230. Dominance and the Market Value of a Mate

Dominance and the Market Value of a Mate

For a male breeder, the market value of a mate is her healthy and young body, because this is the best precondition for healthy and fit offspring.   Therefore it seems logical, that men attempt to get mates as young as they can get accepted.

But for egalitarian non-breeders of both genders, the real value of a mate as a companion is the cognitive quality, which in this context means not an absolute quality like an IQ, but a time-relative quality.  
As long as someone is not yet afflicted with dementia of old age, that person gains value with every day of learning, experiencing, maturing.   Therefore the older a person, the higher the cognitive value.   
A person 20 years younger is 20 years behind and lacking 20 years of mind development compared with someone 20 years older.  They could be complete equals, would the older one sleep for 20 years, therefore it is no question of inferiority, but they are not at the same state of development.    The older person has advanced 20 years of accumulating knowledge and wisdom.

That leads to an interesting question.   When a man gets involved with a woman, who is 20 years younger, does the difference in cognitive quality trigger and justify in his perception his domination?   Or does he want to dominate and chooses a younger woman not only for her young body, but also for her lesser cognitive quality, which for him justifies his domination.   Does his choice include the expectation, that she may agree to be dominated and resist less than a woman with equal cognitive value, being of the same age as he himself?

More generally, men usually choose women, who are less:  Less in years of cognitive development, less in financial and social status, and less in physical size and strength.    This is a hen or egg question:  
Did the male urge to dominate evolve first, and the choice of the lesser women is the consequence for the purpose to dominate with better success?    Or did the opportunity to be able to dominate, because the lesser women were available, cause and trigger the evolution of dominance?    Probably the evolution of dominance and of dominability was an interdependent process.  

Therefore, the best way to form an egalitarian couple is a choice of a mate, which precludes the woman's dominability, by both having similar age, similar height, similar intelligence and formal education in addition to sharing the value of egalitarianism.     

229. Dominance or Cooperation

Dominance or Cooperation

I have been talking about dominance and domination, without ever defining it.  
Domination has one or several victims, dominance can either have a victim or would make any available person a victim.
Submission is yielding to perceived power.   Submissiveness is the willingness to submit, when there is power.   

Not every situation, when one person leads, instructs, guides or organizes, is domination.   

Domination is defined by the following criteria:
1. The higher position in the hierarchy is obtained and maintained by power, expressed by aggression, violence, intimidation, coercion.   There is a ranking by power.   
2. The position of the dominator on the hierarchy cannot rationally be justified by any reason or quality.   It is based entirely upon power, either physical or due to the possession of resources.
3. Without the power, no healthy person would consent to being dominated by the dominator.   But the dominator has the delusion to be qualified by competence to have the power. 
4.  Domination serves selfish purposes of the dominator.   
5.  Domination is perpetuated and defended.    The dominator needs to remain stronger than others to keep his position on top of the hierarchy, therefore he makes efforts to maintain the difference in power.  


These examples are not domination:
1.  The control of parents over their children, of wardens over prisoners, of institutions over severely disturbed mental patients.
2.  When one person has superior knowledge about a skill and trains another with inferior skills, then he is tutoring or guiding the other, but not dominating.   The goal is to reduce the difference, so that they both will have the same level of skills sometime in the future.   
Learning is a form of cooperation to improve skill or knowledge.   
3.  If someone is given the role by consent of all as the organizer and coordinator of the division of labor, even though he then decides to whom he gives assignments and chores.    


Here are several scenarios.   This can be 100 000 years ago or 1 000 000 years ago, when prehistoric people lived in small tribes, their survival depending on the cohesion of the entire group.   
A dozen men have set off on a hunt.   Each of them has his special skill and strength, there is the fastest runner and the strongest fighter.   One has the most dexterity to build a fire, one has the best skills to make weapons.   One has the best memory for animal behavior and good places for hunting, one has the best eye sight and one the best ears.  
Scenario 1.   Domination:
The strongest has defeated them all in wrestling, and has become the chief.   They all fear him.   He is strong, but lacks intelligence.    He leads the hunt, commands anybody to do anything, but is ignorant of different skills of the others.   He has the top position, but he is incompetent and the hunting success is meagre.  He believes to be the most competent hunter, this his subjective justification for his domination.    He claims and keeps the best and biggest share of the prey.  
Scenarios 2 and 3:   They are all equals, who share the work and the prey.    No one has any power over any other. 
Scenario 2.   Cooperation by consent, knowledge and insight.
They are only a small group, and they know each other well.   Therefore there is an implicit and explicit agreement on the division of labor, they do not need a chief, because each of them knows what to do and when.  
Scenario 3.   Cooperation by selected leader
They elect a leader for a limited time like for one hunt, whose job is to coordinate the activities.   He knows the talents and skills of all and is able to choose wisely whom to give which assignment.   


People differ in talents, skills, training and knowledge.    At any given moment, there can be a ranking according to their relative skill in a specific area, but this hierarchy is very flexible, as learning modifies it rapidly.   Cooperation based upon equal rights enhances progress, while hierarchies of power can be a hindrance.    If the powerful but incompetent chief of a group of hunters enforces his incompetent methods on others, this is detrimental, while in a cooperative setting all can learn and improve their methods together.

As a consequence, domination usually leads to two disparate hierarchies.   The hierarchy based upon the ranking of power and the hierarchy based upon the ranking of competence.    Many times the powerful incompetent repress the more capable, who are powerless.   

The Peter Principle is strictly understood not about power:

"The Peter Principle is stated in chapter 1 of the book with the same title: "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
 

But even when the hierarchy in any organization is based more upon power than upon skills, the result can be a case of the Peter Principle.   By power someone climbs the ladder, but when he reaches a position, where his skills do not match his power, he fails and messes things up.  


Concerning couples, the decisive competence is the one for commitment, which consists mainly of emotional intelligence and maturity, empowering and enabling a person to be egalitarian and to contribute to mutual happiness.   A couple of two egalitarian partners does not form a hierarchy, they cooperate by sharing decisions, by consent, insight and a division of labor.    

A man forcing a hierarchy of domination upon a woman is immature and an emotional moron and therefore incompetent.   Any egalitarian woman with average emotional intelligence is more competent than he is.  

 
By establishing his domination, he creates two disparate hierarchies.   The hierarchy of power, where he has the higher position, and the hierarchy of commitment competence, where has the lower position.    Domination and commitment competence are mutually exclusive.    A man dominating by using power is incompetent.    The essence of commitment competence is not dominating and not using power.  


The dominating man is stuck in his incompetence, and the woman is stuck in the position of her competence being overruled by his incompetent power.  

Domination is abomination, and I as an egalitarian woman am looking for an egalitarian man as a mindmate.   

228. Immaturity, Submission, Domination - 2

Immaturity, Submission, Domination - 2

After having explained the Taken-In-Hand approach in entry 226 by evolutionary biology, I found another web page, where people tell their life experiences.    There were one group of more than 40 men and by women, telling their own experiences of actually attempting to establish such a relationship.  

On the takeninhand website, the concept was presented by its adherents as if they were all subjectively in healthy relationships, even though they had established a hierarchy.    What I read on the experiences site, was very different.

Some of the stories sounded to me so extreme, that at first it was hard to rule out the idea of reading a parody of something too weird to be true.    But it is a site of authentic stuff, and there was not one, but too many different persons to be all fakes.    So it was like reading authentic case studies from a book about mental disorders.  
The writers are beyond doubt extremely immature.    The women appear like prepuberty girls under the rule of stern parents, daunted and with completely shattered self-esteem and self-worth.   The men appear like puberty boys.   As a reaction to their unpleasant feelings under the rule and control of their own parents, they have finally found a guinea pig to enjoy the role of being the powerful parent.   Considering the women as having a child's immature mind in a grown up body, the men could even be considered as a kind of a pedophiles without breaking the law.      

