Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    I can't say that women are dipicted as the only sex grieving or that
    that's a representation of our society, i.e. men are strong, women
    emotional.
    
    There have been photos in the newspaper, during Gulf War, where soldier
    cried and grieved over dead comrad.  Interviews of men's emotional
    reactions to questions.
    
    I think the deal with the grieving women photos is not that the media
    is trying to portray women as the emotional or weaker sex but rather to
    show the feeling of the effect of the crisis that's in involved in
    whatever the situation is.  A crying woman, older woman especially,
    enforces motherly love.  Just what the photo represents.  Motherly
    love, nurturing, over loss or death or destruction.  
    
    And personally, T.V. is entertainment, unpaid T.V. anyway.  The ads
    have to catch our attention.  I like well built men.  If a product was
    endorsed by a "soft, emotional man", I don't think I'd be persuaded to
    buy it for my guy.  It's kinda psycological.   I want to keep the men
    in my life very strong.  So, let's not knock those "look what a day
    makes" commercials.
    
    cin  

>Has anyone been keeping track of how often the Boston Globe runs its stock 
>photo of Grieving Women? 

Dorian,

Haven't counted the photos but I just recently noticed that, in 
general, the women on television seem to emote much more often than
the men.  ... hmmm ... poorly said, ... lemme try again: Most of the
women on television, in news stories, ads, sit coms, dramas, et 
cetera, seem to always be emoting: sad, happy, stressed, angry,
forceful....  It's rare to see a woman simply delivering a calm 
declarative sentence. I dunno if the calm declaratives end up in the 
news editor's clip bucket, or it it's the configuration of our world
that only shows women when a certain temperature is hit ... but
it is annoying. 

I'll keep my ear tuned. I'll also turn my eye to the window of grief 
and see who is there.

P.S  ... I noticed a real dearth of faces like mine (female) while
watching tv several months ago, so I started counting the consecutive
sex appearances.  The highest male-to-male-to-male I found was about
28 ... can't remember the female-to-female-to-female.  On last week's
network news, a saw a black_female-to-black_female-to_white_female. It
was the first time I had noticed this. 

    - .1
    
    Thanks - it seems to me that women are portrayed as if they "emote much
    more often than men" - I guess this is just the familiar stereotype of
    women being more emotional, men more rational. Lately I've been
    wondering where this comes from? Why should men want to project
    emotionality (is that a word?) onto women? As in, "real men don't cry"?
    Is it because men feel less than women do? Or is it because men are afraid 
    of feeling and are thus led to deny it? If so, why?
    
    D.

    
    Re .-1 
    
    On a tangent to "real men don't cry".  The flip side of this is that
    women are sometimes faulted for not emoting enough.  
    
    I heard a interview with a juror in the Pamela Smart case who said that 
    one thing that swayed the jury against her was her lack of visible emotion 
    in the courtroom.  (Wasn't there a similar circumstance in the case 
    of the Australian woman who was tried for the death of her child a 
    few years back.  She didn't grieve enough to suit the public.)  
    
    This is not a commentary on Pamela Smart's guilt or innocence, but on 
    the perception that her lack of visible grief was a "wrongness".
    
    							clb
    
    

    what about the boy in the same (Pamela Smart) trial? Did you not see
    his tears? Everybody did... HE showed emotions while SHE did not.
    
    There are many cases... no, women are not the only ones who cry, any
    human being, let it be man, woman, child, girl or boy does, in one way
    or another, whenever there is enough reason for it.
    
    Ana
    
    

    re .0:
    >Are women the only ones who grieve? Do men ever grieve? If not, is it
    >because the media keep telling us that only women do?

    I believe that women are not the only ones who grieve. I believe that
    men do grieve, but in ways that don't make interesting photographs. Men
    in our society may not even learn *how* to grieve.  So when they have
    to, it's slow and difficult.  Or they may suppress the need to mourn.
    
    In fact, I'm a case of that.
    
    My father died last June.  My mother has needed a lot of practical help
    from me since then:  settling the estate, paying taxes, dealing with
    the mess of medical bills, and figuring out how to deal with the things
    (finances, home maintenance) that he always took care of.
    
    My wife felt close to my father (although he didn't necessarily
    reciprocate) so she was very upset when he died.  So I've been the
    shoulder to cry on, the hug-provider.
    
    I've learned that when she's upset, my reaction is to push my own grief
    out of the way, as if it could be taken care of later.  Her grief is
    immediate, and I need to deal with that.  So she grieves openly, while
    I generally hide it, and write about it, and get help from one special
    friend.  I've learned that I can't keep pushing it away.
    
