629. George Simon's Book 'In Sheep's Clothing' - Comment 1

629.   George Simon's Book 'In Sheep's Clothing'  -  Comment 1

This continues entry 628 about the immature theory of mind.

In entries 615 and 618 I already mentioned and commented on George Simon's excellent approach to the problem of disturbed characters.    I just got and read his fascinating book 'In Sheep's Clothing'.

Reading it was an excellent reminder of the utter futility of any attempts to reduce being harmed by disturbed characters.  Someone with a character disturbance cannot be influenced any more than a moving steam roller.   He is determined to get by hook or by crook, whatever he wants.  Nothing can stop him from running over anybody standing in his way.   The only protection is avoiding disturbed characters.  

For me personally, contact with one of them is doomed to lead to an impasse and to unsolvable conflicts.   While I am not prone to be a submissive victim accommodating a disturbed character's objectives, his ruthlessness gives him nevertheless enough power to impose sufferings upon me, to which I react with protest and outrage.  But a disturbed character is out of the reach of any civilized and moderate influencing him by constructive communication.  His mind is surrounded by a wall, any attempts to make him change his behavior bounce off and fail without any effect.

 

According to Simon, all exploitative and hurting behavior can be explained by only one of two cognitive dynamics, either the neurotic avoidance of too much painful emotions or the disturbed characters' conscious method to gain selfish advantages.  
I see another possibility, which I am missing in the book:  It is the incompetence to behave in an appropriate and acceptable way in spite of being motivated and believing to do so.    

Therefore I like to add one more type of a disturbed character to Simon's list: 

The self-righteous aggressive disturbed character.    This type also behaves as a wolf, just as Simon's other types, but he does not put on a sheep skin.   Instead he believes to be a sheep.   Due to his immature theory of mind and to the subsequent lack of getting or comprehending blatant feedback, he is unaware, that he is perceived as a wolf.   (More in entry 628)  

He behaves as a wolf due to immaturity and interpersonal incompetence: 
1.  He is incompetent to know and evaluate the limits of what is rightfully his due.  Thus he is unable to accept as a fair deal to give enough back in return for what he receives.   Others do not consider as justified, what he feels entitled to get.   This can be as bad as an entitlement delusion.  
2.  He lacks the communicative skills to obtain, whatever he wants, by any form of rational convincing, even when it is justified.   When what is not justified is not available, he is too incompetent to apply manipulative tactics.   His competence is so limited, that he resorts to use drastic and primitive methods of power, dominance, aggression.  

This type is very different from both the unbridled aggressive and the channelled aggressive as described in the book.   The self-righteous aggressive usually accepts simple and clearly defined rules and laws, when he understands them in spite of his immature theory of mind. 

The self-righteous aggressive is not malicious, he is just not aware of his incompetence nor of how much his behavior is selfish.   As far as the self-righteous aggressive comprehends another's needs, he is able to care.   For example, he can be a caring master to a dog, if he acquires the knowledge about how to care for a dog.   The success with the dog then reinforces his false belief to be a sheep.   He is unaware of behaving as a wolf, when he forcefully applies the very same form of care and treatment, which is appropriate only for a dog, also upon a human being.       

 

Both the covert-aggressive and the self-righteous aggressive consider themselves as justified to pursue what they want with any means, believing to be entitled to get it.   

But the covert-aggressive has a mature theory of mind enabling him to be realistic about and aware of what obstacles and resistance to expect during his pursuits.   He takes the disagreeing and resisting persons for serious enough to rationally choose the method of aggression, which promises the best success.   In the case of the covert aggressive, this includes hiding his true intentions as a part of using manipulative strategies.   He is realistic about the powers of his opponents, would they discover his aggression and true goals and react by fighting back.  

The self-righteous-aggressive lacks a sufficiently mature theory of mind.   He does not take resisting people into account as individual opponents with real or at least subjectively valid reasons for their disagreement.    He perceives them as merely amorphous obstacles to be best confronted with outright, indiscriminate and open aggression.    The self-righteous aggressive perceives any disagreement with and resistance to his allegedly entitled goals automatically as an indication of others being flawed, wrong, dysfunctional, while nothing makes him doubt his own entitlement.   Who resists is believed to be bringing aggression upon themselves as a legitimate consequence.   

By applying the same generalized standard methods of aggression to all allegedly flawed obstacles, the self-righteous aggressive character is also not able to improve his immature theory of mind.   He notices and reacts to obstacles without understanding, perceiving, evaluating or distinguishing any specific reaction or feedback.   This impedes him from learning successful manipulation strategies.   

Even the self-righteous aggressive may sometimes apply a few of the manipulative tactics described in Simon's book, when he is aware of the probable unpleasant reactions to be avoided.  

The essential difference to the covert aggressive is the self-righteous' lack of any hidden agenda.  Instead he bluntly expresses his claims and demands and what he intends to do to ascertain to get it.   Lacking any comprehension, why others disagree with his entitlement, he does not know nor learn, what to hide and what utterances and behaviors are counterproductive to his goals.   By blurring out his true intentions he provokes resistance, to which he then reacts with enhanced aggression and bullying.   This is a spiral of fast deterioration.  


