Aedra
NEET
- Nov 26, 2020
- 1,869
Let's assume you're crying in public, how would you expect the random people seeing you to react to that? You might even be shamed for it, because it is almost as if we men are not allowed to have feelings anymore, society acts as if we are supposed to be as tough as stone, never show any weakness, especially not to a woman and generally the idea of ''being a man'' boils down to having no feelings. And from this you might assume it has always been this way, in fact, you might assume men were expected to be even tougher than now in the past, but that simply wasn't the case, at least not for europe, I want to go into how our culture went from men intentionally crying in public to impress their peers to a culture that shames it in this thread.
People assume that the reason men cry less than women is because 1. There is social pressure not to do so (correct) 2. Men are biologically hardwired to cry less (false) for most of history, men have cried openly in public, without any shame for it whatsoever, and during medieval times, a person genuinely crying was romanticized as a good thing, that includes both men and women of course. I will now give both ancient and medieval examples of how romanticized crying was.
Quoting from an article :
"Consider Homer’s Iliad, in which the entire Greek army bursts into unanimous tears no less than three times. King Priam not only cries but tears his hair and grovels in the dirt for woe. Zeus weeps tears of blood, and even the immortal horses of Achilles cry buckets at the death of Patroklos. Of course, we can’t regard the Iliad as a faithful account of historical events, but there’s no question that ancient Greeks saw it as a model for how heroic men should behave."
Some medieval examples :
"This exaltation of male weeping continued into the Middle Ages, where it appears in historical records, as well as fictional accounts. In chronicles of the period, we find one ambassador repeatedly bursting into tears when addressing Philip the Good, and the entire audience at a peace congress throwing themselves on the ground, sobbing and groaning as they listen to the speeches. In the 11th-century French epic The Song of Roland, the poet describes this reaction to the death of the eponymous hero: ‘The lords of France are weeping bitter tears,/ And 20,000 faint in their grief and fall.’ We can be pretty sure this didn’t happen as described, but it’s still remarkable that 20,000 knights swooning from grief were considered noble, not ridiculous."
"Furthermore, the sobbing male hero wasn’t only a Western phenomenon; he appears in Japanese epics as well. In The Tale of Heike, which is often cited as a source for the ideal behaviour of a samurai, we find men crying demonstratively at every turn. Here’s a typical response to the death of a commander-in-chief: ‘Of all who heard, friend or foe, not one but wept until his sleeves were drenched.’"
Now, you might say, 'but these are all examples concerning political events or things related to death and war, surely, men would be shamed for crying for small matters?' They were not, because we have examples of those too.
"In medieval romances, we find innumerable instance of knights crying purely because they miss their girlfriends. In Chrétien de Troyes’ The Knight of the Cart, no less a hero than Lancelot weeps at a brief separation from Guinevere. At another point, he cries on a lady’s shoulder at the thought that he won’t get to go to a big tournament. What’s more, instead of being disgusted by this snivelling, she’s moved to help, and Lancelot gets to go to the tournament after all. The knights of King Arthur, King Mark, King Everyone are routinely reduced to tears every time they’re told a heart-wrenching story. It’s hard to think of any niche situations in which tears might exclusively still be the province of women.
Still more remarkably, there’s no mention of the men in these stories trying to restrain or hide their tears. No one pretends to have something in his eye. No one makes an excuse to leave the room. They cry in a crowded hall with their heads held high. Nor do their companions make fun of this public blubbing; it’s universally regarded as an admirable expression of feeling."
Until rather recent times, men literally forced themselves to cry in public to impress their peers, for this reason there was only one type of 'crying' that medieval people hated, the 'hypocritical' crying would be when someone cried not because of genuine feelings, but for the sake of manipulation and so on.
"Weeping was such a central part of worship that it was written into the rules of monastic orders as a required accompaniment of prayer and repentance. Throughout the medieval era, disapproval of crying is confined to hypocritical tears, which were understood to be common in both men and women."
