689. The United Nations Condemn Abuse - If Only They Had More Influence To Improve Women's Plight

689.   The United Nations Condemn Abuse - If Only They Had More Influence To Improve Women's Plight

1949 could have been a year of historical significance for women, because of the United Nations' Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others:

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

The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others is a resolution of the UN General Assembly. The preamble states:

"Whereas prostitution and the accompanying evil of the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and endanger the welfare of the individual, the family and the community"

It was approved by the General Assembly on 2 December 1949[2] and came into effect on 25 July 1951.

"The Convention requires state signatories to punish any person who "procures, entices or leads away, for purposes of prostitution, another person, even with the consent of that person", "exploits the prostitution of another person, even with the consent of that person", run brothels or rent accommodations for prostitution purposes. It also prescribes procedures for combating international traffic for the purpose of prostitution, including extradition of offenders."

Unfortunately, very little if any improvement of women's plight followed, instead the so called sexual revolution and pseudo-liberation brought out the worst in even more men.  If anything has changed, it was a shift away from direct violence towards an increase of paid abuse and of insults by predators mistaking all women suitable to be pursued as prey.   

Genghis Khan would not get away today with his habitual raping, but a recent US president non-violently abused a dependent person without any damaging consequences for himself.   His wife lacked the dignity and backbone to divorce him.  Thus she contributed to the unfortunate trivialization of such abuse.  

Only the methods of abuse have softened, but not the male attitude of feeling entitled to abuse.


The following pages contain a map and a list of all countries, which have ratified or signed the convention:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Persontrafficconvention.png
http://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=IND&mtdsg_no=VII-11-a&chapter=7&lang=en

Interestingly and sadly enough, many rich western countries including Germany, USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia have not.

I am ignorant of the reasons, and could not find them by googling. 

 

So I can only speculate.  I suspect the majority of those politicians with the power to prevent or accept such a convention to be themselves avid and ruthless abusers of female bodies.  
Whenever they experience an urge, they feel entitled to have easy access to an objectified female body without any necessity of being further bothered after the completion of the abuse.  They experience paying for the abuse of prostitutes as the least problematic way to reach their goal.   Being rich and powerful, they can afford it.    

Paying is the least risky method in any society, where this form of abuse is tolerated by nearly all men.  These politicians have reputations and the thereupon depending positions of power and income to loose by any too drastic use of manipulation, deceit or violence.  

But by facilitating and not obstructing abuse these politicians are also guided by what they at least believe to be the best interest of their male voters.   Such voters are those men, who have been damaged and desensitized by the oversexation of society to objectify women, because attachment and long-term bonding are beyond their mental abilities.  

These politicians get double benefits from perpetuating and facilitating the abuse of women.  The can allow abuse to themselves without consequences and they can buy male votes.  Thus male voters and male politicians reinforce each other.  Unfortunately many foolish women also vote for abuse-enhancing politicians without being aware, how they empower their own worst enemies.  

685. An Important Recognition Of A Real Problem But An Unjustified Restriction Of The Focus

685.  An Important Recognition Of A Real Problem But An Unjustified Restriction Of The Focus

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130925132333.htm

"Commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of minors are serious problems in the United States with long-term adverse consequences for children and society as a whole, and federal agencies should work with state and local partners to raise awareness of these issues and train professionals who work with youths to recognize and assist those who are victimized or at risk, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.Minors who are prostituted or sexually exploited in other ways should be treated as victims rather than arrested and prosecuted as criminals, as they currently are in most states, the report says."

"Despite the hard work of prosecutors and law enforcement in many jurisdictions, individuals who sexually exploit children and adolescents largely escape accountability, the report says. All jurisdictions should review and strengthen laws that hold exploiters, traffickers, and solicitors accountable for their role. These laws should include a particular emphasis on deterring demand, both through prevention efforts and penalties for those who solicit sex with minors."

This is a tiny but important step in the right direction towards the full recognition of the damage done by all sexual abuse.   But it is an outrage to restrict the focus only upon children.   This implicitly conveys and enhances the dangerous attitude, that for women abuse were less harmful.  
Only the physiological difference between children and women is real.  Women are biologically suited for sexuality, while children are not yet.   Notwithstanding it is a disastrous fallacy to conclude, that a mere biological option were sufficient as a justification for the objectification of women.   This is the same as the fallacy of using the option, that a human body is eatable as the justification for practicing cannibalism.   A possibility due to a trait or an attribute does not constitute a fate, a destiny or a purpose.  

Abuse hurts, causes suffering, harm and longterm psychological damage, no matter the age of the victim. Due to the physiological differences, it is easy to acknowledge all sexual activities between adults and children as abuse.   But it is much more difficult, especially for men, to really distinguish between a woman's true and free choice and self-abuse.   Unfortunately, many men have a very blurred notion of the difference between a true personally beneficial choice and a mere apparent and alleged choice for what is hidden self-abuse.   There is a fundamental difference between a woman's choice for physical intimacy as a part of committed companionship and the self-abuse of those women, who are under the pressure of circumstances and/or already pre-damaged.     

A woman's participation in self-abuse does not make a man's taking advantage thereof less cruel and less abusive.   It is obvious, at least to decent men, that rape is an immediate trauma for the victim.   But the self-abuse of prostitutes is more like those behaviors, of which the detrimental effects are only accumulative and long-term and not immediately visible.  
Someone, who provides an addictive drug to someone else may only notice the immediate improved wellbeing and may even be reinforced by gratitude.  The long-term damage of many such events is not obvious, even though it can be known.  
The client of a prostitute also only notices the appreciation of the woman having earned needed money.  The long-term damage of her repeated self-abuse is not obvious to the client, who is in denial of being an abuser.   

Abuse is abuse, and self-abuse for hidden reasons does not justify abuse.         

Women need as much protection as do minors.   Men's superior physical strength and frequent social and financial power makes them as much a threat to women as to children, whenever men choose to abuse.

All abuse should be punished and prevented independent of the victim's age.  

676. The Effects Of Attire - A Rational Woman's Subjective Perspective

676.  The Effects Of Attire - A Rational Woman's Subjective Perspective

Whatever people do to their exterior in the realm of attire and body modification, it has effects upon others' perception.  

In the following, the person choosing an attire is the source, the perceiving observer is the target of these effects.   

First some general thoughts:

These effects can

• convey information or clues suggesting and enabling surmises about the sources' invisible attributes.
• trigger or influence the targets' behaviors.  

The effects upon the targets depend upon

• the power of instinctivity leading to spontaneous and automatic reactions
• rationality and awareness controlling and impeding instinctive reactions.

Effects by the source are

• rationally intentional and successful in agreement with the target
• rationally intentional and successfully manipulating the target
• rationally intentional and not successful, when recognized and avoided by the target
• rationally intentional and counterproductive, when recognized and counteracted by the target
• unintentionally collateral and irrelevant.
• unavoidably collateral and counterproductive
• instinct driven, unaware and counterproductive.

The significance of these effects depends upon the subjective identity of the source:

• Strong instincitivity leads to an identity of predominantly being a body and this implies the expectation of benefits from effects upon another body. 
• A predominant rationality leads to identify with invisible traits of the brain.  By such an identity, benefits are expected by verbal communication and behavior. 

How to rationally deal with the effects of attire:

• As a target, it is of paramount importance to always attempt to evaluate and interpret the intention behind people's attire and to always strive for the full awareness of the own spontaneous, instinctive and irrational reactions.  
  Based upon this, a rational target can react independently to perceived effects and avoid being influenced to the own disadvantage. 
  
• As a source, costs and benefits of the effects of the chosen attire have to be carefully evaluated and compared. 
  Costs can be financial, invested time, endured pain, discomfort and social disadvantages.
  Most benefits to be gained by the effects of attire are only substitutes for what can be also gained by verbal communication and by intentional active behavior.   
  Rationally, benefits from attire and body modification are not worth the cost.