The covert aggressive misleads others, while the self-righteous aggressive is himself mislead.   A wolf, who believes to be a sheep, causes not less devastation than a wolf, who knows to be a wolf, but hides beneath a sheep's skin.     

In the case of the covert-aggressive, it is the victim's task to find out, that there is a wolf under the sheep's skin.   The wolf knowing to be a wolf has therefore theoretically the choice to change, if the victim refuses to remain in that role.   

The self-righteous aggressive openly behaves like a wolf and nevertheless believes his bullying and coercing as the legitimate behavior of the sheep, which he wrongly believes himself to be.   Any change is not probable, because someone believing to be already a sheep does not comprehend, why he should change to become one.   A wolf cannot decide or attempt to change into a sheep, unless he first becomes aware, that he is a wolf.  
In this situation, the victim is powerless.   A self-righteous aggressive wolf does not experience his victim as significant enough to influence him.   This impedes him from ever discovering the reality of his being a wolf, instead he continues to consider the victim as being so flawed as to warrant being bullied. 

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. 

597. Commodification And Wanting

597.   Commodification And Wanting

When a sane, mature and rational person declares to want something, this is an expression of a mere wish and of nothing more.   Wishing does not imply any assumption concerning the availability or feasibility nor does it imply any claim to get it.

Attempts towards gratification are an independent next step.   Such attempts are limited by the full recognition of and awareness for the rights of others and by the moral obligation to refrain from harming others and from usurping and seizing.     

The rational method to get gratification is earning it.  When it comes as a gift, it is received with gratitude and not taken for granted.
 

Immature and selfish jerks have a blatant delusional fallacy in their thinking.  When they say 'I want x', they really mean to say 'I demand x, because I believe myself to be entitled to get x immediately'.  They confound wanting something with the entitlement to automatically get it.  They believe, that everybody and the society owe to given to them, whatever they want and when they want it.  

Relationships are entered for the purpose of meeting specific needs.   The difference between mere wishes and claims of alleged entitlement contributes to the difference between egalitarian bonded couples and asymmetrical commodification.   

A bonded, caring, considerate couple feels reciprocally responsible for the careful use of their pooled resources.   Those expenses have priority, of which the benefits are shared by both partners   Any expenses only benefiting one partner are secondary.  Shared decision are based upon agreement as being fair.  Reciprocal gratification of wishes is perceived with gratitude as a gift or as a favor.     

The commodification of women is one special case of the fallacy of mistaking wanting as an automatic justification for claims, demands, coercion and usurpation.  A jerk informing a commodified woman of what he wants feel automatically also entitled to get it immediately. 

• Commodifying men experience and consider it as their baseline of normality, if they always get everything immediately whenever they demand it.   
  They take all received benefits for granted.  They are blind to recognize, when someone does something for them by choice and by a voluntary decision.   They do not know, what favors are.  They do not know gratitude.  
  Any expression of love, care and affection by voluntarily doing something for such a man is lost and not recognized as such.  Whatever gratification he receives, he always confounds it as if it were his due and as if she were only doing her duty. 
  
• When the reaction to commodifying men's demands is refusal,
  
  • they seize their alleged due by hook or by crook, by domination, coercion, bullying, if they have the power to do so.
  • they get extremely angry, aggressive, frustrated and unpleasant, when they lack the power to enforce gratification.

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.    

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.

586. Jerks With Halos

586.  Jerks With Halos

In entry 381 I described Diego Rivera as a jerk with a halo.   He is just one specimen of many, and it is a pattern of very detrimental and unfavorable dynamics.

I consider people (usually men) as jerks with a halo, when they are accomplished or outstanding in some area, as artists, writers, scientists, actors, politicians or even as benefactors for many people, while they also inflict a lot of suffering upon persons close to them.   

Jerks are jerks, and the suffering of their victims is real and no halo seen by any third party does reduce this suffering, it only hides it in an unjustifiable way.
  
Accomplishments need to be evaluated by themselves, without any impact upon the subjective recognition of the magnitude of personal transgressions.   The harm done to the unfortunate victims is an unacceptable moral failure, this is independent of any coexisting achievements.   

Accomplishments do not exempt people from being responsible for what they do to others.  

But this is unfortunately not reality.   Instead, there is a general tendency to condone unacceptable, immoral and cruel behaviors in proportional accordance with the transgressor's fame due to his accomplishments.  By this fallacy of accepted compensation, someone can buy by his accomplishments the right to harm without consequences.

This fallacy is enhanced and perpetuated by any combination of several factors, which all lead to the underestimation of the harm done to the victims: 

1.   Women's apparent and alleged compliance when continuing to expose themselves to their plight.   
1.1.  Women are dependent upon the material support by the man, especially by raising children.   They would leave the jerk, if the could.  
1.2.  Women in asymmetrical relationships have got onesidedly emotionally attached to the jerk, who in return has an entitlement delusion.  His fallacy is his belief, that women exist for his convenience, his accomplishments justifying their commodification.  I described this in entry 268 (The Jerk Attachment Syndrome).

2.  The generalization of suggestive influences of religion, especially christianity, upon both the jerks and the victims.  The jerks with halos subjectively consider their accomplishment as their currency to buy the right to harm women. 

