxy of pink half crescent moons on my palm, indented from an afternoon of holding it in. Swallowing my emotions, bargaining an inner anguish for a tangible pain. The marks have already started to fade, I exhaled loudly.
*************************
My first draft of this article posed the question, ‘when faced with a crying woman, why did the driver immediately assume I was upset about a man?’ These kinds of assumptions are symptomatic of a patriarchal establishment—woman only exists in relation, and in inferiority, to man. So, a woman can only derive joy or sorrow from a man. Even though the driver’s internalised misogyny irked me, I did leave the car feeling emptied, lighter, relieved.
This is not surprising, as there are huge benefits to crying. Crying has an evolutionary purpose: it strengthens social bonds by soliciting help[1]. Studies have also shown that crying releases endorphins and oxytocin, which is an effective method of pain relief. Crying can rebalance your mood through flushing out stress hormones and toxins, making that cathartic post-cry feeling a scientific fact[2]. Crying is so integral to all round wellness, that in Japan, there are ‘tear-seeking’ clubs (called rui-katsu), where people join to witness each other cry[3]. So, why is crying, especially in public, still taboo? I used to wonder why I seem to cry more than other people. Are other people just better at regulating their emotions? Am I less repressed? Or have I been brought up to believe that everywhere is my ‘home’, and so I am entitled to treat it as such? Are there cultural, racial, and gendered specificities that not only allow, but encourage me to cry?
It is more socially accepted for women to cry. There are hormonal reasons why women, on average, cry more times a year than men (testosterone, higher in males, may inhibit crying, while prolactin, higher in females, may increase crying) [4]. Centrally, though, there are huge societal structures that make it easier for women-identifying bodies to display their emotions. Patriarchal structures encourage womxn to express their emotions more openly. Subsequently, though, they are demeaned for it. Born from a culture of male dominance, womxn are believed to be more emotional, more hysterical, more fragile—and, so, more prone to tears. Historically, these stereotypes of womanhood have served only to oppress and silence. Everyday, we see materialisations of this entrenched way of thinking. Instead of listening to the cause of a woman’s hurt, her tears are evidence of her being ‘dramatic’, ‘over-the-top‘, ‘hormonal’. In one fell swoop, these kinds of dismissals minimize the validity of her emotions, at the same time as they redirect blame back onto the woman, and her inability to stabilise and control herself. The view that womxn are too ‘emotional’ not only has deep psychological effects, but has very material, financial consequences, as they are subsequently alienated from high-powered careers. We saw this in the 2016 US Presidential election, with the debates on whether Hilary Clinton’s menstrual cycle would affect her decision-making and political abilities[5]. Or, in the twitter exchange about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez welling up when discussing the human rights violations at the US/Mexico border.
"The view that womxn are too ‘emotional’ not only has deep psychological effects, but has very material, financial consequences, as they are subsequently alienated from high-powered careers."
The argument simply follows that ‘if women cannot control themselves, then how can they lead a country, a boardroom, a conference room?’ Crying, then, has become a sign of weakness, a symbol of a passive, frail femininity. But really, it should be a badge of strength, a refusal to police ourselves. Writer Andi Schwartz states that public crying is ‘not only displeasing to witness; it would create an uncomfortable, disruptive, and taboo spectacle’[6]. For Schwartz, crying is a revolutionary method of rejecting ‘pretty; aesthetics. Instead, opting to display your ‘ugly feelings’ is an emancipatory move. It is, then, an opportunity to build community and relationships away from dominating matrixes of patriarchy and heteronormativity.
Yet, while women-identifying bodies who cry in public are read as a confirmation of long-harboured sexist and homophobic beliefs, men crying in public are unreadable. To cry as a man is to enact a ‘deviant’ masculinity. If women are expected to be emotional, men are expected to be emotionless. Toxic masculinity reinforces harmful beliefs, like the oft-repeated phrase ‘boys don’t cry’. Believing that they are less worthy, less of a ‘man’, if they talk about their feelings, men bottle up their emotions and struggle in silence. Masculine identity is hinged on this sort of stoicism, and this has culminated into a depression epidemic. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45[7]. It is difficult for men to articulate their sadness, as that very articulation causes even more negative emotions, more guilt, more shame. Caleb Azumah Nelson, in his acclaimed debut Open Water, strikingly expresses this sentiment: ‘‘What you’re trying to say is that it’s easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability’[8].