All this is far from any strategy to optimize breeding, as I had assumed in entry 226.   It seems to be a case of two complementary disorders.   The woman wants to remain an eternal child without learning to take responsibility, the man wants to enjoy power and control. 
These couples could even be a narcissist with a co-narcissist.    But they are not a disordered narcissist and a healthy person adapting to it like in co-dependency.   Here the co-narcissist is as much disordered as the narcissist, but in a complementary way.   The narcissist's abuse does not damage or jeopardize her previously intact mental health, instead it gives her relief from whatever are her own psychological troubles. 

227. Immaturity, Submission, Domination - 1

Immaturity, Submission, Domination - 1

When I started to consider the possibility of women's submission instinct in the entries 225 and 226, I wrote about it with some hesitation.    Because I do not want to appear as if I accept it as an excuse for men's dominance.      
The fact, that some women are tragically afflicted with a submission instinct does not justify any man to dominate any woman.    Domination is abomination, no matter if the victims are distorted enough not to object, and even if some have the instinct to not suffer under non-violent domination.  There are the egalitarian women, who do suffer.    A female submission instinct is never a valid excuse or justification for male dominance.      

Only the consciously egalitarian men are able to avoid dominating.    Consciously egalitarian means to have a value system, maturity and emotional intelligence to consider dominance as ethically wrong.   A consciously egalitarian man can either be free of the dominance instinct, or as far as such a man feels any instinctive inclination to dominate, he uses self-control over it.   

Reading about the Taken-In-Hand concept made me aware of a specially dangerous trap for an egalitarian woman, who is intelligent, educated and an independent thinker and who would probably notice the red flags of any non-egalitarian man, who is in search of a submissive woman.   Such a man would also recoil himself from any woman, who declares herself as egalitarian and who refuses to be dominated.   

But those jerks, who do not select outwardly submissive women, but attempt to coerce women to surrender into submission are usually also very immature.   Due to their lack of maturity, they are unable to discriminate between those women, who are consciously either submissive or accepting the Taken-In-Hand concept, and those, who are egalitarian and allergic to domination.    The same immaturity, that prevents them the insight of the wrong of domination, also prevents them from being able to distinguish, on whom their domination causes the worst emotional damage.   

An egalitarian woman can easily become the target of a man, who perceives her as a challenge to gain control and get into charge.   He could even sincerely mistake her as consenting to establish a Taken-In-Hand relationship.   As long as she is ignorant of his goal of domination, she resists for the purpose of establishing equality.    She resists giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he needs to be made aware of how his behavior hurts her.   
This leads to a power struggle.    She fights to protect herself, because she is emotionally allergic to being humiliated by domination.    But he misinterprets this as a challenge to make his ultimate victory more difficult.    For him it is a game, allegedly with implicit consent, but for the woman it is agony.   
The man enhances the fierceness of the struggle, until the woman's resistance is finally broken.    But that is the end of his delusion.  He has not established a Taken-In-Hand relationship, instead he has used up the woman's energies, mental and emotional resources, until she is depleted and devastated.    When depletion forces her to give up her resistance as a futile attempt to establish equality, she has only one option left to protect her against being dominated, and that is removing her from the power of the dominator.    Instead of gaining dominance, the immature jerk looses the relationship.

226. Submission Complementing Dominance ?

Submission Complementing Dominance ?

In entry 225 I wondered about the possibility of women's submission being instinctive.   Googling I came across the concept of the Taken-In-Hand relationships:
http://wikibin.org/articles/taken-in-hand.html

http://www.takeninhand.com/what.is.a.taken.in.hand.relationship

"A Taken In Hand relationship is a wholehearted sexually exclusive marriage in which, to the delight of both spouses, the man actively controls the woman. "

http://www.takeninhand.com/the.resistant.woman

"What I look for in a girl is neither submissiveness nor dominance but resistance. I want is a woman who has the strength to be resistant. "

This web site gives the impression, that it is all about men getting a kick out of gaining ultimate control over fiercely resisting women, who in their own contributions describe themselves as strong, independent, intelligent, successful   These are typically the qualities, that I would expect in those women, who successfully refuse to be dominated.   

My first reaction as an egalitarian woman was wondering, if these women could be mentally ill, in a different way as incomprehensible as the muslim converts in entry 225.

But then I looked at the phenomenon from the perspective of evolutionary biology.     If these women are breeders attempting to optimize their strategy for having fit offspring, it all makes sense.    If women are plainly submissive for the purpose of procuring mates not only to make them pregnant but also to provide for their offspring, then such a selection could be a mistake concerning the quality of the men's genes.    Therefore the women, who consider themselves as alpha-females, want the proof of the males' abilities by being dominant not only over male competitors, but also over themselves.    Such women, who perceive themselves as powerful, independent, capable, strong, struggle fiercely to make sure, that the men are capable to dominate them in spite of all their resistance.   Then they can accept the men's genes as good enough for their offspring.

For the men, subduing the females with the highest health and genetic quality is also a challenge in the competition for fit offspring.    The harder they have to struggle to overcome the resistance, the higher quality the genes of the women, when they finally surrender.      

Even though the people on that website claim, that Taken-In-Hand is very different form simply being in consent about allowing the domination and the submission instincts rule, in the reality it is just that.   Ultimately the women submit, but they are picky and put up a high threshold by checking the strength of the men's power to dominate.  

In entry 211, I wrote: 'Therefore men with high instinctivity often choose women, with whose body they get infatuated, and who are noticeably inferior by education, status, financial power, and therefore submissive.    Doctors marry nurses, engineers their secretaries, shop manager the cashiers.'   
But maybe these women are also not simply submissive, but strong, independent and self-confident of their good looks and they struggle to be as much respected as possible while in the end they surrender to the fact of being in an inferior position.    That would give those men just the Taken-In-Hand relationship.   
On the takeninhand web page, there were no clues to be found about the equality or difference concerning status, formal education and career success of the people discussing their own Taken-In-Hand relationships, so I cannot evaluate my assumption of the effect of the lower status of the women.   

The concept is very new under this name.    Googling gives no results at all for the search of 'Taken-In-Hand relationship' before the year 2001.    Nevertheless this concept is the closest to what seems to have persisted of the mating dynamics from millions of years back, while all values and concept of being egalitarian can only have evolved along with or following the evolution of cognition.  

But this concept got me wondering, if the assumption, that dominant men prefer simply and plainly submissive women, may be generally an error.   Maybe many dominant men want to enjoy the victory of have conquered women into surrendering.   Maybe for most men, a relationship is based upon the taken-in-hand principle, they just do not consciously have a name for it and they may take it for granted and as their birthright.   

But for me as an egalitarian woman, domination is abomination.    Evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology can explain behavioral tendencies as connected with instincts.    This cannot be accepted as an excuse or a justification.
No man has a right to dominate a woman or to attempt to dominate her.   If he does, he is a jerk, an emotional moron, at least very immature.           

225. Domination, Nature or Nurture?

Domination, Nature or Nurture?

I ended entry 223 with the slogan:  Domination is Abomination.   When I wrote this, I made it up myself.   But in the time of the web, originality is rare.   If something is plausible, it usually has already occurred to someone else's mind.    When I googled the slogan, I found out, that it is already the title of a book, which I will read first before recommending it.   

Male domination seems to be a virulent expression of the hierarchy instinct.    Not only have men evolved enough physical strength to be able to force domination upon women, but so many men seem to take the privilege to be able to dominate for granted.   I am afraid that there could be a complementary submission instinct in some women, who accept subjugation, subordination, obedience and docility to the male domination as the unavoidable condition to be able to breed as driven by their procreation instinct.  

