If you knew then what you know now
Dear_one
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Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines
Hi Blazingstar, Only a tiny minority of women currently understand the need for a men's movement, and we wish it had not become urgent. My mother had a pre-nup in '45, and was going to Voice of Women meetings before I got to kindergarten. I spent my life among feminists, worked with them, was employed for a while in a "women's profession" and was the first male asked to join a new support/action group when some local feminists wanted to try going co-ed. After a couple of years, it became clear that no inclusion was being offered - the men were on permanent probation, and only the women had support on tap. I lost all my friends when I realized I'd wasted my life waiting for equality to work both ways.
Now, I'm facing open racism and sexism, despite model behaviour, but I shouldn't complain - Linus Torvalds was recently sidelined for being a white man who accepted donations of code from other people who could have been Asian children for all he really knew, but wound up with a gift to humanity mainly made by white men. Presumably, the people who are insisting on having their code included are not so benign, but women's outrage got them in.
Hi Blazingstar, Only a tiny minority of women currently understand the need for a men's movement, and we wish it had not become urgent. My mother had a pre-nup in '45, and was going to Voice of Women meetings before I got to kindergarten. I spent my life among feminists, worked with them, was employed for a while in a "women's profession" and was the first male asked to join a new support/action group when some local feminists wanted to try going co-ed. After a couple of years, it became clear that no inclusion was being offered - the men were on permanent probation, and only the women had support on tap. I lost all my friends when I realized I'd wasted my life waiting for equality to work both ways.
Now, I'm facing open racism and sexism, despite model behaviour, but I shouldn't complain - Linus Torvalds was recently sidelined for being a white man who accepted donations of code from other people who could have been Asian children for all he really knew, but wound up with a gift to humanity mainly made by white men. Presumably, the people who are insisting on having their code included are not so benign, but women's outrage got them in.
I am so sorry to hear about your experience with feminism. It wasn't mine, but I have no doubt it happened and happened frequently. It makes me sad

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The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot
You’ve had an interesting life, BlazingStar.
Mine has been sort of uninteresting.....because I sought to avoid trouble and was easily complacent and lazy.
I’m glad you’re in a relatively good place now. That helps you give sensible advice, and also helps with people who want to rant at you.
Dear_one
Veteran

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines
Ahh, back to the thread. Aye, Blazingstar, it would be nice if everyone looked at each other with fresh eyes. I have found Native Americans rather good at that, but still not up to 50%. I have not sampled much of the world.
The brain can be seen as a filter, constantly receiving far more information that it needs. Currently, I can hear my furnace, and some traffic, but they don't usually get into my conscious awareness. If they do, I need expensive headphones. My muscles are constantly reporting on how the latest posture adjustment is going, and that seems to get dealt with fairly automatically, only occasionally demanding attention. When meeting someone, we get a flood of subconscious reactions, and these have to be processed using prior experience. If most men and most women share a trait, we will expect it from the next one we meet, just as much as we behave differently to dogs and cats and rats. Ever since Ma Nature invented gender, every mobile critter has wanted to know two things about each other they meet - species And gender - to know how to behave. When gender signals are confusing, it backs up the whole system, and may get "tossed out of court" for lack of time.
Prejudice is usually more of a time saver than a resource waster, so it arises inevitably. What we need is to manage it wisely, and that is not yet taught. Thus, men in general get all the blame for the excesses of patriarchy, when it should be seen as an economic class struggle. Poor men wind up on the very bottom.
The brain can be seen as a filter, constantly receiving far more information that it needs. Currently, I can hear my furnace, and some traffic, but they don't usually get into my conscious awareness. If they do, I need expensive headphones. My muscles are constantly reporting on how the latest posture adjustment is going, and that seems to get dealt with fairly automatically, only occasionally demanding attention. When meeting someone, we get a flood of subconscious reactions, and these have to be processed using prior experience. If most men and most women share a trait, we will expect it from the next one we meet, just as much as we behave differently to dogs and cats and rats. Ever since Ma Nature invented gender, every mobile critter has wanted to know two things about each other they meet - species And gender - to know how to behave. When gender signals are confusing, it backs up the whole system, and may get "tossed out of court" for lack of time.
Prejudice is usually more of a time saver than a resource waster, so it arises inevitably. What we need is to manage it wisely, and that is not yet taught. Thus, men in general get all the blame for the excesses of patriarchy, when it should be seen as an economic class struggle. Poor men wind up on the very bottom.
But I did not understand that when I was a kid. I don't think I came to your realization above until I was in my 50s. I am not sure my 15 year old brain could have handled that information. I am sure people told me that I was too trusting, too nice, too naive. I never heard it, or if I did, I rejected it.
_________________
The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot
Dear_one
Veteran

Joined: 2 Feb 2008
Age: 76
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Posts: 5,721
Location: Where the Great Plains meet the Northern Pines
I think we agree that knowledge accumulates over a lifetime, and that we all made decisions based on less information when we were younger. I remember consciously deciding to try out the hypothesis that people were mutually helpful, in order to break out of isolation at 18. When I was 21, I joined a group working for World Peace, partly because it was growing quickly. When I was 27, we had lost our way and stopped growing, and I went looking for something more promising.
If I had been more cynical, I might never have tried anything. The general advice I'd give my younger self, if as a time-traveller I was constrained from revealing how things turned out, would be to keep an open mind, watch out for people who are fooling themselves with self-serving beliefs, and pay more attention to actions than words. I did quite a bit of that, but more diligence might have reduced my "stuck" periods. A companion bit would be to be more wary when all my information is coming from one source. A con man got me that way pretty badly once.
I think two things I would have done differently:
Taken school a lot more seriously so that maybe I could have gone to college and gotten a job to support myself by now.
Made friends instead of isolating myself completely away from the world that way I could have maybe had support to turn to outside of my crazy controlling mother who has kept me a helpless child for 28 years.
ASPartOfMe
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Joined: 25 Aug 2013
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Kept contact will school and work friends and acquaintances. The way my mind thought once I was done with a stage of my life I was done with it including the people involved. The concept of Networking, so you have contacts you can ask help from at a later time, was not publicly discussed, most people just seemed to innately understand this, not me.
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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
I was saying....that had I been able to go back, maybe I would have put myself out there more, take risks. Maybe try to get my writing published. Expand on my writing.
That is what I thought you meant too; that you didn't try enough things. But one thing you did try and have succeeded at well is with your work. That is a commitment and achievement you may not have had if you had taken more risks.
It's not to late to work on writing.
_________________
The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot
If I had been more cynical, I might never have tried anything. The general advice I'd give my younger self, if as a time-traveller I was constrained from revealing how things turned out, would be to keep an open mind, watch out for people who are fooling themselves with self-serving beliefs, and pay more attention to actions than words. I did quite a bit of that, but more diligence might have reduced my "stuck" periods. A companion bit would be to be more wary when all my information is coming from one source. A con man got me that way pretty badly once.
I don't think I was able to "watch" people in the manner you describe until I was much, much older. I spent so much of my life in a fog of not really getting what was going on around me. Now I can see many patterns, but not early on. I was certainly befuddled by the contrast between what people said and what they did.
_________________
The river is the melody
And sky is the refrain - Gordon Lightfoot