Subjectively:

As a rational woman with an identity based upon invisible traits of my brain and not upon traits of my body, the following is my personal attitude towards attire and body modification.

• As a target, I use other people's attire as a source of information.   This helps to know, whom to esteem, whom to avoid altogether, when possible, and how to avoid being influenced by the intention of the attire.    It is important to make conscious rational decision and to avoid spontaneous reactions.  
  
• As a source, I consider my attire not as an instrument to intend any positive effects.  Nothing of what could maybe be gained by external effects of attire is rationally justifiable. 
  But I have always attempted to actively avoid the undignified effect of triggering the abusive instincts of male animals.  It was futile.  Even though I always was a bit more covered than most other women, hoping to divert the animals to them was in vain.   Sadly enough, my experience at a younger age was, that short of wearing a tent, nothing helped to spare me being approached for the intention to abuse my body.  

Some examples of information important for a woman when evaluating a man.

• Occupation
  Some jobs and hobbies require protective and hygienic attire for practical reasons.   It is important to distinguish necessary attire from attire chosen for effects.
  
  
• General conformity
  Following fashions or limiting the scope of selectable attire according to what is considered as social rules and normative dress code is a form of petty submissiveness.  Examples are men, who hate to shave but continue to do so every day and men, who deny themselves the comfort of wearing sandals or who are bothered about avoiding specific colors of socks along with the sandals.    They are pathetic and ridiculous.
  Such men have a scaring effect upon me.  They can be a jeopardy to a woman, when by the same submission to conformity they also do hurtful things to her.
  
  
• Physical masculinity
  Intentional masculinity, which is expressed for example by investing a lot of time and effort into extensive work-outs for the purpose of muscle-build-up, includes a favorable attitude towards aggressiveness and an inclination to fighting and to competing for a high rank and a position of power and domination.
  Such a man is a high risk, not only because his strength allows him to physically force his will upon a woman, but also by the positive attitude to collateral effects of masculinity as is the objectification of and domination over women.  This effect scares me.
  
  
• Group conformity
  Some men enhance their own subjective masculinity by adhering to groups, which have traditionally cultivated a form of masculinity, which included abuse and degradation of women as a part of the conformity to the group.   They express the adherence to such groups by their attire and body modifications. 
  Outfit and tattoos of motorcycle rockers, street gangs, military and sailors are examples, where the effect of identifying someone as a group member is also recognizing him as a hazard to women.
  
  
• Manipulation
  Any men dealing with large amounts of money, for example insurance agents, bankers or dealers of luxury goods, who want to pursue their own pecuniary advantage by appearing as honest as they are not, choose the crooks' uniform.   Its effects are their method of enhancing the success of their manipulation.   
  Their attire is an expensive looking suit, a tie, a clean shaven face and a neat haircut.   Their trick is creating the false impression, that this intentionally over correct attire lures people to make the mistake to expect correct behavior. 
  Upon myself, the effect is the contrary.  I am so aware of this manipulative strategy, that I never trust a man in a suit and a tie and with a clean shaven face.
     
• Attitude based group membership
  Members and role bearers of religious, woo-woo and political groups of any kind use their attire to signal their group membership.    This has the effect that I can avoid those men, from whom I am separated by a mental abyss. 
   
  

Independence and intellectual identity
 

Wise, rational and decent, non-manipulate people do not make sacrifices of time, money or comfort for the purpose of exterior effects.  They consider and experience external vanity as foolish and irrational.  Their attire serves only their subjective comfort and wellbeing.   They do not attempt to influence others by superficial and manipulative effects, they use verbal communication and correct behavior instead. 

A man wearing cheap sneakers, jeans, t-shirts and a beard due to not being bothered to shave every day expresses by this his rational identity.  (To avoid misunderstandings:  This does not imply neglect.  Comfort does not preclude the attire to be clean and not tattered.)

Depending upon what else I know about his invisible traits and attributes, such a man can have an attracting effect upon me, and he is also a good candidate for becoming trustworthy as a kindred mind.

671. Research On Predators' Brains

671.   Research On Predators' Brains

There is a wide variety of men when judging them by the harm, which they inflict on women.  

Nice, responsible, considerate guys know how to treat a woman without hurting her.   They feel an own innate wish for bonding, for monogamy, for a close and committed relationship with a woman perceived as a person.  

Predators, jerks, abusers are instinct driven alley dogs, who make women's life miserable by mistaking their bodies as toilets for male body waste.  

Both varieties exist and of course there are mixed forms between these extremes.   Explaining the difference includes defining the baseline.

 

1.  One possible way to interpret this distinction is to see the abuse of women as the direct and logical effect of unconstrained male libido.   What enables some men to be nice and decent is their special talent or gift to appreciate and respect women to an extent, which suffices to deactivate all destructive and excessive impacts of their libido.   Their recognition and perception of women as companions is an achievement based upon this special aptitude, which may be an expression of emotional intelligence or even an independent cognitive ability.    It is something, which is lacking in animals and in abusers.

2.  The alternative interpretation is defining drastic behavioral urges as a disorder and call it hypersexuality, which is supposed to be an addiction.   This interpretation and definition omits and overlooks to take into any account the impact upon the abused victims.   Their suffering is condoned and misinterpreted as normal, as merely collateral damage.   Hypersexuality is only considered as problematic, when there are unintended and not wished for consequences for the abusers themselves.

I consider the first explanation as more plausible, because the human species is still evolving further towards the development of predominant cognitive talents and abilities.   This ongoing evolution of the unique qualities of the human brain to be more rational than driven by instinctive urges strengthens the ability to make wise decisions, which can override the power of animal instincts.  

 

There has been done a study on abusers' brains.

Sexual desire, not hypersexuality, is related to neurophysiological responses elicited by sexual images.
Vaughn R. Steele, PhD, Cameron Staley, PhD, Timothy Fong, MD and Nicole Prause, PhD.  

http://www.socioaffectiveneuroscipsychol.net/index.php/snp/article/view/20770/28995
 

"Background: Modulation of sexual desires is, in some cases, necessary to avoid inappropriate or illegal sexual behavior (downregulation of sexual desire) or to engage with a romantic partner (upregulation of sexual desire). Some have suggested that those who have difficulty downregulating their sexual desires be diagnosed as having a sexual ‘addiction’. This diagnosis is thought to be associated with sexual urges that feel out of control, high-frequency sexual behavior, consequences due to those behaviors, and poor ability to reduce those behaviors. However, such symptoms also may be better understood as a non-pathological variation of high sexual desire. Hypersexuals are thought to be relatively sexual reward sensitized, but also to have high exposure to visual sexual stimuli. Thus, the direction of neural responsivity to sexual stimuli expected was unclear. If these individuals exhibit habituation, their P300 amplitude to sexual stimuli should be diminished; if they merely have high sexual desire, their P300 amplitude to sexual stimuli should be increased. Neural responsivity to sexual stimuli in a sample of hypersexuals could differentiate these two competing explanations of symptoms."

Methods: Fifty-two (13 female) individuals who self-identified as having problems regulating their viewing of visual sexual stimuli viewed emotional (pleasant sexual, pleasant-non-sexual, neutral, and unpleasant) photographs while electroencephalography was collected.

Results: Larger P300 amplitude differences to pleasant sexual stimuli, relative to neutral stimuli, was negatively related to measures of sexual desire, but not related to measures of hypersexuality.

Conclusion: Implications for understanding hypersexuality as high desire, rather than disordered, are discussed. "

"In conclusion, the first measures of neural reactivity to visual sexual and non-sexual stimuli in a sample reporting problems regulating their viewing of similar stimuli fail to provide support for models of pathological hypersexuality, as measured by questionnaires. Specifically, differences in the P300 window between sexual and neutral stimuli were predicted by sexual desire, but not by any (of three) measures of hypersexuality. If sexual desire most strongly predicts neural responses to sexual stimuli, management of sexual desire, without necessarily addressing some of the proposed concomitants of hypersexuality, might be an effective method for reducing distressing sexual feelings or behaviors."