In religion, sin is believed to be compensatable by penitence, so that after having paid for the previous sin, there is no cognitive obstacle to prevent the next sin.  Replacing penitence by accomplishments is a fallacy, which is not very far fetched, considering the weirdness of the religious beliefs in themselves.
Thus jerks are not only haloed by others, but they also halo themselves by believing, that their accomplishments entitle them to privileges, even when the privileges harm others.  

Women allow men to harm them for the purpose of buying the reward after death with the currency of their forgiving the unforgivable and by their prolonged suffering .  

3.  Sometimes people feel a vague, fuzzy and unspecified need to improve themselves, but are uncertain, how to proceed.  When they discover persons, whom they do not know personally, but only by the presentation in their work and in the media, such persons are chosen as role models.   The nearer the role models appear to be perfect, the stronger the appeal to imitate them.  The successful imitation boosts the self-esteem and causes good feelings.  This motivates to maintain the idealization of the role model, even when it is not at all justified in the case of haloed jerks.   As a consequence, the idealization of such a role model is protected by the denial of unpleasant and dark sides.    The focus is restricted to the perception of the halo, while the jerk underneath is willfully overlooked.   

Seen from this perspective, many admired and famous men are in reality only jerks with halos.  

570. Politicians And Morals

570.   Politicians And Morals

As mentioned before, there is a biologically caused asymmetry of many men harming women by excessive instinctive urges for sexual homeostasis and of many women not only getting harmed but participating in their own self-harming due to their instinctive urges for breeding.    As a result, the co-evolved gullibility to religion has established a general desensitization to women's plight of being harmed.   Women's bodies being used by men is not perceived as an outrage and a transgression, but as morally acceptable and as their innate doom. 

But this attitude of accepting the desensitization has consequences far beyond merely harming individual women in private situations.    When someone considers and accepts it as correct behavior and his entitlement to harm women by abuse, commodification, objectification, exploitation and taking advantage, this indicates, that he is a hazard to others, not only to women.  

Not only are politicians elected to work for the benefits of their voters, who have entrusted their interests to them.    Politicians are also paid a salary out of tax payer's money, which is so high, that many of the voters can only dream of such an income.    The trust and the salary oblige politicians to balance their self-interest with the benefits owed to their voters.       

But this is not reality.   As can be easily derived from reading daily in the newspapers about the frequent scandals and misdemeanors of politicians, many of them seem to be more or less corrupt, drastically taking selfish advantages of their positions.   Some are limited by what they can do legally, many get even away with criminal transgressions.   

What a politician does to women is an excellent and valid indication of his attitude to his voters.   If the voters were fully aware of this, they would base their political choice not only on the promises of a politician, but also on his moral integrity.  

A man without hesitation nor inhibitions to cheat on his wife can be expected to also cheat on his voters.    A man not hesitating in abusing a prostitute's body for his selfish instinctive urges can be expected to abuse the power of his position for his own greedy selfish interests.    A man using his position as immunity to rape and harass women can be expected to be criminally corrupt.   

The frequent scandals reported in the press and news indicate clearly, how many of the male politicians are not only commodifying and objectifying women as if this were their entitlement and privilege, but that their position also supplies them with more occasions to harm women than has the average jerk.    

Unfortunately too many voters are themselves desensitized to abuse women and even the female voters are manipulated to overlook, that politicians forfeit their trustworthiness by abusing women.   These voters tolerate the immorality, which harms women, and then they are disappointed and angry, when the corrupt politicians fail to do, what the voters expect.   

But the impact of abusive politicians being reelected is even worse than their mere failing to fulfill their obligations.   The fact of having been voted for by many people creates their reputation as role models worthy to be copied, no matter how morally rotten they are.    

Every time, when a politician is reelected in spite of the public knowledge of his cheating and frequenting brothels, this emits a very wrong signal.   It reinforces the fatal social norm of oversexation, promiscuity and harming women by objectification. 

In an ideal world, politicians would only be elected, if they have sufficient moral integrity of not taking advantage of occasions to harm and exploit others, neither women nor voters. 

550. The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

550.   The Irrationality Of Diatribes In Personal Interactions

Whenever I am the recipient of a diatribe or angry rant, I am puzzled about why people bother to approach me in this way, even though this is not a method to gain anything.   The last good example is a comment to entry 549.   

http://dictionary.reference.com

Diatribe
noun:  a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism:
Rant
noun:  ranting, extravagant, or violent declamation.
noun:  a ranting utterance.

The following is not about the benefits of people sharing the same grievances against any third party while being in harmony with each other, nor is it about someone finding relief by telling grievances to a sympathetic friend.   Many important social and political movements have been initiated by a few justified diatribes. 

It is about the irrationality of sending me diatribes by email or blog comments.    Such diatribes are as irrational as is the man's behavior in Watzlawick's story:

A man wants to hang a painting. He has the nail, but not the hammer. Therefore it occurs to him to go over to the neighbor and ask him to lend him his hammer. But at this point, doubt sets in. What if he doesn’t want to lend me the hammer? Yesterday he barely spoke to me. Maybe he was in a hurry. Or, perhaps, he holds something against me. But why? I didn’t do anything to him. If he would ask me to lend him something, I would, at once. How can he refuse to lend me his hammer? People like him make other people’s life miserable. Worst, he thinks that I need him because he has a hammer. This is got to stop ! And suddenly the guy runs to the neighbor’s door, rings, and before letting him say anything, he screams: “You can keep your hammer, you bastard.” (Paul Watzlawick, “The Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious: The Pursuit of Unhappiness”)

There are many reasons, why any man and I are not suitable to have any beneficial contact.   The rational reaction of such a man is to zap without wasting any further thoughts on me, when while reading this blog or my profile on a matchmaking site he notices such reasons.
In the case of doubt, a friendly question invites a friendly clarification.    Any provocation on my part is not intended and it is no invitation to hostile arguments.    There is no rational reason to express anger by attacking me with diatribes.  

