“What Should We Call Girl Pain?”
“Men never ask what they should call women’s pain, so they call us crazy. They call us crazy and they laugh at us. The same men who say women aren’t funny obviously do find women funny. They find women funny at the most inappropriate time: when we’re hurting”
(in case the link above doesn’t work — http://baebl.tumblr.com/post/99608765725/fatwasandfanboys-what-should-we-call-girl)
It’s also a thing where women are twice as likely as men to experience depression.
And it reminds me of “The Taming of the Shrew”, which is literally a comedy about domestic abuse, and which my college professor taught as an experiment of Shakespeare’s where he was trying to see if he could make comedy out of something that was obviously painful and cruel and unfunny. But it’s so hard to miss that intention because that comedy is so often performed straight (see: when the Tosh.0 guy made a rape joke and then directed a rape joke at an audience member). I’m very convinced by this idea of the expectation of female pain.
Related: A longer, incredible and lyrical essay asking a similar question and coming to a somehow very satisfying conclusion; and “Three Months Without Breathing”, a deeply insightful essay by a woman who realized she was accepting her pain without question — in fact, expecting it.