The study backs up my notion, that male libido is by itself a problem causing harm to women.   Therefore it should be not only considered as problematic, when it has detrimental effects upon the men themselves, but whenever is causes degradation, commodification and objectification of women.   It should be considered already as a problem, while it still is restricted to men's deranged attitudes, before any harm is done to women.  

663. Rational Feminism And Female Demisexuality Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin

663.  Rational Feminism And Female Demisexuality Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin

Rational feminism and female demisexuality have the definition and recognition of women as being predominantly persons with a brain in common.   Interactions between the genders are determined by intelligence, personality, talents, skills and other cognitive, non-physical traits.    

Usually, female demisexuality comes first.  The perception and awareness of own needs, including avoidance needs, can be strong yet at the same time vague and unreflected.   

A demisexual woman experiences a strong emotional need for the dignity of being recognized as a cognitive person, before a man is considered as a potential match.   Her non-physical needs for appreciation and respect have priority.  Physical needs can only follow, when these needs are met.  

Not feeling attracted to mere bodies appears as natural, until women start to be the target of predators, who cause suffering, annoyance, fear and a constriction of liberty.   For demisexual women, the frequent male attempts to abuse them as toilets for male body waste are incomprehensible (until the sad truth is revealed by learning about evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology).  

As soon as women with self-esteem and self-respect start to think thoroughly about the initially vague feeling of outrage, rational feminism is the only logical conclusion.  

The cognitive identity is the core value of rational feminism, represented as appreciation and respect for the mind of women. This value rejects all forms of degradation, objectification and commodification as an indignation and as inappropriate.     When some women behave as brainless animals just as many men do, when they agree to copulate like dogs from the gutter, they do establish a form of low level equality.   But even if some people claim this to be a variety of feminism, it is certainly not rational feminism. 

On men's side, rational feminism is an attitude, on women's side it is also an emotional need to be treated by men in accordance with the attitude.  

Female demisexuality can lead to rational feminism, and rational feminism only suits those women, whose needs as demisexuals are congruent with this attitude.

660. Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles

660.  Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles


Gender roles are a subset of social norms.   Gender roles accentuate those differences between the genders, which represent instincts.  Gender roles prescribe behaviors caused by these instincts and which enhance the breeding success.   This is not restricted to those instincts leading directly to breeding, it includes also those instincts, which aim at long-term benefits for all future bearers of the own genes.

Gender roles sometimes override people's innate inclinations and cause them to damage their own best interests.  

I consider the dire burden of procreation on women's bodies as biological abuse.   I am aware, that this is a drastic point of view, which can trigger hostility by some people, even though it is a very rational way to look at it.   

Whenever a person has a tumor somewhere in the belly and has it removed by an operation, most people would agree, that this is an ordeal, that nobody in his or her right mind would choose, if there were an option.   
In the case, when it is not a tumor, but a parasite like a worm, the situation is still the same.   This attitude does not even depend on the weight of what is an unwanted growth to be removed.   

But as soon as the parasite is a fetus, which is either removed by a Cesarean session or expulsed by a very painful procedure, then all of a sudden this is not called an ordeal to be avoided, even though a child's birth weight and size is much higher than tumors and parasites usually are.    Instead of recognizing, that this is an atrocity for women, which in contrast to growing tumors can be avoided, many people of both genders have the delusion, that breeding is the purpose of the existence of women.    They are mislead to believe, that having a womb is the same as being meant to use it.  

When comparing the suffering and damage to the afflicted body alone, the distinction between a child at birth and a tumor of the same weight and size makes no sense at all. 



When animals copulate, they follow their instinctive urges without any cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences.    Female (non-human) mammals have no option to avoid the ordeal of giving birth and raising offspring, because they cannot foresee it.  

The instincts leading to human breeding behavior had evolved in the animal ancestors, long before cognition and especially the included ability for anticipation have started to evolve.    As long as the evolution of cognition was evolving as a merely serving tool enhancing the success of the dominant instinctive behaviors, cognition could evolve towards enabling the human brain to amazing progress without causing disruption.   
Only when this evolution reached a ceiling, the conscious experience of individual wellbeing started to bifurcate from the wellbeing experienced as the consequence of maintaining the homeostasis of those instinctive urges, which lead to the survival of the species.  

A slight mutation. a haphazard genetic combination, and the result were and are individuals, whose cognition is not under an instinctive power strong enough to determine the goals and objectives of these persons' behavior.   Either their cognition has advanced one step further or their instinctivity is too low to override their cognition.   
As women, they fully anticipate the unwanted long-term consequences of breeding and they refuse such self-harm.  As men they are considerate and responsible enough to feel morally obliged to refrain from harming women by making them pregnant.   


Those, whose breeding instinct is still stronger than their cognition, but who nevertheless can also anticipate the harm of breeding, experience some cognitive dissonance.   The subconscious urges of the instincts are experienced as strong but vague, on the conscious level they are converted into attitudes, which are congruent with the instincts.   When there are also disparate and incongruent cognitive needs, this causes cognitive dissonance.  This is often solved by the impact of two distinct social influences.   

• Religious belief systems of any content promise rewards for procreation and threaten with punishment for the refusal.    The delusion of a god's power to do so in the afterlife is one example.
  
• Gender roles add artificial and irrational alleged value to instinctive behaviors and those traits favoring such behaviors.   In entry 647 I declared the gender role of masculinity as an obsolete anachronism.   The gender role of femininity is of course just as obsolete.    

Gender roles accentuate all those traits and behaviors, which are based upon physical traits and not on intellectual achievements.     To fulfill and comply with the gender roles does not require any intelligence or education.    Gender roles appeal especially to those, who are deprived of any choice, because they have a suitable body for the gender role, but no brains for anything better.

All those interests, skills and achievements, which require intelligence, creativity, education and sometimes maturity, are gender neutral.    To be a mother by choice requires femininity, to be a warrior by choice requires masculinity.    But the dedication to science, art, literature, languages, technology and other intellectual pursuits is favored by a predisposition, which can be labeled psychological androgynity.  


By unfortunate logic, only breeders continue to contribute their high instinctivity to the gene pool.  The conscious non-breeders do not contribute their more advanced cognition, unless they breed by accident or otherwise against their own wish.   Therefore the evolution towards a more dominant cognition has not completely stopped, but it is very slow.   

Persons, whose psychological androgynity is strong enough to not be overridden by irrational beliefs and non-fitting gender roles, are therefore not only a minority, but they are also under the strong pressure to conform to a majority's expectations.   
In spite of the difficulties of this adversity, it is nevertheless much better to accept being a non-conforming outsider than to suffer from the self-inflicted harm, which follows conforming to what is not suitable for the own innate identity.  


Therefore those who are mavericks, loners and outsiders are this for very good and valid reasons and not at all due to lacking any desirable quality.   They are not the allegedly flawed misfits, as whom they are not only treated, but also pressed towards accepting themselves as such. 
Not all of them have the awareness and self-confidence to understand, that they are lucky to be free from a biological burden.   They are made to feel excluded, while in reality they are spared the breeders' self-destructive and harming inclinations.   Feeling excluded is a fallacy of those, who have themselves very good reasons to avoid to be included.                

645. The Implications Of Men Fighting Over Women

645.    The Implications Of Men Fighting Over Women 

I recently read an article, which while mainly about another topic mentions men fighting over women.  

"NC: I reported in my 1988 article, “Life Histories, Blood Revenge, and Warfare in a Tribal Population” (Science 239: 985-992) that unokais (men who had killed others) had 3 times the average number of children than same-age non-unokais and 2.5 times the average number of wives."

