The Manipulated Man

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thanks, i try to be a voice of justifiable reason

I know that many of you want to think I'm wrong, but I believe we face a serious problem.

Wanting to slave for women, a cop-out? Are you sure?

(Edit: When I say 'slave,' I don't mean it in a negative way. I just mean the ability to work for them undistracted by badly-placed negative reinforcement.)



Twenty-six unsuccessful years of searching. I've just never gotten that close to a woman.



It's not entirely our fault. Social reinforcement plays a role.

It's a bit like beating a dog for nice, acceptable dog behavior until it finally does something angry and violent, and at that point, shoving the dog into a cage and branding it 'guilty,' if only for doing what felt natural.

In general, however, women have been very kind to me, and few, if any, of them have shown me this dreaded hatred of nice men that I've heard so much about. That is one of many reasons I don't encourage violence toward women.

I'll be fair, too: if you hate society as a whole and you transfer your hatred onto particular women, then you commit what is called a fallacy of division. Lately, I've been struggling with this fallacy. I've had to remind myself that even if the entire universe were malevolent, it still wouldn't mean that cute girl on the street was.

On the other hand, if you blame suffering entirely on the victim, you commit what is called a scapegoat fallacy. This pretty much amounts to pointing at the helpless victim and saying, "It's your own damn fault." It's very pervasive in our culture. Please, I beg you, don't do this.

At any rate, my point stands: social reinforcement can contribute in driving people to homicide. It will be nice when people stop making each other angry on purpose.

well, in my opinion it would indeed seem like trying to be a servant is a cop-out. servants or "slaves" as you put it don't have much social responsibility. it's a rather simple role. no huge decisions. and yes, to me seems like a bit of a cop-out. although maybe cop-out wasn't quite the correct word? i think it is. but maybe i should've looked it up in the dictionary. but it seemed to capture the gist of what i was saying anyway.

it means:
1. A failure to fulfill a commitment or responsibility or to face a difficulty squarely.
2. A person who fails to fulfill a commitment or responsibility.
3. An excuse for inaction or evasion.

ok, seems to more or less be what i meant.

as for getting "close" to a woman, it depends on what you mean by close. having a "sugar mama" means you are essentially playing the role of a boy toy. really only need to get one kind of close for that haha.

wait, what? how does social reinforcement churn out homicidal maniacs? notice that i said "[b]if". i made my statement conditional.
your dog analogy is a bit short-sighted. you said if a dog is beaten. well, let me use another version of the same analogy.

the dog doesn't have to be beaten. the dog can have the common sense to run away and find a new owner the second he sees the angry farmer reaching for his crowbar.

we're much smarter than dogs. and unlike dogs we're alot more free to move around and better choose who we keep company with.
[/b]

"Twenty-six unsuccessful years of searching. I've just never gotten that close to a woman."

Wait wait.....you started searching when you were born? xD Tell me how you managed that...

you don't know =|?
he was born a man. and has since started aging backward. like the guy from the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

There's probably a kernel of truth to this writing, but it's impossible to find it when it's buried under all of this BS 1950's conception of gender roles.

Well, not really a slave. My well-being matters, too.


As opposed to what?


My owner is this society. To an extent, I control you through acts of reward and punishment, but you largely control me as well, and at times you seem to want to manipulate me into playing the role of some 'psychopath' when really I just want to be a nice guy.

Anyway, that is the sense in which I feel manipulated: away from servitude into punishing you, and not the other way around. Maybe if nice men received more respect and less encouragement to be 'bad boys.'

ahhh, k. i begin to think i confused your meaning somewhat.

still, if you think about it society is not your master. it controls you only if you let it. the law on the other hand is a different story haha
and the term society is very broad and subjective. the thing to keep in mind is that our "society" is comprised of individuals with many different lifestyles, personalities, cultural variances, etc.

you seem to be trapped in "law of averages (?)" mentality.
it would be somewhat incorrect to say that society maintains much stability in any one area of social pressure as a whole since it's ever-changing, evolving, differing with each and every individual & each and every individual offering to it the power to change it's flow, and it's sort of close-minded to blame "society" as if it were a sole malicious entity based off some bad experiences.

if you're having bad experiences it is within your power to change that, but you have to find the will to override your fear of that change, and embrace new expanding boundaries in your comfort zone. we all have to adapt at some point.
but that simply addresses trying to change.
dealing with those changes and the sink or swim situation are not so much a matter of willpower and acceptance, but a frame of mind and skills to be learned through lifelong self-exploration, self-regulation, and experimentation.

it is not an easy road, but it is ultimately a rewarding one.
"hope for everything but expect nothing".
"neither condemn or condone".

