“Why are you crying? Are you a girl?!” | View

 

Growing up, I made sure I almost never had to hear the question ‘Why are you crying? Are you a girl?!’ that other boys around me were being asked. I never saw my father or his brothers cry. But I can’t say the same for my mother or other women in my life.

It wasn’t ok for boys to be openly teary-eyed if we were physically or emotionally hurt. Whenever I cried, it was brief, secret, and subdued.

Then there were occasions when boys actually could cry openly. It was when we wanted something. I wildly deduced that this was because crying about emotional or physical injury served as an alarm for possible depletion of limited resources, while crying to get something exposed a wrong which needed immediate correction. But you can ignore my musings.

I was subconsciously jealous that girls were allowed to cry freely in public, especially because the few times when I had cried, I had ended up with a self-comforting, almost euphoric, feeling.

Crying is a way of relieving the body’s pent up energy. It’s also an alarm for the household or larger community so that those concerned, whose hearts melt by your crying, can come to your aid. An example would be babies whose cries can cause even strangers to become concerned, or at the very least, irritated to the point where they would, for instance, “pay someone to make that baby shut up.”

I attended an Anglican all-boys secondary school in Cape Coast, Ghana, which was built by the British colonialists. Here, many of my schoolmates were hospitalised, and nearly lost their lives, as a result of violent lashes from teachers, with canes and other objects. Their refusal to cry out in pain made the teachers angrier, and drove them to strike even harder.

It is as if tears are the colourless blood of our dignity. Maybe also a reaction designed for the sadists who, our African ancestors figured, derived pleasure from seeing us suffer. Complex stuff.

No one saw me cry violently. It was only briefly, when my grandmothers, my Romanian grandfather, and my aunty passed. I also cried alone from time to time for a family member who was helpless, and deteriorating health. And I cried when my mother asked my first love to break up with me (they both saw/heard me, but I was too crushed to care).

Source: https://www.euronews.com/2020/10/08/why-are-you-crying-are-you-a-girl