Splitting the world open: do we really want our Significant Other to be less gender-typical?

Most of us have probably had to listen to friends of the opposite sex tell us that we should behave less gender-stereotypical. For instance, if we’re a guy, we’ve probably had women tell us that we should cry more; and I’m guessing more than a few women have heard guys tell them that they should be more assertive. However, I suspect that the first thought that comes to all of our minds at that point for both sexes is ‘No - you really don’t.’

Women will often ask men – ‘Be more in touch with your emotions; be more expressive.’ However, at risk of casting some enormous and erroneous generalizations, I believe there are few moments that a man is more ‘in touch with his emotions’ than when he is competing against another man – which is not always a pleasant sight. This might mean pelting along the road amidst a peloton of fellow cyclists, or wrestling with them in a bar. Yet our significant others – parents, employers, teachers, and partners - subject us to conflicting messages about such behavior. They tell us, ‘Participate, but don’t be competitive; stand up for what’s right, but don’t be violent; sing, don’t shout; show your emotions, but do so calmly; and talk about your passion, but only as long as it is relatable.’


Cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson explores this quite succinctly:

“The gravamen of the [Furious Muses’] complaints was Richard’s failure to be ‘emotionally available.’ The phrase had left him dumb with disbelief the first time a woman had gone upside his head with it. He guessed that many of his emotions were not really fit to be shared with anyone, much less someone, such as a girlfriend, he was supposed to be nice to, and associated ‘emotional availability’ with unguarded moments such as the one that had led to his getting the nickname Dodge. But several of his ex-girlfriends-to-be had insisted that they wanted it, and, in a Greek mythic sort of revenge, they had continued to be emotionally available to him long past their dates of expiration. And yet he reckoned he’d actually been emotionally available to Rosie Cardenas. Maybe even to the point of making her uncomfortable.”

I want all my female friends to be candid with me – or at least, I think I do. Yet as American poet and political activist Muriel Rukeyser wrote, if one woman told the truth about her life, “the world would split open.” I suspect she meant that women are afraid of being completely honest because they sense that such a pathos-filled outpouring – the outrage at generations of boys dying in wars, the craving for sensuality, whatever – would have social consequences of a similar magnitude to a natural disaster. If that is the case, then men and women have a lot more in common than we tend to think.

Image by Dena Flows