"I found the Yanomamö quite violent, without any outside provocation making them so, and that their violence revolved around competition for women. Specifically, there was chronic and sometimes violent competition to obtain nubile, young females."

"Now if a scientist studying yaks, bullfrogs, bats, deer, salamanders, or any non-human animal stated that they competed for opportunities to mate, no one in biology would have taken that to be anything other than an accurate observation. But if you say that about human beings, it becomes “lurid speculation.”"

Source: 

Savage Science: Excerpt of an Interview of Napoleon A. Chagnon
by Frank Miele, Senior Editor, Skeptic Magazine
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/13-03-06/


Being a woman, I perceive men, who fight over access to and control over women, as a hazard. 

A not partnered man experiencing sexual dishomeostasis often encounters obstacles between his instinctive urges and the access to a woman's body.    Depending upon circumstances, these obstacles are varieties of who controls this access.  Men's methods how to react to these obstacles depend not only upon the factual control, but also upon an individual man's attitude towards women.

1.   When women are controlled and owned by men.   

Under different social and historical circumstances, there are and have been many situations, where women are and were under the control of men, enforced by structural power and physical strength.   This control can be legal or illegal, the controlling men can be family members, religious gurus, autocratic leaders, owners of slaves, captors, abductors, kidnappers, who restrict the access to the women under their power.  
Access can only be obtained by fighting, payment or clever means of outwitting and overriding this control.    Any transfer of who controls a woman is between men, while the woman herself has no influence.

Depending on his general attitude towards women, a man's congruent behavior respects or denies the woman's own wishes to have control over herself. 

1.1.  A man freeing a respected women attempts to win her consent by creating emotional attachment and commitment and he disagrees with any man's usurped alleged right to control a woman.   History, fairy tales, fables and novels are full of such stories.  

1.2.  A man with the attitude of subjectively justified objectification and commodification acquires control over a woman as over the possession of a utility.    Having the delusion that acquiring control creates unlimited rights, he abuses women in disregard of their own wishes.   The victory of one man over the other determines, who will be the one imposing the abuse upon women, who themselves have no chance to avoid this..    

2.   When women have themselves the legal and/or factual control over their own body.  

In this situation, a rational man respecting and appreciating a woman as an equal partner with her own capacity to decide does not fight or compete with other men over her.    He recognizes that only the woman herself is entitled to deny or allow access to her body.   He knows that unless she needs to be freed from another man's illegal and unjustified control as in 1.1., every agreement for any interaction is strictly between him and her.   

As long as their behavior is correct and not breaking any preexisting freely chosen obligations, nobody else matters or has a right to interfere.   Even in the case of a cheating woman, she is herself responsible for the transgression.  The betrayed partner has a right to direct his consequences to her, but this does not justify to fight over her as if she were a stolen possession.

Fighting over women can have many forms.   While animals and some men fight by using physical violence, in modern societies men often compete by more subtle means.   But this still implies blatant disregard for women's ability to decide for themselves.
The story of the wager in entry 119 is a good example.    Even though in this event the woman apparently made her own choice, the circumstances were created by two men.  She was manipulated by them for the purpose of winning a wager.  

There is a very serious and dangerous fallacy in a man's thinking, if he competes and fights over a woman with another man, who has no factual legal or illegal control over her.   Such fighting implies a man's lack of respect and regard for the woman as a person.    

2.1.   Fighting over women implies a general justification of male control and dominance over women.    Instead of principally rejecting such control, men fight over who of them can have it.   

2.2.  Men fighting over a woman deprive her of the choice between all of them.   The loser usually is no more available to her.   Either the winner impedes the loser(s) to get near her, or they withdraw discouraged.   Even a winner, who has enough consideration to not attempt to control her, thus limits who other than he himself gets a chance to attempt winning her consent.  

2.3.  Men competing misrepresent themselves in their attempts to appear each better than the other.  This deprives her of a more realistic assessment of any of them, which would enable her rationally evaluate each of them compared with her needs.    Competing has the best result for those men with the most advanced skills as manipulators, bluffers and liars.  

2.4.  A man fighting over a woman often respects his rival more than he respects the woman.   In this case he fights mainly for the psychological benefits of winning against a valued opponent.  Winning is the main objective, the woman herself is not important.  

2.5.  Fighting means taking risks of being harmed and it means strain and effort.    Therefore the winner is inclined to feel entitled to his prize.   But winning the fight only removes another man as an obstacle, it does not automatically make the woman want him.
Some men are afflicted with the fallacy of wrongly assuming, that as the winners they are automatically attractive and wanted by the women.   

Thus they are prone to become a nuisance when not accepting the woman's rejection.
If such a man would realistically consider the probabilities of a woman's choice between consent and rejection, this would make fighting less attractive.  It would motivate him to attempt to win her directly instead and respect her choice.   

620. Strangers And Risk Avoidance

620.   Strangers And Risk Avoidance

It can be very difficult to find the right middle between avoiding risks and avoiding to hurt others by unfounded prejudices and racism.

Generally speaking, every first contact with a complete stranger is a risk.    It is often difficult or not possible to correctly predict a stranger's behavior.  
 

Herman Melville's novel 'Typee' is an excellent illustration of the problem.   In this story, two sailors are running away from the mistreatment by the captain of their ship.   The place is an island in the Pacific, where cannibalism was at that time some tribes' known practice. 
When starving, the heroes of the story had to decide, which path to take towards finding those natives, who would most probably help without having them for dinner.   The had only hearsay to rely upon concerning the location of those tribes considered to be the least ferocious.   
When the two sailors finally did meet some natives, there was no common language.   They were guided to the natives' village wondering what to expect, whether there they would eat or be eaten.  
Later they found out to have indeed met the one tribe, which they had been fearing the most, cannibals in the habit of sometimes eating the captives of tribal wars.   But the two sailors survived without being feasted upon.  
While the narrator of the story was puzzled, for what reasons they were spared, I could think of one possible explanation being the tribe's own definition of who belongs to the ingroup and who is outgroup.   Maybe only bellicose tribes were defined as outgroups, while their guests were enclosed into the ingroup set of behavior.  


Belonging to an ingroup is often a choice, being treated as outgroup is not a choice.

The real risk of being harmed by a stranger requires to be able to protect oneself by appropriate preventive behavior, which in turn requires to estimate the magnitude and kind of the risk.   
 

Much of today's inappropriate racism and prejudices have their origin in the times, when people living in small tribes and groups in areas of low population density were born into their ingroups.  Every person not belonging to the same community was automatically outgroup.   People mutually having no doubt about who else is ingroup were not prone to make mistakes in judging risks.   

Today in the complexity and globalization of modern societies, people often cannot know, if at all and how strongly they are considered as outgroup by strangers.    They cannot even know, if they are recognized correctly as members of any group or only confounded with members of any especially hated or loathed outgroup.    

Eating outgroup members is certainly an extreme, but when outgroup members are beaten, exploited, stolen from, insulted, socially excluded, ridiculed, abused as prey (entry 619) it is nevertheless caused by the same instinct.   

On that Pacific island, the probability of someone being a cannibal was certainly high only in those, who were visibly natives, while it could be assumed that the Europeans were no cannibals.   But considering them as cannibals because they were racially natives is a fallacy.   It just happened to be a correlation between the foe eating culture having developed, where only the natives were living, while the culture of not eating humans had been brought there by the Europeans.  This fallacy of mistaking a correlation with a genetic predisposition has contributed to deriving absurd assumptions from external traits like the color of the skin.   Such anachronistic fallacy has lead to the irrational, stupid and sick racism disturbing even modern civilized countries with mixed populations like the USA. 

There are two possible mistakes with very different consequences.   

Someone underestimating the risk from strangers just perishes and cannot hand on the knowledge.  Nor would his absence of gullibility to prejudice become prevalent in the gene pool.   Had the sailors in the story been eaten, nobody would ever have heard of to take it as a warning.    

