660. Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles

660.  Mavericks, Outsiders, Misfits And Gender Roles


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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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


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

657. An Example Of An Emotionally Hazardous Man

657.   An Example Of An Emotionally Hazardous Man

In entry 650 I compared the asymmetry in how male and female singles are coping with their needs and instincts.    Singles of both genders can successfully established a network of sources for their intellectual and emotional needs.   By this network of family, colleagues, friends, buddies, all cognitive needs are fulfilled.  What remains unfulfilled, are only the instinctive urges.  

Under such circumstances, men continue to be driven by dishomeostasis towards the use of female bodies.    But women are in the fortunate situation of not being afflicted with the same recurrent urge to get rid of procreative body waste.    Therefore women in the same situation either feel no additional needs of a kind, which requires a man's body.   When women are driven by instincts, it is towards breeding and towards a man as a provider.   Only very few women are ever driven towards a man for the mere purpose of copulating with a body.   Women who want nothing better are very rare, while there are many men preferring them.  

The consequence is a very unfortunate imbalance.   There are many men with no other relationship needs except for a female body, but whose basic decency causes them to refrain from paid abuse.   They search in vain for women, who also have no needs or demands for anything better than a male body.    When they get instead in contact with those women, who need a bonding companion, a safe haven based upon emotional and intellectual intimacy, these women are at a very high risk of being hurt.

This risk is aggravated by some men's insufficient theory of mind.   Being unaware of the implications, that women are not afflicted by the same body waste dishomeostasis as men are, they have instead the delusion, that women share the same instinctive needs.    Only those men, who know, when they hurt and abuse women, have a choice to refrain from doing so.   

A woman needs to be very perceptive for red flags indicating the hazard of being hurt, the earlier and the better she notices them, the more she can protect herself.    


The following is a good example.

I have been contacted by a man, who has listed some search criteria in his profile.
Unfortunately he did not reply to my asking permission to quote him literally, so I try to paraphrase him with the least distortion.   And of course, the following are conjectures from limited information.

    
Two of his criteria are red flags, and his replies to my reservations about these issues made the red flags grew even bigger. 
   
1.   By his criteria, a woman should not require to be his only female friend.   In his reply he claims that jealousy is poisonous and a consequence of a weak relationship.

2.   By his criteria, a woman should not hold him responsible for her emotional wellness.   In his reply he claims that a whole person cannot be hurt by anybody, that being vulnerable means a need to work on oneself and that people are only accountable to themselves for what they feel.  


This man is a nightmare for any woman, who wants a bonded companion, an exclusive confidante, a safe haven, a mindmate.   With him, there is nothing better available than a body in bed.   When his denial of a woman's non-physical needs and his emotional cheating with other women hurt her, he does not take responsibility but blames it upon her flaw and weakness.   Oversimplified, the gist is that if a woman disagrees with how he treats her, it is the woman's defect, while nothing he does, can be wrong.  

1.   For simple minded and immature people, the simple definition of cheating is not getting physically involved with any other person.   Anything else is not understood as cheating and is considered as permissible.   Any objection is rejected as unjustified jealousy.
People without a mature theory of mind are unaware of the harm done as a consequence of this oversimplified definition.   
When such a man's entire non-physical needs are met by his network, he can be misled to firmly believe to be a trophy husband, as long as he spends every night in the bed shared with his partner and does not touch other women.    

When he shares his innermost feelings and troubles with female confidantes other than his bed partner, whom he emotionally and intellectually excludes from being a companion, he feels justified and entitled to do so.  
When he knows in advance his strong permanent and persistent need for multiple important female friends, this clearly indicates, that no woman has ever any chance to become exclusively significant as his one and only bonded companion and confidante.    The exclusivity of only one significant partner is beyond his imagination.        

A different man, mature and with a good theory of mind, is able to draw a clear line between female acquaintances, who are kept at a sufficient and safe emotional distance.   He is able to understand the importance of having close friends as common friends.

2.  Healthy people do not get hurt by insignificant persons, and they are capable to choose, who is significant.    People with a healthy emotionality are vulnerable to what significant people do to them.  Entering a meaningful personal relationship with a significant other implies to make oneself vulnerable.   It implies to give the significant other the power to have an impact upon the emotional wellbeing and it is based upon the trust, that this power is not abused.
People, whom nobody can hurt, are either robots, monsters or psychopaths, or they are unable to perceive someone as significant and to allow anybody to become significant.   One method to interpret this man's normative statement is to imply, that he avoids being vulnerable by not allowing any person to get close, not even a woman in a relationship.  
If this man does, what he claims, he would not hesitate to return every night to the bed of a woman, who lies, cheats and betrays him, and the lacking emotional impact of her behavior upon him clearly indicates, that to him, she is not a person of significance, but only a body and an object.    As long as the availability of her body serves his physiological needs, nothing else of what she does matters.   And if he considers this as normal, then he obviously has never in his life experienced a woman as significant.  

Enhancing the shared happiness is a common goal of a bonded couple, while it is an illusion to passively expect to be made happy by the other's proactive actions.  A partner has no obligation to add to the other's emotional wellbeing.   But the trust of making oneself vulnerable causes and justifies the other's moral obligation and responsibility to avoid hurting, harming and damaging the emotional wellbeing.   It cannot be justified, that one partner profits from a relationship and in return damages the other's emotional wellbeing.    The baseline has to always be Epicurus' principle of not harming and not being harmed.