The irrationality of sending diatribes indicates, that the sender has some problems, concerning both the cause of his anger and his hostility when coping with it:

1.  Entitlement and grandiosity delusion. 
A man feels entitled to get anything and this is justified for him by nothing more than his wish to have it and/or he believes himself to be god's gift to women, who cannot have a valid reason to reject him.    Therefore he considers the choice of a partner only justified by his own selection or rejection. Being rejected is not acceptable to him.   Even anticipated rejection due to my clearly expressed criteria is for such a man a reason to be angry.   A woman's disagreement with his grandiosity is also a reason to be angry. 
2.  Displaced anger.   Something in my text triggers anger, which is caused by his own experiences and has nothing to do with my person.   This something can be either a provocation by any real attribute of mine or it can be something misunderstood and misinterpreted.   

3.  Paradoxical coping with the anger.   The devaluation of what is not available as in the fable of the fox and the sour grapes are a valid coping strategy as part of realistic resignation.    Attacking someone with the declarations of devaluation by email is absurd.    

When people write emails, they enhance the probability of getting a reply by showing as much appreciation for the recipient as they can do sincerely.   In the case of intended manipulation, appreciation is insincerely exaggerated.   

An email of devaluations is supplying the recipient with reasons not to reply and not to communicate.   Therefore there is no reason to ever bother to write devaluing emails, while not writing has the same effect without wasting time.  


The diatribe comment on entry 549 gives examples.   His (assuming the commenter to be a man) attacks me for being German.   This indicates displaced anger about Germany or German culture or maybe some German individual.   Now he attacks me for being German in spite of my explicit declaration of not identifying with being German.

I cannot know his level of formal education.   But his attack on my valuing a university degree makes it obvious, that he has none but does not accept this as a reason to be not suitable for me.  

He calls me 'dogmatic, unscientific, irrational, dictating, intolerant, sexist, emotional, arrogant'.   These being obviously all unacceptable attributes in his opinion, I can fully agree with him that any woman, whom he subjectively perceives as having such attributes, is not suitable for him, no matter who and how she really is.   I have no problem with being perceived as not suitable by an unknown commenter.   But his bothering to write a comment, which forfeits any communication, is weird.  


Expressing and sending a diatribe is a distorted method of counterproductive communication.    Constructive communication motivates the recipient to reciprocate an interaction perceived as beneficial.   Diatribes create antipathy for the hostile sender, who presents himself as someone to be avoided, not as someone to interact with.    Everybody writing and sending diatribes just wastes his own time and gains nothing.  

1.  One possible interpretation of diatribes is to see them as related to real life bullying.    

Based upon his physical strength, a man can sometimes succeed to get his will by intimidation.  A woman cringing under outbursts of anger does not dare to resist.   The woman suffers and is driven away by this bullying.    

Men with long term thinking and wisdom learn, that bullying gets them nowhere and nothing.   But when they are only learning short term direct effects, they are mislead to learn, that expressing anger is a successful method to get their will.    Bullies misinterpret the success of their outburst of anger as if this were a method of influencing the victim's thinking.   They mistake enforced apparent acquiescence with agreement and they believe in their power to obtain agreement by expressing anger.         

As a result of this distorted learning these men are oblivious of the limited reach of the weapon of anger.   Anger and aggression only work in direct contact, when the intimidation triggers spontaneous fear, elicited not in accordance with the probability of a physical attack but by the mere possibility.    

Therefore expressing anger at the target by email is the futile attempt of distance bullying.    Due to not eliciting fear, this does not work.   Diatribes are the consequence of a man's overestimation of the power of his anger without physical intimidation.   

2.  Diatribes are an indication of an asymmetrical attitude to women and of the intention and purpose of a relationship for getting advantages by commodification.   A man pursuing a symmetrical relationship appreciates the information of any woman's needs and preferences for his own evaluation of possible symmetry.   Finding out that he cannot give her, what she needs, is not a reason to get angry and even less to send a diatribe.   For him it is a reason to accept incompatibility.  

543. The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

543.   The Symmetry Or Asymmetry Of Men's Basic Attitude Determines Their Behavior Towards Women

In my reply to a comment on entry 540, I explained, how I can only prevent to be harmed and abused in a relationship by the reciprocal conscious choice of a partner, who realistically can expect to get his needs met without hurting or bullying me.   

I have outlined extensively in this blog, how I need to be treated and what treatment and behaviors are not acceptable.    This serves the purpose of enabling any interested man to check reciprocal suitability without hurting.   