In entry 214 I quoted from Wyman's lecture the direct acquiescence of women with being beaten when failing obedience to their husbands.    It is hard to explain.   Can they really be so brainwashed to not only be docile, but consider this as correct?  

Here is an example.   When I used to come home on a bus I frequently saw there a woman with a boy of about 8 or 9.    Obviously, his mother was picking him up from school every day.   Not only this, but every single time, when I saw them, she was carrying the boy's school bag.   As far as I could judge, he seemed to be a healthy normal child, able to do both, carry his school bag and taking the bus by himself.   Of course the outward impression could have been misleading, maybe he went to some school for kids with special needs and needed to be accompanied.
The woman spoke German like an educated person and with no accent.   From her looks, she could have been German.    But she was dressed in the typical attire of older immigrant muslim women, a long spacious coat and that kind of a headscarf, that envelops the entire head except the face.  
So maybe the boy could have been a normal child, were it not for a mother preventing him to be influenced by the free life of German kids, and carrying his bag as a servant to a child, just because the child is male and she is female, educating him from early on to consider every woman as an inferior servant, even the own mother.

My best explanation for this observation is to assume this woman to be one of those converts, who to me are absolutely incomprehensible.    Some of them are university educated people, and once in a while one can read about them in the newspaper.  They are active in religious organisations.   There have been court cases, when converted women insisted to wear the headscarf as a teacher.   

There are not so many in Germany, but convertion to islam seems to be a common phenomenon in other countries:
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/features-may-10-why-do-western-women-convert-julie-bindel-islam-female-conversion

"In the US it is estimated that approximately 30,000 convert annually. There are about 2.4 million Muslims in Britain and studies suggest there are between 10,000 and 14,000 white converts among them. It is estimated that 75 per cent are female."

And the author asks the same question as I am:

"why do women in the West, having grown up with the benefits that four decades of feminism have brought, choose a lifestyle and religion which brings them such a subjugated existence? "

When a man converts to islam, it is sadly comprehensible, because this religion gives him more permission and justification to dominate than he can get by any other method.   I once read some parts of the Koran, and I nearly puked of outrage.   Women are not only generally disrespected and depreciated, but polygyny and beating are allowed.    I cannot understand, why on earth a western woman would convert to such a religion.  

Brainwashing at a young age, by the pressure of social norms and by role models can certainly modify instinctive inclinations and urges.    This way it could be explained, that an egalitarian woman without any hierarchy instinct would have the resignation to endure slight domination without being harmed.   It could also explain, how a man without any hierarchy instinct automatically tends to do slightly dominating things without even being aware of this, being consciously an egalitarian in his value system.  

But when a person, who has grown up into equality both by education and by having a good career, chooses to enter a life situation of subjugation and docility, then the most plausible explanation would be the awakening of a strong instinctive urge, that had been dormant.   This indicates, that the effects of the hierarchy instinct can be strong enough to partially deactivate the brain even of highly qualified women.  

If the same hierarchy instinct, which causes many men to attempt to dominate, also causes many women to accept being dominated, then maybe the outrage of many women in the west is not so much against the principle of establishing hierarchies of domination, but only against the more drastic expressions like battering.    Maybe the instinct to raise children has the side-effect of the willing submission to some domination by the man, who provides for those children.   


People look at the world from their own perspective and get a more or less distorted impression about the bell curve and the own position in it, and I am not free from this myself.    With the absence of the procreation instinct, it is beyond my imagination, how a woman can love a screaming bundle in stinking napkins so much, that she willingly enslaves herself to serve that bundle's every need for many years.    This is, why I just cannot imagine to ever accept subjugation, which for them at least sometimes is an unavoidable sacrifice for the benefit of that bundle.   

Maybe only a minority of women like me perceive the usurpation of dominance by men as an insolence and presumption and feel harmed in their dignity and humiliated and abased?   

Maybe most women do not mind non-violent, subtle, low-level domination and are not emotionally affected by it, because this is the complementary effect of the hierarchy instinct upon women?   
Maybe it is my projection, that the world is mainly filled with men attempting to dominate egalitarian women?   
Maybe the world is filled with a few egalitarian people, who have the genetic privilege of being spared the hierarchy instinct, and a lot of men and women, who both are afflicted in a complementary way with the hierarchy instinct?  
Maybe the real conflict is between the amount of domination exercised and accepted, when men want to dominate drastically, while women only submit to subtle low-level domination?

I have no answer to these maybe questions, but I know that I am looking for an egalitarian mindmate, who consciously does neither attempt to dominate nor does he perceive domination as beneficial for him.  

224. Weird Innuendo

Weird Innuendo
In the feedback part of the forum of a 50+ dating-site, I politely suggested to improve the search criteria, so that I could look for someone childfree.    
This not only triggered a very aggressive discussion.   The weirdest reaction was the question, if I want someone without children, so I could inherit from him.   
Why on earth would someone at the age of 61 even think about inheriting?    When people at this age get involved to grow old together, then the one, who outlives the other, is more stricken with grief than rejoicing whatever heritage there were for the few years of life expectancy.    

223. Dominance and Transgression

Dominance and Transgression

In the entries 19 and 82 I mentioned, that forgiving needs to be earned, in entry 152 I explained, how grudges because of unearned forgiving are disruptive, and entry 128 was about the importance of taking responsibility for transgressions.  

When one person causes material, physical or emotional harm to another, they need to restore harmony, which requires some or all of these steps:

• restitution and amends of the damage
• justice by an agreement on the evaluation of the harm and why it has happened
• prevention of a repetition

1.   Disasters and accidents
When both parties involved agree on having the same basic values, then a harmful event often can be considered as a mishap or a disaster.   

• When the harm is done by accident, inadvertence, oversight, blunder, carelessness, then restitution is enough.  
• When the harming person is ignorant or unaware of his actions being harming, but being a caring and responsible person, then in addition to the restitution, prevention is required.  He needs to learn, what behaviors are harming, so he can avoid them in the future.

2.  One-level-transgressions
When both agree on having the same values and they agree on the judgement of what is right or wrong, and the transgressor knows, that he is doing something harmful, which he rather would or should not do, then it is a one-level-transgression.  He can be under stress, in a situation of conflicting requirements, he can be too weak to have self-control or be intoxicated 
He already has his independent own insight, that he has done harm, he feels guilt, contrition, remorse. His initiative to make amends and and his need to earn to be forgiven creates justice for the transgressee.  As he already is motivated not to repeat the transgression, there is no further need of prevention.

3. Two-level-transgressions
When the transgressee is harmed by a behavior, that she perceives as not correct, unethical, outrageous and defective according to her own value system, then from her perspective it is a transgression, but in the perspective of the transgressor it is not.   At the moment of committing the transgression, the transgressor believes to have reasons justifying or sufficiently excusing his behavior at least in his own eyes, if not in those of others except the transgressee herself.   He either disagrees with her value system or he feels not obliged to adhere to it.    The transgressor either knows or has the opportunity to know, that the transgressee experiences his behavior as harm.

This is a two-level-transgression.   One level is the actual harmful act, which has a direct impact upon the transgressee.  The other level is the attitude triggering, enabling, justifying this act.   The disrespect, disregard and devaluation expressed by this attitude is the indirect harm.   The harmful act can be observed, the indirect emotional harm is hidden from all, who do not share the transgressee's value system and evaluation.

