A constructively aimed rant

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Please note: this is not to any particular member here but its a thought that I think *really* needs to be expressed in the course of this thread.


The most dangerous thing in all this is that we're all socialized, both men and women, to have a very clean-cut and dumbed down dialog on the opposite sex. Part of it's pop culture, part of it is just how the inherent 'game' works. The trouble is, if we swallow any of these lock-step sitcom roles as good analogies of either gender or its identity - its a big mistake. That and being able to evaluate when the vernacular is tongue and cheek vs. when its meant in a literal sense - also very important. If one chooses to believe that we're soulless matter, they have to also realize that our existence and the value of our very lives is worth nothing more than what we give onto it - therefor one should never miss a single chance to take the highroad. Otherwise - if we're going to smash each others' worlds, as a race we should really just hang it up, throw in the towel, and say that the human condition simply isn't worth maintaining. If your a theist - this should be easy enough, make it your mission in life to make this world more lucid in the light of truth, God wants it and reality was ultimately built by him - therefor anything in a holy text that needs conflict with reality's mechanics is more than suspect.

Aside from culture and culturalization partially collapsing people's skulls, perhaps as a byproduct, is that its a very confusing world to come into as a child - we have the technology to broadcast images across the globe, project movements of people, send thousands of megabytes per second by wire or even air, and yet when it comes to how we treat each other its still utterly barbaric, the relationship world in particular seems to be the most representative as its a time and place where people take most everything they've learned about empathy, good communication, treat one as you'd wish to be treated, and throw it out the window for behavior that their parents would have spanked the heck out of them as kids for. Its horrifically depressing because it seems like it would be easy to fix if people could just raise their standards of their own behavior and thought processes for a second, not even in terms of the relationships themselves but far more importantly their working understanding of the opposite sex and how to actually navigate the reality of what each goes through differently, what each inherently needs, with neither bluntly crashing through lines or holding their cards for the sheer sake of being one up - all before they even go into the situation and before reserved reactions to each others' behavior has to start. Choosing to elevate both the knowledge and the dialog is pivotal. In this world we likely have only one life to live - that's perhaps eighty years, the last ten or twenty are a mountain of sorrows if all the wrong choices are made, no matter who fault can be pointed at outwardly.

I guess the reason I bring this up - partly to say that reality is insanely complex, the dating world no exception to that. Also, to really say that we really need to have much more empathetic and objective conversation on this topic if we want to serve ourselves as a community - at all. Watching people's past traumas play themselves out in projections here is horrifically depressing. We owe ourselves a hell of a lot more, self-control and objectivity are key here. In a broader sense culture is failing both men and women, here and globally. Natural instinct is failing both men and women, also horribly. If either side or both pretends to have no inherent Darwinian dark side or behavior - that choice ultimately makes them blind to the mechanisms of their own behavior and completely unable to cope with, deal with, change it in any way to better their lives. I think when we take the antipathy route at *all* about the opposite gender though or project something on them - we're caving right in to that societal 'dumbing down' of reality, ignoring the ontological problems, ignoring epistemic problems, etc.. The really sad thing - humanity could do so much better in this world and everyone could end up much happier, for some reason though a lot of people really seem hunkered down in their cynicism and seem to even prefer that to real thought as it smells intellectual/elegant and seems to act as a mirage that on appearance seems to bode equal to actual thought on this.

This is my goal - I'll try to, when I can, bring in articles that enter my radar as being objective or forward thinking in terms of gender relations. Please do the same, we need a lot more of it in here - if it were enough articles to drown out the name calling that would be a dream come true, otherwise enough to at least equal or neutralize it would be great as well. Even if this post gets five views and one response at best before falling off the front page - I still feel like I need to plant the seed on this, at least get a few people wanting to think on a higher level about the matter.

I agree, there is a real pattern of stereotypes here on WP; the 'nice guy', 'jerk', 'b***h'... I wonder if it's due to limited (successful) experience with the opposite gender or just the aspie tendency to try and organise things into little boxes.

I think its partly the nature of the topic, partly what your saying - logic applied lazily, part of it's bad life experience. Being slave to that kind of thing is choice though. I'm not saying that a few people rearranging their perspective will change the world or even change their life situation - just that it would be the kind of start that, if more people piled on, the quality of content in here would skyrocket. It would at the very least be a much more uplifting read, might even give some people some amount of faith back in humanity in this area.

I also agree techstepgenr8tion, but unfortunately there will always be some that still want to create, consciously or not, a form of barrier between each sex and what their expectations of them are. There will still be men that only want 'attractive, slim, sexy, stunning' women, but then slate women for adhering to similar standards whilst trying to pass themselves off as 'nice' guys. But then there will always be women who believe that men are meant to foot the bill for every meal they go out for or hold doors open for them. It's a matter of adjusting to modern society for both sexes so that these barriers will slowly be pulled down as it were, although I know it will not wholly be that simple. In some cases, men are going to have to learn that being feminine doesn't necessarily mean having some dependence on them and looking cute whilst women are going to have to appreciate that men are, more and more, no longer treating women like they used to because of the whole equality thing.

I would say that my boyfriend and I have an equal partnership in that we both don't have any expectations of each other apart from that we treat each other well, in that we don't go out of our way to upset each other or expect each other to do things that, for some reason, we are incapable of doing. We are wholly honest with each other and trust one another, we both know what we are capable of and we hold each other in high esteem and so we will have no expectations beyond that and because of that, we are happy. I would never want to lose him as he was difficult to find, despite other people's grievances about him (some members of my family had a hoo-haa about him as he is disabled and so can't provide for me. Newsflash - I can provide for myself and I love him!! !).