705. Age Is No Protection

705.  Age Is No Protection  

In entry 246, I wrote about how women's lives are overshadowed by conscious and subconscious realistic fears.  

 
Mentioning my apprehension, that male libido can be a hazard to women, I have been getting the reaction, that at my age I were too old to be at risk.   Unfortunately, this is not the case.   

I just read in the newspaper, that a woman of 64, which is also my age, has been brutally raped by a 15 year old boy, while alone doing exercises in the forest.  

Age is no protection against the risk of becoming the victim of sexual violence or of the insult of the uninvited approach with the proposal of self-abuse.  

This risk depends on three factors:

• the man's libido
• the man's cognitive control
• the triggering power of the attraction of the victim's body

The attraction of women's bodies diminishes with age.   As long as young women are available, they are predators' first choice as victims.   This keeps the focus away from the old ones and this puts the young women at the highest risk.   

Men become dangerous predators, when the libido is stronger than their cognitive control.   Male libido also diminishes with age, while growing maturity usually adds to the cognitive control.  

Therefore the younger a man, the higher the probability of his being a dangerous predator.  

But cognitive control can not only be weak because of mere immaturity.  It can be lacking also due to mental or emotional disturbance and derangement.   

In the case of (predominantly young) men with high libido and insufficient cognitive control, young women would be the preferred victims, but if none is available, any woman of any age is at risk.    

683. Research Confirms Biological Reasons Of Women's Plight

683.  Research Confirms Biological Reasons Of Women's Plight

Sometimes things appear to me so obvious, that I am surprised, when they are confirmed by research, which is presented as if it were a novelty.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130921092236.htm

"A recently published study strongly suggests men succumb to sexual temptations more than women -- for example, cheating on a partner -- because they experience strong sexual impulses, not because they have weak self-control."

"Overall, these studies suggest that men are more likely to give in to sexual temptations because they tend to have stronger sexual impulse strength than women do," 

"But when people exercise self-control in a given situation, this sex difference in behavior is greatly reduced. It makes sense that self-control, which has relatively recent evolutionary origins compared to sexual impulses, would work similarly -- and as effectively -- for both men and women,"

The misery and plight enforced upon women as a consequence of the physiological asymmetry between the genders is one major topic of this blog. The devastating consequences of men's recurrent dishomeostasis experienced as the urge to use female bodies for the removal of body waste cannot be explained by the mere lack of self-control. 

The reality of this drastic asymmetry is evident by the fact, that men often obtain the abuse of female bodies not only by payment and manipulation, but also by violence.  The latter is enabled by the unfortunate co-evolution of the urge towards abuse with the superior physical strength to force it upon unwilling victims.   

The evolution of these devastating strong male urges seems to make a lot of sad sense, when looking only at how it serves procreation.   Evolution serves the survival of the species, not the emotional and cognitive wellbeing of individuals.        

Female animals willingly copulate at the moment of estrus due to their lacking the cognitive ability to anticipate the consequences of giving birth and raising the offspring.   

When the human cognition evolved, this enabled women also to anticipate the experience of pregnancy and child rearing.  Some women perceive this is a horror, an abuse of their bodies and a form of slavery.  Logically they attempt to avoid this.  

The human species would probably have been extinct by now, had not the further biological evolution counterbalanced this by hiding the female estrus and by adding more male urges plus physical strength.   Thus pregnancies continued to be caused, no more only by compliance due to ignorance, but also by force upon unwilling women.  


In spite of more legal equality in modern western society, even in recent times the plight of women has been perpetuated by two main fallacies.  Both fallacies deny the physiological differences and attribute all asymmetry between the genders to education and culture.   Both fallacies are based upon the projection of the level of the own urges upon the other gender.

1.  The fallacy of the so called 'sexual revolution' is the fallacy of men, who project their higher urges upon women and claim, that women only feel abused due to sexual repression.   This dangerous male fallacy has proclaimed that if women were liberated, they would as much as men want to copulate like alley dogs and would as little as men need emotional commitment.

2.  The feminist fallacy overestimates men's willpower and unrealistically demands men to have the same easy self-control as women.   This is based upon the mistake to project their own lower female physiological urges upon men.   More about my suggestion for a more rational feminism in entry 566.  

 

According to the study, men's problem is not self-control, but the stronger sexual impulse.   But it is a banality to state, that stronger urges require stronger self-control.    Thus the same ability to exercise self-control does not automatically mean the same success of willpower over stronger urges.  