"Believing that they are less worthy, less of a ‘man’, if they talk about their feelings, men bottle up their emotions and struggle in silence. Masculine identity is hinged on this sort of stoicism, and this has culminated into a depression epidemic"
Instead, sadness and dejection are channelled into more socially sanctioned masculine emotions like anger and aggression. There are specific arenas for masculine expression, like the pub and the football stadium. Weeks of suppressed feelings are distilled, pressurised into a 90-minute match, and then an eruption, violent attacks. It makes you wonder what the world would look like if men were encouraged to display their emotions openly, to weep, to giggle, to wail in full view. Would the world be less violent? If men were able to cry, without judgements on their ‘manhood’, if the borders of masculinity and femininity became less rigid, more elastic, how quickly would instances of homophobic brutality and sexist abuse diminish? If gendered identity wasn’t seen as static, but instead, as fluid, flowing, would men feel the need to assert their masculinity in such toxic ways?
While I am claiming that crying is a potentially redemptive, restorative act— one that can transform gendered expressions—I must also point out how quickly tears can become parasitic, dangerous. How swiftly they can fortify a racist schema, instead of fulfilling a theoretical, emancipatory promise[9]. With one tear, a white woman can turn from aggressor to ‘victim’. We saw this in the viral video of Amy Cooper, the Central Park Karen fake-crying on the phone to the police, to report Christian Cooper, a Black man, for birdwatching. Amy Cooper performed a role, the role of the powerless white damsel who needs saving, a deceptive role with a fatal past. She weaponised a feigned innocence to put a Black man’s life in direct danger by calling the police. Echoing a violent history of lynching black men under the pretence of ‘protecting’ white women, Amy Cooper mobilised her tears to levy the full brutality of white supremacy.
Black women are also not given the same leeway as white women with public displays of emotion. Historically, Black women have been expected to bear the brunt of misogynoir—both racism and sexism—and still emerge, strong, unbothered. Michele Wallace, in her book, Black Macho and the Myth of Superwoman, discusses the expectation of Black women to manifest strength through emotional suppression, due to the historical legacy of both racial and gendered oppression[10]. Throughout history, Blackness has been represented as both a site of suffering, as well as a superhuman resolve against that very suffering. To imagine that Black women have a different threshold or tolerance or relationship to pain enables white supremacist forces to inflict more pain. In other words, superhumanization is another form of dehumanization[11]. This ‘superwoman schema’ has serious, detrimental health effects. Scientific research has proved the link between intense stress (such as caused by daily racist and sexist discrimination) and chronic diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases. The superhumanization of Black women is embedded at a young age—with the ‘adultification’ of young Black girls[12]. ‘Adultification bias’ is the overestimation of Black children’s ages, as compared to white children. Black children are treated as more ‘adult’, more ‘grown’, than they actually are. This leads to a greater proportion of Black children becoming victims of police brutality, educational negligence, sexual assault and medical neglect. Crying, for example, is not read as a natural, child’s reflex, but instead as a malicious act to disturb and disrupt.
"Throughout history, Blackness has been represented as both a site of suffering, as well as a superhuman resolve against that very suffering. To imagine that Black women have a different threshold or tolerance or relationship to pain enables white supremacist forces to inflict more pain."
Michele Wallace states that ‘the only way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past is to openly discuss them. Whether in nations, families or individuals, the practice of being on speaking terms with your past lives is the only thing that makes it possible to trust yourself or anybody else. Freedom, liberation, happiness, and fulfilment don’t come ‘naturally’. Rather, they must be struggled for, moment by moment, against the tide of institutionalization, commodification and repression’[14]. So, if liberation is a process of recognition, dismantlement, and rebuilding, then perhaps crying in public can play a part. Crying can be productive not only in its radical expressiveness, but also in exposing the preventable flaws of our society in handling issues of race, gender, mental health, and homophobia.
"So, if liberation is a process of recognition, dismantlement, and rebuilding, then perhaps crying in public can play a part."
Publicly displaying our emotions can forge connections away from dominating matrices of the home, the family; away from the strict separation of public and private; away from scripted social interactions governed by ‘appropriateness’. Crying in public, though, can pull apart these modalities of power-- modalities which are all connected to coloniality. Instead, crying in public invites social relationships founded on newness, on wildness, on shock, on honesty. This may seem like a huge claim, but some of the most striking friendships I have had have stemmed from a stranger crying in a public space. So, cry away the shame, the deep-rooted embarrassment. Soften a ‘stiff upper lip’ with salty tears. And, if you see someone cry in public, sit next to them, don’t impose. If they respond with anger or discomfort, respect their boundaries. Ask if they are okay, with no expectations, with no assumptions.