Cry Like A Baby

2) neither.

3) yes there is. it is accusing a woman of manipulating him by crying.

this too, in conjunction with the accusation of manipulation.

1) women do not cry to get their way. i will sometimes cry in an argument with a loved one, but i can't make myself do it. i cry because someone is hurting me.

I agree very strongly with this.

And I don't love how questions 2) and 3) are passive agressive and built on the assumption that the answer to 1) was true.

I *do* cry at almost everything else: stupid things like the end of the Iron Giant, getting stung by bees, Abba. Which is probably worse.

2- I suppose some people use tears as a form of manipulation. Then again everyone manipulates their environment so why should we hold that against them?

3- Males can try to send people on guilt trips, but usually they just aren't very good at it. Maybe women are less susceptible to feeling undeserved guilt?

this is nonsense: i cry when the strings get heart-tuggy in films like apollo 13 (for goodness sake)

my mum once found my dad crying at the kids on countdown: "because they have such great potential"

I've never fainted. Is it a common occurence?

It can feel as if I am being manipulated when confronted with an emotionally raw response - especially because I have been taught, as a lot of us have, to keep those things inside. Not so much manipulated, but overpowered. My immediate response is not to try and make the crying person feel guilt or shame (at least not consciously), but to accede the argument entirely. To make the tears stop anyway I can. Only later does that seem unfair. Maybe part of what seems unfair is that I feel that I am not allowed to respond emotionally - that doing so would render me weak.

I don't think people consciously set out to manipulate other people with tears, but lack of intent doesn't neccessarily preclude the effect. And again, I'm not so much talking about individuals and their right to cry, but what the different genders are taught about crying and arguing and getting their way - probably a lot of this would have been determined within the family growing up.

It is *SO* not only women who pull this trick. I could tell you stories that you would not BELIEVE about what men will pull to get out of arguments, but you know, it would just make a big old mess for Tom to have to moderate if I did.

I haf nevah forgotten this pearl.

*This* I recognise. Since I find myself strangely unwilling to specify why (a parent thing), I will direct anyone who watched it to the BBC series Castaway (30 go self-sufficient on a Hebridean island), the hyper-rationalism-renders-emotion being embodied by Peter, who had a big beard and a lectureship in politics and an implacable line in grinding down the relationship/emotion-oriented dinner lady whose name I forget.

This means nothing to anyone, does it? Gah.

sorry, mark, but would you decode this for me? thanks.

There is an instinctive response to hearing someone cry. As the distress signal of an infant, is it not designed by nature to bring out a parental/protective impulse?

Can one react to this impulse in a natural way without also becoming patronizing and dismissive?

Can we react to or exhibit primal emotion without infantilizing one another?

end rubbish joke

Friz: Yeah, crying and the responses it elicits is interesting. I've found the assumptions that've guided yr questions through this thread a bit contradictory, though, or at least inconsistent. Top and bottom you're suggesting some kind of sociobiological framework for understanding it - the 'evolutionary survival method' of the original question, and the 'instinctive response' and 'primal emotion' stuff here. IN the middle you imply a much more free-form sociocultural explanation.

First, I would've thought that the range of ways people have done, used, reacted to and thought about crying on outlined here went some way to suggest that whether or not crying is a 'natural impulse', its social elaboration in re meaning are enormously variable ('scuse standard social constructionist argument #2a), especially with respect to gender. Similarly, you might ask why, if the *response* to crying (I assume beginning with the care of children) is such a universal, this social role is historically associated almost exclusively with women.

BAh. What I'm incompetently trying to say here is that yes, I think it is entirely possible that crying neither infantilises the cryer nor forces a kind of misplaced (and resented) protectiveness on the other person. Because it's quite clear from the way that Di, Kim and Toraneko have talked about crying on this thread that shutting down is neither the required effect, nor does it necessarily demand any particular response. That is, crying can be complex, enjoyable and necessary in ways that as I see it have very little to do with either argument tactics or 'primal' emotions and responses. The social learning in how to deal with it might be a little limited right now, but that's contingent, not built in.

Ellie, all I can say regarding inconsistencies in my comments is that they reflect how unsure I am of the validity of the assumptions I have been trying to discuss.

Granted, this is all true, but does this mean we cannot discuss the effect of crying in the context of an argument - esp. with regard to its effect on discourse or resolving a problem? Framing it as a tactic in my initial question was hot-headed and provactative, but I think there is some truth to it.

also, "Primal" is a crap word and I wish I hadn't used it.

so what then, is one to do?

I understand the kind of distinction you're making between what consciously or unconcsiously motivates the act of crying and the politics or discourses that inflect how it's received and acted on. I should've said in my last post that the parallel you make between crying and sulking (stereotypically if not quite empirically gendered, though I personally understand them all too well as gendered), both understood (by the cryer/sulker) as entirely natural, both often reacted to as shutting-down devices, made me think again about both.

I suppose what I was trying to say above is that if we can grope towards and internalise a rather richer understanding of what crying is and does, then that enables a different perspective on its function in argument, in relation to both how it is and how it might be other. I was overreacting to what I saw as you 'naturalising' the infantilising/passive-aggressive effects of tears, and I guess rather ploddingly pointing out that the reason for this was not inherent in the crying, but contingent on a particular accretion of its meanings.

I LOVE having a lump in my throat. It feels like I'm being terribly English and stiff upper lipped, instead of crying like a gurl as I usually do.

other reasons for crying - because you feel that loved one isn't listening to you.

all that said, i hate crying in front of people and usually only cry in front of my partner.

and crying after sex has only happened to me once - and my boyfriend of the time was crying too, cos neither of us had been in love before. ewww mushy. sorry if that grosses anyone out.