Tags
anxiety, feelings, feminism, gaslighting, head, heart, men, photography, projection, stereotypes, women
This, of course, always
I think this is a distinctly female problem. I read an article about a thing called gaslighting. Essentially, the article says women have been conditioned to believe their emotionally unstable. Gaslighting occurs when someone – male or female – makes a remark which we respond to and then it’s immediately met with “you’re being too emotional!” or “calm down, it was just a joke!”
I will grant that there are a lot of women that overreact to the slightest negative comment. However, I don’t think that is what the article is referring to. I think what it’s talking about is years and years of women being consistently told they are unstable, they aren’t capable of managing their emotions. You can see it throughout western literature, movies, and the media where women simply can’t control their emotional outbursts.
It has been repeated so often that women have begun to believe it. You see that image up there? That’s me to a fault. If I’m trying to have a serious conversation about something I really feel or something I think is a legitimate problem – It is pretty much a verbatim recital of the above. Why is it so hard to express ourselves and fell justified in feeling the way we do? Is this a problem only soft-willed people have?
I’d hate to disregard my male companions. I’m sure there are men out there that go through this same mental barrage of doubt. I’ll never fight that men have just as many stereotypes they need to fit into for them to be “normal.”
My only question is: when did it get so hard. I saw a fake book title called The World was Always Awful: A Guide to World History for People who Always Romanticize the Past. I think that would be an amazing book to read. Things have always been this way.
My goal for the next week is to express a serious emotional subject without needing to evade, deflect, justify, and not feel like I need to “patch things up” afterward.
I have already failed once earlier this week when I felt I had to justify my actions regarding an innocuous dinner I had with a friend. There was no reason to feel that way. I made up a problem in my head and ran with it because I worry, constantly, that people aren’t being truthful to me. I assume [wrongly, most of the time] that it takes people some time to realize that something has bothered them. That’s how it is with me, so it’s definitely that way with everyone else, right? Fault: one. I know that’s not true. But, there’s a bigger problem in my life. Recognizing what I know and what I feel. Sometimes it takes longer for my heart to catch up with my head. Patience is all I ask.