The transgressor can be motivated by different psychological mechanism and attitudes:

• He is selfish or feels entitled to his harmful action as collateral damage to fulfilling his needs.
• He knows, what the transgressee considers as morally correct behavior, what obligations other consider him to have or what harms the transgressee.    Behaving in accordance with this knowledge would be a sacrifice for him, that costs effort, self-control and consideration.  He disrespects the transgressee, he attributes her as having little value, not worth any sacrifice.   He believes, that the transgressee does not deserve any better treatment than his defective harmful behavior.     
• He avoids by wilful ignorance and denial to gain awareness of the impact of his actions upon the transgressee.
• He acts in defiance and malice.  

An example of a one-level-transgression is someone yelling an angry 'shut up' to another person.   If he is under stress trying to concentrate on something important, but respects the other as an equal, this can be regulated with a simple apology.   Because they both agree, that this act was impolite and should be avoided.
But if a man disrespects a woman, whom he does not bother to ever listen to, then this outburst as a repettion of a frequent event is a two-level-transgression and not a case for a simple apology.   The outburst itself is a trifle, but his general disrespect and disregard of not taking her for serious is causing serious harm.   Justice and prevention would require, that he changes his attitude and learns to listen to her, to respect her and to take her for serious.  


Wikipedia gives a very good overview over the definition of relational transgressions:

"Relational transgressions occur when people violate implicit or explicit relational rules. These transgressions include a wide variety of behaviors. Scholars tend to delineate relational transgressions into three categories or approaches. The first approach focuses on the aspect of certain behaviors as a violation of relational norms and rules. The second approach focuses on the interpretive consequences of certain behaviors, particularly the degree to which they hurt the victim, imply disregard for the victim, and imply disregard for the relationship. The third and final approach focuses more specifically on behaviors that constitute infidelity (a common form of relational transgression) "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_transgression.  

When a man dominates an egalitarian woman, in her experience all behavior expressing domination is a two-level-transgression, therefore domination itself is a transgression.

Example 1 in entry 215 demonstrates this, when the man changes the scheduled departure for a trip in favor of a visiting friend without first consulting the woman.   

Seen by itself, postponing the departure by two days is a trifle, it can hardly be called harm.   The man, who feels entitled to do what he wants, has no clue, that this is an act representing a very fundamental transgression in his attitude to the woman.    

• He does not value her as a partner, whom he respects enough to consult and share decisions with.   His friend is more important than the woman.   He has more consideration for the needs and wishes of his friend than for the woman.   
• He is selfish, because he chooses the benefits, which he expects for himself from complying immediately and without hesitation with his friend's wishes.  He values these benefits as more important than any consideration for the woman.   
• He commits a breach of trust and obligations.   The woman has entered physical intimacy under the condition of creating a bond of commitment including the obligation of sharing decisions, of being equal partners and of being reciprocally the most important person.  

The result is a very difficult situation.   The man believes to have done a trifle of little importance, while the woman feels excruciating emotional pain because of being humiliated, devalued, disrespected, betrayed in her trust.  
She wants to be able to forgive him and to repair the damage to the relationship.   She needs justice and prevention as a condition to forgive him, but he has no insight in the necessity to earn forgiveness for what he perceives as a trifle.  
The real conflict here is not the postponed trip.   The real conflict is that he feels as entitled to dominate as she feels entitled to be valued, appreciated and treated as an equal partner. 
He takes his entitlement to dominate so much for granted, that his changing of the plans was an automatic, spontaneous reaction without hesitation.   Consulting her just did not occur to him. 
She wants justice and prevention, and to her this means to hear from him the expression of a radical change in his attitude.   She needs his sincere statement, that she is more important than his friend, that he owes her to share decisions with her and to consult her about everything, that concerns her.   
But he is unable to do this, as it is the contrary of what he feels and believes to be right. There is no justice or prevention for her, unless he would give up his entire dominance.  

Here he is caught in a vicious circle.   Only by valuing her very much would he be motivated to make any sacrifice for her including the one of giving up his dominance.   But this dominance includes precise this lack of valuing her.   So he would have to give up the dominance first to value her enough to be motivated to make a sacrifice for her.  

This example has a continuation.    In the man's value system, the dominated woman's duty is obedience, reverence and absolute loyalty to whatever he does.    No matter, how outrageously he had treated her, in his expectation, she was to make the friend welcome.   But in need of a valve for her outrage, the woman tells the friend the truth, making him feel uncomfortable as the trigger of a conflict and as not really welcome.    In the man's perception, this is a serious transgression.    In his perception of justice, she would have to earn his forgiving by her acknowledging his right to dominate and to impose his decisions upon her.   Prevention in his understanding means, that in the future she would not resist his dominance anymore.  

Thus, they both have a grudge, and they both can neither forgive nor earn the other's forgiving, because their different perceptions and definitions of justice are mutually exclusive.   There is no common justice between a man feeling entitled to dominate and a woman feeling entitled to be treated as an equal.    
Justice for her means, that he needs to adjust his esteem of her by raising it up to the level of her self-esteem.   Justice for him means, that she should lower her self-esteem down to the level of his low esteem for her. 

 

 Domination is Abomination! 

222. Hedonist, Epicurean, Relationship - 2

Hedonist, Epicurean, Relationship - 2
In the entries 131 and 157, I have given a general description of the difference between a hedonist and an Epicurean.   This continues entry 158 about the differences between a hedonist's and an Epicurean's kind of a relationship.   It also continues entries 213, 196 and 197 about domination.

1.  Attitudes to eating

This is an analogy.   A hedonist enjoys eating, he wants to have as much of this pleasure as he can.  This means, he wants to spend time focusing on eating and maybe also on activities related to it like preparing meals or becoming a connoisseur of wine.   In the extreme, he enhances this even by barfing, as this quote shows about the Romans:

"Barfing was not only accepted but expected after a banquet. It was a means of getting rid of the prodigious quantities of food and drink pigs gluttonously ingested at their bacchanalian gatherings, and it was believed to prevent hangovers the next day.

Devotees sometimes stuck feathers, such as those from peacocks, down their throats to stimulate their gag reflex. Indeed, practicing this led to the death of Emperor Claudius I."

http://www.agonys.com/facts/vomiting.shtml

An Epicurean wishes to indulge in immaterial, intellectual and emotional joys, bliss and pleasure, and to be able to focus on this, he needs physical homeostasis, that means, he does not wish to be distracted by hunger from his intellectual pursuits.   If an Epicurean is very rich, he has a cook or housekeeper, so that he has no need to even think about food except when eating for the purpose of stopping to feel hungry.    This does not exclude, that an Epicurean enjoys a good meal in company once in a while: 

"according to Epicurus, with whom a person eats is of greater importance than what is eaten."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
   
The hedonist wants to be hungry to be able to eat, the Epicurean eats to reach the homeostasis of not feeling hungry.  


2.   Purpose of a relationship

It is the same with the sexual instinct.  
What was the Romans' barfing concerning food, for the hedonist it is using whatever there is available to stimulate and enhance his instinctive urges, pills or pictures or whatever else.  
The Epicurean couple enjoys physical intimacy as an expression and enhancement of there emotional bonding, but it also serves the purpose to free them of the need for it for a while.   Because their focus, the true benefit of the relationships is the companionship of sharing intellectual endeavors and enhancing their general quality of life.  When as an example they go to an art exhibition, they want to be able to focus on their communication about what they see.    While they are in a state of homeostasis, they are not distracted by physical needs.   
 
A hedonist wants to feel as much urge to copulate as he can, while for the Epicurean couple physical intimacy serves to reach the homeostasis of feeling free of those instinctive urges for a while.


3.   Reasons to end a relationship

Hedonists and Epicurean couples also end their relationships for very different reasons.   In all relationships, the initial passion fades with time.    When this happens, for the hedonist the relationship looses its value, its justification, its purpose, even though there may nothing else be wrong in the relationship, except that the hedonist does not get satisfaction of his predominant need anymore.   Logically, he ends the relationship to find satisfaction elsewhere, but considers his ex as a platonic friend and wants to stay in contact.

