698. A Weird Man

698.  A Weird Man

Recently on a matchmaking site I got contacted by a man, who liked my profile.  As far as there was information in his profile, it also seemed to fit my own criteria.   He had indicated to be divorced.  

At first I was pleased.

But then he admitted, that after being separated for two years, he and his wife were still living in separate buildings but on the same jointly owned property.   In spite of the incorrect indication in his profile, he pretended or believed to be sufficiently honest by telling me this.   
  
I am not that much of an idiot to ever get involved with a married man.   

But I was curious to find out, if there was a chance, that he could be free soon.   In spite of his initial lie to be divorced, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and started to ask questions.

First he admitted, that they were attempting to sell the property and that he was postponing the divorce until after the property would be sold.  He claimed to follow the advice of a lawyer.   Yet he was not bothered to understand the legal problems.   (Sometimes lawyers advice, what brings them the highest fees, not what is best for their clients.)

He claimed that due to some outdated law in France he were forced to remain in his situation, which he presented as unchangeable, as if there were no alternative.  
This made no sense to me.  Why would owning property oblige the owner to live in it?  

When questioned further, he admitted to be at the mercy of his wife, in whose name the property was registered, while he had put his money into it.
At this point, his refusal of an immediate divorce may have made sense, but only in the case of hostility and of a legal fight between them.   

But after more questions I found out, that there was no battle, but that the wife had already agreed to pay a fair share after the selling, and that he trusted her to do so.  

Thus, even if he could not afford to live somewhere else until he had his money, there was certainly not the least logical reason for him to remain married.  As long as he was willing to remain alone, it made not much difference, because there are no implications upon anybody else except the still married couple. 
But in accordance with his wish to find someone else, he needs a speedy divorce.  A man, who has the option to get divorced, but refuses to do so under whatever pretenses and excuses has no moral right to approach single women.  

He believes himself to be an honest and decent person, but he behaves as inconsiderate and irresponsible as a jerk.   He not only contacts women under the false pretense to be single, but he intends to remain a married man for an undefined and unpredictable time. 
Selling property needs two parties.  Waiting until not only there is a buyer, but even one, whose offer is accepted by his wife, can cause him to remain a married man for a long time.   

But it gets even weirder.   When I pointed out to him his rational option to get a divorce as soon as possible, if he would choose so, he was not able to give any rational reason against doing it.  Nevertheless he did not accept, that a profile and contacting women on a dating site imply a moral obligation to get divorced.  Instead he claimed to not feel married anymore, expecting this to make him as available as a free man, as if this would entitle him to be considered as such.
 
He defined his persistent legal marriage as merely a piece of paper.   

I can fully agree with this definition of a legal marriage only as a very logical reason to omit legal marriage as obsolete and unnecessary.  Given sufficient emotional and cognitive commitment, a legal certificate cannot make it more binding than it already is.  

By getting legally married, people succumb to the acceptance of legally binding mutual obligations, by which they are henceforward bound, no matter if they like this or not.   Those who do get legally married do this, because at least at that moment they have subjectively sufficient reasons to accept being thus bound.    

Once accepted by signature, the ties and obligations of a legal marriage continue to exist, no matter how much or how little someone like this guy feels married and attached.  Only divorce or death can end the ties, which are henceforward no more at the disposition of an individual's choice.  

  
For any rational person, this guy is a married man, who refuses the get divorced.  Mistaking not feeling married anymore as being as free and single is a very weird and hazardous form of denial.
No matter this denial, as long as he remains married, his wife is like a time bomb, who could get into circumstances forcing him back to her at any time.  
Marriage laws may differ slightly between European countries, but in essence, wife and husband are obliged to take care of each other in any situation of need.   Assuming the age of that guy's wife to be probably at least near sixty, she could become helpless and dependent at any moment, no matter if by accident, sickness or mental states like dementia. 
As long as there is a husband, he is the one who is legally obliged to take care of her, not any welfare or social services.   Nobody would let him of that hook, just because his claim to not feel married anymore.  

This man's denial of such legal entanglements makes him a fool.  Some people are hazards not by being malicious but by being too foolish to understand the implication of their behavior and their denial.  

697. Desensitization: Abuse As A Christmas Gift

697.  Desensitization:  Abuse As A Christmas Gift

I just came across another scary example of how far the desensitization to the objectification of women has gone, not only by those men, who profit themselves from the abuse.  

One dating-site has sent me the link to a short video.   

First scene:  A man, obviously lonely on Christmas.

Second scene:   The door bell rings and from a delivered box emerges a woman, provocatively dressed in not much more than a reduced Santa costume.   The woman immediately makes physical advances to the man.

Third scene:  The door bell rings again, and a second women is delivered, the man is now handled by one woman on each side.

Forth scene:  The door bell rings again....

At that moment I was too disgusted to watch the rest.   