Someone overestimating probabilities or only imagining non-existing ones, perpetuates irrational and unrealistic prejudices and racism.  
The guy, who kills or avoids the strangers, can never find out, if he did this for good reasons or not.    Had the sailors in the story had weapons and had they killed the natives and survived by eating their food, they may have well told later without any doubt to have killed cannibals to prevent being eaten.   They would never have felt to have murdered and robbed people. 

Lacking any knowledge about a stranger as an individual, estimates of these probabilities are based upon pre-concepts, previous experiences and knowledge or hearsay about the group, tribe and society, to which the stranger belongs.   These pre-concepts can be more or less valid or completely invalid.   All pre-concepts, which are not suitable to predict real risks based upon real attitudes and evident behaviors, are a fallacy.  

Both of the above mentioned mistakes impede the correction of the pre-concepts and perpetuate the fallacies.  

To predict a stranger's behavior requires a lot of estimating and guessing.

1.  The probability of specific attitudes leading to, enabling or facilitating specific behaviors.
2.  The probability of the stranger's having such specific attitudes.  
2.1.  The direct probability of specific attitudes being expressed and indicated by attires and body modification.  
2.2.  The two combined probabilities of the membership in a specific ingroup indicating the presence of specific attitudes and of specific attires and body modification indicating the membership in a specific ingroup.
3.  The probability to be considered as outgroup in contrast with an ingroup, to which the stranger is so much affiliated, that outgroup members are prone to be harmed.

Estimating and guessing the invisible is difficult in complex societies.

1. Subjectively felt affiliations with specific ingroups are often by choice.   Shared attitudes and other invisible attributes can cause strong subjective affiliations, which are hidden from and not noticeable for ignorant strangers.    The members of ingroups sometimes know how to recognize each other, while the indicators for this recognition are unknown to the outgroup members.   
Religions, political parties, social associations or sports teams are examples.    Easily defined traditional ingroups as are ethnicities, villages or neighborhoods are not always automatically experienced as ingroups.

2. The stronger someone identifies with an ingroup, the stronger he is prone to feel hostility towards outgroups.    To every ingroup, there can be more than one outgroup, who for a variety of reasons do not all elicit the same amount of hostility.    



The line between either a drastic misjudgment of probabilities towards being merely too cautious or the irrational, stupid and gullible belief in claims with zero probability is delicate and often blurred.   
 

Being aware, that every interaction with strangers is bearing a risk is by itself not a prejudice. 
The real problem is the correct estimation of the particular risk and what harm to prevent.     Not every caution is a fallacy, only because it is denounced as prejudice or racism by those being themselves the hazard.   Both previous behavior and expressed attitudes in favor of specific behaviors are indicators of real risks.   

Examples of alleged prejudices justified by the probability of a real risk:

1.  Most prisoners are in jail as a consequence of having harmed individual persons, therefore it is statistically probable, that someone just released from jail is not trustworthy.   Not wanting him as an employee or tenant is not a prejudice but a rational avoidance of a risk.    Those few, who are reformed and will not repeat criminal harm, have brought it upon themselves.   

2. Religious people are morally guided by rules established by their religion.    The more someone feels compelled to consider the guide book of his religion as absolutely imperative to his conduct, the more he feels a good person by following the book, no matter what the victims of his behavior experience or say.   

There are many muslim men on French dating sites and chats.   Rejecting them for being muslims frequently leads to the accusation of being either a racist or prejudiced.   Letting aside my general rejection of men with any religious belief, muslim men are especially hazardous to women, who want a monogamous man without sharing him with other women.  

The islam does of not only allow but prescribe unlimited promiscuity to men.   The koran explicitly allows a man four wives and an unlimited number of concubines.    What a non-islamic woman considers and defines as cheating and as a transgression, is therefore normal and morally correct behavior for a male muslim guided by the koran.   

In the possible case, that a muslim restricts himself to only one woman, this is in contradiction to his religion.  It can be due to a lack of either a wish or an opportunity, or it is only temporary, but it is not a moral attitude of feeling any obligation towards a woman to be monogamous.   

The egalitarian attitude, that a woman is equal to a man, and being a muslim, are mutually exclusive.  Any muslim's claim to treat a woman as an equal cannot be trusted, unless he leaves the entire abusive religion behind and becomes an atheist.    Therefore a woman rejecting muslim men is not prejudiced, but acting wisely based upon the awareness of a real risk.    By accepting to be muslims, men bring the rejection by monogamous women upon themselves.     

618. What Comes First: Attitude Or Behavior?

618.   What Comes First:  Attitude Or Behavior?

In entry 615 I already mentioned the fascinating web page http://www.manipulative-people.com and work of George Simon.   I spent some hours reading his description of persons who in his words are disturbed characters.  

My writing on this blog is focusing upon my subjective and female preference of what attitudes and behaviors make a man either attractive or repulsive.    While reading Simon's texts, it has become clear to me, that those men, whom I describe as jerks, are a subgroup of Simon's disturbed character.   Jerks are male disturbed characters, whose victims of their disturbed behavior are women.    What I call commodification, objectification, domination, entitlement delusion and more, I found it all mentioned by Simon, in different words and explained in better English.  

Only he has come to a different conclusion concerning what causes, maintains, enables and reinforces the character disturbances.  

"One of the central tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that there is an inextricable relationship between a person’s core beliefs, the attitudes those beliefs have engendered, and the ways the person’s attitudes prompt him or her to to behave in various situations."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2008/12/08/disturbed-characters-thinking/

I fully agree with this, because any discrepancy between core values (as I dislike the word belief), attitudes and behaviors causes unpleasant cognitive dissonance.   Getting aware of such a discrepancy motivates towards either changing the attitude or the behavior.   

If I have understood correctly, in Simon's view the attitudes and core beliefs come first and the behavior is the consequence thereof.  
Simon accepts the notion of the free will.   I have not found any explicit statement about this, but implicitly he seems to explain attitudes and core values as mainly or entirely acquired by education, socialization and external influences.  

From my point of view, which is derived from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the free will is a myth.   Behaviors are determined by the combination of the force of instinctivity, the avoidance of punishment and of dishomeostasis and the appetency of rewards and stimulation of the brain's pleasure center.   This is facilitated by the knowledge stored in the memory and anticipatory thinking.   

Subconscious instinctive urges are consciously experienced as the inclination towards specific behaviors.   Instinctive urges are mainly the animal instincts for procreation, sexuality, hierarchy, ingroup-outgroup, gregariousness.   

The cognitive and conscious attitudes follow as a justification when giving in to being driven by the urges, attitudes are formed to avoid cognitive dissonance.    These attitudes are influenced and modified by education and social norms either encouraging or repressing instinctive behavior.    

Attitudes and subsequent behaviors differ between individuals in the same society according to differing strength of their instinctivity and also between individuals with the same strength of instinctivity but living in different societies.  
The worst jerks and worst cases of Simon's male disturbed character are men with a high instinctivity, whose abuse of women is additionally enabled and reinforced in a permissive society.   

Accordingly I also disagree about how, if at all, disturbed characters can be changed:

"Changing some aspect of our behavior is always the first step toward having a change of heart. Just as our way of thinking influences our behavior, so our actions and the consequences that stem from them influence how we think about things, the attitudes we harbor, and the beliefs we hold about how to get along in life. Making meaningful changes in the way we typically do things is a prerequisite for changing the kind of person we are."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2012/04/02/disturbed-characters-can-they-change/

I doubt, that attitudes can be changed, as long as these attitudes are an expression of an implicit identity defined by the acceptance of animal instincts.     A change of attitudes would require the conscious choice of an identity derived from the preference for cognition as superior over instincts.    But before someone is able to consider instincts as obsolete and disturbing evolutionary ballast to be overridden in favor of not harming others, he has first to get aware and recognize, how much he is driven by instincts.  
As long as someone accepts himself as an instinct driven animal and thus allows himself his instinctive urges without experiencing cognitive dissonance, he will continue to behave as a disturbed character. 

