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.      

524. The Absence Of Urges Is Better Than Self-Control

524.  The Absence Of Urges Is Better Than Self-Control

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606142704.htm

"A study by University of Iowa neuroscientist and neuro-marketing expert William Hedgcock confirms previous studies that show self-control is a finite commodity that is depleted by use. Once the pool has dried up, we're less likely to keep our cool the next time we're faced with a situation that requires self-control."

"But Hedgcock's study is the first to actually show it happening in the brain using fMRI images that scan people as they perform self-control tasks. "

"The study could also modify previous thinking that considered self-control to be like a muscle. Hedgcock says his images seem to suggest that it's like a pool that can be drained by use then replenished through time in a lower conflict environment, away from temptations that require its use."

This study backs up my opinion, that if a woman wants a man predominantly for the safe haven of the companionship of two persons, then the wisest choice is a man, whose instinctive subconscious reactions to the stimulation by objectified female bodies is as low as can be found.  

A low instinctivity man is no hazard, because by his own innate predisposition, attitudes and genuine needs he is more attracted to a woman's personality than to her body.   Therefore he is not prone to be drawn into a struggle against temptations, which he does not have.     

A high instinctivity man, who only has rationally decided to treat a woman as an equal partner according to her needs, because he has cognitive conscious reasons to do so, including the wish to prevent losing her, needs to exercise a lot of self-control against strong instinctive urges to objectify women.   He is a hazard, because whenever his self-control has been depleted by any other task, he is prone to behave in an inconsiderate and irresponsible way. 
 

This has even further implications.    A relationship needs hard work and effort to improve it, to communicate about unpleasant conflicts, to face reality without denial and avoidance.    Sometimes a lot of willpower is needed to do this.  
Someone of low instinctivity, who does not need to waste his willpower on fighting the strong animal inside himself, has more willpower left to invest into the constructive work on the relationship.  
Also whenever a high instinctivity man has depleted his willpower in an attempt to solve relationship conflicts, he is prone to behave as a jerk due to not being able to resist some temptations.         

251. The Resilience and Willpower Battery

The Resilience and Willpower Battery

This is a metaphor and not a claim of any kind of mystic woo-woo power.

People are born with a fully charged resilience and willpower battery.  

Resilience means the passive ability to endure phases or events of stress, being hurt, being depreciated, being lonely, loss, failure, fear and danger, emotional abuse, helplessness and other inclemencies of life without detrimental effects.

Willpower (as already mentioned in entries 134 and 136) is the ability to have self-control and actively force oneself to do unpleasant things and to resist unwanted impulses.     

Resilience and willpower use the energy from the battery.   When the battery is empty, the person reaches a state, that is known as burn-out.     Usually burn-out is considered as job related problem, but it can be as much be the result of an unhappy private life.

There are many ways to recharge the battery, depending on the personality.   But for most people, a happy relationship is an especially potent method to recharge it, it is a power charger.   

A committed couple, being a safe haven for each other, based upon trust, caring, reliability and responsibility, can strengthen each other in their shared coping with the world around them.   

But commitment and perceiving themselves as a unit is the precondition for a relationship to be a recharger for the battery.    When people fight to get their needs met, they deplete the battery at least as much as they recharge it.    Even worse, when a jerk dominates a woman, then he recharges his battery by emptying hers until she reaches the burn-out.  

Therefore it is my quest to find a mindmate, with whom there will be commitment, which enables us to mutually charge our batteries.

136. Unsuitable Men 6: The Willpower Deficit

Unsuitable Men 6:  The Willpower Deficit

In entry 133, I wrote:  Not hurting requires two components.    The one, who hurts, needs to know, that he is hurting, and he needs to be motivated not to do so.  
After reading and thinking about willpower and depletion, it seems, that I omitted the third factor, willpower and self-control.  

There are the men, who may well be theoretically motivated not to hurt a woman.   But their individual general supply of willpower is so low and their selfish impulses are so strong, that they cannot help it but hurt the woman against their own wish or attitude.   They have developed psychological mechanisms to successfully trick themselves into not feeling bad about it.  

http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/msh/pdfs/Hagger%20et%20al.%20%282010%29%20PB.pdf
"numerous capacity-based theories of self-control also conceptualize selfcontrol as a dispositional, traitlike construct that differs across individuals"
"This implies that people high in dispositional self-control will have more resources at their disposal.  Such individuals will have more resources remaining after engaging in a self-control task of a given duration and resource demand than will individuals lower in trait self-control. Trait self-control may therefore serve to insulate a person from the depleting effects of self-control tasks and moderate the ego-depletion effect"

In entry 134 I described how the coercion to get advantages from her can deplete the willpower of a woman.
When a man has a personal disposition of only a low amount of willpower, and he attempts to control his selfish impulses, he also depletes himself by doing this.   In reality, he may be only slightly or intermittently successful, in his own perception, he feels as if making huge efforts, while his partner experiences him nevertheless as a hurting and selfish person.   
She needs from him the ability not to hurt her, and subjectively, he struggles to do so.   For her it is not enough, while he perceives his attempts and efforts as not appreciated.  