Worth noting that only scandinavians were pretty dry-eyed throughout this era, in fact, a man crying in public was punishable with death in scandinavian countries before scandinavia was christianized. They can now cry a river for their norse pagan religion I guess.
Source for this thread : https://aeon.co/essays/whatever-happened-to-the-noble-art-of-the-manly-weep
People assume that the reason men cry less than women is because 1. There is social pressure not to do so (correct) 2. Men are biologically hardwired to cry less (false) for most of history, men have cried openly in public, without any shame for it whatsoever, and during medieval times, a person genuinely crying was romanticized as a good thing, that includes both men and women of course. I will now give both ancient and medieval examples of how romanticized crying was.
Quoting from an article :
"Consider Homer’s Iliad, in which the entire Greek army bursts into unanimous tears no less than three times. King Priam not only cries but tears his hair and grovels in the dirt for woe. Zeus weeps tears of blood, and even the immortal horses of Achilles cry buckets at the death of Patroklos. Of course, we can’t regard the Iliad as a faithful account of historical events, but there’s no question that ancient Greeks saw it as a model for how heroic men should behave."
Some medieval examples :
"This exaltation of male weeping continued into the Middle Ages, where it appears in historical records, as well as fictional accounts. In chronicles of the period, we find one ambassador repeatedly bursting into tears when addressing Philip the Good, and the entire audience at a peace congress throwing themselves on the ground, sobbing and groaning as they listen to the speeches. In the 11th-century French epic The Song of Roland, the poet describes this reaction to the death of the eponymous hero: ‘The lords of France are weeping bitter tears,/ And 20,000 faint in their grief and fall.’ We can be pretty sure this didn’t happen as described, but it’s still remarkable that 20,000 knights swooning from grief were considered noble, not ridiculous."
"Furthermore, the sobbing male hero wasn’t only a Western phenomenon; he appears in Japanese epics as well. In The Tale of Heike, which is often cited as a source for the ideal behaviour of a samurai, we find men crying demonstratively at every turn. Here’s a typical response to the death of a commander-in-chief: ‘Of all who heard, friend or foe, not one but wept until his sleeves were drenched.’"
Now, you might say, 'but these are all examples concerning political events or things related to death and war, surely, men would be shamed for crying for small matters?' They were not, because we have examples of those too.
"In medieval romances, we find innumerable instance of knights crying purely because they miss their girlfriends. In Chrétien de Troyes’ The Knight of the Cart, no less a hero than Lancelot weeps at a brief separation from Guinevere. At another point, he cries on a lady’s shoulder at the thought that he won’t get to go to a big tournament. What’s more, instead of being disgusted by this snivelling, she’s moved to help, and Lancelot gets to go to the tournament after all. The knights of King Arthur, King Mark, King Everyone are routinely reduced to tears every time they’re told a heart-wrenching story. It’s hard to think of any niche situations in which tears might exclusively still be the province of women.
Still more remarkably, there’s no mention of the men in these stories trying to restrain or hide their tears. No one pretends to have something in his eye. No one makes an excuse to leave the room. They cry in a crowded hall with their heads held high. Nor do their companions make fun of this public blubbing; it’s universally regarded as an admirable expression of feeling."
Until rather recent times, men literally forced themselves to cry in public to impress their peers, for this reason there was only one type of 'crying' that medieval people hated, the 'hypocritical' crying would be when someone cried not because of genuine feelings, but for the sake of manipulation and so on.
"Weeping was such a central part of worship that it was written into the rules of monastic orders as a required accompaniment of prayer and repentance. Throughout the medieval era, disapproval of crying is confined to hypocritical tears, which were understood to be common in both men and women."
Worth noting that only scandinavians were pretty dry-eyed throughout this era, in fact, a man crying in public was punishable with death in scandinavian countries before scandinavia was christianized. They can now cry a river for their norse pagan religion I guess.
Source for this thread : https://aeon.co/essays/whatever-happened-to-the-noble-art-of-the-manly-weep
