Emotional Memes and Cliches

I've been paying lots of attention -- especially as I'm back to heavy lifting some feminist writing -- to the kinds of things that pop up on my Facebook feed. Today I've been interested in seeing the multitude of supporting memes geared toward women who are suffering. See the FB page for Somewhere Over the Rainbow for examples. I wonder about this: we know that women do not suffer more than men, but that they are much, MUCH more likely to share their emotional experiences.

Memes work in interesting rhetorical ways, allowing us to post about our feelings without saying so. In some ways they give us the opportunity (as in sharing songs and lyrics) to say what we feel better than we could say it. Yet the memes I most often see casually leave men out (as sufferers). Since I spend my time studying ways women have been casually left out, I'm surprised by this opposite (a little surprised -- okay, not much surprised).

The disturbing thing, as a feminist, about leaving men out of such touchy-feely, supportive memes is that we (feminists) are interested in getting men to express emotion: to fully feel emotion and talk about it. We believe (and this is supported by a good bit of scientific evidence) that actually expressing such feelings brings people closer, makes them more fully-realized (as Maslow would put it).

So, men suffer just as much and in much the same way as women. Memes, created in an environment that post-dates third wave feminism by decades, still fail to portray that suffering (at least in regards heterosexual romantic relationships). Why are we stuck reinforcing the same old cliches of strong men and emotional women? How can we move forward and connect strength and emotion together, creating a sphere where the emotionally honest and vulnerable are considered the strongest among us -- whether female or male?

Doing so will strengthen the position of women and the move toward equality that is the heart of feminism.

This is the problem: FYI (if you’re a teenage girl) | Given Breath

"We hope to raise men with a strong moral compass, and men of integrity don’t linger over pictures of scantily clad high-school girls." -- from the blog FYI (if you’re a teenage girl) | Given Breath

Again, somehow it is the fault of "girls" if "males" are incapable of seeing past a bit of skin to recognize the woman (girl) beneath it. Sadly, it is women like this mother who continue to provide room in our society for men "who can't help themselves" -- the slope from her line of accusatory thinking about teenage girls to an ability to excuse the true inappropriate behavior of males who take advantage of such girls/women is much, much too easy to slide down (as I learned again this weekend).

I was listening to Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series this week, and I found myself irritated by what I see so commonly in Young Adult literature: boys who know “nothing” about girls.

Now, I’m not picking on Nix here – I understand that his work can be extremely powerful, with Sabriel coming highly recommended. What I’m bothered by is more of a trend in the field. It is a cliché that needs to be defeated. That can only happen with better versions of adolescent gender relations, better versions that more closely relate to the real experiences of the readers.

Today I was reading The Casual Vacancy and I found exactly the kind of moment which works: J. K. Rowling writes, “Andrew wished he knew more about girls; he had never got to know one well enough to fathom how their minds worked” (132). Clearly Andrew, like Nix’s Arthur, is a boy who knows “nothing” about girls. So why isn’t this the same cliché? Simply because Andrew is an anomaly. He knows nothing about girls because he is an abused child from an abusive home where he is not allowed to venture into society – in other words, he knows nothing about girls because he is screwed up.

Rowling, of course, writes wonderfully about adolescents, almost as if she once was one and has perhaps seen a few. She even nails some very male-like thinking when she has Andrew spot a tampon wrapper in a friend’s bathroom – the cliché reaction would be puzzlement and perhaps disgust, while Andrew’s reaction is excitement, “akin to seeing a rare comet” (133). Fact: straight adolescent boys are excited by anything that relates to the sexuality of girls they find attractive. (They also spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about girls in the same exact ways that girls spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about boys – this is something that John Green does so well it’s ridiculous.)

Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Nix’s YA series to Rowling’s adult novel, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. YA readers are, as John Green says, the most important readers many novelists have – and it’s because they are YA. They are learning how to be “real people” from the books they read, and when those books are filled with sloppy caricatures instead of genuine characters, those readers suffer. There are reasons why Holden Caulfield matters, why understanding Ender Wiggins can make us all better, and why Huckleberry Finn is such and amazing human character. Like Rowlings’ Andrew, these “boys” do not know much about girls, but that’s not a cliché because they have real, legitimate reasons for such lack of knowledge.

[Suggestion] | Twenty Little Poems That Could Save America, by Tony Hoagland | Harper's Magazine

[Suggestion] | Twenty Little Poems That Could Save America, by Tony Hoagland | Harper's Magazine