Feminism in Mental Health:

I find having conversations about mental health requires some acknowledgement of gender differences. For better or worse men and women (and genders in between) are socialized differently - this means we place different values on mental health issues and skills depending on our gender, and we associate different mental health approaches according to gender. Historically, women have been raised to do the emotional labor in families, and this is still true in many ways today. This means women have something of an advantage when navigating mental health issues: skills and resources and experience to help inform our approach. That’s a pretty generalized statement, but bear with me as I make my point.

This means men can be at something of a disadvantage: more likely to avoid emotional issues when they come up, to have less of an established framework when mental health concerns become unavoidable, and an overall lower tolerance for the discomfort of navigating these issues. But all things are a balance and all things come out equal, and for every advantage there are disadvantages that come with them. Women might be better at taking care of emotional problems but we’re also much more likely to be people pleasers. Because we have the skills to help with mental and emotional problems we also have the responsibility, the expectation, that comes along with those skills. In other words, women are stereotypically worse at keeping up boundaries, expressing their autonomy, and communicating their needs. And our ability to take care of people is worth a lot less at the expense of being able to take care of ourselves.

Feminism tends to put these skills on a pedestal: it assumes that women need to be rewarded and accommodated for the emotional labor that we do. And while this is certainly true it fails to consider an alternative solution: just doing less emotional labor for other people. Feminism has, rather unintentionally, also taught us to always assume that the man is the wrong one in an argument. I’ve seen this belief internalized in many people of many genders. But in my experience, in relationships, all things are equal. Which means if there’s a problem, it’s everybody's fault. And that’s okay. While men may struggle to communicate and self-reflect as skillfully, they tend to be much better at living with uncertainty, managing anxiety, and taking care of themselves. All great characteristics to have and ones women can perhaps strive for a bit more. So maybe closing the gender gap also means considering who holds to emotional responsibility and sharing that work a bit more equitably.

Feminism in Relationships

Feminism has done a lot of great things for our culture: it’s taught women about empowerment, it’s made headway on crucial political issues, and it’s taught us a lot about the consequences of how we think about gender. Feminism also has something of an addictive quality to it - the same way any political issue or stance does. Politics gives us permission and agency to be angry and empowered and to enact change on the world around us - all good things. But a skill is only as useful to us as far as we know when to turn it off. And there are things feminism just doesn’t do well.

It’s easy to let feminism’s powerful vibe carry us forward into our work or relationships or our family dinners. But sometimes we need to put down the gauntlet. Feminism is good at a lot of things, but it’s not good at helping us connect with people, political stances rarely are. Generally, they’re better at burning bridges than building them. So when issues come up in our relationships (conflicts, miscommunications, unmet needs) it can be tempting to reach for the tools that make us feel seen and heard. But being seen and heard doesn’t help us see and hear the other person, and conflict resolution requires equal validation - that means accepting that to be seen we need to see in return. This is especially hard to remember when gender issues come up in our relationships - which they inevitably do. It’s often helpful to remember that the home is rarely the appropriate place for political arguments - interpersonal conflicts are not resolved with picket lines and poster boards. This doesn’t mean we can never talk out gender issues, or other political concerns. Of course we should. But having proactive conversations about politics is much more rewarding when the relationship is stable and we are calm. So watch your prioritization: if you put the relationship first then that’s where you’ll see improvement, and putting politics first might mean sacrificing the relationship.

Allowing Ourselves to be Complicated in Gender

There are some contradictions implied in this post: be angry, don’t be angry. Resolve conflict, lean into conflict. Take care of others, take care of yourself. Talk about politics, don’t talk about politics. It’s natural to notice these dualisms but I’m afraid noticing dualism at all is often a sign of black and white thinking. And we have a lot of black an white thinking embedded in our culture, particularly in issues like gender. The argument I’m actually trying to imply is: be complicated, do both. We have a bit of a bad habit of thinking about ourselves as one-dimensional. But we aren’t, we are complex and multidimensional right down to our metaphorical bones, down to our literal biology. And it can be a difficult habit to break: thinking of ourselves as only feeling one thing at a time. But I promise it gets easier with practice, because even if you don’t realize it, you’re already contradicting yourself.

We are all walking contradictions. We are all angry and calm. We all want the fight and want peace. We all want to be selfish and selfless. Our need for control and compartmentalization has taught us that it isn’t acceptable to be wishy-washy and inconsistent. That it makes us unreliable and hypocritical. But I would much rather be a hypocrite than stuck forever in one way of being. Not to mention, it’s something of an impossible standard expecting any of us to stay the same. You might find that giving yourself permission to be emotionally messy takes off a lot of pressure: Pressure to know the right answer, to find the right words, to stick to a decision, to never vary or falter, to get things done quickly. No one does their best work (emotional or otherwise) by getting stuck in a lane. Restrictiveness does not usually foster success. And this is just as true in gender as anywhere else. Whether that be expressing gender, resolving gender, arguing about gender, or putting gender away.