This leads on to the problem of predicting the probability of being hurt as early as possible during any contact.    It is futile and even ridiculous to ask any man the direct question, if he commodifies and abuses women.    No man ever would reply in the affirmative.   Some men are not even aware of their own hidden real attitude.   What they believe to be justifiable behavior is experienced as abuse by women.

A man's real basic attitude towards women is more reliably inferred from his behavior.  Basic attitudes are usually congruent with the strength and predominance of instinctive needs and urges.   These attitudes are invisible or hidden, but the behavior is an observable expression of the attitudes.  

Men's basic attitudes towards women are either symmetrical or asymmetrical.  

A symmetrical attitude can be expected, when a man's innate needs are balanced, when his conscious non-physical needs for intellectual and emotional intimacy, activities and a safe haven shared with a bonded companion are at least as strong as his physical instinctive needs for homeostasis.    

Experiencing only or predominantly those instinctive needs leads to the asymmetry of the basic attitude.   

1.   Asymmetrical basic attitude.   

Commodification, objectification and peripherisation are asymmetrical varieties of the basic attitude, they all determine men to hurt and abuse women.  
These attitudes are expressed by the secondary attitude of implicit or explicit claims of entitlement, which are inappropriate, because they aim at acquiring onesided benefits only for these men.   Feeling entitled to benefits not otherwise available they also feel entitled to hurting and harming behaviors as the method to acquire the benefits.   
1.1.  In the case of the entitlement delusion, abusers are oblivious, that what they believe to be their entitlement, is considered and perceived as outrageous and preposterous by others.    Therefore it does not even occur to them to hide their entitlement delusion, to the contrary they are surprised, when the women disagree.    They get angry and aggressive bullies and they consider any woman as defective and flawed, who refuses to let them have, what they feel entitled to get.   They are the least hazard to women by being easily recognizable.
1.2.  The entitlement is combined with the awareness, that others disagree.   This makes them a hazard, because they use manipulations, tricks and pretense to get, what they feel entitled to but which is otherwise not available.   

1.3.   Sometimes men are not aware, that their behavior expresses entitlement.   Their fallacy of believing to be in agreement with a woman's symmetrical expectations makes them also a hazard.   More about this follows below.

2.  Symmetrical basic attitude.

Egalitarianism and bonded monogamy are varieties of a symmetrical basic attitude, which determines a man to have more reasons to protect a woman against being hurt and harmed than to inflict it upon them.    
These basic attitudes are expressed by secondary attitudes, as are for example responsibility, consideration, commitment as including obligations, caring, reliability, predictability, trustworthiness.    People often declare these attitudes explicitly as forming their value system, which they identify with.   But even without being consciously chosen, these secondary attitude determine specific behaviors.    


Unfortunately, things are more complicated.     The behavior is usually a fairly good indication of and congruent with the real basic attitude.   
But any verbal declaration of secondary attitudes cannot be relied upon, because they are influenced considerably by social, cultural and educational influences.   Someone's mere claim to be responsible does not imply, that he really knows, what responsibility means and what behavior expresses responsibility.      

As a consequence, when a man agrees with or even offers proactively to behave according to specific secondary attitudes, this is far from a guarantee for a woman to really be treated according to her expectations.   
In the case, that the man is not purposefully manipulating her, this is caused by the man using words without comprehending their full and correct meaning, which eludes him due to his lacking the corresponding basic attitude.   The man agrees with something, because he knows it to be expected from him or as the condition for being accepted.     But he agrees to give, what he has misunderstood as the meaning of the word, not what the woman expects by using the same word.   


Commitment is an example.     

Entitlement and feeling obligations are mutually exclusive.    When someone feels entitled to a benefit, this means he feels no obligation to give something back.  Whenever someone already considers something as his property or his due, he sees no logical reason to earn or acquire it by a deal.
Accepting an obligation is the contrary, it is the recognition of another person's entitlement to get benefits in return for what is given as part of a deal.

1.   A man with an asymmetrical basic attitude misunderstands commitment as a method of establishing entitlement by ascertaining his control over a woman.    This serves to get benefits from the woman at his convenience.  

2.   A man with a symmetrical basic attitude agrees on a deal concerning the benefits of the relationship for the woman as equally valid as his own.   He accepts commitment as including the obligation to fulfill his part of the deal in return for the benefits he gets.   

Both use the same word, commitment, but they do not mean the same.    When a man gets subjectively committed by feeling entitled and a woman subjectively gets committed with the expectations of a man being bound by obligations towards her, this will lead to serious suffering for the woman.   


The symmetry or asymmetry of the basic attitude depends on fairly stable innate traits as are the instinctive and the intellectual needs.  As long as men succeed to enforce getting benefits from commodification, they have no logical reason to give up their privileges.    Therefore it is rather improbably that a man's asymmetrical attitude changes into a symmetrical one.   

Appropriate treatment of a woman comes only natural, when it is grounded in a man's symmetrical basic attitude, while a man with an asymmetrical attitude is innately oblivious of how to treat a woman without hurting her.   

Such a man has a serious problem even when he is so much attracted to a specific woman, that this motivates him to attempt to treat her how she wants to be treated as the price for being accepted.    

He has not clue, how to behave, unless he gets a recipe for every situation.   He experiences, that every behavior, which is logical for him under the premise of his entitlement, fails and is rejected by someone, who expects him to fulfill obligations.

