Being told to “man up” is something the majority of men have experienced first hand. From an early age our society has conditioned and taught men to not acknowledge their feelings, to not express their feelings, to not be honest about their feelings and just “man up”. Our society as a whole often labels men who express their feelings, as ‘feminine’ ,’chakka’, ‘gay’,’mittha’ all of which are derogatory terms towards the LGBTQ community and for some reason are still considered to be insults and let’s be clear expressing your feelings or being “feminine” does not make a person less of a “man”. What we fail to realise is that telling someone to ‘man up'' has a greater impact on the person and people around them than we would like to think or acknowledge. When a child is growing up, it’s personality or the type of person they are going to grow up to be is highly affected by the people surrounding them, the things they’ve been said, the things that they’ve heard and seen. Even simple things for example: when a male child witnesses that when a female child falls on the playground, the female child is often treated with gentleness, care and is shown compassion by adults but when a male child falls on the playground they are often told that “boys don’t cry” and are not shown the same amount of love, gentleness and compassion as compared to the female child. Now, one would say that doing this is just preparing them for the hardships and the pain they might feel later in life but it’s nothing more than utter bullshit. When a person is unable to express what’s going on in their mind, they often feel frustrated and angry which subjects them to anger issues and often leads them to removing their frustration on other people including their families, partners, children, pets and on several occasions complete strangers. An example of this would be teenagers, young adults and adults using domestic abuse, sexual abuse and verbal abuse on their families, partners and children, people raping, molesting and sexually abusing complete strangers in order to reduce their frustration but this has never helped. This has only led to the rise in rape culture, loss of security, increase in anxiety while going out in public and more of traumatised people in the World. Imagine wanting to pour your heart out, scream at the top of your lungs at all times but not being able to do so and even if you do, do it imagine the person you talked to only replying with “be a man and suck it up” and completely disregarding your experience and feelings. Disregarding men and their traumatic experiences doesn’t solve anything, it just increases problems. Psychologically speaking when people are taught to “be a man” from an early age they are more likely to develop personality disorders like Alexithymia. Alexithymia is a disorder in which a person is unable to identify their feelings and often only shows signs of anger and frustration. It is often caused by traumatic experiences and facing neglect during childhood. Studies have shown that men are more prone to this disorder than women and the sole reason for this being that men are asked to “man up” “suck it up” “be a man”. Alexithymia often goes undiagnosed and a person with Alexithymia often faces issues in their romantic life, family life and the social life as they are misunderstood and their lack of ability to express their feelings gives a rude and mean impression of them to the person in front of them. Our society has a generalised habit of supporting and encouraging mentally ill men who are unaware of how they are supposed to treat people and themselves ,this behaviour which is highly witnessed encourages young male children to do the same thing because let’s be real, this behaviour has been
1 normalised in our society and culture where the “man” of the family protects and leads the family, where the brother protects the sister no matter what, where the man earns for the family and the females are reduced to nothing but reproducing machines, where not having feelings is considered to be a sign of strength when its nothing but normal human behaviour. I have strong reasons to believe that the idea of “manning up” is so deeply embedded in our minds that we are ready to accept the consequences that come with it but not accept the fact that men too have feelings, men too have traumatic and life changing experiences , men too can be vulnerable. The men of our World have been raised to be.a “man” and have had their experiences with sexual abuse, mental abuse and mental illnesses completely disregarded but it’s high time that we stop this. We need to raise our children in an environment, in a society which accepts their feelings and their experiences as they are without attaching any kind of stigma to it because having feelings , insecurities and experiences does not make you less of a man, wearing make-up or skirts does not make you less of a “man”. You do not need to “man up” in order to be accepted by others.
Reference : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229244461_Sex_differences_in_alexithymia_A_re view
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