609. Subtle Commodification

609.   Subtle Commodification

There are many forms of commodification, not all are drastic, some are very subtle.  

A while ago I contacted someone due to being attracted by his profile.   As a first impression, there seemed to exist a common intellectual basis and he had indicated to be seriously looking for a long term relationship.   
I was pleased, when I got a fast and apparently interested reply.   But my being pleased did not last long.  

That guy had just sprained his ankle so badly, that he was housebound for a week.   This made me cautious and suspicious.   When asked directly, he admitted that he started corresponding with me only as a distracting entertainment until he would be well again.   

I do not like this kind of playing games.    Had I not asked bluntly, I would have been led on during a week of building up false hopes followed to an unavoidable disappointment.  

Subtle and low scale commodification as was this nevertheless derives from the same attitude as do the more hurting and more drastic commodifications and objectifications.  

607. Pseudo-Chivalry

607.  Pseudo-Chivalry

Sometimes I am reading in men's profiles the slogan:  'Chivalry is not dead', followed by the emphasis of the guy on his habit of opening doors and helping women into the coat.   

I doubt, that they are aware of the real meaning of chivalry as an attitude towards women.  

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

"Chivalry, or the chivalric code, is the traditional code of conduct associated with the medieval institution of knighthood.  .....  Over time its meaning has been refined to emphasize more ideals such as knightly virtues, honour and courtly love,  "

"The Knight's Code of Chivalry was a moral system that stated all knights should protect others who can not protect themselves, such as widows, children, and elders. ..... Knights were required to .. always respect the honour of women. "

Chivalry is an attitude towards women, not just some superficial behaviors, It means respecting women as having dignity and honor, not as objects to be abused by ephemeral copulation but on the contrary as persons to be protected against being abused by promiscuous villains.  

Whenever a man attempts to manipulate a woman into bed without his having any intention to commit to her, his opening doors and helping into coats is only pseudo-chivalry and hypocrisy.   His pseudo-chivalry is nothing more than a disguise for his true being a jerk, and it is sad, how many women get taken in by this pretense.  

Chivalry and commodification or objectification are mutually exclusive.  

596. Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor

596.   Commodification And Learning By Feedback - The Spell Checker Metaphor


While people can often improve their relationships by feedback and constructive criticism, those men, who commodify women are unfortunately out of the reach of improvement by feedback. 

The spell checker metaphor:

Using a spell checker when writing a text in a foreign language helps to find mistakes and to learn better spelling.   Without the spell checker, the same mistakes are repeated and become a habit.   

A spell checker offers to its user the choice to change his spelling, whenever and if he agrees to do so.  Ignoring the errors indicated by the spell checker can have the unfavorable consequences of reactions to bad spelling.   

The benefits of using a spell checker as a learning aid are limited by preconditions.   It is only a valuable tool to improve the spelling competence, if it is reliable by only indicating real mistakes and by finding (nearly) all of them.  

1.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many false positives.   When the spell checker uses a wrong language on a text, this leads to so many false positives, that the real mistakes are lost between the many apparent mistakes.  

2.  Learning from a spell checker does not work, when there are too many mistakes.  
When someone's knowledge of a language is only minimal and below the threshold for writing correct text, too many mistakes are discouraging and beyond the capacity to memorize all the corrections. 

3.  Relying on a spell checker, which overlooks mistakes, is worse than not using one.  Whatever is not indicated as an error is wrongly assumed and reinforced as correct.   This leads to learning mistakes.  


Feedback as a behavior checker:

Being influenced (entry 594) by the feedback of the partner concerning the preferred behaviors and especially concerning what hurting, annoying and disturbing behaviors need to be avoided is an important method and part of the learning process for improving a relationship. 
The partner's feedback indicates inappropriate behaviors.  Accepting feedback can be seen as using a behavior checker.   Feedback offers the choice to change the behavior in the case of agreement with the necessity to do so.    Ignoring and rejecting proffered feedback can have the unfavorable consequences of strong reactions to the persistent criticized behaviors.

The benefits of feedback as a tool to improve a relationship are limited by preconditions.   Feedback is reliable, when it is welcome by the recipient as justified and when both partners agree, that and how the criticized behaviors need to be changed.   

1.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many false positives of unjustified and irrational criticisms.   When a commodifying man's entitlement delusion causes him to have absurd expectations and make inappropriate demands on a woman, which she refuses to comply and submit to, then his criticizing her for not serving his delusion is not justified.   Under an overwhelming pressure of his absurd and unwarranted blames and reproaches she has no chance to ever discover and consider those few instances of justified feedback.   

2.  Learning from feedback does not work, when there are too many justified reasons for criticism.   When a man has very many hurting, annoying and disturbing habits and attitudes, then getting too much justified feedback is more than what he can cope with.  This can happen, when someone is immature and ignorant, or when he is suddenly exposed to new expectations after having been considered as unfit for learning by feedback as in 3.

By the reaction of blocking and denial to overwhelming criticism he avoids any change.  But giving too much justified feedback is in such a situation not the woman's fault.    Her feeling hurt and annoyed is real and shifting the suffering upon her to spare him is not an improvement for them both as a couple, only a redistribution of the burden.   Her refraining from giving justified feedback is not a solution.  

Whenever there is a persistent conflict, because there is only the choice between him suffering from her feedback or her suffering from his behavior, they are a mismatch and not suitable for each other.    

3.  Not giving feedback reinforces habits, even though they are hurting or disturbing to others.   This happens, when someone gets the fool's or insane's license, not being taken for serious but instead considered as a weirdo and too deranged to change.  While he himself remains ignorant of his unfavorable reputation as a hopeless and incorrigible case, he believes to be respected and accepted.  He misinterprets the absence of feedback as if his behavior were experienced by others as correct and appropriate.  

4.  Learning by feedback does not work without agreement concerning the justification of the feedback.  
Making a relationship work requires a process of adapting to each other.   But not all people are suitable to reciprocally adapt.   When people's basic attitudes and values are too disparate, they cannot agree concerning which behaviors are acceptable and which are not and thus they also cannot agree, which feedback is justified.  They cannot adapt to each other, they are a mismatch and doomed to accumulate more and more unresolvable conflicts.  

5.  Feedback does not work, unless it is understood by the recipient as it was meant by the sender.   When feedback is incomprehensible or distorted by dysfunctional communication (entry 595), it does not help to learn and does not lead to improvements..  

The commodifying men's fallacy:

Spell checkers compare written text with an internal dictionary of correct words.  This dictionary represents the generally agreed upon correct spelling of a language.  Some spell checkers allow people to enter additional own words as correct into this dictionary.     Any fault entered as correct into the dictionary would no longer be found by the spell checker.  But entering faults is of course a completely irrational method of avoiding to notice the own errors by distorting the spell checker.

Yet the method applied by commodifying men, when handling women's feedback is as if someone would adjust the spell checker by feeding mistakes into the dictionary, until all the mistakes are hidden.   Text thus only appearing as if correct is then believed it to really be correct. 

But the dictionary of correct behaviors is in the woman's head, outside the commodifying man's control.  Feedback concerning his outrageous behavior and his absurd attitude towards women does not elicit the appropriate reaction of his correcting his behavior. Instead he believes the dictionary of correct behaviors in the woman's mind to be faulty.  He reacts with attempts to fix the woman, which for him means to make her modify her allegedly wrong feedback and the faulty concept of correct behaviors causing this feedback.   

Whenever by any method, threat, coercion, exhaustion or domination he succeeds to make her discontinue her feedback, he interprets this as having successfully fixed the woman.  

By this mechanism, men commodifying women are out to the reach of being influenced.    