Whenever he is ignorant of the suitable recipe, he is prone to relapse to the inappropriate hurting behavior derived from his alleged entitlement.   
This causes a very fragile situation:  The woman is not respected as an equal, she is only a commodity temporarily treated as if she were appreciated and respected.  
This can only last, as long as this gives him subjectively more benefits then bullying her to usurp his alleged entitlement to benefits.   

She cannot be happy, because happiness requires to be perceived as an equal partner in a symmetrical relationship.  But due to his relapses she is fully aware of the indignation and degradation of not really being appreciated and respected, even though his attempts create the intermittent appearance as if. 

A woman's happiness requires a man's symmetrical basic attitude.     

542. The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

542.   The Fallacy Of Utilitarian Compensation Without Agreement

This continues entry 541.  

Two persons, of whom one calculates the total costs and benefits by one calculation, while the other considers pain and pleasure as independent, are a mismatch with tragic consequences.   Their basic attitudes concerning harming and hurting are incompatible.

Whenever a person is principally willing to control and restrict the own behavior for the purpose of not risking to destroy the relationship by impeding the partner's happiness, there are two options.   These option differ fundamentally in the very disparate attitude towards what constitutes happiness or unhappiness.  

• Option 1:  Happiness is defined as the difference between being hurt and being pampered, it is calculated as pleasure provided minus pain inflicted.   The more a man feels entitled to hurt a woman for the benefit of his own pleasures, the more he compensates for this by providing real or ascribed pleasures to the woman. 
  This is demonstrated in the plot of the classical Hollywood couple, where the man feels entitled to cheat, as long as he buys enough diamonds and fur coats to the wife, whose acquiescence to his transgressions can be thus bought. 
   
• Option 2:  Happiness is defined as the absence of unhappiness caused by harming and hurting behavior.   A man intending to keep a woman needs to focus all his efforts on not making her unhappy, and this requires for him to know or to learn, how to avoid hurting her.   Not being hurt is the most important ingredient of being happy.  
  As long as he does not hurt her, the man does not need to do anything else to please her.   
  In this option, transgressions can never be compensated for.   Not forgiven transgressions destroy the relationship.   Acquiescence with transgressions is not available, only forgiveness earned by the transgressor's genuine and sincere guilt, contrition, amends and full recognition of his obligation to never repeat the transgression.  

When both partners are a match concerning the preferred option, each of the options can work for them.

But conflicts are unavoidable, whenever one person - usually the man - applies option 1 upon a woman needing option 2.  

In this case, a spiral of deterioration is automatically initiated, when the woman feels hurt by the man's specific behaviors.   She defines and experiences as transgressions, what he feels entitled to do.    Without even any agreement as to what are transgressions, they are a mismatch, and the spiral of deterioration is the logical consequence.  
It starts, when he usurps, coerces or enforces his own advantages and privileges from and upon the disagreeing woman, feeling entitled to them.    She experiences being hurt for his selfish benefits as abuse, but he disagrees.   

Getting aware of her disagreement and resistance are for him no sufficient reasons to stop his transgressions.   Nevertheless he does not want to risk driving her away, so while he refuses to renounce the benefits gained by the transgression, he instead attempts to eliminate her unwelcome reactions to his behavior by any form of compensation, which is easier for him than changing his behavior.   
Believing that pleasing her enough would suffice to be able to continue his transgressions, he bends backwards in doing and overdoing things for her, which he believes to be sufficient to please her.       
But this does not work as he expects and as he feels it to be his due.   She continues to feel hurt, because he continues his hurting behavior and his commodifying attitude of feeling entitled to hurt her.   Nothing he does and tries has any effect, as long as he does not give up the commodification and the hurting.   
The next step of deterioration is his getting angry and frustrated for not getting the expected appreciation of and gratitude for what he does for her.   In his subjective experience, he is paying for her acquiescence to how he treats her, but she does not deliver the goods.    She does not feel any gratitude, because she clearly distinguishes between what someone does for the real and sole purpose of pleasing her and what someone merely does for the purpose of buying her submission to being hurt.    This purpose devalues anything of what he does for her, no matter how much she would enjoy it otherwise.          
Yet he believes to have paid and thus he feels justified to continue transgressing.   This is another turn of the spiral of deterioration.   Wanting nothing except the termination of being hurt and abused, every new or repeated transgressions makes her more unhappy, completely unimpressed by his unasked for compensations.  All the man's intensified efforts to compensate are in vain, making him more and more angry and even feeling hurt himself. 


A deal is only a deal between (at least) two persons agreeing.    When someone wants an items owned by his neighbor, throwing any amount of money at his neighbor does not make it a deal to buy the item, as long as the neighbor refuses to sell.    

It is the same with the compensation:  It would only be a deal with the partner's agreement.   But what one person wishes and wants does not suffice to make it a deal.    A woman's acquiescence with being hurt cannot be bought from her with not matter what pampering and unasked for compensatory pleasures, if her acquiescence is not available for sale.    

538. The Proof Is In The Pudding....

538.   The Proof Is In The Pudding....

(Which correctly quoted should be as 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating'.)    While there are clues in men's profiles (the topic of a future entry) concerning their general attitude towards women, better clues can be derived from corresponding.  

