Why Women Aren't Crazy

[redqueen]

This appeared at Huffpo first with the title "A Message to Women From a Man: You Aren't Crazy", but since Huffpo is well known to engage in all the tabloid nonsense they do (for advertising dollars, not as a difference of opinion as at this site), I thought I'd link to this site, which is a men's site which I think is worth exploring.

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-women-arent-crazy/

You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!

(snip)

Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?

When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling—that’s inconsiderate behavior. A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation—pure and simple.

And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.

(snip)

More at link.

[seabeyond]

1. no. i do not hear it from my father, husband, sons, nephews. ever. i do hear it often in cyberspace

a favorite manipulative ploy to assign an emotion to me i am obviously not feeling.

i have had a lot of it of late.

[iverglas]

2. snork

Why, surely not here in this group?

Interestingly, maybe the fact that it is not used exclusively against women in cyberspace helps to make clear what the intent is. This kind of crap is endemic in cyberspace, as part and parcel of the common refusal to engage, and the choice to misrepresent instead. The odd man might find it instructive to experience what women deal with day in, day out.

You don't experience it personally in real life, sb, but you certainly experience it as a member of the group -- every time a woman politician is dismissed with words that ascribe an emotional rather than rational basis to her words, for instance.

[redqueen]

3. Excellent point. This is aimed at female politicians often.

It's bad enough when we get it in real life (I've gotten it from women too so it's not like I'm demonizing men and saying all men are evil, lurking friends), but when it's aimed by the M$M at powerful and influential women, that sends a very damaging message to everyone.

[seabeyond]

7. yes. we hear it. we know it. and we know the intent. and how dare

a woman call it out. she is not being cooperative. time to attack her sexuality. it is all so choreographed, that it is to the point of absurd.

[Tumbulu]

13. yes, lot's in cyberspace (nt)

[iverglas]

4. the seminal work

Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness.

http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/books/women-and-madness

I read it when it was first published.

Why are so many women in therapy, on psychiatric medication, or in mental hospitals? Who decides these women are mad? Why do therapists have the power to deem a woman mentally ill when she asserts herself sexually, economically, or intellectually? Why are women pathologized, but not treated, when they exhibit a normal human response to abuse and stress - including the lifelong stress of second-class citizenship?

Phyllis Chesler confronts questions like these and persuasively argues that double standards of mental health and illness exist and that women are often punitively labeled as a function of gender, race, class, or sexual preference. Based on in-depth interviews with patients and an analysis of women's roles in myths and history, Women and Madness is an incomparable work.

What is "normal" for a woman is abnormal for a human being.
What is "normal" for a man is abnormal for a woman.

Classic double bind that women are trapped in. If we are emotional, we are being abnormal human beings, because normal human beings are not emotional. If we are not emotional, we are abnormal women.

And on your point: if we are not emotional, we must be portrayed as being emotional, so as to be confined to our abnormal human being status, and dismissed.

[Sera_Bellum]

5. Not only do I hear it

in cyberspace (including DU), but t.v. movies, IRL.

But I gather I'm overly sensitive to this issue eh?

[iverglas]

6. and another excellent point!

But I gather I'm overly sensitive to this issue eh?

And another double bind. By protesting too much, you prove their point.

[redqueen]

10. It's a pretty efficient system of marginalization,

and it is one reason why it's taking so long to change things.

[Feldspar]

8. And, as always, it's good to be

told I'm *not* crazy by a man.

Crazy? Not crazy? They'll be the judge...

[redqueen]

9. Ha, yes,

that was touched on a day or two after this was published, at Feministe.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/11/15/a-message-to-yashar-ali-from-a-woman/

I almost posted the Feministe blog entry here instead, but ... well I don't know why I didn't, really. Hmm.

[libodem]

11. I like the site too

I like the idea of a dialogue where we open a discussion and not an arguement.

[seabeyond]

12. i am so with you on that. i have found discussion, whether in agreement or not, so much

more productive, in ALL ways.

[Rex]

14. Nope, not in my immediate family...extended family yes.

Dad would never say those things to my mom.