Thus any abolition of the abuse of women requires a change in the attitude and behavior of both genders.   This requires a shift of the focus away from both fallacies.  Neither the female demand of more self-control by men and nor the male myth of female repression leads to any improvement of women's plight.  

The focus needs to be on the full acknowledgment of the disruption and harm caused by the excessive male urges and a subsequent change of both men's and women's attitude and behavior.  

1.  Men need to acknowledge their instinctive urges for recurrent restoration of physiological homeostasis as asymmetrical and not reciprocal.  They need to learn and take for serious, that women have different needs.  Men need to accept the biological reality, that the magnitude of male urges cannot and will not be requited by women.   Men need to give up the devastating myth of the existence of less consciously felt but equally strong urges as being the women's defect, and the belief in this myth as the justification to overcome this alleged defect by hook or crook as if this would ultimately be beneficial for the women.  This is a male delusion with cruel consequences for the victims. 

Instead men need to recognize, that the only realistic expression of consideration and responsibility towards women means to refrain from commodifying and objectifying them.    

2.  Women need to acknowledge, how little men have control over the automatic triggering of their instinctive urges towards abuse, whenever they are exposed to the perception of stimuli from female bodies.  This is aggravated, when men are in the state of high dishomeostasis.  

Even those decent and nice guys, who have not the least conscious intention to let abuse follow the perception of any unwelcome triggers, need more self-control for stronger stimulation.   Whenever they need all their available self-control to cope with these urges, this may leave them depleted of any further willpower, which they need to cope with other urges.  This may make it more difficult to resist other behaviors like overeating or smoking.   This can be concluded from studies about the depletion of willpower as presented in entry 524.   

(The following may sound like a far fetched speculation: I am wondering, if obesity, alcoholism and other self-harming widespread behaviors of lacking willpower are not partially enhanced by the oversexation of the media and of everyday life.  Not abusing women may deplete many decent men of so much of their willpower, that they more easily succumb to other urges instead.)

 
Therefore women too have a responsibility and a moral obligation to be considerate of men's physiological affliction.   Women need to avoid triggering male instincts towards their bodies, unless they are in private with a man, with whom they either have or want a relationship. 

Most people would agree, that it is cruel to show a bill of money to a beggar and then tell him to keep his fingers off, because it is not for him to have.  This invites the beggar's attempt, if he grabs it, while of course this is not a justification.   The beggar needs willpower not to grab it.   He would not need willpower, as long as people just pass him by.   A woman presenting herself nearly naked or in any provocative attire does the same to any man in dishomeostasis, whenever she wants him to keep off her body.    

As unfortunate as it is, the misunderstandings between the genders lead to antagonistic struggles, in which in the end both genders suffer.   Men are able to enforce abuse, but women react by materialistic exploitation.  
The abuse of women and the exploitation of men can only be abolished by cooperation based upon the realistic acknowledgment of the biological asymmetry.   Studies like the one cited are a good beginning, but a much more widespread recognition of the true problem is needed.      

671. Research On Predators' Brains

671.   Research On Predators' Brains

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

There has been done a study on abusers' brains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

638. Research Indicating Indirectly A Correlation Between The Objectification And The Commodification Of Women

638.   Research Indicating Indirectly A Correlation Between The Objectification And The Commodification Of Women

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082258.htm

"Married men and women who divide household chores in traditional ways report having more sex than couples who share so-called men's and women's work, according to a new study co-authored by sociologists at the University of Washington."

The article states a link but does not supply explanations.   In the framework of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, it makes sense to assume the force of instinctivity as a shared cause, which leads directly to the objectification of a woman's body and indirectly to the commodification a woman as a utility to serve a man's other needs.    Of course the circumstances determine the magnitude of objectification and commodification.    A man's abusing a prostitute is much more drastic and conscious than subtle tendencies of a husband towards his wife as shown in the study.

The stronger a man's recurrent sexual dishomeostasis, the more the animal part of his brain is at risk of subconsciously experiencing a woman as an object to be used, even while he consciously is not aware thereof, even if he consciously rejects objectification and respects women.   

This subconscious objectification is not limited to the use of her body, but is also generalized towards the commodification of perceiving the woman's entire person as existing for the purpose of additionally serving the man's general comfort and convenience.  

