535. Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

535.   Commodification, Inappropriate Behavior And The Dynamics Of Escalation

I am using burping in the following thoughts as a prototypical inappropriate behavior.    It is a placeholder for many other similar behaviors, this is not specially about burping in particular. 

• Burping is generally considered as inappropriate behavior in most western societies, especially at the dinner table.
• Everybody with a minimum of culture, education and intelligence is aware of burping being considered as inappropriate.  Most people agree.
• People feel embarrassed, when they burp accidentally.  They are anxious to avoid it. 
• The magnitude of the embarrassment depends upon the subjective importance of the witnesses' good opinion.

Therefore the common reaction to be expected after any accidental burp is a more or less embarrassed apology.  How much someone feels embarrassed depends upon the subjective significance of the witness.   Burping is experienced as less embarrassing, when the other at the dinner table is a sibling than when it is the boss to be during the interview for an attractive job. 

 

Someone (unless this person is seriously retarded or disordered) burping freely and without any sign of the least embarrassment is thus sending a significant message concerning the attitude towards the witness.   This message tells, that the witness's opinion is insignificant, that the witness's perception and experience do not matter.   
 

For a woman in the context of searching for a mate, being thus burped at is a big red flag indicating the man's attitude of commodifying women.  
Nobody sane feels embarrassed, when the witness present during burping is only a utility like a vacuum cleaner.  When a man burps freely in the presence of a woman without feeling embarrassment, this is a very strong indication, that he does not really distinguish between a vacuum cleaner and a woman.   Both are commodities perceived as only existing to serve him without any significance as persons.   


When traditionally two persons have a date while knowing very little about each other and thus having few misguided expectations, a woman would probably notice the uninhibited burping as a sufficient reason to refrain from meeting again.   She may not consciously recognize the commodification due to not even be bothered about the reasons for his inappropriate behavior, which suffices by itself to recoil. 

But the situation is different with online contacts, when two persons meet personally only after a long phase of correspondence.   Nobody can burp by email.   When in this situation the woman experiences the man's uninhibited burping during dinner for the first time, this is to her not an unambiguous red flag.  Instead it conveys a message, which is very contradictory to her expectations.   

While the correspondence has triggered her to expect being appreciated and respected, the burping makes her experience the emotional effects of being commodified.   She feels disrespected by what appears to her as a lack of either manners, consideration or politeness.    
Her goal is being shown by his behavior as much of the alleged appreciation, as what she had deducted from his emails.   As long as her focus is upon his burping as if it were a mere bad habit and not on the more serious and significant message of not valuing her enough to feel embarrassed, she attempts to influence him by showing feedback.   

As long as she is oblivious of his underlying attitude of commodification as the true problem, she is mistaken to think that she can influence him to correct his behaviors.   She is mistaken to attempt to be supportive to a shared wish to improve the relationship, while the absence of sharing is a part of his attitude of commodification.   Her feedback is meant as support to enable him to directly improve his behavior as his contribution to his alleged shared goal to improve the relationship.  

Her feedback starts gently and subtly, but gets more and more drastic, whenever it elicits no reaction.   The lacking reaction magnifies her discomfort and suffering from experiencing her insignificance.   
The first hint may be just a frown, followed by a disgusted expression, the next step being a polite remark to please stop burping, repeated in less polite tones and words.   If this escalation continues without any improvement, it ends with her calling him a pig and a plebeian or whatever is the worst word she has in her vocabulary.  

 

But these dynamics are much more than the escalation of her becoming impolite and offensive in her language, it is also a shift of her attitude towards him.   She starts with the attempt to influence him towards solving the contradiction, as long as she still is considering him able to express as much appreciation by his behavior as she had expected as a result of interpreting his emails.  Her goal is the reciprocity of the expression of as much respect and appreciation as she has for him.   

When the escalation reaches the point of her calling him a pig and a plebeian, the contradiction has been resolved the opposite way.   Experiencing the persistent lack of respect in his behavior has caused her to also lose all her previous respect for him.   Her emotional counterpart to being commodified is loathing and detesting him as unworthy.   

Behavior based upon the attitude of commodification forfeits the victim's respect in many ways.  I used burping as an illustrative example.   There are similar escalations, when a man forces harm due to irrational behavior upon a woman and does not react to any rational discussion until she calls him an idiot, and when she cannot stop him from hurting her by transgressions until she calls him an a**e.    The kind of harm due to his behavior differs, when he drives her to consider him either a pig, or an idiot or an a**e.   The dynamics follow the same pattern.