For an Epicurean couple, fading passion is of no consequence.   It only means, that the couple have to be less active to maintain the homeostasis, that they feel comfortable with.    If an Epicurean decides to end a relationship, then it is for a serious reason in the behavior of the partner, some transgression, that cannot be repaired.    If their basis of companionship has been destroyed, the basis for friendship is automatically also destroyed. 


4.   Opposite gender friends, fidelity, equality

For a hedonist, passion and physical desire are the purpose for a relationship and they define, with whom he gets involved, not the personality, nor intellectual and emotional closeness.   He can be passionately infatuated with a woman from the gutter, whom he considers as stupid and inferior.  He calls many women friends, whom he estimates and with whom he shares more intellectually than with his partner, but these women are mere friends, because they do not elicit his passions.  
With his definition of a relationship, he does not consider such friendship as cheating.   

For an Epicurean, the personality, the values, the qualities, the attitudes, the ethical integrity of a person define for him, who is good enough to be called a true friend.   The same traits are also included in his criteria for his choice of a mindmate.    Therefore as soon as an Epicurean considers a woman as a true friend, he also considers her as a potential companion, except if there are special obstacles.    For the Epicurean, commitment is the intimacy of friendship enhanced and enlarged with physical intimacy added to make the special bond.    He therefore is aware, that fidelity is more than merely keeping away from other women's bodies.   For him, any close friendship with a woman is emotional cheating.   She is his equal partner and his best friend, and she has not intellectual deficits, that would be a justification to seek intellectual compensation with other female friends.   They share their friendships with other people as a couple.  


5.  Domination

The Epicurean wants the joy of a woman sharing her thoughts and her intellectual life with him.   He can only get this from a woman, who is his equal and whom he treats as an equal.   A woman's communication can only be voluntary, it cannot be obtained by coercion.

An Epicurean man is not very prone to get interested in a hedonistic woman, and even less would he get involved with one.   The male hedonist chooses a woman by her passion eliciting body, no matter, who she is.    If she also is a hedonist, then they may be a match and content with each other.   But if she is an Epicurean, then she is at high risk to be dominated and used, if he succeeds to lure her into a relationship.  

In entry 219 I speculated about the correlation of dominance, promiscuity and immaturity.   Now I add strong hedonism to the correlation and I see the complementary correlation between equality, bonding, maturity and  Epicureanism.  

6.   Conclusions for my mindmate search

Whenever a man tells me, that he is still friends with his previous intimate partners, I conclude, that he is a hedonist and that for him a relationship does not have the same purpose as for me.   

When a man has many women friends, but in spite searches for a partner, it makes me suspicious.   Obviously, his focus is not on choosing a companion by the same qualities as he has chosen these women friends, but he is a hedonist searching predominantly for passion.   Most probably, in his perception a companionship without passion is not an option, therefore with such a man, there is a high risk of his ending a relationship, as soon as his passion fades.   

My mindmate is an Epicurean, not a hedonist.  

221. Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 3

Non-Breeders Statistically and Historically - 3

In entries 209 and 210 I used quotes from Wyman's lectures to point the prevalence of different methods to accomplish the refusal to raise children. The ubiquitous motherliness of all or most women is just a myth. Today people can declare openly on the web to be childfree, but there are more non-breeders around and have always been, than cultural tradition under the influence of religion want women to be aware of.

Wyman talks in his lecture about infanticide and abandonment in the past. But also in present times, once in a while the newspaper reports cases of neonaticide or infanticide, when dead bodies are found in places like garbage cans.  In one recent case, the bodies of three newborns were found in a woman's freezer. In another case, the bones of nine newborns were found in flower pots on a balcony.

There are also the cases, when living newborns are deposited in front of a hospital or house for the purpose to be found and cared for.

Statistical quotes:

"The researchers reviewed the case records of 26 courts in three regions of France, involving the death of a child within the first day of life between 1996 and 2000, "

"The official statistics put the figure of the unlawful killing of newborns at 0.39 per 100,000 births for the same regions over the same period."

"But the court data point to 2.1 per 100,000,"

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20101214/Neonaticide-is-more-common-than-previously-thought.aspx

"An estimated 150 to 300 cases of neonaticide occur in the United States each year."

http://www.nursingcenter.com/library/JournalArticle.asp?Article_ID=425439

Killing another human is never an acceptable solution to any problem. No woman, who lives in a society, where contraception and abortion is available, is forced to give birth, if she does not wish to do so.

According to Wyman, in lecture 23 there is no scientific reason to declare the fertilisation to be the beginning of life, it is a completely arbitrary decision. In fact, there is not one criteria scientifically valid to define any specific moment as the beginning of life.

http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/biology-and-history-of-abortion-6767/

In my personal opinion, based upon the two premises above, the child has no life of its own until it can be kept alive outside the womb.   From then on, neonaticide is no solution to be tolerated.  Until then there is not justification to deny a woman the right to decide, what to do about parts of her body.

The ubiquitous motherliness of women is a myth. Therefore it cannot be justified to consider childbearing and raising as any woman's obligation nor as the purpose of her existence.

220. Promiscuity and Human Evolution

Promiscuity and Human Evolution

I claim, that bonded people caring for each other and experiencing a committed and monogamous relationships as a safe haven are happier than those, who are unable to feel bonded. 

Evolution favors the fitness of successful fertility, independent of the suffering or wellbeing of the individual.   Happiness is therefore not a direct factor in natural selection.   But with the evolution of the species homo sapiens, it may have become indirectly an enabler of the special kind of fitness, that is connected with a well functioning brain.  

Promiscuity leads to a high quantity of offspring, but monogamy leads to a higher quality of offspring, because happier or less unhappy parents can do a better job raising their children.    

A promiscuous man may sire a dozen children or more with several women.   No matter if this is in consecutive marriages or short affairs, the result are children raised by only one biological parent.  
If a woman lives on welfare, her children are often deprived of chances to develop their potential, instead they are forced to start low skilled labor early in life.  
If the woman works, she usually is under a lot of stress and lacking the time to spend with her children.  

If the woman brings the child into a patchwork family, this leads also to unfavorable influences.
In all these situations, the child is at an elevated risk of deviance of any kind like delinquency or substance abuse and of underachievement.

A bonded monogamous couple usually raises one or a few children, whom they enable to develop all their potential and intelligence.   These children may contribute to the progress of society by making inventions or scientific discoveries or doing other valuable professional work.   

Therefore it seems plausible, that there has been a shift in the focus of the natural selection away from the physically strong but dumb, selfish and dominating studs, who were the fittest, when survival depended on hunting and defending a group against wild animals.    Instead natural selection seems to have started to favor the fittest in being intelligent.   These could have been excelling in observing nature and having a good memory about hunting grounds, improving the technique of building huts or preserving food and developing agriculture.  They could have enabled the progress by developing better communication to share their skills.    This evolution of intelligence was part of a more general evolution of all mental capacities, not only rationality, memory, imagination, but also of self-awareness and emotional intelligence.  

Suffering and being unhappy can incapacitate parents to enable their children to develop all their capacities.   Therefore I assume, that the side effect of the natural selection of the fitness by intelligence was the automatic selection also of people, who were better able to be content as a monogamous couple.  That means, the women suffered less with men, who were less dominant and less promiscuous.    This is an explanation, why at least some men obviously have evolved to avoid promiscuity and to get bonded when mating with a partner and thus raise more intelligent offspring. 
There is scientific evidence, that intelligent men are more monogamous:
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/03/02/2010-03-02_smart_men_lss_likely_than_dumb_ones_to_cheat_on_partners_study.html

The physical development of an adolescent is much faster than the maturation of the mind.    A boy is physically able to become promiscuous long before he is mature enough to understand, that bonding leads to much more happiness.   Thus unfortunately, adolescents are at high risk to become promiscuous without even having a clue, that they are getting irreversibly emotionally damaged.    Many become promiscuous, before they ever have a chance to experience bonding.