"Couples who follow traditional gender roles around the house -- wives doing the cooking, cleaning and shopping; men doing yard work, paying bills and auto maintenance -- reported greater sexual frequency."

This division of chores is´not derived from biological differences in aptitudes, but from men installing for themselves the privilege to pick those chores, which require skill, creativity, intelligence and which supply the reward of experiencing achievements, while the women are burdened with the dullest, banalest and most unrewarding routines like cleaning. Women are made to do, what men do not want to do.  

Women are often so exhausted and worn by their ascribed and enforced work load, that they have no time or energy left to learn the skills needed for the chores, which the men have reserved for themselves.   Thus the men believe to have a sufficient excuse to perpetuate their privileges by claiming, that the women were unable to do anything better than cleaning.    

This study indirectly reinforces once more my conclusion:     

It is many men's fallacy to claim and believe, that a high sex drive were a positive and desirable attribute of male quality.  They often are even foolish enough to feel proud of their sex drive.  They are unable to recognize, how much it can also be an affliction causing harm to women, at least to those, who are intelligent and educated.   

The lower a man's sex drive, the less he is prone to fall into the trap of subtle objectification and commodification.    The lower a man's sex drive, the higher the probability, that a man is able to treat a woman with appropriate respect and appreciation for her as an equal partner and person.  

  

499. Demisexuality And Monogamy

Demisexuality And Monogamy

Demisexuality and monogamy are both beneficial for the emotional and attachment needs of those people, who are sensitive and intellectual and not just instinct driven robots. 

Demisexuality and monogamy are connected, but they are not the same.

In entry 498 I described, how capitalists have created absurd social norms to acquire high profits from those, whom they had successfully manipulated to experience themselves as allegedly deviant.   In entry 493 I pointed out, how the definition of demisexuality by those self-labeling themselves as such is based upon the agreement of being deviant according to the accepted social norm of oversexation, while refusing to buy the capitalists' remedies.   

As explained in entry 496, when discarding the capitalists' absurd social norm by seeing demisexuality as the cognitive adaptation to the middle of the bell curve of libido and sexual instincts, it is not at all a deviance.  According to the evolution of the human cognition, demisexuality and monogamy are appropriate, realistic and suitable as social norms, because they are beneficial for the human emotional needs for attachment.   Such social norms bring no profit to capitalists, but they are superior for the purpose of avoiding individuals being harmed and suffering and social troubles and disruptions.  

Monogamy and demisexuality are closely connected without being the same: 

Sexual attraction in demisexuality and the wish to be part of a monogamous dyad are caused by the same personal attraction.  This personal attraction enabling sexual attraction in demisexuality consists of the same traits and attributes, which also attract couples to choose each other for the benefits of being committed companions sharing quality time and living arrangement.   Monogamous sexuality and sharing a home require both the same kind of trust to share exclusivity, intimacy and resources and the wish to be together and to enjoy each other's company and activities, which also causes the sexual attraction of demisexuals. 

• Demisexuality does not automatically lead to monogamous life arrangements.
  
  When taking the predominant definition literally and orthodoxically, demisexuality does not imply monogamy.   It is theoretically true, that someone can get into an emotionally close relationship with more than one person leading to sexual attraction and activities.   It is theoretically possible to imagine a mormon or muslim demisexual man having a polygynous family arrangement, that fully satisfies his personal needs.  
  But this does not imply, that he can reciprocally fulfill dyadic needs of more than one partner.  Any kind of arrangement may suit the needs of someone demisexual, while asymmetrical arrangements do not offer the same safe haven as does a dyad.
  
  Demisexuality is a cognitive predisposition, a trait, a predefined reaction or lack thereof to specific stimuli, demisexuality is wired into the brain, even in the absence of consciously experiencing the lack of stimulation.   Demisexuality does not require someone being aware of having such a predisposition. 
  
  
• Demisexuality is not the only possible cause for monogamy.
  
  Monogamy is a life style based upon the choice of the exclusivity of sharing the safe haven of the dyad with one specific person.  Monogamy is the exclusivity of the special combined intellectual, emotional and physical intimacy shared with only one significant other. 
  
  Monogamy can be either maintained by a successful use of willpower as the consequence of the cognitive insight of the superior long-term benefits of exclusivity or it can be facilitated and enabled by demisexuality.
  
