Two dudes overheard at the gym:
First dude: So you know my friend from California?
Second dude: Yeah?
First dude: So his godson –
Second dude: You mean his son?
First dude: No, his godson –
Second dude: So like his nephew?
First dude: No, his godson. Like, it’s the kid of one of his friends, and he’s the godfather.
Second dude: Okay.
First dude: So his godson, well, I was talking to him on Friday and his godson’s dad killed himself.
Second dude: You mean your friend?
First dude: No, my friend’s godson’s dad. His friend.
Second dude: Was it a family member?
First dude: Yeah, whatever, his cousin or something. He asked my friend to be his kid’s godfather.
Second dude: Why’d he kill himself?
First dude: I guess his wife was cheating on him or something. And his mother had done it, too.
Second dude: Done what?
First dude: Killed herself.
Second dude: So he was bummed that his wife cheated on him. But that’s still pretty harsh, leaving his kid like that.
And that was that. No expression of sympathy, no asking about how the California friend was handling his friend’s suicide, nothing about how the godson was doing. I’m not even sure the second dude ever even understood that the California friend was not the one who committed suicide; he showed a surprising obtuseness about the very simple relationships being described.
I overheard the conversation a few hours after I’d taken this online questionnaire that measures “autistic traits in adults,” linked in the comments of Unfogged. Some of the questions seem to be about introversion vs. extroversion, but others measure how well you understand the feelings and motivations of other people, and some of the questions are about those “Rain Man” qualities like fixating on patterns, numbers, and dates.
But while the dudes at the gym, particularly the second dude, may have been on the autistic spectrum for all I know, I kind of doubt it, and that’s not what really interested me about their conversation. While the dudes sounded kinda Aspergery, the very same conversational qualities also just made them sound like dudes.
This is a banal observation: Part of what it means to be masculine is to be bad at talking about, showing, and understanding emotion.
This masculine difficulty with emotion is situational, at least for me. I myself sometimes have mini panic attacks when I face a strong emotion in an intimate situation; my mind goes blank and I can hardly speak. At other times, though, I can be empathetic and expressive of my own emotions — usually when I’m with friends who are articulate about their own feelings and not engaged with the masculine bullshit. (I scored a 13 on the web quiz, a low-ish [quite far from autistic] score for males; besides a fluctuating amount of introversion, I don’t think I really have any autistic-spectrum traits.)
So maybe it’s unfair to judge the dudes at the gym. They are, after all, at the gym, working out together — a situation that we all know can quickly degenerate into teh gay if masculinity is not rigorously upheld.
The situational aspect of masculine emotion-blindness makes sense when you think about masculinity as a social construction. There are plenty of situations in which it’s perfectly okay for a man to be bad with emotion; there are plenty more situations in which it’s even expected for him to hide his own emotions and ignore emotions expressed by others. A White Bear wrote a great comment a couple of weeks ago pointing out that men often force women to do the emotional work in a relationship just by refusing to do any themselves — just like men who don’t do their share of housework often get their female partners to pick up after them.
And dealing with emotions is work. It can be hard, it can be frightening, and it can make you vulnerable, expose you to ridicule (regardless of your gender). The alternative, though, is to end up like the dudes at the gym.
I guess what bothers me so much about this gendered emotional work is that it becomes somehow a point of bragging rights to say one is bad at understanding and articulating emotion, like you prove your masculinity in some meaningful way by being really bad at feelings. And I’m kind of like that—emotional work is really really hard for me, which is why I resent that it’s always supposed to be my job in hetero relationships to do it all myself. And it wouldn’t be a bad thing if we all recognized our emotional limitations so we could notice that there are areas we need to improve and practice on.
One of the things that annoys me about those online autism spectrum quizzes is that, while ASD is terribly underdiagnosed, for sure, the conversations on Unfogged tend to be full of non-ASD people bragging about how high their score is, as if being so emotionally hobbled by culture is a good thing. People with ASD tend to experience a lot of anxiety and depression about it. That is, it doesn’t “free” them from emotional discourse; it often makes them very lonely and unhappy not to be able to interpret emotional cues.
This self-diagnosis stuff seems to be a tendency to self-pathologize in order to brag about how few responsibilities one has toward others. IME, people who actually have emotional and mental disorders really struggle with wanting to be able to fulfill the social contracts they’re unable to. There are a lot of groups devoted to rethinking these disorders as a different kind of cognition, with new opportunities and abilities, which is great. But that’s a mature, considered response that comes out of a lot of pain and confusion.
I guess it’s not far, in my understanding, from pretty much anything that guys brag about to seem more manly and evade responsibility, like, “Oh, I cheated on you because men are just dogs and I’m a man, honey.” “Oh, I hit you because men are violent when they’re angry and I’m a man, baby.” You know, all the Venus/Mars stuff I hate so much. All those culturally gendered differences could be used to negotiate middle ground, but, as long as their primary use is to make sure women do all the negotiation and men retreat further into gleefully pathological territory, I remain suspicious. On the veldt.