595. Communication: The Importance Of The Correct Conveyance Of Information

595.   Communication:  The Importance Of The Correct Conveyance Of Information

Communication is a process of conveying non-obvious information from one brain into another.   Cooperation, agreement, consent require the availability of the same information to all parties involved.   

Whenever information does not reach the recipient (listener or reader) unaltered from how it was supplied by the sender (speaker or writer), the result is distorted communication and subsequent unsolved and unsolvable conflicts.  In this case, relationships are doomed by the accumulation of more and more unsolved conflicts.   

Communication works best, when the information sent is neither redundant nor insufficient but conveys just all, which is really needed based upon a realistic evaluation of the targeted recipient's knowledge.     
Communication is distorted, when the information contained in the sender's statements does not match the needs and expectations of the recipient.

The cause of distorted communication and incomprehension can be on both ends:

1. Information provided by the sender does not correctly reach the recipient.  

• The recipient fails to listen.
  
  • He believes to know already, what will be said, based upon his assumptions, prejudices, preconceptions and misinterpretations.   
  • He underestimates the sender and does not consider his statements as worth to listen to.
  • The topic does not interest the recipient, no matter how important it is to the sender.
• The recipient confounds, what is really said, with what he only imagines as said or has heard elsewhere.   This creates a false memory, by which the recipient believes to have heard, what in reality was never said.  
  
  
• The recipient receives only a selection of the information sent. 
  
  • He listens not for the purpose of receiving information, but for the purpose of finding something to contradict and to believe himself to be right.
  • He listens for the purpose to find a hidden agenda or hidden truth in the distrusted sender's statements.   The interpretation is believed and confounded with what is really said but lost.
  • He filters the conscious reception of information to avoid hearing, what would make him feel bad. 

2. The sender fails to communicate well.   Too much redundancy forfeits attention, in which case also important information is lost.  This has a similar effect as has insufficient information, it leads to incomprehension.  

• The sender can have a memory problem. 
  • He forgets, what he has already told and repeats it too often.
  • He confounds, what he only thought about and intended to say, with what he really had told.

• The sender overestimates his own importance and expects the recipient to have paid attention and to remember everything told just once.   

• The sender is generally unable to evaluate, what information is required to be understood.
  
  • He cannot distinguish between general information to be expected from the target recipient, and specific information only available to himself.
  • His statements are omitting some information replacing them with  implicit interpretations and conclusions, which are not comprehensible, unless the recipient shares some cognitive common ground of shared values and attitudes.   
  • He is influenced by hidden and invisible sensations and emotions and is not aware, that the recipient cannot mindread and does not share his state.  

3.  The sender conveys a specific level of informational content, which is suitable for preselected recipients only,   

• He fails to adjust the level of information correctly to the recipients.
  
  • He overestimates the recipients cognitive ability and knowledge, and this leads to incomprehension.   
  • He underestimates the recipient's comprehension and ability to remember, what was already told,  The redundancy bores the recipient.  Too banal and obvious information can appear as the assumption of lacking intelligence.   

• The recipient overestimates himself and chooses communication situations, where his incomprehension is unavoidable.   

Communication can only be constructive, when both partners are both able and motivated to make it thus.   

When the communication is distorted with dynamics like described above, then a couple can spend years together and never find out, who and how the other really is.  

Instead of getting to know each other better, they reciprocally create false alleged personalities of the other.  With every conflict and misunderstanding the false image gets more extremely distant from the misjudged person's reality.   Being treated as the alleged false personality can be very painful and the relationship is doomed.

593. Commodification And Trust

593.  Commodification And Trust

A correct assessment of trustworthiness is very important when interacting with others, especially when deciding on future interactions.    The better the assessment of trustworthiness, the better the prediction of behavior.  

Consciously paying attention to consistent, congruent and plausible behaviors is one method, but there is more:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120911113047.htm

"Certain nonverbal gestures trigger emotional reactions we're not consciously aware of, and these reactions are enormously important for understanding how interpersonal relationships develop,"

"Nexi is a humanoid social robot  ....  While conversing with the participants, Nexi -- operated remotely by researchers -- either expressed cues that were considered less than trustworthy or expressed similar, but non-trust-related cues. Confirming their theory, the team found that participants exposed to Nexi's untrustworthy cues intuited that Nexi was likely to cheat them and adjusted their financial decisions accordingly."

While too much trust bears the risk of being harmed, there cannot be any close relationship without or with insufficient trust.   

A close relationship is symmetrical between equal partners based upon mutual trust and reciprocal trustworthiness.  
Trust is based upon the expected trustworthiness as a trait, whenever somebody is considered to be a person and a human being.   Only persons are checked for being trustworthy, and clues as in the research for trustworthiness are only perceived and expected from persons (or robots imitating them).  

Commodification is asymmetrical between a user as a subject and a used utility as an object. Utilities are functional or dysfunctional and the prediction of their reliable functioning in the future is a question of probability and experience.  In the case of inanimate objects, this is logically not a question of trust and trustworthiness.  A utility like a vacuum cleaner is not asked, if it intents and is able to function the next day, followed by the assessment, if the answer is honest or a lie.  

Due to trust not being a relevant factor when using an inanimate utility, the commodification of women as if they were inanimate objects creates a distorted situation.  
The owner has full control over a utility.   When he puts the vacuum cleaner in a closet, he can expect to retrieve it in an unaltered state, whenever he wants.   He has no need to trust the vacuum cleaner to not leave the closet.
When a man has established control over a commodified woman, he expects to have once and for good ascertained her availability for being used at his convenience without this being a situation requiring to consider trust.


It the comparison with a vacuum cleaner appears a bit too drastic, here is another metaphor:   When a man commodifies a woman, she is for him, what a dairy cow is for a farmer.   

A farmer's dairy cow is valuable possession under his full control. 
The cow brings him lots of benefits, as long as she receives careful maintenance for her physical wellbeing.  He is aware that appropriate maintenance is in his own self-interest.  
The farmer learns, how to handle a cow, from instructors and books, by observing her for signs of dysfunction, by using trial and error and by consulting a veterinarian.
The farmer does not expect to get any information from the cow by asking her questions, nor does he bother about intellectual or emotional needs.  She is a body and he gets the benefits from her body.  
Trust or any personal traits do not contribute to his prediction concerning the amount of future benefits or the assessment of the cow's value.   


But a woman is not a utility, and in contrast to a vacuum cleaner or a dairy cow, external and physical control does not include control over her mind, having full control over her is only the controlling man's illusion.    Neglect, oblivion or denial of the importance of the woman's trustworthiness and personality does not annihilate their impact.   

Whenever the woman wants to trust, to be trusted, to find trustworthiness in a partner and recognition of her own trustworthiness, then being kept outside his protective defense of control dooms the relationship.     

Omitting any focus on or attention for the assessment of trustworthiness makes commodification even also risky for the man himself.   If he is unfortunate or stupid in whom he picks as a utility to be used, he does not get control as expected over a suitably helpless victim.   In the worst case for him, he gets commodifed in return, for example by a breeder, whose priority are her children and who only exploits him materially as a provider. 


Trust and control are mutually exclusive, while control is a behavioral consequence of or ingredient in commodification.    

This leads to distinguishable dynamics:  

• If a man lacks the ability to assess trustworthiness and gets harmed too often by trusting the wrong persons, resorting to the replacement of trust by control is his method of coping, the result is commodification.   
  It could be called secondary commodification, because it is a side effect of control as a coping mechanism.
  
• If a man is driven by instincts to perceive women principally as commodities, control is the method to establish the commodification.   In this case trusting and the perception for any information serving the assessment of trustworthiness are deactivated as not needed and they may have never been trained and developed. 
  This could be called primary commodification.  Control is used, because women do not opt to be commodified, as long as they have a choice for an alternative.  

