History is life’s greatest teacher, or at least, it ought to be. And when it comes to history’s treatment of women, specifically in how society so often gaslit them as suffering from ‘female hysteria’; it’s a lesson we can all learn from. ‘HYSTERICAL WOMEN: Are you nervous, or unreasonable? Subject to sudden tears and violent outbreaks or tempers? These are often symptoms of feminine upsets!” …Says the paper from 1935. This is how we treated so many women 100 years ago, turning their externalised shows of distress, into a made up pseudoscientific bogus term of ‘female hysteria’. An abused women with a trauma response? Hysterical. A neglected wife finally snapping back? Hysterical. A woman addicted to an opiate? Hysterical. A woman in poverty, in desperate need of help? Hysterical. We victim blamed them. Subjecting these women to awful, humiliating, and scientifically bunkum ‘treatments’ to exorcise them of their ‘hysteria’. We combined and contorted various issues, turning women’s experiences into a monolithic blob, that both internalised and stigmatised their pain. …Sound familiar yet? Because ‘female hysteria’ sounds awfully similar to ‘toxic masculinity’, which also puts all the blame in the wrong places, or as Professor Heidi Matthews puts it, ‘excludes the material conditions that produce and encourage dysfunctional performances of masculinity themselves.’ A bullied boy, finally fighting back? Toxic. An abused man, acting out his trauma? Toxic. An addicted, or mentally unwell man? Toxic. A man conditioned never to express pain? Toxic. Round and round we go, but this time the whip is in the other hand, and brandished by fools so enamoured by themselves, and too virtuous, that they’ll never realise they’ve become the villain. So is ‘toxic masculinity’ the modern equivalent of ‘female hysteria’? What do you think? #mensmentalhealth #menshealth #mensmentalhealthawareness

2024-08-12