Gender differences & emotions

OP this chap is basically playing a fun (for him) game of "your team is inferior to mine and you are inferior to me. Now let me put down anything you say to the contrary" with you. He's a bore. Find someone more interesting to talk to.

Also anecdotal: plenty of male children who dissolve into tears and lash out at the drop of a hat come from socialised situations where male negative emotions are taken more seriously than female emotions, and everyone drops everything to respond to them. And there is less expectation of learning to tolerate uncomfortable feelings. Watch a nursery or young primary class lining up some time: little boys, young enough to be uninhibited and to just act naturally, will often shove in at the front. Girls will often, when displaced by a boy, give space and step aside. Likewise on the street: women automatically give space to men, there are MNetters who have intentionally played with this when walking and held the space and waited for the male person approaching to do their share of automatic, instinctive co operative moving around/out of the way. It's often ended with a confused male who has walked right into someone and can't understand why. Socialisation. Huge thing.

Also role models: many kids are exposed to adults with poor self control, emotional regulation and way too much stress, and witness a lot of meltdowns upto and including domestic violence. The statistics bear out which group tend to be dominant as the aggressors, and whom provide almost all of the statistics for serious injury, serious threats and murder in the course of domestic abuse.

Nothing but observations and opinion though.

I quit reading Psychology Today because of the overt sexism in many articles and pure nonsense in others.

I’m just starting out on my journey to trying to better understand feminism

By trying to find proof that women are less able to cope with their emotions?

Although there was no difference in the number of life events experienced in the previous two years, the women rated their life events as more negative and less controllable than the men

with the women listing family and health-related events more frequently than the men, whereas the men listed relationship, finance and work-related events

So the same number of Men got married and became the one who gave birth and were doing the child rearing & wife work as Women did?

But Men did not include the children they'd given birth to and had to rear as causes of stress? they only only included money, jobs and friendships/shags/colleagues. Weird that Men didnt include the kids they'd given birth to and reared as life events.

Why is that study included? It's useless

@TheGreatSloth Yeah, I thought we all agreed that gender isn't real due to it being made up nonsense.
Gender seems to include Women enjoying shutting up and being nice which surely no one believes is anything other than repressing emotions and it ignores Men battering other Men/Children/Women to describe them as rational and in control of their emotions.

That's before you get to the weird 'Sex is something Nice Wifely Women tolerate for Husbandy Men, except for evil Slags who enjoy being attractive/outside/drunk/alone to incite Rape from the Men who are totally in control of their emotional state'

It's all bullshit. When did this shit go back to the stupidity we see now? Serious query

Shouldn’t this be about sex differences, not gender differences (whatever those are)?

I’ve rarely if ever had a conversation about this where there wasn’t a man there trying to get a reaction for his own amusement.

I’m unlikely to get involved in it these days (except with women). ‘Wind up a feminist’ is sadly a common game I’ve found.

I am a season ticket holder for premier league football team.
Attendance is male dominated. I’m the only woman among several hundred men in my section. In a Stadium of over 50,000 mainly men.
I defy anyone to attend and tell me that men are not emotional. I’ve heard this rubbish trotted out for so many years.
If your team is losing or there’s a perceived injustice by the ref, or a moment of history by a dying second winning goal - there is pure, raw emotion. Crying, fighting, shouting, jumping, whatever. It’s emotion. Often gets displayed differently but it’s still emotion.

Go watch a football match. Watch the spectators. Its hardly a stress free rational thing with no emotions.

I think men are more hormonal and emotional than women, testosterone means that they are subject to being overwhelmed by rage as others have said but also to sexual arousal/lust both of which impair the function of the rational intellect.

It seems to me that they are also more susceptible to stress than women. The anger response and resort to violence is how we can see how they don’t cope with stress. I don’t know many men who could cope with 24/7 childcare + household tasks and keep their cool.

This difference in handling stress and emotionality between boys and girls is observable at a young age in the playground in my opinion. The evidence for me is the high number of boys compared to girls getting angry and lashing out physically and becoming tearful due to perceived insult.

All just anecdote and personal opinion...

I think you can ask different questions.

Even if women do experience more negative emotions, Does experiencing more emotion, make one less rational? I didn’t see anything in the first article that would empirically support that? It might mean we are more empathetic, more nuanced in our emotional responses, don’t see why it would it makes us less rational.

And additionally- just because we experience more stress, does any of this evidence support us dealing less well with it? As PP pointed out, male suicide rates suggest the opposite.

We may be more ‘emotional’ and more stressed, maybe that’s the biological and societal hand we are dealt, but it certainly doesn’t mean we are any less rational or able to cope, actually there is plenty to suggest the opposite.

The male suicide rate being higher than that of womens' would seem to suggest that men are emotional and subject to stress- maybe just less able to implement coping strategies (and allowing for the impact of different methods used).

If it is true, anyone thought about how this might be a response to protecting children. If we are better tuned in to our environments, are more sensitive to our surroundings, then we may be better protectors. As for stress, well, best start defining a few things emotion for one, based on a male person no doubt.

I find it amusing when people say women are emotional......but completely neglect anger in their assessment.

Also, it wouldn't surprise me if women feel more negative emotion. They do most of the caring, most of the multitasking, most emotional/mental work in relationships, but they are often the most vulnerable, physically and financially.

Read "Invisible Women" - she talks about how women do experience more stress but its in line with the number of hours work they do, when childcare/housework is counted as work. Basically a lot of women don't get enough downtime so are chronically stressed compared to men.

I was under the impression that it was shown that women deal better with stress than men?

That we survive better, that we can endure more physical hardship (starvation, sleep deprivation, exhaustion) etc.

Personally, and anecdotally, I'd say that the trouble at the moment is a 'straw that broke the camel's back' one. That women already run most of their day to day life under stress, so adding covid and everything that brings on top has just tipped some of them over the edge.

It's overly emotional, illogical and not a sign of coping well with stress however it's described.

I saw a study recently saying women were less emotional and more logical, especially when stressed. Something to do with less testosterone making us calmer and more rational. Will try and dig it out for you.

Yeah, men are just much less emotional and more logical - look at Donald Trump, logical, unemotional and handles stress very well...

Who starts wars
Who is responsible for the majority of violence and death in the world
Look at the 'reasons' men give for rape, murder, domestic violence
Look how they express their emotions and what they do when they're stressed. Eg the rise in violence around sports matches, they're so emotional about their football team losing they are violent to each other, animals, their partners etc.

Less able to cope with stress raises the question of which 'stress' is equal for both sexes.

Men are feeling less shame?

Yet Women are murdered as a result of Men 'losing control of their emotions' because they feel embarrassed/shamed/belittled

Could it be we express more shame because the risk of not appearing to self regulate is so grave?

Its impossible to say if any human behaviour is cased by nature, nurture or socialization, because we can't provide any control groups.

• Figures show that women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression than men, they attempt suicide at the same rate as men, but men are more likely to succeed because they use more violent methods.

• Men are more likely to act out in violence and be convicted of a violent crime.

How can that be true if women are more emotional and less rational?

And agree about male rage.