Escalations due to not reacting to the feedback from someone mistaken for and mistreated as a commodity, whose opinion, experience and perception does not matter, destroy a relationship.   The one, who feels offended and blames the other for name calling, instead of asking himself, what he has done to provoke the escalation, is the one, who dooms the relationship.  

408. Embarrassment And Conformity

Embarrassment And Conformity

In entry 151 I narrated my experience, when someone was making a fool of himself without feeling embarrassed at all.   

Today I read about an interesting research about embarrassment:

"Subjects who were more easily embarrassed reported higher levels of monogamy, according to the study.

"Moderate levels of embarrassment are signs of virtue," said Matthew Feinberg"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110928180418.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fscience_society+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Science+%26+Society+News%29

   
But embarrassment is too vague a concept.   Its real complexity needs to be analyzed further, especially concerning the difference between conformists' and non-conformists' embarrassment.    Conformists are guided by the expectations of the surrounding social environment, while non-conformists are guided by their own values, attitudes and standards.    As they compare the actual behavior with different ideals, they logically also experience very different behaviors as either appropriate or a transgression.  

1. Embarrassment can be triggered either explicitly by behavior like bad manners or implicitly by an attitude, value or trait, that is hidden but can be revealed by observable behavior.   Sometimes observed behavior leads to the wrong appearance of embarrassing attitudes or traits, that are not real.   
2. Embarrassment can be a consequence of either not complying with the expectations of others or of acting in contradiction to the own standards and attitudes.    Both can be either congruent or mutually exclusive.    Conformists and non-conformists feel embarrassed for very different reasons.   
3. Conformists feel embarrassed when they appear to fail conforming.   Non-conformists feel embarrassed, when they are not correctly represented and perceived according to their own standards, they feel more embarrassed when they wrongly appear to conform than when they are perceived as behaving according to their own true standards and personality.  
4. Embarrassment can be either direct or indirect, it can be triggered either by the own behavior or by being in some personal connection with the misbehaving person.  
5. Embarrassment depends on the importance of the person witnessing the behavior.

A few examples.  

For a minimally cultured and sane person in western societies, burping is considered bad manners and a person burping accidentally feels embarrassed.    Basic manners are not a question of conformity.   In this case the expectations of others and the own standard of behavior are congruent.    A person burping without feeling embarrassed is considered as at least weird if not deviant.   

In our western societies, it is normal to eat using both hands.
There are cultures, where burping is considered as neutral or even good manners expressing appreciation of a meal. 
There are cultures, where only the right hand is suitable for eating, touching food with the left hand is considered bad behavior.     
Most western people would still feel inhibitions to burp, even as guests in a burping society they would still perceive this as embarrassing behavior.   

Would they be informed guests in the country with the left hand eating taboo, and they would forget themselves and accidentally use their left hand eating, they would not feel embarrassed by the blunder of using the left hand.   But they would feel embarrassed for the implicit rudeness of being inconsiderate.    
But the embarrassment of accidentally eating with the left hand as rude is restricted to the situation of being a guest with estimated people.   If instead eating with the left hand on a bench in the park, the strangers passing by are not important enough to feel embarrassed.

With attitudes, that are incongruent with the expectations of the majority, the situation is different.   For a non-believer in a christian society, there are variations of what triggers embarrassment.  
- The non-conforming self-confident atheist considers religion as stupidity and mental illness and reading religious books like the bible as a foolish waste of time.    As far as he is concerned about another person's judgement, he would feel embarrassed if seen with the bible in his hand, because he does not like to appear so stupid according to his own judgement, no matter what the other thinks about reading the bible.  
- The non-believer, who wants to conform, who has been brainwashed enough by his christian upbringing to feel deficient and flawed for his inability to believe, feels embarrassed, if he gets caught reading atheistic books.

In the hypothetical situation, that an atheist walks into a library to look for some quote in the bible, obviously the opinion of complete strangers should be irrelevant, even if they would mistake him for a christian.   A well known acquaintance is also not such a problem, because it is easy to correct a wrong impression by declaring the own atheism and reason for consulting a book as weird as the bible.   

Most embarrassing is the situation with those people, on whom one wishes to make a good impression.    Wanting to be respected by the librarian, who may be a fellow atheist, but being probably despised as an alleged christian would cause a lot of embarrassment.  

