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Dear men, emotions are supposed to be expressed
What you need to know:
Literature. Society believes that being a man means hiding failures and weaknesses. While being a woman is wearing your feelings on your slit wrists. The author demonstrates how men are more emotional than women and should never repress their emotions.
Masculinity is a static concept. It means the same thing to different people, especially when those people are defining men as bulletproof.
To be sure, a man is not supposed to cry or show any form of vulnerability. He is a hunter, after all. And, in the wild, the hunter quickly becomes the quarry when any weakness is detected, right? Wrong.
Anne Lumbasi’s book titled You Can’t Fake It: Redefining Emotional Wellness and Masculinity debunks social mores, which proclaim the invulnerability of men.
In so doing, she invites men to be themselves as emotional and relational beings, who cannot be detached from their affective essence.
Instead of stringing together a number of arguments to tie into that coat of many colours that is masculinity, she shares many a heart-rending story.
“Mommy, do not let me die,” begged her younger brother Thomas Owen before expiring in his mother’s arms.
The poor young man suffered from depression from an early age. He was given medication, drugs whose identity the author does not know, only to attempt suicide several times thereafter. He ultimately met his death by other means; means that were wholly avoidable. You see, depression is real. And the stigma attached to it is just as real.
Her brother Owen, as he liked to be called, and many other males are harried by demons which come with depression.
Instead of society empathising with this abnormality, their condition is swept under the rug by social misdiagnoses, which favour non-disclosure of one’s mental health.
Men who are found to be “weak” in this manner are shunned, belittled as half-men. That is because of society’s definition of masculinity being exclusive of vulnerability.
Again, society often looks at depression as some generational curse or the retributive hand of providence smiting us for some past indiscretion.
The author disagrees with this estimation. She views depression as normal and believes we need to normalise its treatment in the same way we treat a physical ailment.
As with physical ailments, it has symptoms we should pay attention to. “Self-isolation: Many people who are experiencing depression seek to isolate themselves from their family and friends. It could be because they feel other people will not understand their feelings and that they are better off by themselves,” she writes as she lists a number of signs that point to depression.
Excessive drinking is another sign. It manifested itself in the torment of her brother, Owen. The author empathises with men, while calling out those who think men should respond to things like trauma, abuse, infertility, domestic violence “like a man”.
Those who pigeonhole men as unfeeling beings are forcing men to bottle up their emotions. Then when the genie of their inner turmoil is out of the bottle and they commit suicide, the men are blamed for being “like women”.
The implication here is that being a man is being strong, while being a woman is wearing your feelings on your slit wrists. Yet, the author ably demonstrates how men are potentially more emotional than women, but are not allowed to show this.
To explain, she reveals the curious way her mother and father respond to physical pain. Her mother is far more stoical than her father, possibly because she suffered far worse from child-bearing.
“This got me thinking about the men in my family when they fell ill even with a common cold; you would think they were actually dying. I am sure some of your brothers or fathers have wanted to write their will in anticipation of death when experiencing a simple pain or discomfort that they could overcome with a few painkillers. But because this is physical pain, it is acceptable enough for them express it,” she writes.
The emotions which are denied, men are seeds of their destruction since emotions are supposed to be expressed not repressed.Subsequently, she asks for our compassion. Especially to those whose emotions could be denied no longer.
“Even a body of a person who has committed suicide is judged. They will slap the body and bury the person with no dignity because it is regarded as their fault, and considered an embarrassment to those left behind. Would we bury someone who broke their hand and succumbed to injury the same way? Why do we feel shame when the mind falls sick and the person succumbs to that illness by committing suicide?” the author wonders.
Title: You Can’t Fake It: Redefining Emotional Wellness and Masculinity
Author: Anne Lumbasi
Pages: 73
Price: Shs30,000
Availability: Naalya Motel
Published: 2023
