Yesterday my professor was giving us a talk on how to act professional in our industry. He said, and I quote, “Ladies, you owe it to your gender to not cry. Once you lose that trust it’s very hard to get back.” Are you kidding me?! In all of the years I have worked in my industry I have never cried on the job, but I have seen girls AND boys cry for an array of reasons.
I agree that we are going into a stressful career that can be cut throat. And yes, if you cry on the job you are looked down upon. That being said he phrased it in the worst way possible and did NOT have to single the girls out.
If one girl cries on the job it does not mean that every single girl is going to cry. We are representatives of ourselves and not the entire gender. If a boy cried others wouldn’t think all boys were going to cry, so don’t think that about the girls. Also, if a guy cried he would be looked at as ‘sensitive’, but the second a girl cries she is ‘too emotional.’
I think this was a very sexist and misogynistic comment that was returned with a very dirty look from me. I do not think that a professor should make statements or be allowed to make statements like this in the classroom.
Unruly Bodies 
If a female cries in a situation, she is reaffirming that females can’t control their emotions nor their bodies. If a male cries, he is an exception. It is inappropriate for a professor make such a sexist comment and to affiliate a human body reaction with only women. I despise the misguidance that males shouldn’t cry or that women are expected to cry because we are weaker.
I am furious that your professor made such an ignorant and insensitive comment.
Just because a woman cries, does not mean that she is too emotional. Woman tend to express their feelings more, and by doing so, they can improve their emotional and mental health, as well as increase social support.
Men are equally as emotional, but are pressured even more by society to suppress their feelings to avoid being perceived as “weak”. It is due to the suppression of feelings, and lack of social support, that men who have poor emotional and mental health (depression) are more likely, than their female counterparts, to commit suicide. It is not healthy, for any gender, to suppress their feelings. We are all social creatures and we are meant to express ourselves, in order to better connect with others.
I understand that our society expects us to control our bodies and not display something so personal, such as feelings, to everyone else. But people in our society need to understand that the suppression of feelings is not healthy nor natural. For your professor to make such misogynistic comment about women being overly emotional and how we “owe it to our gender to not cry”, is plain ignorant. He needs to educate himself on health psychology, before more stupidity comes out of his mouth.
“Once you lose that trust”? What does that even mean? Does seeing a woman cry shatter this guy’s fantasy that he works with robots? Once someone cries, it calls into question the merit of all the previous work they’ve ever done? This train of logic mystifies me, over and above the sexism.
This makes me think of when people see a woman driving badly they think that all women are bad drivers, but when a man is driving badly they just think that that man is a bad driver. I suppose when someone sees a person “feeding” the stereotype they tend to blame that person for the stereotype existing. Kind of in the same way your professor seems like women “owe it to their gender” not to feed the stereotype. That is absolutely ridiculous though and your professor should really know better especially since these type of things tend to alienate women in a male dominated field and keep women out of male dominated fields.