  Choosing the life arrangement of a dyad (entry 497) is the choice for an emotionally healthy life style, when two partners support each other as a caring monogamous exclusive couple against the inclemencies of life.
  
  G.K. Chesterton only needed two sentences to express it beautifully in his novel 'The Man Who Was Thursday': 

  "there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy."

 

Demisexuality does therefore not lead automatically to monogamy, but monogamy without demisexuality is fragile, while demisexuality stabilizes monogamy.    Demisexual monogamy is a better safe haven than any form of monogamy, where exclusivity is only maintained by self-control in fear of consequences.   Demisexuality is the absence of those instinctive inclinations and predispositions, that are the biggest hazards to monogamy.   

Demisexuality is the best precondition for a lasting, stable, reliable and monogamous commitment.  
Monogamy is the best option for demisexuals.

498. Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

498.  Capitalism, Media, Social Norm And Monogamy

I claim: 

Some of today's decisive social norms are an artificial invention serving capitalists' profits by disregarding human cognitive and emotional needs.    

Monogamous life arrangements are the best adaptation of the human emotional needs and of the advanced evolution of the human cognition to the animal instincts also present in the human brain.
  

1.  The enabling factors of capitalistically distorted social norms.

1.1.  I call someone a capitalist, who uses financial power to ruthlessly invest money, wherever and whenever he can get the most profit, without responsibility and consideration for social and psychological consequences.   

1.2.  Until about 100 years ago, the reinforcement, persistence and influence of social norms depended on real life role models.   Role models lived successfully according to the social norm, social norms were reinforced by the example of real persons' achievements.  
While religions and philosophies also had influences, the real life experience of personally known role models restricted social norms to the correction by realistic physical and cognitive capacities of human beings.  

1.3.  According to the theory of being determined by the adaptation to the environment during evolution, the human cognition has not yet adapted to the technological environment, in which we are living now.  
It was first Kanazawa, who pointed out, that people are led to confound people on TV with personal friends.    http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf 

But this effect can be seen even more generalized as being effective, whenever recorded voices, movies, live size color pictures trick the subconscious brain to confound the preserved representations of persons with real present role models.

1.4.  The more often something is heard and repeated, the more people believe it.   Real life role models are not willing to repeat the demonstration of their endeavors for the purpose of influencing others.    Movies and audio tapes can be replayed endlessly and they have therefore more impact.    

1.5.  The technical progress created the influence of virtual role models confounded as if they were real people.  
The realistic voices from the radio started this.   The Nazi ideology would probably have not been so widely accepted by the German population, had not the radio repeated this ideology in a way, that people were misled subconsciously to be listening to personal role models.
When the color TV enabled capitalists to send role models as commercials into every home and repeating their messages endlessly, they established several new social norms, which do not correspond to people's real needs as cognitive humans.   

Instead these social norms were established to create profitable markets.    

  

2.  Distorted social norms optimize capitalistic profits

The general principle of the capitalistic social norm claims enhanced wellbeing as something to be bought by consumption.    The even more powerful and more devastating principle are those artificial, unrealistic and distorted social norms, which make people feel deviant and willing to spend money on remedies to reduce the alleged deviance, while there is nothing wrong with them.  

Capitalists, predominantly male, have created distorted social norms for both genders:

• Men have extremely high libido, they are promiscuous and successful in discarding the monogamous commitment to be successful predators consuming women.   
• Woman want to be prey as much as men enjoy to be the predators.   Due to the fundamental biological difference, only men have a physiological need for sexual homeostasis, while women have no biological reason to need sex unless there are also emotional benefits.   Therefore by this social norm consumption and material benefits are the substitutes for the not available emotional benefits as women's reward for their acquiescence to be compliant prey. 

As shown in entry 497, the safe haven of living as a dyad is the best adaptation of the human need to combine cognition and physiological needs.   People using their cognition to earn and create happiness, who work hard on their relationship by communicating, by solving conflicts, by sharing time and activities, by learning to trust and to cooperate, bring no profit to capitalists.  
People, who spend most of their time working for money, guided by the belief, that happiness could be bought, are doubly profitable to the capitalists:  They produce and they consume.    Someone, who is too busy to invest time and effort into cognitive improvements of a monogamous happiness, is lured by the social norms to instead invest money in acquiring the prey's compliance by buying consumption goods for her.       

• The role model for men invests money to offer general consumption to women.
• The role model for women invests money in her body to attract men to spend money on them.  