It is the old dilemma of what is fair compromising and what is giving up basic human rights and reasonable requirements concerning a relationship.   Between one, who prefers hiking, and the other, who wants to visit a museum, an arrangement can be a fair compromise.    When a woman gets hurt less, she is still getting hurt.   Any amount of hurting is no correct treatment.   Therefore any compromise between hurting a lot and not hurting, that results only in hurting less, is not fair and not acceptable.

A man, who receives a woman's feedback, that she feels hurt by his behavior, and who consciously would not want to hurt her, would feel shame and guilt.  He certainly does not like to feel the loser and wimp, who hurts someone, whom he would prefer not to hurt.  

Therefore he uses some psychological strategies to cope with this.  
1.  He prevents himself from consciously knowing, that he indeed is hurting her.     He uses denial to avoid her feedback ever reaching his mind.    He defines her feeling hurt as her defect and flaw.   He blames her to fail her duties to him so he believes his behavior to be justified.
2.  He does the same as the penitents in Sevilla, described in entry 135.   Subjectively he buys himself the license for all the transgressions, that he feels too weak to avoid by self-control.   
He attempts to compensate by doing things for her, that he subjectively considers as caring.   Valuing the fulfillment of his own needs as something of a paramount importance, he projects his own needs upon her and does for her, what he enjoys himself, or what he assumes, that she wants.  Then he expects a lot of appreciation from her for what he does.    
But he is oblivious of what she would consider as caring, of what she really needs and wants.   It does not even occur to him to ask the woman, what is really important for her.   The efforts, that he invests in his compensating activities, are only enough for his own having the illusion of doing more for her than he gets from her, she does not perceive it this way.   Because he is not making any progress towards ending his transgressions, his compensations are not a personal sacrifice for him, and she continues to experience him as using her for his own selfish advantages.  

This leads to an insurmountable impasse, if they differ in a basic attitude.    If in her value system moral transgressions cannot be compensated for, while he considers compensation a reasonable procedure, then they are not compatible and there is no rational compromise to solve the conflict.     
If the woman is like me, she considers moral transgressions like hurting as absolutely not acceptable.   The man is not suitable, because he is hurting her, she may consider him a jerk, a wimp, a moron, depending on his reasons.   There is no way to compensate for hurting.    Nothing he does, has any value, as long as he continues his hurting transgressions.   
When the man in his own perception has not only compensated, but even overcompensated for his transgressions, when he feels to have already paid a high price for his license to continue hurting her, then he starts to think, that he is entitled to get this license and that she owes him to forgive the transgressions of the past and to tolerate his future transgressions.   When the woman refuses this deal, he feels rejected, even outraged.   

It really is an impasse.   She is as convinced of her right to not be the target of transgressions as he is convinced that he has the right to be allowed the transgressions in return for the imposed compensations.

A man, who would hurt me, is not suitable for me, no matter, how much he is willing to compensate for hurting.   If he wants to be suitable, he has to refrain from hurting me.

134. The Jerk's Paradox

134.  The Jerk's Paradox

In entry 130 I explained the difference between a caring partner, who appreciates, whatever a caring woman voluntarily does for him, while a cruel jerk coerces her to serve his selfish advantages.   This can be further looked at with the view upon how it depletes or replenishes her willpower. 

Willpower is something that can get depleted, according to some research.  
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/006569.html

Unpleasant tasks use up the willpower, and the daily routine of doing chores is a drain of it for many people.   But a happy life with a caring partner is probably a very efficient way to replenish the willpower and preserve some kind of a homeostasis.
Therefore the caring, trusting, appreciating man can get easily, what he needs and wishes from a woman, who cares as much as she is cared for, because he maintains her capacity to care.    

But for the jerk, who uses intimidation and coercion to press his selfish needs out of a partner, this is very different.  The woman uses up all her willpower to resist the outrage, to protect herself, to survive without breaking down, to cope with the stress of being helplessly under the pressure of the jerk.   She needs a lot of willpower not to loose her own countenance and deteriorate her own situation by yelling and calling the jerk a jerk.  
That depletes her so much, that she looses any capability to comply with his coercion.    To do something, that she wishes not to do, but is resigned to do to avoid a threatened consequence, needs a lot of willpower.   When she has none left, she cannot do it.  

"Coping with stress, regulating negative affect, and resisting temptations require self-control, and after such self-control efforts, subsequent attempts at self-control are more likely to fail. Continuous self-control efforts, such as vigilance, also degrade over time. ......  These decrements appear to be specific to behaviors that involve self-control;"

http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/672%20Muraven%20&%20Baumeister%202000.pdf

This has a paradoxical consequence.   The jerk believes, that domination and coercion are powerful instruments to achieve his goals.   In reality, these very instruments do the contrary, they impede him from getting anything.   The jerk applies all his outrageous hurtful treatment to get advantages from the woman, but he drives the woman away and in the end, he has nothing.   

A jerk, who would deplete me of my energies, is not suitable for me.