Cry Like a Girl

One of the arguments that most successfully undermines my confidence in my own ability to apply logic to certain situations and people is that my negative association with said situations or people negates the validity of my views. Basically, if something I feel strongly about is tainted with emotion, my conclusions about it don't hold any water.

This is particularly irritating when it comes to my views on politics and religion. Having been brainwashed via Christianity, I see a lot of potential harm in organized religion. Dealing with a child with special needs has repelled me from Republican policies on education. Going two decades without health insurance has made me quite favorable of the Affordable Care Act. My personal and traumatic experiences with a gun have resulted in my preference for more gun control laws. Aborting my own father's baby when I was 15 has made me a staunch supporter of reproductive rights.

My life experiences have shaped the way I think about things, and the way I think about things has a lot to do with how I feel in response to my life experiences. I don't believe this is a bad thing. It actually really seems like common sense to me. After all, no one is going around saying that a person's aversion to touching fire is void because that person has been burned before. It's called learning from experience.

I suppose I should acknowledge that I discount peoples' arguments on similar premises quite often. For example, I don't believe getting robbed by a black guy is a legitimate reason to back white supremacy. I don't think an illegal alien harming you or someone in your family is a legitimate reason to be anti-immigration. I don't think getting food poisoning the night your waiter was gay is a legitimate reason to vote against marriage equality. I mean, what does one really have to do with the other?

But those are life experiences that people base their religious and political views on. Maybe that is why I have been so reluctant to defend myself against emo-haters when I am trying to make a point. I can see that emotion can not only cloud judgment, but can also be wildly manipulated to defend or support stupid shit that doesn't make any sense.

Because I spent my childhood in a vortex of unacknowledged pain, I find myself going out of my way to acknowledge other people's pain. I am extremely hesitant to dismiss someone's conclusions that have risen from emotion. But I also just really don't care sometimes. Sometimes conclusions arising from emotion are stupid and don't make any sense.

But emotions, by definition, don't have to make any sense. It all contributes to that ethereal dimension of the mind called intuition. I have learned to trust my intuition, on account of it's historical accuracy. Many times I can't articulate the reasons I make certain decisions, or take certain actions. I just go with my gut.

I do question the intentions of my gut, though, because I was consistently taught that my personal motivations were selfish. I worry that I'm doing something for a shallow, destructive reason, and wonder if I need to call my gut into check. But I am finding more and more that my gut is actually one of the most ethical parts of me. It is kind of a relief to know I can rely on my gut to point me in the right direction, too.

But my gut works by making me feel things. I have always been obnoxiously analytical, and feelings can be slippery to analyze. I catch myself trying to intellectualize my feelings, and it just makes everything muddy. Maybe that is because I was criticized whenever I reacted emotionally to anything, and I reacted emotionally to A LOT of stuff. I was very hurt and very angry as a child, and those feelings were almost always shamed and dismissed as not valid.

Growing up in a society in which women are undermined because of their ability to feel things, the dismissal of my own feelings seemed appropriate. I also very much resented women, and scoffed at people who expressed emotions. Anytime a man expressed emotions, I considered him to be "less than" because of this perceived feminine characteristic. I held men as superior, and condescended to women. I didn't see any problem with this until I realized that, as a woman, I didn't actually enjoy constantly putting myself down.

After I was able to begin recognizing the abuse I suffered, largely at the hands of men, my idealization of the male sex crumbled rapidly. The most devastating aspect of this was the fact that I was, by this time, married to a really wonderful man, and had two little boys who would someday become men. As difficult as it was for me to work through, it caused me to see women - including myself - in a different light.

It feels really good to view myself positively. I am still terrified of crying in front of anyone else (actually, I'm terrified of crying regardless of whether I am alone), but I can recognize that seeing someone else cry does not mean they are weak. It means they are feeling something, and for me, that is one of the strongest things anyone can do.