About these online quizzes: This one actually struck me as quite well done, although of course far from having actual diagnostic efficacy. Like I said in the post, I saw the questions as measuring at least three different axes (is that the right term?), with ASD presumably being somewhere in the high scores on all three axes. And since, like many people, I often find emotional work very difficult, it was nice for me to go through the questions and see that yeah, I’m a little introverted, but actually I do understand others’ feelings and motivations. I’m not oblivious, I just need to work on bringing my emotional cognition to the forefront more often.
And really, I probably should have found a better way to contextualize the weirdly affectless conversation I heard at the gym, especially now that this morning I see Michael Savage’s asshole remarks about autism on my Google news page. Note to all: I really don’t know a thing about ASD! I just wanted to talk about my feelings!
And I completely agree with you, AWB, about the gendered emotional stuff being a lame cop-out in the service of extending male privilege.
OMG, the Michael Savage thing is enraging.
I think your point, BTW, is a totally appropriate criticism to MS’s assumption that autistic kids are somehow just “brats.” There’s a seriously identifiable way in which autism is different from being a jerk, and I think this sort of culturally induced affectlessness (and triumphant self-diagnoses) cloud that difference in a way that’s really insulting to families raising autistic kids. Savage’s proposed solution of yelling at an autistic kid to snap out of it is just jaw-droppingly cruel and stupid. Why on Earth would someone who apparently has no experience with autism feel the need or warrant to suggest it doesn’t exist?
Wow, so Michael Savage (a.k.a. Michael Weiner) has a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine and once corresponded with Allen Ginsberg.
4: Right. And Savage’s whole schtick, including this little episode and including his pseudonym, is further evidence of the perniciousness of this masculine-gendered uncaring tough-guy bullshit.
We are truly solving the world’s problems today here at the Great Whatsit, AWB.
I finally took the stupid test and got a 29, which is very high. A lot of that, I think, is a product of my career choices. Do I talk a lot about the same thing? Why, yes! I’m writing a dissertation and have been thinking about the same two words for three years. Do I concentrate really hard on one thing at a time and sort of lose my shit when my concentration is broken? Why, yes! I’m trying to write a damn dissertation and it’s really really hard. Do I feel my interlocutors are often putting up with my speeches about stuff? Why, yes! I’m a lecturer, and, unfortunately, that habit seeps into my personal life. Now, the question is, did academia appeal to me because I’m just like that, or am I like that because of academia?
Whatever the case is, it’s clear also that we perform sometimes at our most capable and sometimes at our least capable. Sometimes, I am totally charming and socially graceful and warm. But, a lot of the time, I’m anxious, insensitive, and weird. I can’t really count on when it will swing either way. I wish I could find the link, but there’s a really great vlog from an autistic woman in response to criticisms that she “really could” understand what’s going on socially if she tried harder because sometimes she does a lot better than others. (She’s unable to speak, but uses speaking software to type what she wants to say.) In the vlog, she uses the example of pitch recognition. For most people, we can, with practice, recognize relative pitches in music. That’s a fifth, that’s a minor third, etc. But identifying particular notes is a lot harder, and sometimes we’re better at it than at other times. We often need a pitch given to us, and then we can identify others. The blogger says she identifies pitches immediately as frequencies, as easily as most of us identify the names of colors we see. It’s hard for her to understand why we can’t do it automatically, all the time. She likens it to how people get on her case for not being able to communicate well or understand communication well all the time. Sometimes, she feels she has a standard “pitch” to use to understand communication through relating it, and she manages OK. At other times, it all just sounds like unidentifiable notes.
Anyhow, I thought it was a pretty interesting explanation of why non-autistic people have such a hard time grasping what the autistic experience is like, why some instances are more difficult than others.
Oh! Found it! Here’s the video.
Um, does anyone think the problem described at the gym isn’t that they are male (and therefore automatically predisposed toward struggling to “communicate emotionally”?!?) but that they are stupid?
Seriously, do you think those guys would have all of a sudden blossomed into enlightened discourse if the topic turned to public policy?
I think a great many of our fellow citizens just aren’t that bright (witness the last two elections or turn on a network TV show) and constantly demonstrate this in any number of discouraging ways.
A lot of men do PLENTY of emotional work but dumb men understandably struggle with this just like they do with most things…as do the vast number of less than impressive women who date them.
Might there be a problem with confusing what it means to “do emotional work” with actually having a relationship?
I have to say that Ruben makes alot of sense- many people “aren’t that bright”. Not saying that I am…
It seems like a pretty good tool to look for trends. My score was also a 13.
By the way, Dave, you were close, the DSM is divided into axis.
And I don’t really know if men force women to do the emotional work, it’s that more men are analytical and women emotional. Women don’t force men to to the analytical, we tend to focus on our strengths (because we are not that bright).
Emotional intelligence really doesn’t scale with academic intelligence. Some of us have plenty of the latter and not much of the former, due to cognitive disorders or just a total lack of development in that area that comes from cultural pressure. In my case, it was the latter, in that I was encouraged to ignore and not discuss emotions, as many of my male friends say they were similarly encouraged to do. There are plenty of women like me who are bad at emotional work, and some of them are smart, and some of them are dumb. But, in general, it seems easier to me to find female friends who know how to deal with and talk about their emotional lives in complex, intelligent ways than it is to find men who can do it. As someone who is not (AFAIK) cognitively disabled, it’s something I can practice at and improve, and I think men can do so, too.
