in response to people saying things like "men aren't allowed to cry in public, unlike women" other people will then say things like "women are penalized, not rewarded, for public displays of emotion—the fact that women are presumed to be overly emotional & irrational is misogyny, not a privilege"
which is often true but like, it's contextual innit. lest we discount the phenomenon of White Woman Tears
I've recently had white women in professional contexts tell me that they were quote "hurt" and "gutted" by what amounted to very minor professional faux pas on my part. I remember reading a white woman academic's essay on Jane Eyre that began with recounting her emotional upset upon having Jane Eyre "taken away from her" by postcolonial / anti-racist scholarship. white women's emotions do have currency in personal and professional spaces in selective contexts, i.e. when wielded against people of colour 🤷🏽♀️