3.    The markets of deviance.

This social norm creates two levels of feeling insufficient and deviant, and the capitalists sell alleged remedies: 

Market 1:  The sex market, which is primarily a market for male customers.   

The social norm makes men believe that they are deviant and deficient, unless they have a very high libido.  This is unrealistic when compared with the biological bell curve of libido, where in reality the extreme libido is deviant.  (More in entry 496 on Demisexuality And Cognition)

The sex market sells

• remedies to physically enhance the libido of the predators:
  
  • medical treatment, pills, hormones

• remedies to subconsciously enhance the stimulation of the predators' libido: 
  • pornography tricking the subconscious brain to confound being stimulated by mere pictures with being in the presence of a real woman

• remedies to physically enhance the success of triggering another's instinctive physiological reaction:
  • pheromones, fashion, cosmetics, body modifications

• remedies to enhance the predator's manipulation skills: 
  
  • The market of PUA (pick-up-animals) training.

• remedies to avoid failing as a predator by being a customer instead: 
  
  • prostitution.

Market 2:  The Psychotropic Drug Market

The capitalists established the social norm, that any person, who cannot be happy and striving as an unattached predator or prey, but who is sensitive, vulnerable and suffers as a result of the deprivation of commitment, is deviant and needs to be treated by taking psychopharmaceuticals.  
They have created the psychotropic drug market, which is extremely profitable and still growing.  This is an excellent documentary:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDlH9sV0lHU

Psychological and social problems like depression, outbreak of psychiatric disturbances in vulnerable people under emotional stress, trauma, aggression, burn-out, alcoholism, illegal drugs abuse, crime, juvenile delinquencies are a few examples of what happens to people and their dependents, when basic emotional needs are not met.  Such sufferings are symptoms indicating the needed change of the toxic or noxious circumstances of their life situation.  If people's emotional needs were fully recognized, many psychological and psychosomatic health issues could be prevented by appropriate interventions.    But in this case, there would be no profit for the capitalists.  

The artificial social norms of defining as deviance, what really are healthy reactions to serious life challenges, have therefore two detrimental effects:

• Effect 1.  Those taking the psychopharmaceuticals deliberately, accept themselves as deviant in comparison with the artificial social norm.  People deprived of the social, emotional and psychological benefits of the safe haven of a reliable dyad as outlined in entry 497, react with maladaptive coping behavior.   Instead of attempting to get the needed benefits of a monogamous relationship, they take pills.    They are manipulated to believe this as the easy and only way out.
    
• Effect 2.  Those, who involuntarily hurt and harm others in spite of believing to act morally, consider their victims as deviant.  They influence or even coerce them to take pharmaceuticals as the apparently only remedy to restore them to cope better under the artificial social norm.  
  As already elaborated in entry 489 (Demisexuality And Morals), one of the collateral devastations of the artificial capitalistic social norm is the effect upon the behavior of those people, who are willing and wishing to be moral. They believe to act as good people according to the social norm, but they are oblivious of the damage done by them.    They harm others, but instead of changing their own behavior, they feed them with pills to repair the alleged flaw.   People doing damage with a clean conscience cause sometimes the worst harm.

An example:   

The proverbial broken heart can physiologically be expressed by symptoms of a real health issue, according to this study: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120207121928.htm
"Broken heart syndrome occurs during highly stressful or emotional times, such as a painful breakup,
Broken heart syndrome also is called stress cardiomyopathy. Symptoms are similar to those of a heart attack, including chest pain and difficulty breathing.
During an extremely stressful event, the heart can be overwhelmed with a surge of adrenalin and other stress hormones."

Without the distorted capitalistic social norm, a sensitive caring person would feel responsible and avoid breaking another person's heart.   But the social norm of the oversexation and of promiscuity has destroyed the realistic recognition of the human need for attachment, consideration and responsibility.  

• The person suffering the broken heart fights the allegedly deviant reaction with psychopharmaceuticals. 
• The person, who had broken the heart, feels entitled to do so and considers the other as in need of pharmaceuticals.     

To sum it up, capitalists have used the media to artificially create the social norm of the oversexation of society and of men's high libido in addition to the general market of selling alleged consumable happiness and wellbeing.   
The discrepancy between biological reality and the distorted social norm has created two markets, one of remedies for those men attempting to comply with the sexual norm, and the other of pharmaceutical remedies for both men and women, who are psychologically damaged by this norm.

