Women are weak and fragile

Not.

This title was paraphrased from a few sentences I have read in various articles here, on Medium, and I am here to tell you the many reasons why these sentences and “beliefs” are problematic.

Vulnerability and masculinity

To be able to communicate our emotions and to work on who we are as individuals is a powerful tool that many take for granted.

Many seek to be “man enough”, and believe that crying or showing any signs of “weak” or “feminine” emotions makes them weak.

Well, guess what, this mindset does not make you a good person, it is toxic, and yes, if you have that mindset, that means you have unfortunately fallen into the pattern of toxicity where you keep shutting yourself down and are hurting yourself and your surrounding in the long run.

This is not your fault if you did not notice this until today. However, moving forward, continuing to enforce this mindset will now mean you are willingly continuing to put this pain in society.

This sentence stating that women are weak and fragile simply feeds this toxicity and unfortunately, until this toxicity is ceased, everyone including our children will continue to suffer and grow up in ways that are detrimental to their well-being.

Shutting ourselves down, underestimating our own point of view or closing ourselves off is not helpful and we have all done it at some point in our lives, either because we were told to not overthink it, or that what we were reacting about is nothing.

Whether what we are stressing about is nothing to others or not, this does not change the fact that we are stressed out and others may react differently to a situation that impacts us. Our reactions are valid. We cannot forcefully change our reactions, but we can start working on opening up and letting our feelings out healthily.

The male pride

This male pride has significant consequences on everyone, as it not only shuts down men, it shuts down everyone and is one of the main reasons for high violence and suicide rates in men. Teachers telling their student to “stop crying so much” to children bullying other boys or girls for not being as physically active or for not looking enough like a straight man. These occurences and events burden individuals and dictate their actions until they are able to be vulnerable, open up and address them.

This pride has had an impact on everyone.

Here are some steps to help you break this pattern slowly from your end:

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