In a relationship the partner's stupidity is an indirect reason to feel embarrassed, the stupidity of being religious is just an example.   Getting involved with a stupid person means not to have chosen a sufficiently suitable equal partner but having sunk beneath the own standards and that is an act of own stupidity and a reason for embarrassment.   

When an atheistic man gets involved with a woman in spite of her stupidity of believing in a deity, the man usually does this due to his using her body as his compensation.    But a woman has no reason to ever get involved with a man, whose stupidity would cause her embarrassment.       

194. Valued Partner or Lab Rat?

Valued Partner or Lab Rat?

1.  Knowing each other

To grow together in closeness and become a bonded, devoted and committed couple requires, that both know each other very well.    Based upon mutual appreciation and respect, they learn to know each other by asking questions, by listening to the answers and to all introspection, that is given without hesitation.    When their mutual understanding and evaluation over time is consistent with the experienced behavior, then trust, trustworthiness, reliability and predictability can grow and the relationship will become a safe haven.    Their method to know each other is communication.

A jerk is too bonding-disabled to participate in such a process.   For him, a woman is an inferior being with a limited mind and brain, whom he studies as Skinner studied his lab rats.   Skinner studied lab rats, the jerk studies a dog with benefits, as I have already described in entry 30.   
Knowing the woman to him means to observe her reactions, that he triggers for that purpose.   He probes her, he provokes her, he does anything to her, that he expects to lead to a reaction.    He does not listen to her feedback or her introspection, because he does not value them.   
He misses vital parts of her personality, all her values, attitudes, emotions and how she perceives and experiences him and his way of treating her.   He misses everything, that goes on in her mind, that cannot be observed.
With selective perception, he does not observe all, that is important, only what he likes to get aware to enhance his preconception and prejudices. 
Observed behavior allows many interpretations, and his are biased to what he wants to observe and to believe.
His bias is his wish to justify using her as a utility for his own benefits without any consideration and without having to bother about her needs.  
By not verifying his believes and delusions about her in direct communication, the longer he builds up his subjective impressions, the more distorted they get.  

This way, he will never know, who and how the woman really is.   He will never be able to treat her the way she needs to be treated to be happy with him.


2.  Treating each other

In entry 190 I gave the example of an embarrassing public scene.    The caring bonded guy does not want to hurt his partner by embarrassing her.    He would not only stop talking, when his partner whispers a reminder in his ear, he would also be motivated to learn, what causes her to feel embarrassed, and he would then attempt to avoid doing it, before she even says anything.   He cares for her feelings.  

The jerk is different.   He feels entitled to do and to get, what he wants, without consideration for others.   If his behavior is embarrassing her, he experiences her feedback as a nuisance, and he perceives himself as justified to do some dog training to remodel her.   Instead of stopping the embarrassing behavior as an act of consideration, he repeats it as often and as drastically as he can, for the purpose and expecting that by doing this he could habituate and desensitize her, until she would stop annoying him with her protest against his behavior.  He considers himself to be the one to set the standard of behavior.    When he does not feel embarrassed, then he automatically believes, that there is no reason for her to feel embarrassed.    The purpose of his drastic dog training is making her feel flawed because of feeling embarrassed.  
Instead of changing his behavior as an expression of caring for her, he attempts to change her with no consideration for her sufferings.
 

The caring couple communicates to adapt to each other, taking the other's emotional wellbeing into consideration.
The jerk considers a woman as some kind of raw material, that he can form, mold and emotionally mutilate by any means, no matter how cruel and malicious, until she is the utility fitting his needs perfectly.  
I do not want such a jerk, he is a nightmare for a woman like me.

190. Helplessness or Influence

Helplessness or Influence

I need a relationship to be a safe haven, and a safe haven to me is an emotional shelter, where I am never made to feel as helpless as a leaf in an autumn storm.    Situations, where others force unpleasant events upon people, are a part of life and often they cannot be avoided.   Therefore it is of paramount importance to keep the helplessness of being coerced out of a relationship.    I need influence on everything, that happens to me as part of a relationship.   

Influence is not domination nor is it control over the other, influence is not onesided but reciprocal, it means being allowed to participate in shared decisions on how to handle issues. 
Influence means, that what a partner does to me is inside the limits of a fair balance of giving and receiving, it means, that inside these limits all I have to do is tell, what I need and what hurts and disturbs me, and the other acts in consideration.   Influence means, that I do not have to defend myself against outrageous domination, that I am not pulled into a power struggle nor that I need to fend off coercions.