But not all men become promiscuous.    It seems as if an adolescent is torn between two forces, his instinctivity urging him to copulate with any female body he can get hold of, and something, that holds him back.    In entry 101 I speculated about a construct, that I called the promiscuity inhibition.   This could be a combination of emotional intelligence and the disgust to have close contact with a stranger's body (entry 108).  
Therefore an adolescent is prone to become promiscuous, if his instinctivity is stronger than his promiscuity inhibition.    He becomes promiscuous, when he has the opportunity, because enough female bodies available and promiscuity is socially condoned and encouraged by many male role models.

219. Correlation of Dominance, Promiscuity and Immaturity

219.  Correlation of Dominance, Promiscuity and Immaturity

I assume, that male dominance over women, promiscuity and immaturity are correlated.   Therefore also the male ability to be an egalitarian committed partner is correlated with maturity and the intact promiscuity inhibition.  

This is a follow-up to entries 101, 104, 108 and 109 about promiscuity, entries 213 and 214 about domination and entry 113 about bonding disability.

1.   The non-promiscuous man gets bonded to his partner by the symbolic and meaningful act of entering physical intimacy as an addition to emotional and intellectual intimacy.   Non-promiscuous means, he experiences this as a special event and feels bonded and attached from then on.    Feeling bonded includes non-selfish caring love, which means automatically equality.  It is mutually exclusive with domination and exploitation.    Feeling bonded, he also wants to stay together and not jeopardize the relationship by harming his partner.    Maturity enables him to know, that only a fair balance between giving and receiving leads to a viable and lasting relationship.

2.   The promiscuous man cannot get bonded, because the promiscuous routine of using any haphazard female body as a toilet and forgetting her in a jiffy has destroyed once and forever his ability to experience the mental connection between physical intimacy and commitment.  
A promiscuous man can get infatuated with a woman's body to the extend, that he wants to secure its long-term use.   For this purpose, he even marries her.   But that does not create the emotional bond of unselfish caring love.    He is married or extrinsically committed (entry 98) to her for the selfish purpose of getting his own needs, wishes and whims out of her.    Domination and exploitation are logically the most successful method to acquire his privileges and advantages.    Being promiscuous, it is logical to discard and replace her, as soon as he no longer gets enough advantages out of her.   Therefore he has no reason to treat her well to make the relationship last.   An unmarried non-bonded man is prone to dump, a married non-bonded man is prone to cheat.   He is selfish and dominant, because he is immature.   

In entry 113 I described the bonding disability as a consequence of immaturity.   But promiscuity is not independent of immaturity.    Those men, who desensitize themselves to become promiscuous by emotionally detaching the use of a woman's body from perceiving the existence of a person inside the body, usually do this during puberty and young adulthood.   It happens at that age, when their sex drive is the highest, while they are still too immature to be aware of the resulting psychological damage.         

If such a man stays immature, he will never be able to feel bonded.   He will remain one of those men dominating women as described above.

But if he grows into maturity, if he rationally understands that meaning of a committed relationship, but his ability to automatically feel a bond by entering physical intimacy has been destroyed, for such a man it is very difficult to get bonded.      
If he is already in a relationship, where he dominates a woman, with whose body he is infatuated, then there is the possibility, that as a part of maturation, he slowly grows into feeling emotional and intellectual intimacy and a more caring love, while his domination will be gradually reduced.    He may develop a bond even though physical intimacy is disconnected from it.   This bond can become strong enough to motivate him to stay on and treat the woman with decency, once the infatuation has faded.    It can happen.  

If he is not in a relationship, the situation is more difficult.    Even with the best intentions to get committed, as soon as he enters physical intimacy, emotionally he falls back into the psychological rut of the promiscuous perception of temporarily controlling a body, that is just a utility.    The only remedy for him is to be for a considerable time under circumstances, which force him into close platonic contact with a woman, while the use of her body without a bond is impeded and postponed.     For example they could be colleagues during a scientific field trip, working together but living in a camp with little privacy, slowly developing intellectual and emotional intimacy as a result of the shared work.    When they finally also get physically involved, they already have such a strong mental bond, that his inability to feel bonded by the physical intimacy cannot diminish the bond.   
 
I already called promiscuity a scourge of humanity.   It really is.   It damages the men's psyche, while they themselves are not even aware of their emotional disability.  The men are inflicted with this abomination, but they themselves do not suffer, instead they make the women suffer as their proxies.   The men's inbuilt capacity for domination makes the suffering of the victims more horrific.  

218. Domination, Egalitarian Commitment and Special Problems

Domination, Egalitarian Commitment and Special Problems
This is a continuation of entries 216 and 217

Domination is a method to get something from someone by using coercion and intimidation.   In combination with only having selfish, uncaring utility love for a woman, whom he perceives as a resource for benefits and advantages, a man can exploit a woman, who feels bonded with caring, unselfish love.  
Domination is a potential in most men, because they usually have the physical strength to back up the intimidation with the ability to batter.   In the absence of unselfish care for the woman's wellbeing, there is nothing to hold a man back from exploiting and dominating her.  

This does not imply, that there are no couples with the different constellation, where the man has caring love for a woman with only utility love.   But whatever method of manipulation and tricking she may use to take advantage, it rarely is the same as is male domination.   But as I am writing this blog as a woman, who is looking for a mutually caring commitment with a non-dominating mindmate, such women are not the focus of my considerations.  But even if it seems so, I am not claiming, that most men are bad and most women are good.  


But to further illustrate the difference between a dominator-dominee and a egalitarian couple, here are three more scenarios of couples, where one partner has a flying phobia.       

1.  The man is an uncaring dominator, the woman has the flying phobia.    In this case, he uses extortion:
He buys the flight tickets and tells her, if she refuses to come along, then he will dump her and look for a better companion, with whom he can enjoy frequent exotic vacations.  

2.  The man is an uncaring dominator, but he has the flight phobia himself.    He feels entitled to be accepted as he is:  
The woman is the one, who loves to travel, and she gently suggests to him to go on a anti-flight-fear training course.    But he gets angry, he insists, that it is his right not to fly, if he does not want to.   If this does not please her, she is welcome to go.    

3.  There is a couple of two egalitarian, bonded, caring partners.   She has the flying phobia.    Both feel care for each other, and both are guided by the obligations of commitment, they can handle the problem in a constructive and considerate way.     Love means to perceive and experience such obligations not as obligations but as caring.    

In this case, he is bound by the obligation of not hurting the other.   He does not put pressure upon her but offers his support for whenever she wants it and in the form she considers best.  
The partner with the fear to flight also has obligations.  She has brought a onesided problem into the relationship, she feels responsible for the disadvantages caused by it.  Therefore she is motivated to do everything possible to overcome her phobia, so that she can comply with his wish to travel together at some time in the future.  
The important focus of both partner is on the own obligation and caring disposition to act for the benefit of the other.   They both do there own best to improve the situation, they do not make mutual demands and they do not take the care of the other for granted.  

Two cooperating caring partners can solve problems, that cause disruptive conflicts between a dominator and a dominee.  

217. Domination and Exploitation

Domination and Exploitation

In entry 213 I defined domination in a relationship of adult mates.   The basic attitude of the dominator is his selfish entitlement to get all the benefits and advantages from the dominee, no matter what methods of coercion he uses.   The dominee is not considered and perceived as a partner, but as a utility serving the dominator's selfish purposes.  
This is even true, when the dominator firmly believes, that what he forces upon the dominee were in her best interest and beneficial for her.    In this case, he uses the dominee to gain and enhance the delusion of being a good person.   

