4:43am June 24, 2012

This might explain some things.

I have a friend who convinced me I was not very good at figuring out words for the intensity of my own emotions. Not that I doubt her sincerity. Just that when I explained to another friend why I thought this of myself, she offered a different explanation.

What happened was that this first friend got in an argument with me about whether I was “very angry” (her idea) or “mildly irritated” (my idea). To the point where “mild irritation” became a bit of a catchphrase on her part, used with quotation marks firmly in place. She told me that my body language when “mildly irritated” would, in any other person, signal anger near the point of violence.

And for all these years I’ve been assuming that either my body language or my understanding of emotion-words must be seriously skewed. She has better social skills in general than I do, and tends to pick up on things like that better, so it seemed the obvious conclusion.

Except. My other friend pointed out that the two of us had some major culture/class differences.

About class, I wrote a post recently called And all the categories get shifted around again. About how someone explained to me that what I’d thought was a middle-class upbringing was actually (if you looked at patterns of power and some other stuff as what determines class) more like “upper working class”, which, when I grew up, way overlapped with the middle class in terms of money. And either way, my parents were always working class no matter what definition you use.

And apparently, there’s often class differences in how you’re supposed to express emotions. I mean, tons of individual variation, but common patterns. Where generally the higher up the class ladder you go, the more, for instance, you’re supposed to suppress obvious physical expression of anger. And the more a person shows anger through movements or shouting, the more they’re going to be perceived as out of control and potentially violent.

I mean I’d heard of this. I knew I was way towards the end of things where a person shows their emotions through physical movement, when they show in typical ways at all. Hell, I’ve written whole blog posts on the subject. Including one that had a wonderful quote by someone about how when she and other working class women get angry, middle class people “sometimes act as if we’re all about to pull knives”.

And I hadn’t even once thought to apply it to this situation. Especially since I’d seen the two of us as “both middle class”. Rather than me upper working class, her upper middle class. (Class differences actually have created confusion between us in many other areas too.) But now I’m seeing exactly why this kind of misunderstanding would happen, and neither one of us would be the wiser.

My parents have certainly never mistaken mild irritation for just-short-of-violent anger on my part. And they’ve seen me, repeatedly, at my most violent (I haven’t been violent in years, but as a teenager it got really bad), so if anyone would have a reason to fear me going off any time I got irritated, they would. And unless other factors were involved (PTSD, disablism, etc.), people who find my irritation or anger frightening have generally been middle or upper class. Other people have just taken it for what it is, not as some kind of indication that I was out of control and potentially dangerous.

What bothers me about situations like this is it’s so hard to tell what’s going on. When this happened, I altered my entire assessment of my own awareness and abilities over what was probably a cultural difference. Given other people’s reactions, class differences make more sense than the explanations I’ve accepted in the past. But just… confusing as all hell. Because I do have enough trouble with language, typical body language, and social skills that any or all of those could have been it as well. But I’ve also long found myself treated differently for being a “show my feelings on my body” person rather than a “discuss my feelings with serene detachment” person, so I’m surprised I didn’t think of that when this happened.

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