Someone's reaction to my disagreement with the implicit expression of the acceptance of relationships as asymmetrically beneficial for men is very informative.   

Based upon my need for intellectual intimacy as a relationship essential, my profile on matchmaking sites contains this statement:  

Geographical distance is easier to overcome than mental distance. 

 

The following is a good example of an exchange of messages, which do not even require any further comments.  

His first message:

"NOTE: MENTAL distance is much easier to overcome than Geographical distance."


My reply: 

'Without any conclusions about you personally, in general this attitude tells me, that a man denies a woman her vital need for intellectual intimacy. Mental distance deters intellectual intimacy.
Whenever a man is not bothered about mental distance, he is an abuser, who intends to objectify a woman's body, while he does not value her enough for intellectual intimacy.'


His first reaction: 

"With your 'caustic' attitude, I honestly think that you would really be what is called in North America, a 'Royal Pain in the Ass'."

His additional second reaction: 

"Your "Presumed Intellectual Capacity", very nuch exaggerated in your own mind, is comparable to a Mental Midget.
You greatly over estimate your capacity with another human being who may be a 'thinker', and I think that anyone who would waste 'time' to keep corresponding with you is one, sad, foolish human being.
I cannot wish you 'Much Success' since that would be undermining the intellectual capacity of a possible interested man who might be 'taken in' with your 'mental onslought'."

534. The Pseudo-Evidence Fallacy

534.   The Pseudo-Evidence Fallacy

Whenever someone bases the decision, how to treat another person, on a belief, which is so strong, that it impedes and overrides the rational perception and comprehension of evidence and reality, there are more or less fatal consequences for at least the misjudged person, often for both. 

Examples:

1. A very drastic example was the alleged proof of who is a witch by throwing the unfortunate victim into the water to see if she floated or drowned.    Men believed in this cruel irrationality, even though their brain had nevertheless enabled them to become fluent in Latin.   
2. In some cultures, parents not only decide, whom to marry their children to, but they choose an alleged match following an astrologer's advice.   This has certainly caused millions of people to suffer from being tied for a lifetime to a mismatch, the worst fate being that of women being abused by a man, whom they would not have chosen.  
3. Today people are less prone to fall for very blatant irrationality.  But the more the irrational claims and beliefs mimic science, the more people are gullible to mistake pseudo-science for science.   
   NLP is a good example.   In entry 177 (The Jerks' Fascination with NLP) I already elaborated, why NLP is a belief system, and why this blend of some elements from scientific psychology with irrational and unscientific claims make this so attractive to people with a distorted self-concept as if being rational.  

In these as also in many more examples, there is a pattern of a specific fallacy:  

The person

• bases a rational decision process upon incorrect or insufficient information acquired by absurd, weird, preposterous or insane methods.   
• is unperceptive, mindblind, immune to or otherwise not impacted by any information coming directly from the target of the behavior.   The target has no influence upon what information is used to determine, how s/he is treated.
• imposes the decision upon the target or attempts to, feeling entitled and justified to do so. 

This fallacy impedes trust and as a consequence it impedes a relationship from becoming a safe haven, which is impossible without trust justified by trustworthiness.   
Trustworthiness can only be assessed by the rational method of evaluating evidence.  This method compares all of someone's verbal and non-verbal expressions and behaviors at any moment with all of this at any another time, and also with external independent sources.   
The more often this comparison is consistent, congruent and without contradictions, the more the person's overall trustworthiness can be estimated as probable.   Never discovering a lie is a part of this.

Any other method, which relies on unverified and unverifiable clues, is a hazard and misleading.   Earning trust depends not only on the own trustworthy behavior, it also depends upon the partner's ability to recognize trustworthy behavior as such by the correct perception of evidence.    Trust cannot be earned from a person using unsuitable methods.  

An honest person never lying is nevertheless not trusted by a partner using flawed methods to evaluate honesty.   The delusion of being able to rely upon firmly believed pseudo-clues makes him oblivious of reality.      
Fools believing in NLP derive the pseudo-evaluation of alleged honesty or lack thereof from the target's eye movements.   This is a hazardous fallacy, as the study quoted below clearly shows.    Eye movements can be caused, influenced and diverted by many triggers.  During any conversation, people's attention can be easily caught momentarily by events at the periphery of their vision.   
The haphazard location of such events suffices to determine the erroneous attribution of an alleged trait towards one of two errors:      
Accidental eye movements of a honest person can forfeit the chance to be trusted.  
The blind believer in NLP can also easily be mislead to trust by a liar's accidental eye movements.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120711205943.htm

"For decades many NLP practitioners have claimed that when a person looks up to their right they are likely to be lying, whilst a glance up to their left is indicative of telling the truth."

"Professor Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire, UK) and Dr Caroline Watt (University of Edinburgh, UK) tested this idea by filming volunteers as they either lied or told the truth, and then carefully coded their eye movements.  In a second study another group of participants was asked to watch the films and attempt to detect the lies on the basis of the volunteers' eye movements.

"The results of the first study revealed no relationship between lying and eye movements, and the second showed that telling people about the claims made by NLP practitioners did not improve their lie detection skills,” noted Wiseman. "

The pseudo-evidence fallacy and commodification share the common defective acquisition of information.    In both situations, the target is excluded from being considered as a possible source when choosing, which information is used for the decision how to behave.  Both situations indicate depreciation and disrespect of the target, but it works differently.