496. Demisexuality And Cognition

Demisexuality And Cognition

I claim:  Demisexuality (defined as "sexual attraction to people they know personally, usually based on some kind of emotional connection, whether platonic or romantic. They can’t feel sexually attracted to strangers, celebrities, or people they don’t very well." by http://outlawroad.tumblr.com/post/10265976595/gray-asexuality) is not a deviance, it is the appropriate evolutionary adaptation of sexuality as a part of the evolution of human cognition.  

Demisexuality as a concept causes a lot of confusion, as long as it is not explained as a part of a general model of human sexuality.   

The following model includes two main factors, sexual dishomeostasis and sexual behavior.    Because of biological differences, I am simplifying my model to only exploring the male side, which is determined by physiologically obvious indications.    In females, the procreation instinct interferes too much.  

The reasons for my simplification are shown in this research:
http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf 
Cark/Hatfield: Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers
In two studies, when a stranger was approached by a woman saying "I have been noticing you around campus.  I find you to be very attractive." and "Would you go to bed with me tonight?", the majority of men agreed.   In 1978, 75% did, in 1982, 69%.   In the reverse situation, all woman approached by a man refused.

The study was done on college students.  Such women have above average education and intelligence and no pressing need to marry a provider.   The men are at an age of high biological libido and before being restricted with obligations to a wife and children.  
Therefore the proportion of how many men agreed in this study is not representative for other social and cultural groups.  
But the different reaction of men compared with women in this study allows to conclude, that the reason for self-labeling as demisexual by considering it as a deviance is also different for men and for women.  
It is predominantly a male problem to experience deviance from the social norm of oversexation as a physiological deficit.  Females are under social pressure to act against their natural inclination and perceive their own demisexuality as a social deviance.   I explained this already in entry 493. (The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men)

My model of male sexuality is based upon two factors:

• Perceived sexual dishomeostasis
• Sexual behavior as a reaction to the presence and availability of a target body

As I mentioned before, I consider the strength of the libido in every age group of men as a continuum with a distribution along a bell curve.   The perceived strength and urge of sexual dishomeostasis represent the innate strength of the libido. As this is a model, I omit the effects of health issues.

Simplified, at both extreme ends of the scale, the libido determines the sexual behavior.   In the middle of the bell curve, sexuality is controlled and modified by human cognition.

1.  At one extreme end of the curve are the dangerous promiscuous jerks, who are so oversexed with high libido, that they are not only drooling over every woman's body but who are ruthless emotional psychopaths, who use and discard women without any conscience or consideration, even by force and coercion.  

2.  At the other extreme of the bell curve are the truly nonsexuals, who have no or very little libido and no need for sexual homeostation.

3.  In the middle of the bell curve, there is a moderate perception of dishomeostasis, but the experience and practice of sexuality is modified and controlled by cognition.   The cognitive control over sexual reactiveness to the perception of stimuli is a byproduct of the evolution of cognition.   

Without cognition, a man would not be different from any non-human animal.  A man without cognition and in the state of the recurrent dishomeostasis after the latency time since his last copulation, would drool over every woman's body, who is genetically suitable to trigger his instincts.   In the animal world, whenever a male feels dishomeostasis and perceives a target body, sexual behavior is the automatic reaction of a robot determined by instincts only.  

In this middle part of the bell curve of libido, there are several possible reasons, why at a given moment an available target body does not lead to sexual behavior.   A target body is the body of a woman, who is a stranger and whose physical attributes are such, that they trigger the automatic sexual behavior of every high libido jerk.  

3.1.  A man in a relationship, which maintains his homeostasis, never gets into the situation of being driven by so much dishomeostasis, that he is tempted to make use of the target body.   This situation shows the benefits of bonded and committed monogamy.  

3.2.  Other needs, urges and sensations are temporarily stronger than the stimulation by the target body, examples are hunger, fatigue, danger, sickness.   This effect limits the behavior of all men, no matter the strength of the libido.  

3.3.  A man has enough cognitive control to resist the instinctive responsiveness to the target body.   In contrast to animals, humans do not react automatically to stimuli.   Human cognition allows to base decisions upon the memory of past experiences, the knowledge of consequences and the knowledge of not directly visible additional factors.    The refusal to react to a target body with sexual behavior can be based upon the anticipation of better alternatives or of the unwanted consequences.   This rational evaluation can avoid the plight of some women, but it does not avoid those men's behavior, who have come to the conclusion, that they can get away with the abuse of a woman.   

