MEN AND SHAME

In a blog called ...

"No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz?"

I found a great article called ...

"Emotions: Threat or Menace?"

Here noahbrand writes:  "Guys, back me up on this. Picture two guys in a painful situation, and the first guy is openly showing his pain and vulnerability, and the second guy is sitting there stoically, one eyebrow cocked. Notice how you can’t help feeling that the second guy somehow won. Hell, I feel that way, and I know that’s insane. I’m the guy writing this post about how insane it is, and I still can’t disentangle that notion from my psyche.
I don’t know how to reverse this meme. Seriously, picture some kind of “It Gets Better” project where men, the manliest men available, openly confess their deepest pain and vulnerability in YouTube videos. Got it? Right, now picture the comments on those YouTube videos."

Well, recently Jonah Mowry bravely uploaded a YouTube-video showing his pain and vulnerability:

Edited to add another link to this video, with an update from Jonah:




Take the time to read some of the hateful responses on YouTube, and look at some of the videos accusing him of lies and cheating ... they are a toxic fruit of society's norms for men.

And here is a balanced video response to the hate and denigration:

This whole shame thing takes me back to the late 80s, when I was one of many women who broke the taboos against speaking of childhood sexual violations. We found it helpful to look at the taboos in perspective, and remind ourselves that "this shame is not my shame, it is a shame that society has given me, and I do not want it!"

Maybe men can say the same, when they feel shame because of emotions that society does not want to see?