also it helps to have some self-honesty.
do some deep soul-searching and try to think about things in terms with no bias from any perspective including your own. step outside your own opinions and look not at how people are as a whole because that'll just lead you to making biased generalizations which are certainly not true in all cases. but rather look at the human condition, the psyche as a template, correlate through absolute truth and openness of thought why people might do even the most messed up things for example and open yourself up to every possibility and acknowledge that anyone including yourself could have ended up that way in their place. there are more factors both known and unknown than most would hope to comprehend. it is not for us to judge. legal judgments their punitive measures conflict with this view, but it has only arisen through our imperfect attempts at order, peace of mind, and to some extent necessity.
(I only hope i explained that as well as i thought it did. if it were possible for you to step inside my head i suppose you'd know what i meant instantaneously without any confusion of what is so very hard to explain in words correctly with no misinterpretation. in fact this is one paragraph i'm not so satisfied with)


everyone's lost & confused, if not about who they are, then in their justification to themselves of their actions. people are imperfect and we as a species are riddled with problems. think about it. you know yourself better than anyone else, right? but how well do you actually know yourself?
do you see darker motives in yourself as well as lighter ones? well, you should because we all carry the capacity for both. we are neither fundamentally good nor evil. throw that debatable and deceptive philosophy out the window. we simple "are".
we can "know" people only as far as they are willing to know themselves and physically or verbally convey that to us. knowing someone in the entirety of the sense is somewhat of an impossibility because there is always something that we hold back even from ourselves. always something whether good, bad or indifferent that lurks beneath the surface of the murky waters of our subconscious. and it could never be pinpointed and explained entirely anyways because we are creatures of change, and so everything you could hope to say about anyone else or even yourself is entirely speculative and irrelevant on a grander scale.

"[b]the world has never been black and white, even on tv, but an immense variety of greys from lightest to darkest. and though it may look completely black there may yet have been some white in there somewhere.[/b]"

though people don't like what they do not understand, so they strive to categorize, to find "control" both internal & external. when it comes to "people" themselves, people are no exception. that categorization is judgment in itself. and so naturally we are a very judgmental species also.

i am not trying to seem pretentious, patronizing, jaded, or otherwise looking down.
and much of what i say is in itself speculation.

but i like to help people. and i hope this helps in any way, shape or form.
i am in no way telling you this is how you should look at things, but if you see something that makes sense to you and you find that maybe it's something that may possibly ring true, then feel free to go with it.

also, i like debate. so any challenges to my theory & speculation are appreciated. i like to keep myself sharp.
eclecticism: "to not follow any one system (because none are perfect ) but selecting, what are considered best elements of all systems"

Personally, the author makes sense to me. Not in the sense that all women are eager to latch on to men, but in the sense that many don't care to be on any kind of equal footing as men. I know lots of women who work towards independence. I'm going to a college for the first time in years next semester, so there's a chance that I'll see a different side to things. But socially, it's expected that the two separate for the most part. Sociologists put it best when they note that women tend to value their social relations, while men tend to value their goals.

I had a girl talking to me the other week, in 5 minutes the topic was on moving in with me and a long-term relationship. Mostly the moving in part. I'll start disregarding "The Manipulated Man" when I observe something else

random girl? if so then all riiiight.

Yea, it was a little weird.

Actually, I said that I would address issues as they arose; nowhere in that post was anything remotely resembling what you have suggested. I have not found any offensive remarks in this thread, and given that the original post was edited, I'm not sure of the original content and will not now amend the thread arbitrarily. If you have a concern in the future, LPP, please use a PM instead. And by the way, have you settled upon your own gender on here? Until this time when I checked, you had opted to list yourself as female.


M.

This "Manipulated man" book is an utter garbage written by some whining loser who should've been born a girl.

Look, as a man you have a choice to be a Man (with a capital letter). You do not have to subscribe to any stupid gender role doctrine. You are actually allowed to live by your own principles. Anybody who tells you how you should live your life can go f...k themselves.

If you don't like how certain things are done, say that loud and clear. Manipulation has only one root cause - the manipulated allows it. If you want fairness in a relationship, set the ground rules as a Man. Women absolutely love and respect a Man who can't be manipulated, stands by his own principles and doesn't accept any BS from anybody. The moment your woman finds out that she can manipulate you like a flipflop, she'll lose any interest and will likely start looking for a real Man elsewhere.

Don't read this garbage.

Excuse me, but it was written by a girl.

That depends on the mood, makuranososhi.

You are the second user who quickly judged the author as a "bitter women-hater man". Tip: he is not a man.