    I don't know if it's peculiar to me or to my family, or if it's
    generally true in our society, that women grieve openly and men hide
    it or deal with it privately.
    
    Bob

	Bob,
	
	Thanks for your reply and openness.  My dad died last July.  My
	grief *still* comes to the surface, sometimes very unexpectedly.
	Immediately after his death, when we were all home making the
	arrangements, I'd often "lose it".  My sister was a mess.  My
	mother weepy and indecisive.  My brother, the youngest, (only 
	20), and my dad's only biological child, was a rock.  He provided
	hugs to those that needed them.  He made decisions when the rest
	of us stood around dazed.  He made jokes when we thought we were
	going to explode.  

	I wondered, "Is he grieving?  Has it hit him yet?  What will 
	happen when it does?  Will he let it?"  I still haven't figured
	these out.  I guess I thought that since he wasn't grieving 
	openly like myself and the other women in the family, he must not
	be feeling anything.  Apparently this isn't necessarily true.

	You're lucky that you have a special friend that you can share
	your feelings with.  I hope my brother does.  I'm not sure that I
	can be that person for him.

	Sue

    Based upon my public behaviour, I have been called calm and controlled
    in situations where an expression of grief would be deemed
    'appropriate behaviour.'  Publically I allow myself anger, humour,
    competence, ... I do grieve.
    
    When my dearest friend Vicki died on her daughter's 3rd birthday I went
    forward with the birthday party, cleaned up afterward, and went home to
    take a shower.  Afterward, I sat wrapped in a towel in the master bath
    and howled and keened and sobbed myself to sleep  [Rick tells me it
    lasted about three hours ... it felt like forever to me].
    
    On April 12th, when the husband of a dear friend died [see hug note and
    many thanks to those who responded] I was very sad.  I most likely
    appeared a little preoccupied.  But I got through a dinner for 12 [left
    the dishes in the sink this time] and afterward sat on the floor and
    sobbed into my arms on my coffee table for the better part of an hour.
    
    This is a typical response for me.  I also do my grieving in 'safe'
    situations, like tear-jerking movies.
    
    I 'hide' my grief from a sense of self-preservation.  To show grief was
    to show weakness, places that could be hurt, when I was small ... and I
    just formed the habit.
    
      Annie
    

    I cry quietly.  Most often when I'm alone.  Most often in the car. 
    It sometimes hits suddenly, and then leaves as suddenly.  There are 2
    or 3 people I feel comfortable crying around.  It's a very intimate
    thing to share with someone.  If I just can't hold it in I try to keep
    a lid on it until I'm alone, or at least away from people, because once
    they start "there there"ing me I just cry harder, and I don't like to
    cry in public if I can help it.  It still feels to me like a sign of
    weakness, like I obviously don't have my s#it together, and like I'm a
    fragile, frail, lady-type person (no offense meant but that's not how I
    like to see myself).
    
    -Jody
    
    

I don't think it is always the man who is the "rock" supporting the grieving
women around him.

When I was in college, my boyfriend and I heard that his best friend, Rob,
had been killed a few weeks earlier.  Rob was also a good friend of mine,
although we weren't as close as he and Andy were.  I felt like screaming and
crying and withdrawing from the world, but instead I stayed strong and
supported Andy, who did enough crying for the two of us.  Through-out the
whole ordeal (by default, being the first and only one to know, we had to
be the ones to let all of our other friends know) I hugged him and held 
him and talked to the other people in our group (by phone).  I didn't cry
until it was all over and I was alone.

D!

    
    I've held men-friends while they cried.
    I felt very trusted and touched that they were comfortable enough
    with me for this....sometimes, when they stopped, they talked about
    how difficult it had been for them to cry, and their fears at
    others seeing them weep. I respect them all the more for showing
    their feelings. I've had menfriends camp out in my house and
    work through grief - one guy stayed for about three weeks after
    his girlfriend died, mostly sitting in corners and listening to
    "their" songs. 
    
    So, men do grieve.
    I suspect that the media don't usually focus on it because of our
    cultural discomfort with men crying and showing feelings. Thus,
    when a picture is shown, it has special impact and is used to
    highlight an event that the media want to show as particuarly
    powerful or important.
    I keep thinking about the Greek tragedies, and their Chorus of
    weeping women. Grief has to be worked through, but life has to
    go on, and it seems to me that society has split these two
    functions on gender lines - men have taken responsibility for
    "keeping things going" and the women disrupt their usually
    routines to pubically express the grief of the community. It
    seems like a ritual - one that's cathartic, but also one that
    prevents the men of the community from touching these painful
    feelings. Sort of isolation from feelings by mutual consent.... 
    