 

Sending a bunch of prostitutes to be abused is suggested as a Christmas gift.  

As an atheist, Christmas means nothing to me, I have no reason to celebrate the birthday of someone, who either never existed or if he existed was an insignificant person.   To me personally, abuse of women as mere toilets for men's body waste is not any more objectionable on Christmas than it is at any other time.  

But for the Christians, for whom Christmas does have a meaning, people are supposed to form emotionally attached monogamous couple and abuse in any form is considered a sin.  
According to the Christian myth, a child was born by an alleged virgin.   The video suggests to celebrate this event by abusing a bunch of prostitutes.


The message of the video is the culmination of how far abuse has become socially accepted by some part of the population.   The sender of the link has an unequivocally female name.  
This is really disheartening.   Not only men are desensitized to what abuse does to women.  Even many women are desensitized to the long-term detrimental effects of the self-abuse of women. 

The video is meant to be humorous.  Humor trivializes its topics.  Therefore most decent people limit jokes to topics, which do not trivialize outrageous and shocking events like the holocaust or shooting at schools.   Yet people are so desensitized, that the abuse of women is not perceived as a serious outrage, but as something suitable to be trivialized by jokes.  This trivialization reinforces the desensitization.

696. Detrimental Longterm Effects Of Childhood TV Exposure

696.  Detrimental Longterm Effects Of Childhood TV Exposure

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131122084541.htm

"preschoolers who have a TV in their bedroom and are exposed to more background TV have a weaker understanding of other people's beliefs and desires."

"This study shows that TV exposure may impair children's theory of mind development, and this impairment may be partly responsible for disruptive social behaviors."

""When children achieve a theory of mind, they have reached a very important milestone in their social and cognitive development," said lead researcher Nathanson. "Children with more developed theories of mind are better able to participate in social relationships. These children can engage in more sensitive, cooperative interactions with other children and are less likely to resort to aggression as a means of achieving goals.""

People with empathy and a good theory of mind consider the consequences of their behavior upon others.   When men ruthlessly abuse female bodies as toilets for their body waste without any own need for emotional attachment and without any awareness for the degraded women's such needs, this indicates a deficient theory of mind and a state of serious desensitization.  

There have always been such abusers, but they harmed women in defiance to a generally accepted social norm of monogamous attachment.  Sartre and Camus are examples (entry 686).   This then happened inside some subcultures, but before the impact of media upon all young people's minds, abuse did not become a part of the social norm.  

The so called sexual revolution changed the social norm towards the nearly ubiquitous acceptance of abuse as men's alleged natural right and towards the tragic myth of the alleged benefits of self-abuse for the victimized women.

Reading the study quoted above, I can see, why this change of the social norm first happened in the sixties in the USA and only with a delay in other countries.   The first generation of people, who had grown up with TV from an early age on, were also the first generation of people, who were seriously desensitized and distorted in their theory of mind.   In other countries, as in Germany, the same effect came with a delay, which was the delay until the local ubiquity of TV.
An entire generation had lost the ability to fully comprehend the tragedy of the abuse for the victims.   When an entire generation of men had been desensitized to copulate like alley dogs, this sufficed to change the social norm.  Since then the impact of TV has even grown stronger, because as a compensation for the desensitization, the material has become even more drastic and more explicit and more available to choose from.   Therefore it has only been getting worse.    

I grew up as a child without TV, I grew up in the tranquility of not being prematurely disturbed by any detrimental exposure to what has its appropriate place only in the privacy of adults' bedrooms.  I was lucky not to be desensitized concerning my dignity as a female human being, having never lost the full awareness for the monstrosity of the socially accepted abuse.  

Instead I got allergic, The more men are desensitized, the more often women are exposed to the obnoxious impertinence of intended and proposed abuse.   Too frequent exposure to what is noxious can cause allergies, not only by physically noxious substances, but also by emotionally noxious proposals.   

695. Changing Women's Plight Depends Upon The Insights And Good Will Of Men Like Jackson Katz

695.  Changing Women's Plight Depends Upon The Insights And Good Will Of Men Like Jackson Katz

I have been accused of hating men, because I have been writing so much about my loathing and abhorring abuse, degradation, depreciation and objectification of women.   

But I would not invest so much effort in my quest to find a mindmate, were I not fully aware, that there are exceptional men, who do at least abstain from if not actively oppose abuse and who respect women.   They are rare, but they are qualified to be significant male role models for desirable attitudes and behaviors.   

These men need to be heard and they deserve praise and admiration.  One of them is Jackson Katz, all my kudos to him and to this talk of his:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue.html

He also made a documentary criticizing what I as a woman perceive as scary and repulsive in the worst kind of men.   Being a man himself, he cannot so easily be disqualified as an alleged man hater as women are so often. 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/tough-guise/