3.4. A man's cognition interferes with the responsiveness to the target body.   This is, what is usually defined as demisexuality.   But this is more complex, because the human cognition can override instincts on several different levels of demisexuality.

Level 1.   Stimuli are filtered from perception, before they reach the brain.

• Some people with autism and Asperger's are known to be oblivious to incoming non-verbal signals.   An example are persons, who bore others with endless monologues, because they are mindblind to the non-verbal expression of others' boredom, annoyance, disapproval.
  It is possible, that the sexual stimuli from the target body can be filtered the same way.   I have been speculating before, that there is a personality type, that is a part of Asperger's, but which can also be found in people, who are far from having any clinically relevant symptoms.   Maybe demisexuality is a part of this personality.    

Level 2.  Cognitive needs are stronger than physical needs. 

Stimuli from the target body are discarded or deactivated subconsciously, when emotional needs are stronger.  Such cognitive and emotional needs can be:

• The needs to feel self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth in accordance with an identity as a person with morals, education and intelligence.   In this identity, the body is only the container and supply system for the brain.  
• A value system, in which human cognition is valued highly, while animal instincts are despised.   There is a strong need to avoid cognitive dissonance by living up to the own standards.
• An Epicurean personality, to which emotional and intellectual stimulation causes generally stronger pleasure and joy than physical stimulation.   This includes the subjective experience of intellectual intimacy as very beneficial.
• Sensitivity and empathy blocking the perception of sexual stimuli, unless the partner shows unequivocal signs of happiness and attachment

Level 3.  Competing conscious stimuli

The stranger inside the target body not only sends out sexual stimuli, but also other stimuli, that are competing and by being stronger, override any sexual attraction on a conscious level.   

• Disgust sensitivity to a stranger's body impedes promiscuity.  Only a slow process of creating emotional closeness can be strong enough to override the disgust.   More in entry 108.   (Promiscuity and Disgust Sensitivity)
• Repulsion or fear based upon nonverbal signals or knowledge about the person as for example can be a contagious sickness or a criminal record.   

4.  The social norm has a strong impact upon what sexual behavior men consider as appropriate, no matter how much or how little it corresponds with their real needs determined by their place on the bell curve of libido.  In entry 493  (The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men), I pointed out the detrimental effects of the social norm of extremely and unrealistically high libido for all men.   But the social norm of celibacy, that prevents the catholic priests from marrying the housekeeper, with whom they have developed a monogamous attachment, is equally unrealistic.   
  
There is a need for a new social norm, which focuses upon both, the realistic recognition and acceptance of every man's individual level of libido and upon consideration and recognition of the real needs of women.  
The drooling promiscuous jerks, who are not controlled by cognition, are deviant and sick.   It is absurd to consider them as the role models for men in the current social norm.    A social norm is most suitable, when it fits best the needs of the majority, while it controls the hazard of the deviant and protects the weak and vulnerable.  

Monogamy is the most suitable concept for the men in the middle part of the bell curve, whose libido is at a healthy medium level.    Monogamy provides the best protection for women against being hurt and harmed.  
A new social norm of moderate libido and monogamy is the most appropriate to suit the actual evolutionary level of the human cognition. The oversexation of societies, which value the high libido of the men, who drool over every woman's body, is outdated and anachronistic.  

493. The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men

493.  The Social Norm Of The Drooling Men
Social norms have a lot of power over susceptible and gullible people, because they influence behavior away from innate inclinations.   Others are compared with social norms.  Correct behavior is defined by social norms.  The own self-esteem and self-worth depends on the comparison with social norms.   Social norms define the perception of deviance.  

Social norms are beneficial, when they guide behavior towards a morality, that has the goal of avoiding and minimizing suffering, hurting and harming.  

Some social norms also do a lot of damage, especially when they are no longer appropriate to changed circumstances or when they serve the benefits of a powerful and influential minority but harm the majority.  

One example is the social norm of high libido for men.   This social norm is incongruent with the real human cognitively influenced sexuality, which is based upon the strength of the libido distributed along a bell curve.  