    I cry easily myself, especially when I'm in a situation that feels
    free (often when I'm travelling, or abroad - somehow being in
    another place frees me up). I can't control it, and I'm learning
    how not to feel awkward and embarassed about it - I do tend to
    wander off on my own rather than stay with people, but I no longer
    feel crippled with embarassment if I start when I'm with others.
    I am especially likely to get triggered off by music. Most
    of my friends now know this and tease me gently about it - I
    do feel uncomfortable when people around me are obviously
    distressed by my "distress" and start fussing or trying to stop
    me crying (assuming that crying is emotionally painful for me,
    which it usually isn't, and assuming that feeling pain is a
    bad or sad thing, which is isn't necessarily).
    
    'gail
     
    

    
    I'm sure men do grieve. What bothers me is that there seem to be so few
    'validating images' in our culture, showing men grieving - so that the
    message is, they don't, or shouldn't, or it's not 'manly' to do so. But
    the Grieving Woman was there in the Globe again, on page 1, this past
    Sunday (in living color) and again on page 1 the following day. 
    
    I suppose it's just part of a broader tendency in our culture to project 
    all emotion onto women (so much so that it becomes a 'bad word': how
    many times are women accused of being 'too emotional'?). Such splits 
    along gender lines can't be good for women *or* men...
    
    D.                 

    Men more often grieve in private, but certainly not always.  A friend
    of mine lost it on the airplane coming home from his grandfather's
    funeral.  I lost it outside the animal hospital where our cat was
    put to sleep.  A friend lost it at a bridge party just last friday when
    we were talking about the Vietnam memorial in D.C. (he lost many men
    under his command in the war).  
    						- Vick

    
    Curious.....why do we use this phrase "lost it"?
    Lost what? 
    Control? Our masks? Our public persona?
    

	When I use the phrase "lost it", I mean lost control.  There are
	times when I'm just weepy or depressed, but basically I'm in 
	control of myself.  When I've lost it, forget it, I can't talk,
	drive, or do anything.  One of the times I lost it was when I had
	to call a bakery to bring food over after the funeral.  That was
	too much.  

    I just meant "lost it" in terms of not being able to keep oneself from
    crying.  My friend on the airplane apparently "lost it" in the manner
    described in -.1.
    						- Vick

    I think it was Henry Thoreau who said: "Most men live in quiet
    desperation".
    
    Eugene

    - .1
    
    I wonder whether, by "men", HDT meant human being, or adult human male?
    (Isn't it odd that the English language has no word that means,
    unambiguously, adult human male?)
    
    Although I suppose if he did mean adult human male, he could have said,
    most *guys* live lives of quiet desperation...anyway, it all makes for
    much confusion, imho.
    
    D.

    re. .19
    
    That's funny.  I have always used "guys" as an genderless appelation.
    I yell at my daughters, "Would you guys knock it off!" or say,
    "hi, guys" when approaching a mixed group of friends.  Is this
    non-PC?
    
    					- Vick

	re .18, .19
        
        I asked about that line in VISA::JoyOfLex; among the
        replies were ...
        
        Dan
        
>> 700.3
>>    The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
>>    
>>    	-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), _Walden_ (1854) _Economy_
        
>> 700.7
>>    Did you know that while he was living at Walden Pond, Henry David
>>    regularly took his laundry home to his mother to be washed?  (I
>>    always knew all those lit classes would come in handy someday!)

re .20 (guys as a genderless expression)

I think it's okay if you're *addressing* your daughters, and it's clear who
you're talking to.  However, I've been known to find the word 'guys' as a 
form of address irksome on occasion when I'm being addressed by someone I 
don't know, particularly in work situations ("Thanks, guys, for the bugfix", 
for example.)

I think guys gets considerably less PC when addressing women in non-traditional
roles; whereas I might think nothing of addressing a group of aunts and
uncles as "guys", I probably wouldn't do it to a group of mechanics.  I also
think it's more acceptable as a genderless form of *address* than as a 
genderless form of *reference* (which I don't think it is; who does the phrase
"the guys down at the bank" conjure up to you?  If one of your daughters called
you up at 11 PM and asked to spend the night at a friends house with "the guys",
would you assume those other people were female or male?)

    Sharon

    I usually use "folks"for a genderless group, and "guys" (rarely) for an
    all-male group.  But I agree that "guys" really is ambiguous.

    I use "folks" for both genders, "guys" for men, and "gyns" for women,
    for the most part.  
    
    Could we take this to the language topic and leave this topic for the
    subject of grieving?
    
    -Jody