The dominator gets his selfish advantage by actively using coercion on the dominee.   Domination is a constellation enabling exploitation. 
There is also a different variety, it is the exploitation by the loading the own burden upon others:

It concerns people with a special disability or limitation.   Long ago, I have known a woman, whose one leg was amputated below the knee as the consequence of an accident.   From then on, she allowed her disability dominate everybody.   Obviously, she felt, that the world owed her to serve her whims and wishes, she felt entitled to get all benefits and advantages she could get as a compensation.   In reality, it was much more than a compensation, it gave her additional benefits.  
They made her an artificial limb, but it would have needed effort and even some initial pain to learn to walk with it.   She did not bother to even attempt to learn using it.   She preferred to have people push her around in a wheelchair and go on errands for her.   There were always some people having compassion and a wish to help, I was one of them.   She just took all and everybody's help for granted, she did not perceive, that people decided voluntarily to help.   She subjectively experienced being served her due.

I have met or heard of many more cases, when someone with some special need or disability feels entitled to get any advantage and benefit, that he can get, without any gratitude.

I could call the refusal to limit the burden upon others the dominance by passivity or by inertia.  Someone has the choice to either put the burden of a problem upon someone else or make active efforts to reduce the burden.  

Examples:

1.  The woman could have learned to walk with the artificial limb and have become independent of other people's help.   She choose to remain dependent on others as it was more comfortable.    The burden would have been on her partner, had she been in a relationship.  

2.  The woman with the flight fear in entry 216 has the same choice.   She can either work on reducing and eliminating the fear, or she can feel entitled, that her partner submits to the consequences of never flying to a vacation destination together.  

3.  Someone is scared to drive.   S/he can either take advantage of the partner to be her taxi driver, whenever s/he wants to go somewhere, or s/he can conquer her fear and get a driver's license.   

4.  Someone has low self-esteem and lacks confidence.   He can either accept the partner's support and maybe get other help, or he can abase and demean the partner and reduce her to a source of narcissistic supply. 

5.  An addict, no matter if it is alcohol, drugs or whatever, has the choice to either do something about his problem, or to burden the partner with his behavior.     If the partner complies, this is called codependency.  

There are many more constellations, where one has the choice, whom to burden with his trouble.   It is the choice to exploit or not.   I can see a pattern, when it concerns couples in a relationship between an exploitor and an exploitee.   
The exploitee is committed, bonded and feels caring non-selfish love.   Therefore the exploitee is motivated to support and help the other.   The exploitee behaves and treats the exploitor as if he were an egalitarian partner.  The exploitee suffers by this mistake and error of judgement.  
The exploitor may value the exploitee as a precious utility and may be infatuated, but any uncaring love is absent.   The more advantages the exploitor gets, the more he values the exploitee.  He does not value the exploitee as a person, but as a resource.  The absence of care, of emotional restrictions, of commitment gives the exploitor the power.
This pattern is not so much about material exploitation, but more about emotional exploitation.   The exploitee gets emotionally exhausted, devastated, burned-out, depleted.   The exploitor gains emotional resources to continue living with and to avoid coping with his special problem.  
The exploitation ends, when the exploitee is spent to the point, when the exploitor discards the exploitee, because there is nothing left to gain, or when the exploitee gets aware of the outrage of the situation and leaves.    An exploitor does not stop, as long as he can get something.      

216. Domination or Commitment Governance - 3

Domination or Commitment Governance - 3

On a dating site, I found a quiz about how much someone would go along with another person's suggestion or have a will or opinion of his or her own.   Unfortunately I have forgotten, on which site I have seen this, so I cannot quote the exact phrase. 

There was one question, how the reader would react, if the partner would buy flight tickets for a weekend, in spite of the fear of flying of the reader.   
What amazed me, was that only one of the possible replies was as strong as anger.    Implicitly the question insinuated, that pressing an unpleasant experience upon another is nothing serious.    Since usually men spend money on women, so I assume that in this example the buyer of the tickets is a man and the phobic person is a woman.    In the mind of the author of that quiz, a woman is supposed to agree to about anything, if she wants to be agreeable.    

It was a short question, there was not enough information to really be able decide on a reply, but by making some additional assumptions, this serves as some more examples for what is domination.

Scenario 1:
They know each other only a short time and he does not even know, that she is phobic of flying.    This is a good example of thoughtless and well meaning behavior, that is domination, even though the man is not even aware of.    If a man buys a ticket for a woman for an event at a fixed date, this is generally a subtle form of domination.   
The woman is under pressure accept the invitation, else the money is wasted.   It can be a subtle form of extortion.   She may have to change plans, that she already had for that same time, she may have to overcome obstacles like fear.   Maybe the event is something very unpleasant for her.   A man, who has respect and consideration for the woman, would only suggest the invitation, but he postpones to buy the tickets until after she has accepted.       

Scenario 2:
They know each other long enough, that he knows about her fear of flying, but not long enough to have ever talked about it.    He does not even know, if her phobia is general or if she has lost a close relative in a plane crash.  
Buying flight ticket in this situation is not only domination, but it is cruel and inconsiderate.    The woman suffers pain, no matter what she does.   If she submits and comes along, she is going to suffer the pain of the phobic experience, if she refuses, she suffers the bad conscience of wasting the money of the flight and of disappointing him.    

He could initiate to talk about how to handle the phobia in the future, he could offer her his support and he could make any suggestions.  But what is the best method can only be her own choice, evaluation and decision, it has to be in the scope of her abilities.  

Scenario 3:
They are living together, and after experiencing the limitations of being deprived of flying vacations, it is her explicit new year's resolution to go on a flight and attempt to overcome her fear.    A few days later he comes with the tickets for a short flight.    In this case, it is not domination, because he just supports her to do, what she really wants to do and is determined to do.   

215. Domination or Commitment Governance - 2

Domination or Commitment Governance - 2

Examples:

1.  Domination: 
A couple has tickets for a trip to leave on Sunday.   A few days before that, an old friend of the man calls and tells him, that he wants visit him from Saturday until Monday.  
The man accepts immediately.   Then he calls the travel agency to change the schedule of the trip.   Only after having done all this, he informs the woman of the change of plans.

I consider this behavior as domination and an outrage, because he disrespects and depreciates the woman.    He does not value the woman enough to include her in sharing decisions, and his friend is more important than the woman.

The correct behavior of an equal partner would be to tell the friend on the telephone to call back later, and then talk about the matter with the woman.    The fair procedure in this situation would be, that they leave as scheduled.   The man has one entire day to be with his friend.   The friend can either stay the second night alone in the apartment or go to a hotel, if he can afford it.   

2.   Respect and caring agreement:
The couple plans to go away over the weekend, but has not yet booked anything.   The man's friends calls wishing to come for the weekend.   He has not seen that friend in a long time while, who can only come this weekend.    Again, accepting immediately is domination.   The correct behavior is to ask the friend to call back later and consult with the woman.   But in this situation, the considerate woman agrees to the change of the plan to please the man, whose wish is to see his friend. 

In this example, they both care about each other's needs.   He cares about the woman's wish to be respected as a partner sharing the decision, and she cares about his wish to have his friend as a guest.  

3.   Commitment Governance:
The couple shares the common lifestyle of enjoying the visit of friends and of visiting friends.    They agree explicitly, that friends visiting are always welcome, as long as there is no serious obstacle.    Hospitality has become a part of their commitment governance.    Only in this situation, when the man can be certain of the woman's consent, he can accept the coming of the friend without consulting her first.   