Influence means, that there is a considerate reaction, whenever I ask someone to do something or to stop or to refrain from doing something. 
The considerate reaction can be to just comply or to find an agreement for the issue by constructive communication.    Compliance means the motivation to comply, even if forgetting it sometimes.    Not reacting is denying influence.

There are two major ways, how a man can make a woman feel helpless by denying her any influence on his behavior: 
1.  By disrespect and not taking her for serious, by disregarding and ignoring her wish, not reacting just as if she had not said anything.  
2.  By behaving like a child with ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), that means by doing deliberately the exact contrary of what she asked for. 

Examples:
1.  In entry 133 I already gave the example of the correspondent, who sent me a dozen emails full of gibberish from a translator in spite of my protest.    With a bit of the benefit of doubt, this can be defined as a non-malignant case of the man being so pleased with the translator as a toy, that he disregarded my advice and my annoyance with the gibberish, and it was only an act of disrespect and of taking me not serious enough.  
Influence would have meant, that telling him just once not to send me gibberish from the translator would have sufficed to make him stop doing it. 

2.  This example is more drastic.   A couple sits in a bus, where several people are sitting near enough to overhear their entire conversation.   At some moment, the woman gets aware, that the conversation is getting a bit too private for others to be allowed to listen. 
She therefore whispers a warning in his ear and she expects the man to postpone further discussion of private matters, until they are alone.    A decent and mature man would comply immediately.    This is the kind of influence, that I wish to have in a relationship.  
But the jerk with the adult version of ODD reacts to her discreet whispering by protesting, that nobody listens, loud enough to draw attention.   When she repeats her whispered suggestion to be quiet with some more urgency, his reply, that they were not talking about anything private, is again loud enough to be heard by everyone. 
After a few more repetitions of such sequences everybody stares at a very embarrassed woman and it has become a public scene.    Such a guy is not just a jerk, he is a cruel and malignant jerk with some psychopathic tendencies.    He uses the power of the circumstances to get her into the helpless situation of either being driven into a public scene or having her private matters discussed on front of strangers.  

A relationship with such a jerk would be a nightmare.   My mindmate will be someone, who concedes me influence on how he treats me, who protects our privacy and who avoids embarrassment and public scenes.    
I described in entry 178 the importance to spend an engagement phase together before getting involved.    During that time I want to find out, if the man allows me to influence him to change his behavior, whenever I feel hurt.    If I cannot influence him, then there will be no relationship. 

151. Embarrassment

Embarrassment

Some time ago I went with someone to visit a museum.    Since he had a university degree, I thought, that he was an intelligent person.  
But when we handed our bags in to be stored, and got the luggage tag number 13, he refused it.   I was stunned, for a moment I could not believe my own ears and eyes.    He was such a moron, not only did he refuse the number, but he seemed not even to feel embarrassed about it.   
He rejected that number tag without any hesitation, just as others would reject a plate of soup with a fly in it in a restaurant.   

Some people get brainwashed as children to fear the number 13, but grow into adults knowing that it is nonsense and even if they feel uncomfortable, they are wise enough to hide it and to fight against it.  

He did not feel ashamed or embarrassed at all.   But I did, just for being in the company of such a moron.   I admit, that the person handing the tag was not of such importance, as I will not see her again.   But somehow I do not feel comfortable with people, who make a fool of themselves, while I want to respect them.

People, who feel embarrassed and ashamed of their own behavior, have a reason to improve it for the purpose of feeling better about themselves.    Some need the feedback of others to be even aware, that they have a reason to feel embarrassed.   But they can learn.     But a person, who does stupid or gross actions and does not feel embarrassed is doomed to make no improvement.   The whole world may consider him as weird wacko and a moron, only he himself has no clue.  

Later on I asked him, why he he rejected the number 13 and he came up with some lame excuse about being reminded of some unpleasant old woman.   Obviously, he did not want to talk about his real reasons.   He deprived himself of the chance to learn, how others perceive his behavior.

My mindmate is someone, who has enough perception for his own behavior so that he avoids making a fool of himself in public.    Therefore I do not have to feel ashamed to be with him.    Some women want a man to be proud of, I am much more modest, I just want someone, who does not embarrass me.