Society has created gender stereotypes such that people can’t feel what they want and our emotions are used to uphold the patriarchal structure of society.
“Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.” – Sarah J Maas.
Having a coffee in my hand at midnight and reading a book to dive with the flow of words or to face reality throughout paragraphs sometimes make my inner self cry. What a brilliant idea it was. To face the harsh realities while ignoring emotions at the same time.
Yes, it is terribly delightful. I don’t understand it. Maybe I don’t want to explore it. It’s also a trigger warning.
So, what are emotions? Why does it just make us so helpless or helpful?
Emotions are complicated things that increase perplexity with the feelings associated with them. No one can easily tell you that emotions are not tangible. They are something and maybe nothing; they can be good and bad at times. But still, it is not enough.
I remember Mulligan and Scherer explaining what emotions are. For them, emotions involve bodily changes that we feel and lead us to the object we want, whether it be our subjective experience or triggered by some external event. Overall, emotions perform complicated functions for individuals in their social life.
On the other hand, Gohm and Clore insist on emotions that constantly produce similar patterns of feelings and make everyone different. Emotions influence cognitive processes in humans, including learning, processing, perception, problem-solving, etc. Emotions help individuals to motivate their behaviour, actions and have a strong mastery of attention.
We often forget to link attention, command and control to the learning process. It facilitates information efficiently.
Interestingly, people often question me for being so obsessed with exploring gender (like seeing every statement through a gendered lens). Trust me, if you say a sentence in front of me, be sure I can dive into your thoughts and never make you leave clueless with respect to gender and the emotional state you have.
I know my readers that for you, it seems terrible. But I like it. So, how can I disappoint you all for not putting gender into emotions?
Why Are Emotions Complex In Feminist Politics?
No doubt, emotions are used in binaries, interlinked with femininity, public, private and gendered bodies. For a long time, it has been juxtaposed with the reason that is masculine, objective and rational, purposefully working as a political strategy.
We eliminate survivors of patriarchy who are also perpetrating violence in public and private spheres while questioning the decorum of structured fundamentals around emotions. For example, societal codes and conduct make men believe in becoming a cult with reason. The absence of emotions glorifies them. That’s how we can see them in a victimhood state.
But it has many consequences that lead them into denial of acceptance. Acceptance of the state of victimhood. Those untriggered emotions inside them rage a gender war once they recognise it. You can easily recognise it in your families too. The complexities make us curious about gender power dynamics.
Why is it unacceptable that emotions contribute much of their essence in triggering unbalanced power structures?
Suppressing emotions in a larger structure or institution always makes us helpless. Your emotional expressivity is a tool to counter anything that puts our existence into a vacuum. Recognising physiological differences and establishing rigid gender stereotypes/differences (related to psychics) on the dead foundations puts you in trouble.
The trouble of discharging negative emotions and catering to them all without noticing the factors affected is a question of concern. It simply means the lack of emotional expressivity can trigger and flame all the differences at first hand without any productive output.
In communication, emotions play so well. Its expressivity relies on how we perceive things and socialise throughout our life. We react. We feel disconnected. We fail. We lose track and whatnot.
Negative emotions like anger and violence always intersect with behavioural change. It is a slow process but spoils many lives. How are we going to respond to your attitudinal response?
Gender differences in emotional expression result from combinations of innate biological differences, socialisation, the impact of current social context and social expectations with females within the culture.
Screening all emotions like sadness, caring, happiness, sacrifice, etc., with a smile on society’s display with high expectations from females to pursue it throughout generations is problematic. It limits their essence. It stops males from carrying on what they want and feel. It just manipulates everything.
It is a starting point of creating emotional disturbances. For example, a woman is forced not to display her anger and frustration if she wants because “it’s not her cup of tea”. Then what? Suppression leads to creating tornadoes inside of a person. It puts limits.
What about those men who want to show love and care but resist? That’s how they have been created, framed and displayed. Its impact is huge and impossible to track unless we allow ourselves to intervene.
We need to understand how emotions generate, culturally manufactured, purposely framed into each and everyone’s bouquet whether we like it or not. Yes, that’s how it works. We just need to unlearn. Unlearn what’s not defined. Unlearn what pushes you in tornadoes. Unlearn whatever makes you unworthy. Unlearn what diminishes your existence.
“We stop other people from crying because we cannot stand the sounds and movements of their bodies. It threatens our own rigidity. It induces similar feelings in ourselves which we dare not express and it evokes a resonance in our own bodies which we resist.” – Alexander Lowen.