Children have been fed with “women are emotional, men are logical” ever since I can remember; at least younger me was told that way by the adults in my life. Yet the more I grew, the more I understood that the previous statement was wrong. Because if it was true, why would men not think logically when it comes to taking actions? Taking an example, let’s talk about Bear from ‘Obsession’.
‘Obsession’ is a psychological thriller film which tells a story about a man, Bear, who liked his friend, Nikki, and could not confess his feelings to her. Bear ended up messing and making a wish with a stick of One Wish Willow because of his own cowardice. It is obvious that Bear acted recklessly with the One Wish Willow, because he immediately freaked out when his wish came true. Yet the audience still misunderstood the meaning of the film itself. The audience ended up taking the wrong side to blame and the wrong side to support.
Many people still think that Nikki is the villain in the film rather than Bear and ended up taking Bear’s side. Then, why is that wrong? Nikki was the one who went insane and became overprotective over Bear. Let’s be clear here: Bear’s cowardice made him wish on the One Wish Willow which made Nikki go insane. Nonetheless, misinterpretation of who the villain is in the film is still going around the film community. The rejection that Bear received earlier in the movie made him break the One Wish Willow, which implied that Bear could not handle rejection from Nikki. Therefore, the question is: why does it seem like men cannot handle rejection? Is rejection too hard to be handled?
Let’s be real: rejection can be pretty hard to accept. Rejection of love, rejection of dream job, rejection of dream school, rejection from society; every kind of rejection is indeed hard to swallow. Rejecting rejection is one thing, but does that mean people should do vile actions to the person(s) who rejected them? No, it does not excuse us from taking morally wrong actions just because we got rejected from something. Then, why does this keep happening? Not just in the fictional world, there are many cases of rejection in real life being too hard to swallow. It ended up causing bloodshed.
Why are the majority of men unable to handle rejection? This leads us to the patriarchal system and fragile masculinity in men. Both patriarchy and fragile masculinity in men do not allow men to have emotions, or rather, not to express their emotions. By not being able to express their emotions, especially anger, it will build up by itself and waiting to burst out.
The patriarchal system teaches men to be the one in charge and the one on top of anything, while fragile masculinity teaches men to be “men” and not to act or be like women. “Women are emotional; men are logical”. This statement shows that men are not allowed to be emotional because then they will be like women. Hence, men’s emotions are so built up that they can burst at any time when they get rejected.
The patriarchal system in society leads men into believing that they are in charge of everything in the world. When men get rejected, the rejection also tears their ego and/or their feeling of being the top at everything. Men can get rejected, but that does not guarantee men’s ego would survive the feeling of being rejected.
Men’s behaviour in handling rejection still holds a pretty big question mark. Yet society believes that every time men do such things to women, the victim is still the one to blame because apparently, women are not allowed to reject men; hence, men feel like women owed them an explanation on why they rejected men.
In the end, people would look back at similar cases and pity the wrong side. Rejection will always be there, waiting to be sent to people. Although rejection may hurt people’s feelings, it still does not excuse people from taking actions that endanger other people. If men were logical, why would most of them still endanger people because of a rejection? Is the word “no” too hard to swallow?