I agree, we all need to work to find a workable balance.
I find that many of my lesbian friends are more like males, in that they seem more analytical, which makes me wonder how much emotional/analytical is innate. I don’t have many gay male friends, but I would guess that they trend to be more emotional. I know A White Bear hates the mars/venus debate, but, it seems that we are a mix between innate and cultural. It is when someone uses either (innate or cultural) for an excuse for his/her behavior that it is problematic.
One of my greatest strengths is my ability with emotions, but it is also my greatest weakness. I am often too sensitive, and therefore not forthright (in an attempt to not hurt other people’s feelings). There is a great cognitive-behavioral treatment called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy which attempts to teach something called the Wise Mind, which is a balance between the emotional and the analytical.
Emotional intelligence really doesn’t scale with academic intelligence…
AWB is right–but it’s not just emotional intelligence. Academic intelligence doesn’t scale with a lot of what most people consider “smart.” (Anyone who’s ever sat through a faculty meeting knows this. It’s a bunch of people who have self-selected into a profession that is often solitary and obsessive, individualistic, downright anti-social…and they’re trying to work together to make practical decisions?!)
One of my biggest flaws in oral communication is impatience with the pace. I am so used to absorbing printed language really quickly that listening to people talk (watching the news, for example, or enjoying a book on tape) makes me NUTS. One-on-one contact is a little better, because there’s so much nonverbal information to parse as well: body language, facial expressions, intonation, etc.
I am also hopeless when it comes to remembering names, giving or receiving driving directions, and basic navigation. Does this condition have a name? Besides “cognitive disability”?
I also have such poor spatial cognition that I regularly bump into doorframes and furniture. (And no, that is not the result of the cognitive lapse know as “drunkesnness.” At least, not usually.)
Marleyfan brings up an interesting point re: lesbians and gay men. I think what he’s describing is due to rejecting a certain amount of gender socialization, rather than due to differences in sexual orientation per se or as it can generate an inability to conform.
9: By their grooming and dress, these guys looked like young professionals, lawyers or financial guys or something. Maybe not super smart, but not stupid. That’s why the conversation stood out to me, even the weird not understanding of the godchild/godparent relationship. Second dude was clearly not listening very hard to first dude; first dude clearly wanted to process a bit, but was constrained by second dude’s emotional obtuseness.
10: more men are analytical and women emotional.
Well, that’s the question, right? AWB and I are not alone in proposing a cultural explanation for this phenomenon that has to do with the constructions of masculinity and femininity. In my own life, I find myself reacting with quite different degrees of emotional fluency depending, partly, on how masculine I’m expected to be and how masculine my interlocutors are. It doesn’t seem very helpful to simply repeat gender stereotypes — we’re asking about why the gender stereotypes are what they are. Cf. “men are from Mars,” etc.
(Apologies for the spelling. I can barely see the gray-on-white screen today. All that reading must have ruined my eyes.)
Friends and I have had an ongoing conversation about the “I’m just _______” cop-out to excuse inexcusable behavior. I don’t think it’s necessarily gendered (though if you fill in that blank with “a man” or “a woman,” beware my wrath for whatever you’re trying to stereotype your way out of). For example, I have a friend who said to me before a trip together, “I just have to warn you, I’m a horrible traveler—really cranky and nasty.” Are you kidding me? You know this about yourself and rather than making any effort to be civil to me and make my experience bearable, you’re going to embrace this as your “identity” so you can act however you want? Or the friend whose new in-laws, whom she had already been warned to dread by her new husband, told her at the wedding, “Welcome to the nuthouse. We’re all crazy.” I read it initially as a sort of sweet, fumbling way to apologize in advance for how dysfunctional their family is, but she corrected me, understanding it as a way to waive any responsibility on their part to behave like civil adults. I know that some behaviors and tendencies probably are hard-wired, and probably gendered to some extent. I believe, though, that as social adults we are obligated to try to overcome some of these less productive social shortfalls in ourselves for the comfort of others. Not that we have to fake it all the time, but for gosh sakes, people, suck it up—you can’t say “I’m just a tantrum thrower” or “That’s just me, a violent drunk” or “I’m just a sex offender, that’s just how I am” and expect us all to say well, it takes all kinds . . .
Well put, Swells. Although, I’ve noticed that sometimes, people apologize in advance for their behaviour, not as an excuse to act however they want, but because they feel truly inadequate in one way or another. I’ve noticed this especially with women – we tend to apologize a lot in daily conversation rather than just stating what we need or intend to do. e.g. saying, “Sorry, but, do you mind if I…..” rather than “I need this” or “I’m going to do this”.
Perfect way to wrap it Swells. I started about four different responses, but kept deleting them. Next time I have a hard time, I’m calling you!
Perfect way to wrap it Swells. I started about four different responses, but kept deleting them. Next time I struggle, I’m calling you!