The social norm of high libido corresponds in a very biased way only with one extreme end of the bell curve.   This social norm declares the most extreme inclinations to be the best and to be most suitable for everybody.   The definition of masculinity and virility includes high libido as a major ingredient.  Low libido is strongly despised as a defect.  

High libido itself is a biological predisposition.  The social norm of expressed high libido is implicitly defined by men as experiencing themselves drooling over every female body, whenever this body is perceived as attractive in the implicit agreement of those, who drool the most.

Experiencing frequent drooling serves as the self-reassurance of meeting the requirement of the social norm of high libido. 

The consequences of this social norm are very detrimental:

1.  The technical advancement of life-imitating photos and movies and the distribution by printed media, television and the Internet has caused the oversexation of society and a general desensitization to this even for those, who do not benefit or even suffer from this norm.  

2.  According to this social norm, the promiscuity of the drooling men is considered as their entitlement, while the suffering emotionally attached victims of being dumped or cheated upon are considered as flawed and deviant.
  
3.  Instead of rejecting this social norm as being detrimental to themselves, most women accept attempts to trigger men to drool more by modification of their exterior as the best solution of coping with the social norm.    The compete to trigger the strongest drooling.   

4. Those men with less libido, whose behavior would best fulfill women's emotional needs, are impeded from accepting themselves as they are.  Instead they measure themselves in comparison with the harmful social norm.   As a consequence, they either attempt to correct their alleged problem medically or they attempt to imitate the promiscuous jerks as role models.   They deteriorate in the false belief of improving.  

5. The widespread definitions of asexuality and demisexuality as a label for self-labeling are also a reaction to the fully accepted social norm of high libido.   

"An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. "
http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Asexuality

"Demisexuals are asexuals who only experience secondary sexual attraction to people they know personally, usually based on some kind of emotional connection, whether platonic or romantic. They can’t feel sexually attracted to strangers, celebrities, or people they don’t very well. So demisexuality is all about sexual attraction, just like asexuality is all about the lack of sexual attraction."
http://outlawroad.tumblr.com/post/10265976595/gray-asexuality

Theoretically, the evolution of the human cognition enables people to derive their identity, self-esteem, self-worth from their intelligence, creativity, talents, knowledge, skills and also from behaving morally by avoiding to hurt and to harm others.   The evolution of the human cognition has advanced far enough to free humans from the need to base self-esteem upon attributes of their bodies.  
Any man with low or lacking libido has this option.    But in spite of this, nearly all men seem to feel deficient, if they do not drool often enough over women's bodies.    I cannot remember to have ever read or heard of any man, who prefers himself as someone with a low libido.   Even men, whose religion forbids any behavioral expression of libido do not feel good when just having none but they take pride in conquering it.  

It appears as if low libido in men automatically leads at least to low self-esteem, if not to more severe psychological problems.   They seem just unable to consider and accept low libido as either not important or even as an indication of being the quality men, who do not hurt women.   They cannot even change their opinion about themselves, when women tell them explicitly, that they prefer the monogamous non-drooling men with the moderate libido.

There are self-help and discussion forums for people self-labeling themselves as asexual, demisexuals, and similar labels.   These forums seem to be populated by persons struggling with low self-esteem, lacking self-worth, subjective feelings of being deviant.  They seem to be in the need of a niche, where they find others similarly afflicted.   They share, what they experience subjectively as their common flaw of failing under the social norms of an oversexed society.   
They have accepted this social norm without ever doubting its value or justification.   It does not even occur to them to criticize or reject the social norm of high libido and drooling.    

They repeat again and again their strong emphasis of the paramount importance of the difference between the absence of sexual attraction and the absence of or low libido.   This very artificial distinction is a remarkable mental trick to resolve a strong cognitive dissonance.  
They are unable to deny to themselves to recognize the reality of not drooling over women's bodies, while they are aware that this is considered a deficit according to the social norm.   They want to be able to accept themselves as different without feeling deficient.

The social norm of high libido is an attribute of one person.   The focus on lacking sexual attraction is a mental trick to shift the focus away from being someone with a personal deficit.  Sexual attraction requires by definition the interaction of more than one person, it requires a target to be attracted to.   Lacking sexual attraction as an explanation allows to externalize the alleged cause to the nonexistence of suitable targets.  This can be accepted as a difference, which is independent of failing the social norm.

Humanity needs to adapt culturally to the human cognition by a radical shift of the social norms concerning sexuality.    In another entry, I will make some suggestions.