In the case of commodification, the target is mistaken for a passive utility in a onesided relationship and therefore not considered as able to be a proactive source supplying any information.  
The pseudo evidence fallacy disregards, devalues and rejects the information input coming directly from the target.   The real information is noticed but replaced by the false beliefs.   The target is considered as a proactive source of irrelevant or worthless information.  

532. Bullying And Commodification Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin

532.   Bullying And Commodification Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin  

The words commodification and objectification have two meanings, as the attitude with the mere potential to harm and as a behavior with a harmed target.   The step from the attitude to the behavior is accomplished by bullying.   Therefore bullying and commodification are two sides of the same coin.   They reinforce, enhance and enable each other.

Commodification leads to bullying, bullying is an indication of the attitude of commodification. 

Bullying is a method to take, what is not available without coercion.   Commodification is the attitude of subjective asymmetrical entitlement to more than what is appropriate from the victim's perspective.       
Bullying enables the behavioral commodification by onesided decision.  Successful behavioral commodification of a disagreeing victims requires bullying.  

Men's subjective entitlement to commodify women is merely a preposterous and delusional attitude of pathetic jerks, as long as women are able to avoid being mistreated and abused by them.   Even though there are specific situations of women's self-commodification when breeding, generally speaking women in their right mind do not consciously agree to be commodified.   Instead they resist and refuse compliance and acquiescence, as long as they are under no restrictions to do so.    But unfortunately, disagreement with outrageous attitudes is not a sufficient protection against such attitudes being imposed by asymmetrical power. 

When a man only wants, wishes and expects from a woman, what is fair, just and appropriate, he often gets it without even asking.    Else asking or rationally convincing are usually sufficient methods.   Bullying is not an options.   When the own needs are not met in a relationship without coercion, this does not justify bullying, it is an indication of a mismatch.  

Bullying in a relationship is an asymmetrical method for the purpose of getting benefits from the partner, who does not agree to owe these benefits.   A bully takes advantage of whatever power is available to him.   The average man is so much stronger than the average woman, that he is able to beat her up and kill her without a weapon.   Therefore any display of anger, rage, aggression appears as a threat, which is strong enough to trigger many women's spontaneous fear and cringing, even without the experience of having been beaten.   
Additionally to bullying, there is also sometimes the advantage of asymmetrical situational power, when one of two conflicting goals is easier to enforce then the other.   When one wants to leave and the other wants him to stay, the one leaving has the power to do so, the other has no means to hold him back.  
 

Women cannot be rationally convinced of the acceptability of being commodified by men.  But in spite of the impossibility to rationally justify the commodification of women, bullying bears the tragic consequence of misleading men to misinterpret the bullied women's alleged outward acquiescence and compliance as if it were agreement.   
This is the cause of an unfortunate vicious spiral:   Immature and selfish men start their interaction with females during puberty already with the delusion of being entitled to onesided benefits from objectified and commodified women.  They are reinforced by the social norm of the ubiquitous oversexation of every day life.   They feel entitled to get the benefits by hook or by crook, and thus they bully women considering this as a legitimate method.    Under the entitlement delusion, any absence of resistance, any resignation or external helpless compliance is misinterpreted as agreement.   

The more often their bullying is successful, the more their delusion gets worse.   They not only expect the victims' agreement with being commodified, but they also take the alleged agreement for granted and for justified.  


Subjectively for a man, bullying is as much or as little justified as is commodification.   This has also another implication:   When for a man bullying is a principally justified behavior, having become a regular habit, he is prone to use it not only in situations, when he really otherwise would not get what he wants.   He is also prone to bully, when he only wrongly believes this to be the only method available, even though in reality he just has not been patient or outspoken and explicit enough to enable the woman to do, what she is motivated to do.   

Therefore any bullying is also a clear indication of an attitude of commodification, when this attitude has not yet been discovered, because it is incongruent with the man's verbally claimed attitude towards women.

Bullying is a clear expression of depreciation and disrespect for her person, even when the man claims verbally his wish for an equal partner.    An egalitarian man does not bully, a bully is not an egalitarian.    

Being bullied by a man is harmful for a woman on two levels.  A bullied woman suffers from being denied the reciprocal bonding and commitment and from being denied her dignity as an equal person.  


But bullying is only a successful strategy for those jerks, who are satisfied by the short-term commodification, when the abused woman is discarded and replaced, before she has been bullied beyond her endurance into dysfunctionality.    

Whenever a man prefers the benefits of the long-term commodification of the same woman, his bullying impedes his own intentions.  The immediate success of his bullying seems to reward him.   This reinforces the bullying.   

But he is mistaken to think that all is well, only because he experiences it as well for himself.   He is oblivious, that all apparent submission of the woman is only her helpless and powerless lack of resistance on the outside.   On the inside, there is no alleged recognition of his entitlement, on the contrary, her hidden grudges grow with every instance of being bullied.   

She experiences as transgressions, what he believes to be his entitlement.    Every additional such transgressions damages her trust and her feelings for him a bit more. 

  

His greed to get too many benefits by commodifying her leads him to be left in the end with nothing after he has bullied her away by bullying her once too often.