Twilight interviews a stallion who recently lost a loved one as to why he didn’t cry much about it. She doesn’t set out to accuse, but to help and understand. What she finds, she was not expecting.
I wrote this story as a kind of response to a friend on the issue of men and crying. I do my best not to attack the feminist viewpoint that says “patriarchy, nuff said!” because I think most folks have either rejected that notion entirely or are at least questioning it already.
While reading this, please put aside any biases you have, for or against men crying or for or against women doing the same. There are general differences between the genders that can at times appear concerning. It’s healthy to ask questions.
(Image from PedroHander on deviantart.)
nice Far Cry 3 reference
7779205 Have to admit I don't know how I referenced that.
...It legit makes me sad that there aren't more views on this story...
7795616
Not a lot of ways to market it and without more chapters, that's how it goes. I am planning a new full story about a conflict surrounding the gender rights debate, but that's gonna be very different from this one. Stay tuned I guess.
7786380
The definition of insanity is used in Far Cry 3. It’s not actually from that game, of course, it’s just a well-known time it was quoted.
This story makes me think of Inside Out, specifically a fact about human psychology that the film references. The value of sadness to the human animal, essentially, is that expressions of sorrow trigger sympathy in other people, and that encourages them to go to someone in pain, to help them. Crying is usually seen as the most obvious social signal that someone’s sad and needs help. But in Cloud’s case, crying never achieved that effect for him; he just got laughed at for it. ‘Boys don’t cry’, and all that bullshit. That’s a natural human instinct, comforting a fellow human in pain, that’s not working as it ought to.
He naturally turns to other ways of expressing pain, which for him sometimes means lashing out. And of course, that gets fear instead of sympathy from Twilight and just makes it worse. You’re not as likely to get the help you need when your expression of sadness scares people, but he doesn’t seem to have a choice, does he? What I get from this is a) It’s harmful to mock a man for crying instead of helping him, and b) it’s important to remember that someone might be trying to express their pain or ask for help, even if it doesn’t look that way.
You can see those points being made in the show, too. When AJ goes missing, Big Mac tears up, and it isn’t treated as a joke. In fact, I think almost every male character has had a crying moment that was treated seriously. They skirt the line with Shining Armor, he’s had a crying joke at his expense a couple of times, but at least they were always supposed to be happy tears; he was never mocked for hurting. I always appreciated that. Or take Dungeons and Discords: Discord is in pain over being lonely without his one friend, and he reacts by being a jerk to Spike and Big Mac all night. This of course makes them mad and results in them kicking him out, which has taken the problem of his loneliness and just made it worse. It takes the two of them realizing ‘Okay, he’s being an antisocial jerk ... but he’s being a jerk because he actually really needs friends right now’ and setting aside their anger to reconcile with him.
I like this story. They talk in circles a bit, and the writing could be hard to follow, but the story itself is good. Very poignant, and very pony.
8220047
You’re sort of getting it. You’re making a mistake many people not born male make. What’s wrong with men isn’t that they’re not women. Let’s see, how many dogs can cry for longer than about a minute? Yet people comfort their animals when they see a change in behavior that suggests sadness. Hell, animals do so for each other and again, many of them, if they cry at all, only do so for short periods of time. Crying isn’t the only expression of sadness. How about hanging your head, going silent, drastic changes in behavior, becoming grumpy, or even, like in Cloud’s case, saying out loud “my daughter is dead” so you know what’s going on? He said it a few times, if someone didn’t care when he wasn’t crying, they wouldn’t spontaneously care if he did. His experience with his dog was an example of how he knew that was true. Studies have been done, when a child or a woman cries, a natural draw occurs that doesn’t happen for men, at least, not on the same level. I’m going to say something that needs to be said that a LOT of non born men need to hear and I hope you think about it. “This is how I was born, and I wasn’t born wrong.”
His friends didn’t care- which his admits, probably means they’re not really his friends and his only real friends are Rainbow Dash and his wife. Rarity, however unintentionally, made a different point. While the way men deal with pain is often just part of what they are, it IS harder for those not involved in their lives to tell when something is wrong and that IS a weakness in how they deal. Look up “rumination”, it's a very serious problem that can come from how women deal with grief and yet, I’m not gonna say, “a woman’s problem is that she’s too focused on feelings”. How you grieve is part of what you are and many psychologist will tell you, it’s not something you can just change.
I really liked this one.
I’ve always found that not crying frequently nuked a lot of self-expression for me, in a sense. Especially when other signs of frequent grief and depression (which certainly has got to do something about the not crying thing) were in full force, and no one really cared, or very few people did.
It also ended up being one of the more masculine qualities I have, especially as a kid. I honestly think a lot of it stemmed from the really bad stigma of “boys don’t cry” and that it’s something I must have internalized more and more to the degree that it’s one of the more obvious ways I feel fucked up. Somehow people being more willing to show disgust at “the weird girl who doesn’t cry” was a very bad way of trying to untangle some of the old gender dysphoria for young me. Definitely not a good thing.
I love the point you make about just how much the other obvious signs of sadness are ignored, though. It’s something applicable to anyone of different ages, sexes, genders, or sensitivity.
Loss is...
the most cruel teacher..
Our experiences shape us, our expectations rule us but our phantasy is where we gain our freedom..
and I wont let anything but me rule myself.
J