Emotional Suffrage

You are too emotional. You think too much. You need to lighten up. 

A simple exchange with a friend, misunderstood by me, is enough to send my day into cataclysmic agony. I need to have everything resolved, no loose ends in sight. I cannot function in the social unknown.  

“Do you think my personality is too much? Like, do you think I act too extra around people? Maybe I should tone it back.” I asked my mother these questions after a friend told me to calm down when I slid to the side of the backseat of a car, reacting to a sharp turn more dramatically than expected. I was in a good mood, full of energy and fervor. Her criticism drained my energy immediately. My mother told me she’d had a similar experience in a social situation; she was told she laughed too loudly. On both occasions, we said nothing but hoped to be noticed less from then on.  

What is so startling about a woman who is a little too loud, a little too much for the standard? 

* * *

In middle school, a male friend made a joke when I brought my copy of The Diary of Anne Frank to his house. I don’t remember what the joke was, but I remember feeling disgusted, and I remember the two halves of me that were torn between quieting myself and stating how I really felt—that it was humorless and inappropriate. I spoke my mind, and it got me . . . nowhere. I thought it would feel good when I called him out. I just felt kind of stupid. Under an Instagram post I made sometime later about figuring myself out, he responded: “It sucks when you realize you’re less mature than a girl.” I’m not sure if I was supposed to feel flattered.  

You should have kept your mouth shut. It would’ve been easier. 

As a woman, it is generally acceptable to be intelligent, sensitive, or funny, but not so much a combination. A woman who is intelligent and sensitive is too intimate a conversational partner for a man unless they are in a relationship, in which he has a vested interest in her sensitivities. A woman who is sensitive and funny probably isn’t funny at all to a man most of the time. And a woman who is intelligent and funny is just a threat. But a woman who is intelligent, sensitive, and funny? She had better be attractive, or she is still quite worth nothing at all.  

What a bunch of feminist bullshit. Plenty of men in your life allow you to be all three of those things. They’re going to be offended when they read this.  

Maybe I’m exaggerating. At least, that’s probably what a man would say. He would likely tell me that I’m being too emotional and that I will not convince anyone with my complaining. He may even admit that relationships between men and women were once strained, but not so anymore. After all, men are much more enlightened these days. And things are different now, right? Everyone’s equal. I can go to work and get paid. I can vote. I’m not going to be told who to marry. Look at me and my freedom! I am happy! I love my life where I can say and feel and act however I please! 

Once again, you are being irrational and overzealous. You’ve lost every shred of credible thought you might have once held onto.  

I am told to “lighten up.” I will lighten when I begin to feel that everything is not so heavy.