This distinction is of no practical significance to the woman, who is helplessly under the control, until she removes herself. This distinction would only be important, if such a man ever attempted to overcome the commodification.   But as commodification means, that a man subjectively has the power to get the benefits he wants, unfortunately he lacks any motivation to end it.   

Trustworthiness as a human cognitive trait and trusting as a person's reactive attitude have both an impact upon behavior, even though they are ignored when replaced by control.   There are many more traits and attitudes having an important reciprocal impact upon the interaction between cognitive humans, but which are not expected from commodities, no matter if inanimate objects or animals. Their denial is as detrimental as is the denial of trust. Responsibility, consideration, empathy, caring, intellectual appreciation are just a few of a long list.  

591. Commodification And (Cyber-)Stalking

591.  Commodification And (Cyber-)Stalking

Commodification while the relationship lasts and stalking after its end are connected, because they are both caused by the same distorted attitude towards women.     

People are protected by the law against real life threats from real life stalking, cyberstalking without any physical danger is a more subtle, but nevertheless a form of abuse.  There are many other kinds of cyberstalking, the following concerns the variety based upon commodification.   

When egalitarian, mature, rational and responsible people discover to have become involved by mistake, due to not having enough in common or to having irresolvable conflicts, they communicate until they end the relationship by a shared decision.

When egalitarian, mature, rational and responsible people later suggest a reconciliation, they do this based upon the insight and motivation to offer a drastic change of their own behavior.  They do not approach the ex-partner with demands while they offer nothing.    In the case, that they cannot or do not accept to change their own behavior, they recognize the final failure of the relationship.   They have the consideration of ending all contact and allow the ex-partner to forget and to heal.


Men who commodify women are neither egalitarian, nor mature, nor responsible.  They are also not rational, else they would know, that relationships are doomed by their commodification. 
Commodification is based upon the asymmetrical attitude, even entitlement and grandiosity delusion, that women exists for nothing more except to serve men's needs, wishes and whims at their convenience.    

Commodifying men believe to have been born with a free flatrate for being served with unlimited benefits by women.    

This can lead to two patterns of disastrous dynamics.   

• Pattern 1.  Commodifying men hurt women so much by domination, disrespect, coercion, control, disregard, objectification, until they are devastated and run to save themselves.
• Pattern 2. Woman having enough self-esteem and self-confidence to resist enforced commodification get dumped and discarded as being flawed, defective and dysfunctional.   

In both pattern, men do not get, what they expect according to their entitlement delusion:  Utilities always serving their needs but not asking or expecting anything in return.   Nor do they elicit women's agreement with the men's delusion of being perfect, while anybody else is to be blamed for men's every dissatisfaction.  

Cyberstalkers are angry and frustrated men.   They reproach fate, life, a deity, cosmic power or any other vague entity for failing to give them, what they feel entitled to:  Complying and submitting women.   

• In the first pattern, they are angry for having lost a satisfying commodity.  They demand to be given back, what they consider as their rightful possession.     
• In the second pattern, they feel defrauded by having been given a dysfunctional commodity.   They feel entitled and demand not to get a discarded insufficient  possession back, but to get it first fixed, repaired and improved.       

Some cyberstalker write angry diatribes full of grudges, complaints and reproaches, claiming what they believe to be entitled to and declaring their outrage of either having lost it or of having been given only a deficient and dysfunctional substitute.    These diatribes are implicitly written to the entity, not to the woman.  They are angry with the entity, whom they consider as responsible for their frustration.   

When someone buys a faulty machine, he blames the shop keeper, not the machine in the case of a defect.   But there is no such entity, neither generally nor as someone owing them anything.   So there is nobody to which to address complaining diatribes.   Lacking any better valve for their anger, cyberstalkers misaddress and displace their diatribes to the incommodifiable women.    These cyberstalkers are like the legendary man, who was dissatisfied with his inability to use his computer, so in a burst of anger he shot a gun at it.      

This is not only a fallacy, it is completely irrational and leads nowhere.    Cyberstalkers waste their time and achieve nothing except making themselves repulsive and aversive.      At the moment of breaking up, the dumped or driven away commodified women may have moved on with still ambiguous feelings.  The annoying and obnoxious stalking behavior helps the process of killing, whatever positive feelings may have been left.  

Stalking has several effects upon the victims.

Emotional:

• Being reminded of what the victims want to forget slows their healing.  Poking into someone's emotional wounds for the purpose to delay healing is adding more cruelty to the previous abuse.   It adds repulsion to the estrangement.
• Being triggered to relive memories of the abuse during the relationship is painful.
• Post relationship harassments add to feelings of being ashamed for having been involved with an unworthy and deranged man.

Cognitive:

• Men confirm by cyberstalking their being good riddance and not valuable enough to yearn for.
• The repetition of grudges confirms their magnitude and puts emphasis upon those differences, which indicate a mismatch.   
• The vindictiveness of efforts to prevent the victims' healing clearly indicate the cyberstalkers' unworthiness.
• The irrationality of stalking without benefits not even for the stalkers themselves indicates the men's lacking of intelligence and/or sanity.  

Stalking is paradox.  Even if the cyberstalkers would really want the women back, their behavior nevertheless drives them only further away.   The cyberstalkers reassure women of their unworthiness by adding some more to their previous reasons for rejection.

585. Masculinity And Femininity As Identity Crutches

585.   Masculinity And Femininity As Identity Crutches

Masculinity and femininity are both identities based upon specific dispositions for needs and behaviors determined by virulent instincts.  The stronger the instincts, the more masculinity and femininity are pronounced.   The stronger masculinity and femininity, the more they bring out the worst in men and in women.  

Masculinity and femininity are consciously expressed as favorable attitudes towards specific instincts.

 

Masculinity is based upon a positive attitude towards more or less excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostation leading to the objectification of women, and towards the hierarchy and ingroup-outgroup instincts, leading to competition, fighting, domination, aggression.   All this often causes extreme suffering for the victims.
 

Femininity is based upon a positive attitude towards the more or less instinctive breeding urge.   This leads not only to their sacrificing their own wellbeing for the priority of breeding, but they burden the disadvantages of breeding also upon other people.    

Masculinity and femininity are complementary identities.    Masculine men abuse women's bodies as objects, feminine women displace their bonding needs to their offspring and do not offer bonding to a partner.   

Masculinity and femininity are the social norm.   

1. When their high instinctivity predisposes people to innately conform with the social norm, they are at ease with themselves and with their social surroundings.   For people with more cognition than instincts, they are a hazard.
   
2. There are also those other men and women, who are either equally instinct driven and controlled by cognition, or their cognition is even stronger than their instinctivity.    In this situation, their confidence makes a big difference.

• Strong, secure and independent thinkers with high self-esteem are not impressed by the pressure from a social norm, which does not fit their needs.   They reject masculinity and femininity in favor of a gender neutral rationality, they are only concerned about their genuine emotions and needs.    They too live in the congruence of their attitudes with their innate inclinations.
  
• But those also lacking confidence, who are insecure and have low self-esteem, are in a especially difficult situation.   They need an identity.  Theoretically they have two options, a cognitive or an instinctive identity, depending what influences their ideal self.
  
  • The more appropriate cognitive identity is hard to obtain, it requires learning, working on oneself, mental and intellectual efforts and resisting social pressure.  
    The false instinctive identity is much easier to obtain.  It just needs to refrain from any self-control or reasoning and to allow existing instincts to rule.  The rest is imitation of all the other instinct driven people and to fulfill the expectations of the social norm.   It is the choice of the least resistance.
    
  • Some people may even not feel any of the instincts, and nevertheless strife to fulfill the social norm, because it supplies them with a fake identity.  They may even relapse at the same time into some apparent cognitive behaviors and appear contradictory and inconsistent.
  
  Whatever the exact dynamics, masculinity and femininity are for these people no real identities, but identity crutches.