"Men Are Too Emotional"

Haneek from DS9

My kids and I completed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation plus its ensuing movies a while back, and now we have moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've never been able to get into DS9 the way I enjoyed other modern Star Trek series, but my one son loves it so we’re watching the series via Netflix. In episode 10 of season 2, a new humanoid species arrives as refugees at the space station. The Skrreea are a matriarchal society, something that comes across as shocking to the station’s crew. Haneek, the only woman who arrives in the first group of four to the station, talks with the leadership of DS9 about her culture as they discuss the impending arrival three million more Skrreea from the Delta Quadrant:

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Major Kira Nerys: Is there anything wrong?

Haneek: I’m just not used to the men being here. Skrreean men don’t involve themselves in situations like this.

Lieutenant Jadzia Dax: Are all your leaders women?

Haneek: Yes…. Men are far too emotional to be leaders. They’re constantly fighting among themselves. It’s their favorite thing to do. [Skeptical glances shared between Chief O’Brien, Doctor Bashir, and Constable Odo, the males gathered at the discussion.] …Please do not misunderstand. We love our men. [More skeptical looks exchanged.] Really!

Clearly this is meant to be a parody of the biased and erroneous statement we often hear in our society that women suffer from too many hormonal mood changes that therefore make them unsuitable for powers of leadership including politics. There’s a terrible age old joke about how a pre-menstrual President would be far too likely to hit the big red button and start a nuclear war. In Skrreean society, men's emotions are seen as troublesome just as women's emotions are seen as almost dangerous in ours.

The real truth is that we are all emotional creatures regardless of our sex or gender. We all feel and we all act on those feelings. While higher levels of testosterone may make some people more aggressive and higher levels of progesterone may make some people more likely to cry, the bottom line is that we all have emotions that we feel overwhelmed by. How we act on those emotions is probably influenced by both nature (hormones) and nurture (what our society teaches us the gender-specific appropriate response is).

Another truth that our society is very afraid of at times is that all of us possess a masculine side and all of us contain a feminine side. We all have traits that are seen as male and others that are seen as female. What most of us don’t have is a good balance of those traits because we are afraid to embrace one side or the other. In her seminal work Living in the Light, especially in chapters 8 and 9, Shakti Gawain discusses the feminine and masculine within each of us. As Gawain explains, the feminine side of us is the nurturing, intuitive side. We all are nurturing on some level, though not all of us are called to be parents. Still, we know how to care for others around us who are family members, friends, or lovers. We also have intuition, though since the Enlightenment, our science-dominated society has taught many of us to suppress this intuition in favor of rational thought. Unfortunately, our society sees this nurturing and intuitive side as weak and powerless. This is far from the truth. Our intuition can be one of the strongest ways we live if we allow it to be a part of our lives. Men who are in touch with their feminine side, who aren't afraid to follow their intuition or feel their emotions (aside from anger and aggression), are often judge by our society for being weak and feeble as the feminine is poorly stereotyped as such; the media crucifying Howard Dean in the 2004 election season for expressing what was seen as unacceptable passion is an excellent example. In contrast, the masculine side within all of us is the action side. It is the part of us that follows the understanding of the feminine intuition in order to make things happen. Men are expected to be doers, to be problems solvers. Women who have this same strong masculine action side are judged by society as being too “butch” or too unfeminine; Hillary Rodham Clinton is a prime example. However, we all have to be people who take action if we want to accomplish anything in life!

This disturbing division of the feminine and the masculine in our society is based on unhealthy stereotypes. Even in my own life, I've experienced quite a bit of judgment because I am “too masculine” since I am a strong, highly-organized, educated woman who doesn't hesitate to act on what will help her life. I had a male friend act surprised when I said that I missed having opportunities to dress up in frilly dresses; he erroneously presumed that since I didn’t wear makeup I didn’t enjoy most stereotypically feminine things. For me, developing my masculine side was probably more of a survival technique, one that I began in my childhood as a way to protect myself. Like Gawain experienced personally, part of my challenge as an adult has been embracing my feminine side and recognizing that it is not a sign of weakness: The feminine is merely a different type of strength.

It will be a wonderful day when our society can accept the masculine and feminine as different but synchronistic qualities which work together to make our society complete. I look forward to the day when the way women are still treated now is seen as ludicrous as the Skrreean idea that men are too emotional to be involved in leadership. Once the yin and the yang of our lives is more in balance, our society will become totally different than what most of us experience now.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

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