No need to apologize Crystal Guy… you are entitled to your opinion.
We are, each of us angels with only one wing;
and we can only fly by
embracing one another
Yeah, us women! We are nothing but a pain in the ass! You should disassociate yourself from us at once! Let me be the first to offer my hand in a hearty goodbye.
The moon looks on many flowers, the flowers on but one moon.
GRRRRRRRRRR!!! The implication has been made a couple of times that every time women cry, it’s some form of emotional blackmail. Sometimes when my boyfriend & I fight, I cry. I don’t do it as a calculated move in order to get my way. I do it because I feel really deeply hurt by something he has said, implied, done, not done, etc. It’s a natural reaction to a bad situation. It doesn’t make me a bitchy drama queen or anything.
What I don’t understand is why it freaks out guys so much when women cry. Like I said, it’s a just a natural reaction to stress. I’m not saying he should ignore it or anything, but he could, like, try to figure WHY I’m crying & discuss it with me.
Except I forgot, I’m a woman & we can’t think rationally, didn’t someone say that?
Yet another overreaction…
What, it’s an overreaction to ask for help and support instead of being blown off and called irrational?
Modest? You bet I’m modest! I am the queen of modesty!
Stella*Fantasia
You raise an interesting point. I don’t know why it freaks guys out so much either, and I’m one of those guys. Seeing a woman crying fills my guts (well, it’s more like right under my breastbone) with some kind of tension. It can vary between anger, if I think she is using emotional blackmail, to compassion, if I think she’s at rights to be so sad, to utter bewilderment in a lot of cases. This is true even watching movies.
I suppose it might be because men cry more rarely, and thus only over very intense things (plus Titanic), so crying is a really big deal. There is a little bit of mistaken empathy - “If she feels bad enough to cry then she must feel as bad as I did when my parents got blown up that time which was the last time I cried, so now I’m upset too”. That’s my best guess, anyway.
I think that since guys are expected NOT to cry (sometimes no matter what the reason), they’re uncomfortable with crying. Why else would some of them freak out if their small sons cry when they hurt themselves. It’s kind of strange to tell a 6-year-old to “be a man.”
Drain Bead, do you mean I overreact when I cry because my SO says hurtful things to me, or did you mean that my post was an overreaction?
Gee, kick a guy in the crotch as hard as you can and THEN watch the tears flow! Big guys don’t cry my ass…
Actually, I heard some interesting statistics on men and women crying. Men apparently cry more often than women at movies. (This explains why so many men walk out of cinemas cursing the eyelash that just happened to fall into each eye a few moments before.) Women cry more than men at everything else.
I’m going to try and find this source because I think I saw it on the web (apparently, there are info sources off - line, but I can’t remember what they are … something involving flat sheets of wood pulp …?).
In any case, physical seems like one of the least likely things to make a guy cry. Death is probably more effective. So if you want to make me cry, you’ll have to kill my friends, or at least decapitate Teddy.
Shrug.
Extremes of gender role playing are equally ludicrous, IMO. The crypto-kittenish drama queen is just as ridiculous as the harder-and
colder-than-steel macho robot.
Read some of Deborah Tannen’s stuff; it explains this much better than I ever could, but men and women just plain don’t react the same. Neither right or wrong; just different. What IS wrong (hey, Occam, you’re not off the hook!) is imputing foul motives and willful misconduct to those differences, male or female.
Women aren’t sly manipulators and men aren’t emotionally stunted lumps. Both men and women who find refuge in extemes of gender stereotyping are rather ridiculous and rather pitiful.
Sorry to pour water on a lively little fire.
Shrugging again,
Veb
I don’t think anyone said that ALL women can’t think rationally. Hence, the overreaction.
Oh yeah, I stand corrected. I just checked this thread. Occam said he was unable to find a rational woman, which I guess isn’t exactly the same thing.
shrugs
It’s not really a sentiment that I care for, either, though.
Well, you don’t have to care for it. However, the fact that you started putting words in his mouth like that just about proved his point. Not meaning to jump on your ass or anything, but when defending female rationality, it’s probably a good thing if you don’t make irrational leap judgments. Especially if you’re female. 
Damn skippy.
You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.
Huh? I posted that agreement to another thread…talk about irrational.
Nevermind, y’all.
You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.
Maybe feminine “irrationality” is REALLY Superrationality, several steps ahead, and when the wheels are spinning-with traction- sometimes you just can’t explain.
Drain Bead, you’re misinterpreting what I posted, but I’m no longer interested in hearing what you have to say, so I won’t belabor the point.
So be it. Just trying to get you to be a little more careful with words, is all. I rather enjoy playing Devil’s Advocate, trying to show people how their words might be interpreted in a way they didn’t mean them to be. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. You may feel free to dismiss everything I say from now on.
gasp the HORROR!!! It’s EMOTIONAL! Oh good god, Occam… you say that like emotions are something bad and evil, something to be afraid of.
I have one pair of regular shoes, and one pair of muddy-weather boots. Don’t lump all women into the same mold, moron.
Well much as I think that urine splatters and pubic hairs are a daring and bold statement in interior decor, they aren’t my thing. I also don’t really like to touch the toilet with my hands any more often than neccessary. You know, you don’t HAVE to stand up to pee. Oh, and in my house you will put not only the seat but the LID down as well. We have animals and children that don’t need to be getting into the toilet.
Now sure, there are annoying, whiny, manipulative women out there. And men. There are all kinds of personality traits and they crop up in both genders. You can choose to assign them to everyone or you can treat people as individuals. One of these choices may leave you very lonely.
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O p a l C a t
www.opalcat.com