A viable commitment governance implies the justified and justifiable trust, that whenever one partner decides something on behalf of both partners, the decision is based on a fair evaluation of the equal wellbeing of both, the decision is not aiming at gaining onesided selfish benefits.  

   
Equality means the reciprocity, that one partner consults the other before taking any decision, that has an impact upon the other, as has for example changing the schedule of a trip.  
Unfortunately, the general brainwashing of men towards domination has the detrimental effect, that many men consider even just consulting a woman not as correct behavior, but as submission under the woman's alleged domination.  

As a consequence, a considerate egalitarian man often gets into a psychological conflict.   He wants both, he wants to be a decent partner and he also wants to be accepted as a man according to what the majority of men consider as masculinity and the male gender role.   

• When he does consult the woman, the man risks to be scorned and mocked by other men as unmanly and a wimp, and he may even be tempted to agree.    
• When he dominates the woman, he hurts her and destroys the relationship. 

  
Thus, he is in a loyalty conflict, and whatever he does, he cannot avoid the risk of loss.   

• If he decides to be an egalitarian bonded partner treating the woman correctly, he risks the loss of the comfort of being accepted by his buddies.  
• If he dominates the woman, he destroys the relationship and looses her.  
• If he tries to please both, he risks to loose both.   

Equality is difficult for both genders, but the man's options are different.    The woman can only choose between suffering or leaving, if the man dominates.   The man can choose between dominating or not, and either way he has to bear the consequences. 

214. Obstacles Impeding Equality

Obstacles Impeding Equality

In the entries 196, 197, 211, 212 and 213 I already describe some aspects of male dominance, which causes a lot of agony to women.    I have already explained, that men can establish domination over women by taking advantage of their physical strength and of the vulnerability of breeding women, and that only the laws and rules of society limit it.  
This fatal situation could be the effect of the hierarchy instinct, that not only causes male domination, but also women's submission and sacrifice in favor of the benefits for their offspring and it could be aggravated by the parents' role model and the social norms brainwashing women to the point, that true equality is even beyond their imagination.

In Wyman's second lecture he not only gives evidence, how widespread the battering of women is, but also, how much women can be brainwashed into accepting such an outrage.
http://www.cosmolearning.com/video-lectures/sex-and-violence-among-the-apes-6746/

Quotes:

"Battering is extremely common almost all over the earth and for as far back in history as we know. [.....] In Punjab in North India, 75% of scheduled cast women, that's lower caste women, reported being beaten frequently by their husbands. There's an agreement there, 75% of the men report beating their wives."

"in the culture--both the men and the women feel that it is the husband's right to beat the woman, and it's justified. It's the woman's due. She should be beaten, and they talk about this quite openly; 40% to 80% again in different surveys, 40% to 80% of wives agree that a beating is justified if a wife neglects household chores or is disobedient."

"Severe beating is almost uniformly justified and condoned for many reasons, including for example, a husband--a woman disobeying her husband's orders. If a husband gives a woman a direct order and she does not follow it, she gets beaten. It's her duty to obey her husband and they describe it--the women talking to each other and talking to investigators describe it as selfish when she follows what she wants to do, "

"the numbers are something like 50% of U.S. women will be physically abused by the men with whom they live, so again this is partner violence. Six million will be really battered"

I doubt, that in the west, the battered women would agree to deserve such treatment.   But there are more subtle psychological mechanism as a consequence of male enforced dominance.  

Women, who are intimidated and desensitized by the countless daily instances of male domination of some lesser degree than violence and who may have experienced it already in previous relationships, may well aspire for as much as what they dare to consider as equality.   In reality they only aspire for a kind of pseudo-equality, because they are not even able to imagine, what real equality could be. 
There are the complementary men, who from infancy on have been brainwashed to be entitled to dominate, but who in spite of this are willing to accept the woman's equality.   Unfortunately many times, they start to confound the pseudo-equality with real equality, because in their experience, all women settle for it.  
The result are couples, where both are mistaken to believe, that their relationship were one of equality, but seen from a neutral perspective, it is one of reduced domination.    As long as they are happy together, there is no problem. 

Equality is binary, two persons are either equal or not.   Domination is gradual, there can be more or less domination.    Therefore pseudo-equality is a form of reduced domination. 

But there is a deep conflict, when such a man, who sincerely believes to be an egalitarian partner and who confounds reduced domination were real equality, meets a woman, who aspires for what is real equality in her own perception.   Because of this disagreement, he then starts to experience her behavior as if she were attempting to dominate. 
It is a really tragic constellation.   Two partners, for both of whom equality is a part of their value system, perceive each other as someone attempting to dominate.   
This can lead to a power struggle, where the man has the advantage of the better weapons of his physical strength.   His fights against her alleged attempts to dominate with real domination.    The woman lacks adequate means to protect herself, she can stay and suffer or leave.   Such a relationship is doomed.

For a woman like me, being dominated hurts so much, that it destroys the relationship.   But being the target of a man's defiant reactions to his accusation of my alleged attempts to dominate also hurts so much, that it destroys the relationship.    I need true equality.
I know, what is good for me, maybe more than many women, who have been brainwashed into subordination to male dominance without even being aware of it.   But knowing, what is good for me is independent of attempting to get it by taking advantage of another or in a selfish way by disregarding the other.    What I want as part of a committed relationship is neither to be dominated nor to dominate, but to find consent about the meaning of equality as part of the commitment governance.

The conflict of dissent about equality can be resolved by constructive communication, only if the two partners also agree as a part of their value system, that a power struggle between two equal partners is destructive and detrimental and has to be avoided by all means. 
To find consent about what is a fair and balanced egalitarian commitment governance, requires that both partners are independent thinkers, not blurred by the distortions of the ubiquitous social norm of male dominance.  
In addition to a profound knowledge of each other's needs, both partners need more than the simple empathy to put themselves in each other's shoes.     They need the mental ability of enough abstraction in their thinking, that they can evaluate and compare their own needs with those of the partner from the impartial perspective of a third person.    They also need the ability to communicate profoundly and they need the motivation to spend as much time as it needs in the process of creating the commitment governance.    

213. Domination or Commitment Governance - 1

Domination or Commitment Governance - 1

I have been writing a lot about dominance.   But not all acting on behalf of another person is domination, so I better define the meaning of domination:

1.  The dominator is ignorant of the needs and wishes of the dominee. 
1.1.  His ignorance is a consequence of selfishness, indifference, disregard and lack of consideration.
1.2.  His ignorance is a consequence of disrespect and depreciation.   He firmly believes in his assumptions, prejudices and projections and he cannot be corrected.
2.  The dominee is under the power of the dominator and has no influence on how she is treated.
2.1.  The dominator coerces, threatens and intimidates the dominee to get his will against her resistance.    The dominator uses situational power (entry 212), whenever he has it.
2.2.  The dominee has no choice but to submit without resistance, because she is aware, that otherwise the dominator will inflict some disaster upon her.


For a couple of egalitarians their consent about their shared commitment governance (entry 185) is a method to prevent domination.  
1.  In commitment governance, each partner knows exactly the needs and wishes of the partner.   Both partners communicate, until they both have that knowledge.
2.  Whatever one partner does on behalf of the couple, he first checks, if his action or decision is in accordance with the partner's needs and wishes and in the very least is in no way harmful. 
3.  They both feel bound by the commitment governance and never use situational or other power.   

Example:
One partner takes all the initiatives to suggest and organize Sunday activities.  
This is inside the framework of commitment governance, when and if the other partner is content and agrees with the arrangements and would have chosen similar activities.  It can be a form of the division of labor between people with different skills and interests.   
But it is domination, when and if only one partner decides, what he wants to do on Sundays and coerces the other to participate in activities, that she does not like.