Guys, calling the women in your life “crazy” is not going to bring you closer or solve any problems. Chaunie Brusie explains.
“Look, I’m sorry I said that, but you were being crazy …” my husband started.
“No!” I shouted at him. “No! You’re doing it again!”
“What?” he roared back. “I am trying to apologize!”
I shot him a withering glare. “No,” I said. “You can’t apologize and call me ‘crazy’ in the same sentence. It doesn’t work that way.”
Perhaps you clicked on this article thinking that I am actually a crazy person or maybe you have, from time to time, also experienced being slapped with the “crazy” label. Or maybe you think I’m just totally overreacting and there’s nothing wrong with a little harmless “crazy” hurled between couples.
But hear me out.
Since the dawn of time, women have been labeled as hysterical, weak creatures. The image of the helpless, hysterical woman victim to her own uncontrollable hormones is one that continues to persist. (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders didn’t remove hysterical neurosis as a clinician condition until 1980, for example.)
I mean, just look at one of the first “treatments” for hysterical women recommended by the ancient Greek doctor Melampus — to restore them back to balance, he recommended “carnally joining” with young, strong men. How convenient.
Even now, in our modern-day, women can have-it-all and do-it-all culture, it’s pretty common to associate women as “acting crazy” or crack jokes about it being “that time of the month.” Hormonal birth control, which eliminates a woman’s menstrual cycle, is hailed for evening out those pesky hormones that insist on going up and down every month.
Do I get more weepy when I’m pregnant? Yup. Do I sometimes get a bit more irritable when I’m PMS-ing? Sure. But any underlying factors behind my emotions don’t make those emotions any less real. I am still experiencing them and therefore, they are still valid. It’s not up to anyone else — spouses, partners, and boyfriends included — to decide the validity of my feelings.
I’m not entirely sure I buy into the fact that as women, we are hapless victims to our overflowing, out-of-control hormones. Something tells me nature probably knows what it’s doing. But assuming, for a moment, that our hormones do cause us to have varying emotions, moods, and feelings. Guess what? Those hormonal fluctuations that may or may not affect our emotions are what make us women. (Just ask Caitlyn about that.)
Do you know who doesn’t have hormonal fluctuations? Oh, that’s right — men.
Ladies, there is nothing wrong with us because we have hormones or periods or uteri. For thousands of years, men have looked at us, with our unpredictable bodies that insist on doing inconvenient things like get pregnant and drip blood and leak milk and have feared, abhorred, or belittled what they did not understand.
Women have been burned at the stake as witches, have been sexually abused for the sake of taming those unruly hormones, and have been forced into marriage in order to “repress stimuli that could excite.” I mean, really.
So yes, I do get a little worked up when I hear someone call me “crazy,” even if that someone happens to my husband. That word spurs up a lot of emotions, (I think) rightfully so.
In fact …
You might even say that hearing it …
Makes me crazy.
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Originally appeared at Babble
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Photo: flickr/Bright Adventures
The post The Danger of Calling Your Wife Crazy appeared first on The Good Men Project.
