I'VE GOT TO ADMIT, THIS MOVIE TUGGED SOME STRINGS.
So, I don’t think that I necessarily have a problem with being stoic or insensitive to the world around me. However, I believe our society actually encourages and puts pressure on its males to be emotionally retarded, if you will. It’s pretty simple: if you have something between your legs, you aren’t supposed to cry, you aren’t supposed to want to talk, you aren’t supposed to be concerned with too much outside of fixing things, mowing the lawn, drinking beer, having sex, and frantically yelling at the game on TV as if you were the head coach. If you don’t feel this way, then you get called the equivalent of not having something between your legs. As males, we are not meant to “harmonize head and heart,”[1], but rather heart and reproductive organ.
FROM A YOUNG AGE, THE IDEA OF NOT SHOWING EMOTION IS BRANDED ONTO MALES.
A great example of a stereotypical male and his expected absence of compassion, that is “the feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it,”[2] is given in Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In the novel, the chickenhead Isidore must tell Mrs. Pilsen that her cat has died. Yet, Isidore tries to console the grieving Mrs. Pilsen by informing her that she can get an “exact electric duplicate of [her] cat…in which every detail of the old animal is faithfully repeated,”[3] and that such an opportunity exists is “fortunate.”[4] While she eventually takes Isidore’s offer, the Mrs. Pilsen was not consoled by Isidore’s way of communication.
MEN HAVE A REPUTATION FOR BEING INSENSITIVE AND NOT UNDERSTANDING.
That moment, in her time of grief, the last thing this woman probably wanted to talk about was getting a new robotic cat for her husband. Isidore’s misplaced words is just another example of men are generalized as being insensitive to women who “in general, feel both positive and negative emotions more strongly than do men.”[5] I think that because of our culture’s expectations of men to have such a limited emotional range, the story of Gary, the “intelligent, thoughtful, and a successful surgeon”[6] who was “emotionally flat, completely unresponsive to any and all shows of feeling.”[7] In his situation, I don’t think his enormous intelligence has somehow suppressed his emotional side (I don’t think any side of the brain is dominating the other), but he is emotionally limited by the standards of his sex.
I believe this emphasis on being an uncompassionate male can contribute to the deterioration of one’s ethics. For any one male, what starts off as “boys don’t cry” can, with a few wrong turns, become “boys don’t feel”, which can, under the worst circumstances, morph into “boys don’t have compassion, empathy, or sympathy.” When one is told this from a very young age, the belief is like a disease that can’t be cured. Perhaps this is why there are ten times as many male murderers—people like David Lee Powell—as female.
PERHAPS POWELL WAS AFFECTED BY OUR SOCIETIES MALE STIGMA.
[1] Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence,” X61
[2] definition of compassion,X41
[3] Philip Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 80
[4] Philip Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 80
[5] Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence,” X62
[6] Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence,” X64
[7] Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence,” X64
PHOTOS:
1. The Notebook, http://www.reellifewisdom.com/files/images/notebook%203.jpg
2. Don't Cry, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/showcase/submitted/images/gallery/118496133228393352770_1.jpg
3. Cartoon, http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/amc0711l.jpg
4. Powell, http://z.about.com/d/crime/1/0/r/k/powelld.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment