700. Research Concerning Female Self-Abuse

700.  Research Concerning Female Self-Abuse

This is entry 700 and I am still blogging to find a mindmate, who is not predominantly an instinct driven animal, but someone, who values a woman's brain more than her body.  
All I want is to find one such man.  Where is he?  

Sometimes in matchmaking sites they suggest answering among other questions, what one would change, if one were a deity able to create a better world.  
My answer:  I would change the male biology.   I would recreate a different version of men, who would never feel an urge to abuse a woman's body and remain emotionally unattached.   I would create men, who crave for emotional attachment and monogamous bonding and who would only consider, need and experience physical intimacy as a consequence of this.   I would create men, who never touch a woman, unless they also want and intend to share their lives with her.    

A few such men do exist, but if all men were like this, the world would be a much better place for women.  

In entry 688 I listed some of foolish women's reason for participating in self-abuse.  

I omitted one more unfortunate reason for female self-abuse.   Many foolish women compete for whom they perceive as alpha males and reject the others, whom they could have for themselves without competition.  
In long bygone times, women competed for men by their looks, the social status of their parents and their quality of character and personality.   
Due to male power over the media, the present social norm of promiscuity has the side effect of many women having been brainwashed to accept self-abuse as the unavoidable price to be accepted by men.   Today women compete by making themselves available for self-abuse and by presenting themselves in a way to trigger men's wish to abuse them.   These women have the delusion to get a relationship with alpha men by allowing their bodies to be abused before another woman makes her body available.     

But self-abuse is detrimental for women, as two studies indicate:

1.  There is a study showing the distinction between the attitudes of the genders concerning what is the best pursuit of self-interest.   

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131125164745.htm

"In the largest, most in-depth study to date on regret surrounding sexual activity, a team of psychology researchers found a stark contrast in remorse between men and women, potentially shedding light on the evolutionary history of human nature."

"They suggest that men are more likely to regret not taking action on a potential liaison, and women are more remorseful for engaging in one-time liaisons."

""For men throughout evolutionary history, every missed opportunity to have sex with a new partner is potentially a missed reproduce opportunity -- a costly loss from an evolutionary perspective." Haselton says. "But for women, reproduction required much more investment in each offspring, including nine months of pregnancy and potentially two additional years of breastfeeding. The consequences of casual sex were so much higher for women than for men, and this is likely to have shaped emotional reactions to sexual liaisons even today.""

"According to the findings:

    The top three most common regrets for women are: losing virginity to the wrong partner (24 percent), cheating on a present or past partner (23 percent) and moving too fast sexually (20 percent).
    For men, the top three regrets are: being too shy to make a move on a prospective sexual partner (27 percent), not being more sexually adventurous when young (23 percent) and not being more sexually adventurous during their single days (19 percent)."

These asymmetrical regrets reflect the impact of the current social norm of promiscuity, which represents the men with the strongest urge to abuse as if they were average.   Male regrets are about failing to perform as much abuse as prescribed by the norm.    Women regret to have been misled by the norm to act in a self-damaging way, hurting themselves by the denial of their emotional needs.  
Men are encouraged to feel entitled to more abuse, women learn the stupidity of self-abuse often only, when it is too late. 

2.  A study indicates, that self-abuse is unhealthy:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2013.848255#tabModule

"“Hookups” are sexual encounters between partners who are not in a romantic relationship and do not expect commitment. We examined the associations between sexual hookup behavior and depression, sexual victimization (SV), and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among first-year college women. In this longitudinal study, 483 women completed 13 monthly surveys assessing oral and vaginal sex with hookup and romantic partners, depression, SV, and self-reported STIs. Participants also provided biological specimens that were tested for STIs. During the study, 50% of participants reported hookup sex and 62% reported romantic sex. "

"hookup behavior during college was positively correlated with experiencing clinically significant depression symptoms. Sex in the context of romantic relationships was not correlated with depression."

"Approximately one-quarter of the sample reported at least one instance of SV by way of physical force, threats of harm, or incapacitation during the yearlong study."

"hookup behavior during the study was a significant predictor of incident STIs"

"The potential for negative health and social outcomes suggest the need for proactive educational efforts"

This is a tragic vicious circle.   Women are misled to mistake self-abuse as the only successful method to find a partner for their emotional needs.   This instrumental compliance reinforces the male delusion, that women would benefit when in reality they are abused.   Thus even those men, who would not abuse a woman, were they aware of what they are really doing, do not hesitate to abuse women pretending their compliance to be their true wish.  The male delusion of mistaking purposeful self-abuse for beneficial self-interested behaviors bears the risk, that sometimes men may believe to do something beneficial and pleasing to not consenting victims.       

654. Gender Differences As A Research Result

654.   Gender Differences As A Research Result

I am aware of what I have learned by my own experiences and perception of men's behavior and of the huge distinction between how much most men are under the power of animal instincts and how little I am myself afflicted by such instincts.  

My own needs for attachment, commitment, companionship, appreciation of and respect for my brain and the recognition, that I deserve something better than being mistaken for a commodity are the contrary of many men's instinctive urges towards using female bodies without commitment.
  
But this awareness does not imply, that I am able to generalize correctly from myself to other women without a bias.   There are too many women presented on the web as allegedly and apparently by choice promiscuous, prostitutes and porno-stars to not be puzzled.   

The truth about this and about how many of them remain unharmed cannot be obtained from the standard media.  Feminist publications present this very differently.   Those of these women, who suffer later from irreversible psychological damage, are often either not presented or the damage is attributed to any other cause but not the self-afflicted compliance with being abused. 

Many people are gullible to social norms and external influences distorting their attitudes and evaluation of their own behavior, both as perpetrators and as victims.   In many societies, especially in modern western cultures, this favors men.   Women are fooled to underestimate the self-inflicted harm and men are fooled and fool themselves, that there is nothing wrong with what they do.   It is a sad reality, that too many men are naive and stupid enough to believe, that what they experience as beneficial for themselves, cannot cause harm for women.  Because they feel an urge to copulate like alley dogs, they cannot comprehend, that this harms women.   It is a good example, that a good theory of mind would be a better protection against harming others than is simple naive empathy.  

I am a allergic to any male attitude towards commodifying and objectifying women.  I am aware that many other women on the web appear to protest and to reject abuse much less than I do and to tolerate and to condone male harming transgressions more easily.   I cannot know the reasons, why they differ from me.  
I wonder if they really suffer less as the victims of male instincts.  Maybe the real difference between them and me is my greater resistance to being manipulated.   The socially propagated female gender role is not a part of my ideal self nor of my identity.   As an independent thinker I am immune to be made to believe, that what men do to women is automatically appropriate and that women should therefore not disagree but attempt to accommodate men by submission to their needs and repressing own needs.     


Therefore I always welcome research, which shows, that other women too are not the complying animals for copulating alley dogs, even though men prefer and misperceive them as such:  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130410192806.htm
 

"Women saw the maintenance of their romantic partnerships as a team sport, involving equal input from both partners with shared goals and beliefs being the key to success. Further, their happiness and contentment were intimately bound up in both their best friendships and romantic partnerships.

In contrast, men were found to exist at a greater distance from both of their closest relationships. When asked to score themselves against their best friends and romantic partners on a range of attributes their responses indicated that, consciously or not, they continued to act as though they were members of the dating market despite being in committed relationships."

"Dr Machin concluded that: "Our research shows that successful relationships are much more essential to women's well-being than men's. Men seem to keep their relationships at arm's length with one eye on the dating market. It seems that regardless of our culture of monogamy and commitment the biological imperative still operates, to a greater or lesser degree, for men. The war of the sexes is still alive and kicking within our relationships.""  [My emphasis]

619. Objectification And The Ingroup-Outgroup Instinct

619.  Objectification And The Ingroup-Outgroup Instinct

The ingroup-outgroup instinct has evolved in many species living in groups.   It provided two sets of behaviors, automatic in animals and as a social norm in humans, which are sometimes very contradictory.   
Examples: 
Outgroup members are prey to be eaten by cannibals, while ingroup members are companions to share the food with. 
Outgroup women are prey to be raped during wars, even by men, who are no brutes to their wives or any ingroup women.

 

When a previously unknown man in real life initiates contact with a woman, for her this always bears the risk of at least the indignation of being considered as prey to be objectified and commodified, if not the worse victimization by violence.   

But there are two distinctive instinctive urges, which unfortunately add to the number of men behaving as disgusting alley dogs towards women.   

There are not only the general jerks, who driven by their instincts promiscuously objectify all women.    There are also the those jerks sufficiently determined by their ingroup-outgroup instinct, who behave differently towards ingroup women while treating outgroup women as mere prey.     

When younger and traveling alone through some Mediterranean countries, I have experienced the following pattern so often, that it started to cause me nausea.   
Sitting somewhere like on a bench in a park and being approached by a man I hoped for some interesting conversation about the country and its society and way of life.    But I was not treated as a human being with a brain.  Instead I was the target of a predator, flirting and attempting to seduce me, perceiving me as prey, as a body to be used.   

I doubt very much, that all of these predators would have caused the same indignation to local ingroup women as they allowed themselves to do to a tourist.  

Being a foreigner made me unequivocally an outgroup person by nationality.    But on a subtle and diffuse level, any subjective distinction by sorting them into either ingroup or outgroup facilitates some men's selective objectification of women.   

When driven by instinct towards abusing indiscriminately any female body for homeostation, while moral imperatives of their religion and culture forbid them promiscuity, uncoupled men suffer discomfort by either dishomeostasis or cognitive dissonance.   Defining an outgroup of women as such, upon whom moral rules do not need to be applied, is their mental trick to acquire homeostasis and avoid cognitive dissonance.   It is the mental trick of the selfish jerks attempting to acquire homeostasis without accepting commitment as not only bringing a subscription to recurrent homeostation but also meaning monogamy and emotional obligations.  

This mental trick enables jerks to have the sincere delusion to be decent and correct men, as long as they refrain from promiscuous behavior with women of their ingroup, while feeling free and justified to behave like alley dogs with women from any outgroup.   
The social history of an ingroup defined as an upper class, where so called gentlemen abused the servants and other poor and lower class women, is one example.           

614. Changing Role Models

614.   Changing Role Models

For the purpose of reducing the boredom of doing household chores, I am sometimes listening to simple and superficial stuff like old radio shows.  Thus I also listened to a serial about a private detective called Richard Diamond, consisting of several dozen episodes broadcasted around 1950.  
As it is a Hollywood production, the hero was created as what at that period of time was the fictional prototype of masculinity.    Being a prototype, Diamond was certainly the role model for many contemporary young men.   Just as was and is James Bond for the generation of their sons and grandsons. 

Diamond and Bond have a lot in common (, as much as I can know from only having ever seen one unpleasant Bond film without any wish for more).  
Both role models are aggressive and tough, never have any fear, being very apt with weapons, fists and also with verbal flippancy.   Both are not destroyable, no matter how much they get beaten up or injured.  Both are never impacted by any guilt or emotional effects after having killed anybody as an everyday event of no consequence.

But there is one very decisive distinction between both role models. 

James Bond is a disgusting promiscuous women abusing jerk.  Were he real, he would be every decent woman's nightmare.  
 
Richard Diamond appears to be principally a decent guy.  Throughout the entire series, he has the same girlfriend, Helen, treating her correctly.    Being the prototype of a stud, he is portrayed as catching every woman's interest and as flirting with all of them, but this is the limit.   He is not only a role model of being true to Helen, but he is shown as being true by choice, not by lack of opportunity.   
Diamond is also presented as not merely infatuated with Helen's body but also attached to her as a person, whom he appreciates enough to spend a lot of his spare time with her, including shared non-physical activities.   
Monogamy is an implicitly and indirectly expressed part of this role model.  Whenever Helen expresses jealousy of one of his female clients, he does not reproach her, but defends or clears himself as being true to her.  An such jealousy is a part of Helen's being also a role model, it is not at all shown as inappropriate. 

Richard Diamond is certainly not my ideal of a man, because I prefer non-aggressive intellectuals.   But at least he is not someone abusing women as does his thoroughly repulsive successor James Bond.    

As far as role models have an influence, someone like Diamond can bring out the relatively best in men, but Bond certainly reinforces their worst.   

613. Commodification And Objectification Of Women Are A Teleological Fallacy

613.   Commodification And Objectification Of Women Are A Teleological Fallacy
 

Men commodifying, obectifying and abusing women are an example and specific case of the general teleological fallacy.   

As outlined in entry 612, nothing has an independent purpose.   Any purpose is always and only in a person's mind, while an object is produced, used or considered for use.   

Using something merely because of its apparent and alleged purpose sometimes seems superficially as correct behavior and thus justifiable but it is a fallacy.    No properties of any object, which make it appear as if it were perfect for application in a person's pursuit of a purpose, suffice to automatically justify or excuse the use of this object.  There is even less such justification for the use of a human being wrongly mistaken to not differ from an object.  
 

To the contrary, the use is not justified unless there are sufficient legal and moral rights.  Moral obligations require to refrain from harming people and damaging their property without consent in exceptional cases.  

The fallacy of commodifying, objectifying and abusing women is unfortunately enhanced by several factors: 

1.  Religion  
 

According to christian fairy tales, a god has allegedly created the first woman from the first man's rib only as a favor fulfilling his wish.   

This can be translated and generalized easily into the typical male fallacy of believing that 

~in the god's initial plan, men sufficed and women were superfluous.   

~the god consciously created men as beings with the property of recurrent sexual dishomeostasis.  

~a god is perfect by definition and makes not mistake, therefore the recurrent need for homeostasis is something valuable and not a fault in the design.     

~the god created women especially suitable to be used to restore male homeostasis.  He created them for the purpose to supply men with such bodies.  

=>  Therefore these men believe it to be the god's will and plan, that men use women and that all harm to women is justified by being the god's responsibility.   

2.  Natural selection
 

As sad as it is, procreation and the survival of the human species depends on the physical abuse of women's body by the harm, pain and discomfort of pregnancy and birth.     But the property of having wombs and thus being suitable to reproduce does not automatically imply, that women exist for the innate purpose of breeding.    

The more women are willing to self-abuse and the more men are inconsiderate and ruthless to abuse, the more offspring they have thus contributing to the gene-pool.  

3.  Evolution of the telos drive
 

Pararajasingham's suggests (http://www.reasonism.org/main-content/articles-by-other-authors/item/285-the-telos-drive-a-neurobiological-basis-for-religious-belief) the telos drive as an explanation for religious beliefs.    I would rather explain both religion and the teleological fallacy by the biological fact, that breeding is inherently harmful for women and would not be chosen by women, who are fully intellectually and rationally free.     

The telos drive could alternatively be explained as a co-evolutionary coping strategy due to the emerging cognitive dissonance between men's instinctive urges to use haphazard female bodies for homeostasis and the evolving cognition and ability to have empathy, which enable men theoretically to appreciate women's brains along with learning to solve survival problems by reasoning and to use self-control motivated by consideration.
Would they only solve this dissonance by having an isolated belief of women existing for their use and convenience, this would easily be recognized as irrational.   But a more general dysfunction of the brain towards teleological thinking and a telos drive make the belief of women existing for men's purposes consistent with the more ubiquitous fallacy of imputing a purpose to life, to the universe and to the will of some creator.  
  

Promiscuity and the teleological fallacy of believing that women only exist for the purpose of maintaining male sexual homeostasis are two sides of the same coin.   Promiscuity is the logical behavioral expression of this false belief.   
The teleological fallacy of ascribing to women the purpose of being used enables, enhances and reinforces promiscuity.    

Unfortunately it is very difficult for some men to gain insight and awareness, that acting based upon a fallacy of an alleged purpose can be morally wrong due to harming the victims.   The denial of the victims' suffering is a part to the fallacy of ascribing a purpose.    In reality, the fallacy of women's purpose to be used by promiscuous men does not diminish the harm to the women, it only disables men from comprehending, what harm they do. 

604. Commodification Under The Influence Of Culture

604.   Commodification Under The Influence Of Culture

Biologically seen, there are factors determining the watershed between the intrinsic commitment of nice guys and the promiscuity of abusive jerks.   

These factors are the innate strength of men's instinctive urges causing the discomfort of sexual dishomeostasis and the innate quality and strength of the cognition upon the behavior.  

Demisexual intellectuals with a strong need for bonding are able to appreciate women's personality, promiscuous jerks are programmed to always degrade women as objects for use.   But there are also the fence sitters having behavioral predispositions in a delicate balance between instinctive urges and cognitive strength.   Upon them, culture and social norms are a third and decisive influence.     

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905135340.htm

"To be a 'success' in evolutionary terms, women need to have access to resources for raising offspring, and men need to have access to fertile females. Researchers have argued that women tend to prefer partners who have an ability to invest resources in their children (i.e., wealthy men), and men tend to prefer partners who appear fertile (i.e., young women) because evolutionary adaptations have programmed these preferences in our brains."

"They found that the gender difference in mate preferences predicted by evolutionary psychology models "is highest in gender-unequal societies, and smallest in the most gender-equal societies," according to Zentner."

"Because increasing gender equality reduces gender differences in mate selection, these studies indicate that the strategies men and women use to choose mates may not be as hardwired as scientists originally thought."

"But he also adds evolutionary roots shouldn't be ruled out entirely.

"Indeed, the capacity to change behaviors and attitudes relatively quickly in response to societal changes may itself be driven by an evolutionary program that rewards flexibility over rigidity.""

When a promiscuous jerk copulates with a female body like a dog in the gutter, this is determined by four factors.   

• The experience of the intrinsic urges of dishomeostasis, 
• The enhancement and magnification of the impact of dishomeostasis by external triggers upon the perception.
• The availability of bodies for easy abuse.    
• The basic attitude of accepting promiscuity as appropriate behavior without any damage to his self-esteem or confidence.   

While only the innate magnitude of dishomeostasis is biological, the availability and ubiquity of external triggers, the availability of bodies for ready use, and the choice between promiscuity and monogamy as part of the ideal-self depend also upon the social environment.   

I was a child in Germany in the 50s, before the fatal sexual revolution freed the worst in men.    The 50s were certainly not a golden age for women, while there was still no reliable birth control, no legal abortion and husbands had unjustifiable legal rights like the one to forbid their wives to have a job.   

But as far as women were commodified, it was as wombs, not as objects and utilities serving men's animal instincts.  There was no public objectification of women.   Sexuality was restricted to its appropriate place inside the privacy of the bedroom of committed couples.  

There were no pictures of naked or lascivious women in any public place, not in commercials, magazines or newspapers, nor in movies.  Most women were aware, that being nice but decently dressed was in their own best interest, just as was also the conscious rejection of any involvement except long-term commitment.    

It was a golden age of beneficial wise prudery.    

Public life was free from detrimental triggers for male instincts.   

There were too many jerks then too, but they were jerks by their own innate animality, they were jerks in spite of a social norm of commitment and monogamy.  Abusing women was not facilitated for them.  These jerks had to consciously decide first, that they really wanted to abuse a woman, because finding the hidden prostitution and pornography required a proactive search. 

The nice guys and the fence sitters were spared the involuntary exposure to triggers, which were incongruent with their real wishes and inclinations for intrinsic commitment based upon their cognitive personality.    

When they experienced the discomfort of dishomeostasis, the circumstances due to the social norm and the culture smoothed their path much more towards commitment and monogamy than towards promiscuity.   

In the 50s, it was much easier for intrinsic nice guys to remain decent, nothing perturbed and distracted them from living in congruency with their cognitive ability to appreciate women.     

Today, the public objectification of women does not only cause a lot of harm to women, but it also causes self-harming to those nice guys, who would be most happy in bonded monogamous commitment.   They are exposed without having a choice to the ubiquitous triggers to their worst animal instincts by the combination of the excellent quality of the realism of the media, the oversexation of every day life and the social norm of male promiscuity and female acquiescence.

The potentially responsible and considerate nice guys and the fence sitters are in the unfortunate situation of being triggered by instincts and encouraged by social norm to use those too many women, who acquiesce too easily.  Such women are also manipulated by the same social norm into believing, that promiscuity were modern, monogamy were prudish and old fashioned and that the only chance to successfully compete with other women is to allow themselves to be available first for use lest another would be chosen for being easier to get.  The sad result are many women suffering from unilateral and not-reciprocated attachment.  The men get desensitized by using too many women.    This is, how fence sitters convert themselves more and more to jerks.   

The guy described in entry 601 is a good example.    In the 50s, the easiest way to homeostation would have been to continue his efforts towards finding commitment, which he initially seemed to really want.   But now, the social norm and the triggers lured and lure him to desensitize himself, until he will be unfit for commitment by his own doing.     

 

I have a very high regard and appreciation for those nice guys, who are determined by their cognition and no trigger of any strength has the impact to cause them to stray from decency towards abusing women as bodies.   

The true quality of a man reveals itself, when no trigger and no influence can ever make him sink so low as to become promiscuous.    Such men are rare, but they do exist.    I am looking for one of them as my mindmate.  

601. Anecdotal Evidence: How Instinctive Urges Blur, Distort And Deactivate A Man's Reason

601.   Anecdotal Evidence:  How Instinctive Urges Blur, Distort And Deactivate A Man's Reason

A few days ago, a man's profile gave me the impression of his being a nice, decent, and considerate guy.    He used words like honesty, sharing, loving, kind and compassionate in his profile.   He told me, he were fitting my own profile, where I have explicitly mentioned, that I do not want any contact with promiscuous men.   

He seemed interested in further contact with me.   We exchanged a few emails and he agreed also with the importance of communication and of intellectual compatibility.   

But when I had another look at his profile, I was really puzzled.    He had changed his declared intention from actively seeking a relationship to dating but nothing serious.   When I asked him about this unexpected and seemingly incongruous change, his answer was so different from what he had appeared before, that he appeared like a different person.  
.   
He wrote,
1.  that he was "totally discouraged with online dating"
2.  that he now intended to have "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex."

For a moment I was speechless.  When he wrote this, it was morning in his time zone.  Had he written this in the evening, I would have suspected him to be drunk.  
  
1. Even by not being his dream woman, according to his initial interest, the contact with me could more logically have encouraged him.
  
2. Something is strange, when someone with this man's profile decides on such a project.  It is not something to achieve with honesty.   Most women, to whom a man would unequivocally suggest "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex" would feel insulted by this objectification and disrespect.  They would consider him a ridiculous fool for having such expectations.   
Most men, who succeed in getting "a hookup, nothing serious. Dinner, movie, and sex", do this by lies, manipulation and other methods of misleading a woman to consent based upon the false hope of beginning a relationship.    This is abuse. 

It seemed incongruous and inconsistent, that a man, who had declared himself as valuing compassion and kindness, suddenly plans coldblooded abuse.   It is incomprehensible, how someone suddenly decides to abuse a female body as a toilet for his body waste in spite of his claim of wanting intellectual compatibility.

The following are of course only speculations, as there is no way to find out the truth. 

Desensitization to full comprehension for how much a woman gets hurt, when she is used and discarded is not enough to explain this contradiction.  Desensitization to harming others works best in the absence of compassion.    

The most plausible explanation is this man's overreacting to a state of strong physiological dishomeostasis.    The guy seems to have been reduced from a thinking and feeling human being to a mere animal, being completely under the power of overwhelming instinctive forces.   In this state as an animal, all his human reason appears blurred, distorted or deactivated.    

Any option for behavior guided by human compassion and kindness seems to be concealed behind the predominant urge to copulate like a dog in the gutter, and behind the drive to be a predator and to ruthlessly hunt for prey.   This state as an animal lasts until homeostation restores humanity.

I replied, that a man, who objectifies women, is not worthy of me.    His reaction was "F**k you, you crazy broad. Go back to the asylum."    I was merely blunt, but the animal in him became vulgar.


While I am scared of men's dangerous instincts, I also feel sorry for them.   They are afflicted with instincts, which destroy for them the chance to get, what is most beneficial to their human cognition, especially in the case of men, who are intelligent and educated, and only deranged when they experience dishomeostasis.   

This guy is just one example.   Without being deranged temporarily by his instincts, he could have a happy symmetrical committed and bonded relationship with a woman like me.   But his instincts reduce him to a disgusting beast, who temporarily sinks so low as to intend to abuse women as a toilet for his body waste.   No decent woman with dignity and self-respect wants anything to do with such a man.   

It is very difficult for me to imagine, how men's specific physiological sexual dishomeostasis of needing to get rid of body waste feels.   Biologically, women's bodies do not provide this same experience of dishomeostasis.   
My best attempt to comprehend the magnitude of men's problem is to compare it to the urge of an addiction like alcoholism or even an extreme deprivation as is starvation.   Sometimes an extremely strong craving deactivates and overrides all higher cognitive and moral consideration.  The craving person ruthlessly applies any atrocity, which allows him to restore homeostasis, even killing, stealing and robbing. In the case of men, it can be abuse and rape of women.       

Those jerks, who always copulate like dogs in the gutter, oblivious of the damage done to the abused women, are just animals, who have never really become fully human.  
But assuming, that the guy in this incident knows the full meaning of the words used by him in his profile, like kindness and compassion, makes me wonder, what happens after he had his night in the gutter.   How will he feel, when he is back temporarily in a state of homeostasis, becoming fully aware of what he had done to the woman by luring her into his gutter?    Will he feel the same shame and regret as the addict, who in the state of homeostasis wishes to be free from the addiction?

551. Neuroscience - The Cognitive Reaction To Touch

551.   Neuroscience - The Cognitive Reaction To Touch

The following study has a very important result.   It shows the impact of cognition as a filter upon the emotional interpretation of sensory input.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120604155709.htm

"A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee -- these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom."

"The team measured brain activation while self-identified heterosexual male subjects lay in a functional MRI scanner and were each caressed on the leg under two different conditions. In the first condition, they saw a video of an attractive female bending down to caress them; in the second, they saw a video of a masculine man doing the same thing. The men reported the experience as pleasurable when they thought the touch came from the woman, and aversive when they thought it came from the man. And their brains backed them up: this difference in experience was reflected in the activity measured in each man's primary somatosensory cortex."

"Unbeknownst to the subjects, the actual touches on their leg were always exactly the same -- and always from a woman"
""We see responses in a part of the brain thought to process only basic touch that were elicited entirely by the emotional significance of social touch prior to the touch itself, simply in anticipation of the caress that our participants would receive.""

The method of this study is a starting point for further research to settle the question, how far monogamy has evolved as a predominant cognitive need and if therefore men's claim of women's alleged promiscuity is an excuse for abuse and objectification.  

I would like to see the results of the following variations of the research design:

1.  Monogamy or adultery:

1.1.  Men
Subjects:  Heterosexual men in a committed relationship 
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- the intimate partner
- a single woman
- a woman in a relationship

1.2.  Women
Subjects:  Heterosexual women in a committed relationship 
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- the intimate partner
- a single man
- a man in a relationship

 2.  Commitment or promiscuity

2.1. Men
Subjects:  Single heterosexual men looking for a mate
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- a single woman presented as only available for commitment
- a single woman presented as available easy prey
- a woman in a relationship

2.2. Women
Subjects:  Single heterosexual men looking for a mate
Compared stimuli:   Touch by
- a single man presented as only interested in commitment
- a single man presented as a habitual predator
- a man in a relationship

3.  Desensitization

The number of previous intimate partners is a possible intervening variable causing desensitization and habituation to touching strangers and if this effect is different between men and women.  

Stimulus: Touch by a stranger of the opposite gender
Comparing: 
- heterosexual men with few previous intimate partners 
- heterosexual men with many previous intimate partners
- heterosexual women with few previous intimate partners 
- heterosexual women with many previous intimate partners

Such a study could answer, which of the following hypothesis is the most probable.  

1.  Animal instincts are still the predominant force in both genders, making men promiscuous predators to women selecting men by the quality of their genes.  Cognitive restrictions of behavior are merely superposed by culture, social norm and education.  

2.  The evolution of cognition has led to the predisposition in both genders to experience the emotional and mental need for monogamous bonding, but the instincts are still so strong, that they can become the dominant force.    The animal urges compete in both genders with the advanced cognitive evolution of equally strong bonding needs.   

Men's animal instinctive urges towards using women's bodies are unilateral, only men are prone to succumb to instinctive behaviors overriding their cognition in a way, that hurts women.   Women's instincts merely drive them to breed and not to hurt men.   

Behaviors are modified by culture, social norm and education, but the modification does not override the emotional reactions determined by the real innate needs.    Social norms cause suffering for both genders.

3.  The evolution of the predominance of cognitive needs for monogamous bonding has been stronger in females than in men.   Women have already evolved to have cognitive bonding needs stronger than the mere animal procreation needs, while for men, animal promiscuity urges are still stronger than there slowly developing cognitive needs for bonding.   

Women are ahead in their cognitive evolution, while men are lagging behind.   

Behaviors are modified by culture, social norm and education, but the modification does not override the emotional reactions determined by the real innate needs.    Social norms are accommodating men and cause women to suffer.  

Such studies are important because of their potential to help reduce human suffering

Even without hard data, one observation cannot be denied by anybody, who has read enough suffering people's personal accounts on the web:   

Emotional pain caused by not reciprocated exclusive emotional attachment in a dyadic relationship is at least one of the most frequent causes of human non-physical suffering.

Any social change to end this kind of suffering needs to be based upon knowing the cause, which is a task for neuroscientific research.  

Women, who do not want to be hurt anymore, do certainly not want to wait, until men have improved and evolved beyond being animals.   Women need a method to prevent being hurt.  
In entry 525 I already mentioned the benefits for women, if men could be sent to a brain scan before risking the tragic mistake of getting involved with and hurt by a commodifying jerk.   

The study quoted above is another indication, that the technical possibilities already exist for brain scanning as a part of a wise choice of a mate. 

 
As soon as brain scanning becomes affordable for common use, people could be tested by a brain scan for a score on a scale between monogamy and promiscuity.   Research as what I am wishing for would be the basis of such a score.   Prospective partners could then be evaluated for how much hazard they are to a partner needing exclusive committed bonding.        

544. My Fantasy Of The Golden Age Of Neuroscience

544.   My Fantasy Of The Golden Age Of Neuroscience

The last half century has been the age of great electronic and technological progress.    This enabled the ubiquity of the impact of media bringing along also the collateral damage of invisible, subtle and unrecognized emotional harm to many people.  The media have enhanced the already innately detrimental effect of the obsolete male instinctive urges even more in the wrong direction, as oversexation and promiscuity have been made a social norm.   
Men's instinctive tendency to the asymmetrical attitude towards women (entry 543) has been implicitly and subtly reinforced as a consequence of this unfortunate social norm.
 

This is generally overlooked, ignored and denied, and society pays a high price for this.  Women suffer directly and more knowingly from commodification and objectification forced upon them.   Men are deprived of the higher emotional benefits of bonded monogamous commitment, but they are usually oblivious of this, because the deprivation is hidden behind the superficial immediate satisfaction available by the abuse of female bodies.  They are not even aware of what they are depriving themselves of, as they never had a chance to experience anything better due to being exposed to the oversexation too early during childhood.         


Regularly reading newsletters informing about really amazing results of research in neuroscience has led me to wonder, whether we may now be at the onset of the age of neuroscience.  It even has the potential to become the golden age for women, would neuroscience achieve the very significant goal of removing the slippery slope of the ongoing reinforcement of the worst male behaviors and attitudes.   

While women's mere complaints about suffering from commodification and asymmetrical attitudes (entry 543) are dismissed by men as female shortcomings, the growing evidence of effects observed by brain imaging methods is more difficult to disregard.    Hard and multiple evidence could finally have an impact upon men's persistent denial, how their own instincts are a real problem requiring to be dealt with.  

If this insight would be widely accepted, then this could lead to the application of medical science and neuroscience to develop methods to reduce men's needs for sexual homeostasis down to a beneficial level, where is seizes to damage women.   While the body of unattached females would no longer trigger any urges for abuse in men, they would instead always be attracted first to a woman's mind and personality, before they are attracted to her body.  

It would certainly be easy to create some pills, which combine the bonding of oxytocin and a reduction of libido or even some appliance for brain stimulation for this purpose.    A bonding helmet for men similar to Persinger's helmet would be a great invention.   

What a dream:   A helmet stimulating a man's brain, and even the worst jerk would become a caring, responsible, bonding, monogamous nice guy, feeling a need for commitment.    This would give women the option to reject any man, who refuses to use this helmet.   A helmet could thus free humanity from the scourge of male promiscuity.  

But I am taking my fantasy even one step further to mere science fiction.    If it were not just a helmet, which a man can decide to use or not, but if it were a chip to be planted in every man's brain, this could really create a paradise on earth: 
There would only be nice and decent men never hurting a woman.   No more rape, no more adultery, no more using and dumping, no more predators making women miserable by the degradation of pursuing them as prey.   No more prostitution, no more pornography,   A woman would be safe to chose, where she wants to be at any time of the day or night without risking to be attacked.  

All the above are far fetched and unrealistic dreams, as long as men generally do not have any insight, how much their excessive sexuality does not enhance but destroy the emotional quality of life, which is a potential of human cognition but only when it is unrestricted and undistorted by instincts.   The obstacle are all those men lacking any comprehension of the benefits for themselves of any method resulting  in the replacement  of the primitivity of their being animals with true humane happiness.  

 

Men's choice to either allow themselves to be controlled by their instincts or to control the instincts are rarely ever motivated by consideration of women's dignity or by the rational question of equality or by doubting the justification of asymmetrical attitudes (entry 543).

Throughout history and up to now, sometimes men have and still do fight against their instinctive urges for sexual homeostation, but the reason is always religious or philosophical and not any consideration for women.   They focus upon their success or failure concerning their self-control as a part of their self-esteem and self-worth.   They do not reject instinctive urges as a distortion of men's cognition concerning the attitude towards women, they do not value the avoidance of damage to women.    Sparing women is not their goal, it is only a lucky collateral benefit.     
The catholic priest, who succeeds in keeping his hands off his house keeper does not do this by respect and consideration for the woman.   He does this by fear of punishment in the afterlife and as a prevention of feeling a failure and looser due to his vows of celibacy.   

539. Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

539.   Movies Are Contributing To The Harm Done By Promiscuous Jerks

I have been mentioning before, that promiscuous jerks are predisposed by instinctive animal urges, but that the harm done to the victims is magnified by the sad influence of the media propagating, enhancing and reinforcing the social norm of oversexation.  

A recent study gives some evidence, that the influence of movies is contributing to women's plight by supplying the wrong role models.    

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120717162743.htm

"Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners, and are less likely to use condoms with casual sexual partners,"

"Many adolescents turn to movies to acquire "sexual scripts" that offer examples of how to behave when confronted with complicated emotional situations. For 57 percent of American adolescents between the ages of 14 and 16, the media is their greatest source of sexual information. They often don't differentiate between what they see on the screen and what they must confront in daily life ."

What this study indicates as the fatal influence of sexual scenes in general movies, can logically be expected to be even worse in pornographic movies. 


There are other sources providing some further contextual explanations.    

1.  Kanazawa has pointed out, that people are misled to confound the mere moving pictures of people on TV with personal friends, because the evolution of the human cognition had no yet enough time to adapt to the realistic technical representations of people.   The spontaneous and subconscious human perception does not distinguish sufficiently.    

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ehb2002.pdf

This has fatal consequences.   

Commercial movies are made to entertain people, not to educate them towards responsibility and consideration.   The stories of movies are not realistic.  They are in some way extreme and often dangerously pseudo-realistic.   Women are often abused in a drastic way, which in real life would be legally punished, but the severe harm experienced by them is omitted in the movies, because it is not entertaining.    They are damaged as objects, not harmed as humans.

Adolescents need the valid and beneficial role model of the happy serenity of a bonded monogamous couple.   But what should be encouraged most for imitation lacks any entertaining thrill.  Such a couple's happiness is as beneficial for the two partners themselves as it is dull and boring to the curiosity of gossiping and scandal enjoying bystanders, not matter if in real life or on a screen.    

Therefore the perception of the adolescents watching movies is mislead by confounding the images of the role models on the screen with real people appearing as an extension of their social environment.   Thus the influence of such role models to be imitated is dangerously strong.   

The adolescents are misled to consider the unreal, fantastic and extreme events and activities of the observed stories as if this were a valid representation of real life.

For the consumers of the movies and even more of pornography, abuse seems to end without any consequences, when the movie ends.  But in real life, abuse not only concerns a transgressor, but also a victim.   The abuser's onesided perception of having terminated the abusive event does not really end it.   Real life jerks cannot fully avoid to witness the visible reactions of the victims.  Even those jerks, who are not bothered or insensitive to whatever they do themselves often do notice the suffering, when the victims are their family members harmed by other jerks.

In short, real life harm has more or less observable consequences, which serve as a deterrent.   This deterrent is lacking in the movies.  The harm done by the promiscuity shown in the movies is hidden and omitted as if it did not exist.  Thus the movies mislead adolescents towards oblivion and denial of what they do to their victims by imitating the abuse.

2.   Milgram's experiment have been lately reinterpreted:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718164947.htm

"The researchers hypothesized that, rather than obedience to authority, the participants' behavior might be better explained by their patterns of social identification. They surmised that conditions that encouraged identification with the experimenter (and, by extension, the scientific community) led participants to follow the experimenters' orders, while conditions that encouraged identification with the learner (and the general community) led participants to defy the experimenters' orders."

Explaining the physically barbaric act of applying electro shocks by identification can be generalized to explain the emotionally barbaric act of men's promiscuous objectifying of women's bodies also by the identification with the imitated actors in the movies.

537. The Golden Rule - A Modified Version For Men

537.   The Golden Rule - A Modified Version For Men

The Golden Rule as quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

"One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself"

"One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated."

The second form of the golden rule does not prevent women from being objectified and commodified, the first form even encourages men to do so. 

When men are driven so much by their instinctive urges for homeostasis, that it deactivates their cognition and blurs their reason, they perceive every female body as a potential target for their animal needs, at least subconsciously.   

In this situation, jerks and psychopaths do not feel any need for justification, they ruthlessly act upon their entitlement delusion for promiscuity.   They are determined to get homeostation by hook or by crook, their methods include seducing, paying, manipulating and coercing.    Their abuse of women is out of the reach of any moderation by the influence of the golden rule.

But many of those men, who consciously attempt to be guided by the golden rule, fatally misinterpret it as an encouragement to project their own inclinations, wishes and needs upon women.   Many men in the state of dishomeostasis dream, hope, wish or even wait to be proactively approached by self-objectifying women offering homeostation without demanding or expecting anything for themselves.   As this is a denial of reality, these men take the initiative and approach women for the purpose of objectification.   Subjectively they follow the golden rule: They are doing to the women only exactly what they wish done to themselves.   
This misinterpretation of the golden rule impedes these men from being aware, that and how much they are insulting women with this depreciation, devaluation and indignation.  

While men in the state of dishomeostasis are prone to be unaware of what they themselves are doing, this does not automatically distort their general judgment.  The same men, who themselves do not hesitate to sleep around like alley dogs, may well feel outrage, when their mother/sister/daughter becomes the prey of his fellow alley dogs. 

Therefore I suggest this golden rule for men:

A man should treat women as he would like others to treat his mother/sister/daughter/wife/girl friend.

A man should not treat women in ways that he would not like his mother/sister/daughter/wife/girl friend to be treated.

509. The Fallacy Of Tantra

509.   The Fallacy Of Tantra 

The word Tantra in a man's profile makes me suspicious.   The word Tantra in the context of our western culture can have two meanings, both indicating something, that I prefer to avoid.  

Those who claim to be sophisticated, experience and define Tantra as one of many eastern woo-woo cults.  In entry 508, I already presented the debunking by the Great Tantra Challenge.   A man with such beliefs is not more my mindmate than is any other believer in some irrationality.   

But there is an even cruder interpretation, which reduces Tantra to a technique of instinct-enhancing gymnastics.  
While I react with repugnance towards the vulgarity of Penn & Teller, the last part of their show is nevertheless an example of how people are trained in Tantra:  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jFj_RL5QvM
 

The documentation shows people in the public activity of near-copulation, the pornographic display reminds me of the behavior of dogs from the gutter, void of any human dignity.    I cringe at the mere idea of getting involved with a man, who has participated in such a session.

It was not even clear, if the participants were committed couples.  But assuming them as couples attempting to improve something wrong between them, learning Tantra is not more an appropriate remedy for their problem as would be fighting a headache by hitting the head with a hammer.   The enhanced pain and enhanced pleasures are both only stronger sensation covering temporarily a persistent and not solved real problem.  

Long term happiness as a couple requires more than attractive bodies, but also specific psychological conditions.  When a couple is dissatisfied with what happens inside their bedroom, Tantra cannot be more than a pseudo remedy.  

Their real problems are very different, they are a consequence of the general mating fallacy.     
In many mammals including homo sapiens, the physiological male needs for sexual homeostasis and the motivation to pursue this by the stimulation of the pleasure center in the brain has evolved to trick people into procreation.  The infatuation between bodies has evolved to produce healthy offspring, but it has not evolved to last, especially not as long as people live today.    

The sad consequence of this is promiscuity.  

But there has also been the second evolution of human cognition including both emotional and intellectual needs and cognitive abilities to be guided by long-term thinking, non-physical enjoyments and self-control. 

The more the human intelligence has evolved enabling people acquiring education, sophistication and intellectuality, the more they are able to enjoy intellectual and creative pleasures.  Logically, in comparison with non-physical enjoyments, sexuality becomes a dull banality and less rewarding.  

The theoretical consequence is the cognitive ability to find happiness in monogamous close long-term bonding based upon intellectual and emotional intimacy.

In spite of the benefits of the advanced evolution of the cognition compared with the evolution of the more primitive instincts, many humans continue to fall into the trap of the general mating fallacy.   Due to this fallacy, people continue to consider sexual satisfaction as the purpose of and the reason for having a relationship and as the criterion for the choice of a mate.    

This fallacy is maintained and enhanced by the social norm of oversexation as already explained in entry 498 and entry 493.   

I would not be astonished, if some of the participants in the Tantra course were even singles and as mislead as to believe, that such skills would be of more advantage in the competition for a mate than personality and intelligence.   

Mistaking Tantra as a remedy when experiencing physical dissatisfaction as a couple is a behavioral expression of this general fallacy.  

1. How affective physical intimacy is experienced depends on the quality of the intellectual and emotional intimacy of the couple.   The quality of physical intimacy is a measuring device for the emotional quality of the relationship. 
   When there is a distortion of physical intimacy, it is absurd to apply mechanical remedies like Tantra.  Instead the couple needs to find out, what is wrong in the relationship.   When unresolved conflicts are damaging the emotional intimacy, then the couple needs to solve the conflict and repair the emotional bond.   When they restore the close bond, they also restore the non-verbal message of belonging together expressed by physical intimacy.    If external help is needed, couple's therapy improves much more than Tantra instruction. 
   
2. Some people are innately hedonists, and hedonists are the kind of consumers, who bring the most profits to capitalists.   Therefore they are the preferred role models as shown in entry 498.
   Others are Epicureans with predominantly cognitive and emotional needs.   It is absurd, when Epicureans are manipulated by the capitalistically propagated hedonistic social norms to attempt to experience the same as do hedonists.   Methods like Tantra are used to override Epicurean innate preferences.   
   Some Epicurean couples are mislead by the general fallacy to expect much more benefits from sexual activities, than there really are, when seen realistically with an unmanipulated mind.  Sexuality is nothing more than an instinct shared with animals, who have no cognition, who cannot enjoy anything better.   Animals have no choice, but humans do.
    
   Only maintaining a man's physiological homeostasis is a necessity for a relationship, but nothing more.  There is no rational reason to artificially attempt to get more pleasure from something, when it is experienced and considered as a mere banality.   
   
   If intelligent and educated people would be free from the detrimental social norm of oversexation and would instead fully recognize that they can enjoy a visit to a museum, a lecture or a good movie together more than bed activities, this would enable them to just shift their focus in a positive way to share, what they really enjoy most.    They would be out of the reach of capitalists selling Tantra.  

If a man believes in the possibility of improving a relationship by methods like Tantra, this scares me.   I am looking for a man as my mindmate, who shares the full awareness and recognition, that the quality of the affective physical intimacy depends only on the emotional quality of the relationship.

506. The Harmful Effects Of Pornography On Jerks And On Emotional Morons

506.   The Harmful Effects Of Pornography On Jerks And On Emotional Morons

As shown by a lot of scientific evidence in entry 505, exposure to pornography converts men into hazards to women with emotional needs.   

When men are knowingly harming women. they are ruthless jerks.   Others are emotional moron, who want to be decent and moral people, and who have a clear conscience believing to do nothing wrong.  They are oblivious or in denial of the real damage done by them.
This is a general observation, but it is also the case, when men harm first themselves by pornography and whose harming women is a direct consequence of having damaged themselves.  

When damaged men are outspoken in their refusal to commit, women have at least a fair chance to avoid being abused by them.   

But those men are the most dangerous, who appear, pretend or believe to want a companion, and whose bonding-disability is hidden until the discovery as the consequence of actually getting involved.   Women are mislead to agree to intimacy, which for them is the beginning of commitment.  They give and expect affectionate physical intimacy.  All they can get from the damaged men is being an object used in their mechanical copulations.  

These are two examples:

1.  The jerk:
 

I read somewhere on the web the desperate complaints of a guy, who has not only damaged himself by too much pornography, but who has reached the consciousness of suffering from it.    He describes with words, that resound his genuine pain and distress, how much he would want to have a woman as a companion.   But every time, when he wishes a woman to become his companion, the desensitization overrides everything else.  Physical involvement automatically converts the attempted mating into the subjective experience of another instance of his habitual abuse, and the woman meant as a companion is perceived as just one more degraded object and utility.    
This guy is a jerk, because he has recognized this effect upon himself, but in spite of knowing, what he does, he repeats his futile attempts to have a companionship.    Every time, when he tries again, he harms a trusting woman without feeling responsible.  
He is also jerk by being very selfish. His extreme exposure to pornography is the result of his making a good living by selling it.    He admits, that he continues his profitable business, knowingly inflicting the same harm upon others, in spite of being aware of having harmed himself.

2.  The emotional moron:

Recently I have corresponded for a while with a man, whose denial is remarkable.   He told me quite convincingly, that he really wants a long term monogamous relationship, and how much he is interested in communication and in companionship.   He put emphasis on his alleged appreciation for women.   He told me, that he never had a one-night-stand, and this of course made him attractive to me.  
When I asked him about his use of pornography, I thought it was merely a routine question.  I really expected a negative answer.    Instead I was consternated and horrified, when he admitted to having been consuming pornography habitually since over 40 years, whenever he was not in a relationship.   After 40 years, it is most probably an addiction.    

He naively considers pornography as a harmless everyday habit.   I have sent him the links to scientific articles about the harm done by pornography listed in entry 505.   Reading these articles had no impact upon his complete denial.   He claims that even if everybody else gets harmed by the exposure to huge amounts of pornography, he continues to believe, that he alone is the one exception, who has not been damaged.  

My mindmate to be found is neither a jerk nor an emotional moron.   He has no life history of abusing women, he has not desensitized himself neither by promiscuously using real bodies nor by exposing himself to the pornographic representations of abused bodies.

505. Science Indicating The Harm Of Pornography

505.   Science Indicating The Harm Of Pornography

For emotionally unharmed people, monogamy, commitment and exclusive pair-bonding are basic cognitive and emotional human needs. 
Promiscuity, polygyny, cheating, dumping, degrading and abusing others as mere bodies cause serious emotional harm to people.   

While the emotional benefits for individual human beings derived from the exclusivity of monogamy are the topic of romance in novels and movies, scientific research instead focuses mainly on general social, economic and evolutionary benefits of monogamy.  

Whenever I am reading men's profiles and the ubiquitous promiscuous and perverse wishes and goals, in addition to some feedback to this blog and to my own profiles, I sometimes feel as if I were an alien from another planet thrown into a filthy gutter.     

But luckily, I am not entirely alone with my evaluation of the damage done by the artificial social norm of an oversexed society.   There are learned and knowledgeable scientists studying the serious harm done by pornography.  

When already repeatedly expressing my disgust about the ubiquity of jerks openly pursuing promiscuity on the Internet and about the general oversexation of society, I had omitted to put special emphasis on pornography as the core of the problem.  Promiscuity is more an abstract concept, while pornography is its real life representation.  
The entire detrimental effects of the general oversexation including the subtle and indirect damage are like an iceberg, of which only one seventh is visible above the water.   This visible part is pornography, of which the harm can be shown most easily.     I already have called promiscuity a scourge of humanity, and so is pornography as its most visible expression.
 
While I was fully aware of the kind of damage done to users' brains by the exposure to pornography, I had not been aware to which extreme extensity and pervasiveness pornography had grown along with the ubiquity of the Internet.    While I cannot avoid being exposed to the general oversexation of daily life against my will, the access to pornography on the web requires proactive behavior.    By being able to avoid it, I was not fully aware the real magnitude of the problem.    

I attributed promiscuity directly to men's being physiologically driven by their strong animal instincts, this being aggravated by their having lost first the sensitivity to appreciate an emotional safe haven and subsequently also lacking the motivation to use self-control.  
Those promiscuous jerks and emotional psychopaths, whom I described throughout this blog as prototypes from my worst nightmares, have probably not become obnoxious and disgusting merely by an innate disposition.   Instead it is more probable, that the additional exposure to huge amounts of pornography has magnified their innate predisposition, until all their human qualities had been destroyed.  

It seems that pornography converts potential jerks into irreversible jerks.  

There has been done a lot of research on the different aspects of the harm done by pornography, and learned people have expressed and explained it much better, than I could do.   The following is a list of a some very good sources for further information.

Patrick F. Fagan: 
A Poison In The Home
http://www.diolaf.org/documents/Marriage%20and%20Family%20Life/Pornography%20Resources/a%20poison%20in%20the%20home.pdf
 

Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D.
The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community
http://www.wifamilyaction.org/files/trya.campaigntoolbox.org/downloads/FRC_PornStudy_0.pdf
 

Mary Eberstadt  Mary Anne Layden 
THE SOCIAL COSTS OF PORNOGRAPHY
http://www.internetsafety101.org/upload/file/Social%20Costs%20of%20Pornography%20Report.pdf

Dr. Victor B. Cline:  
Pornography’s Effects On Adults and Children
http://www.stop.org.za/Victor%20Cline%27s%20Study.pdf

Ana J. Bridges 
Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships
http://www.socialcostsofpornography.com//Bridges_Pornographys_Effect_on_Interpersonal_Relationships.pdf
 

Jackson Katz: 
Pornography And Men's Consciousness
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/genderandmedia/assignments/katz001.pdf

Rebecca Whisnant: 
Confronting pornography:  Some conceptual basics.
http://stoppornculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Whisnant-Confronting-Pornography.pdf

497. The Human Preference For The Dyad

The Human Preference For The Dyad

The web is full of claims, that monogamy were not part of human nature and that polyamory and other forms of promiscuity were the better expression of human nature and needs.   If this were as true as it is often repeated, then this would be visible by the choice of the preferred living arrangements of involved groups of three or more persons.  
Reality indicates the contrary.  Dyads are so much preferred, that even gay people fight to be allowed to be married as dyads.  Most people indicate their preference by living as dyads or by a clear wish find a partner to become a couple, when they are singles using dating sites.    

As far as there are polyamory living arrangements, they are usually a consequence of a religion.   I cannot be sure, if without a religious belief any mormon or muslim women would really choose to share one man.    I have never heard so far of any gay or lesbian triad wishing to be a married group.  

People still prefer dyads as the basic unit of living arrangements as the result of a cost and benefit calculation.

An adult, who is neither dependent nor has dependents be family ties, is free to choose the preferred living arrangement of living alone, living with one other adult or living with more than one adult as a group.   

The following omits any special situation, when people live with parents, children, siblings etc.   The incest taboo excludes the physical needs, which are a part of the deal in the free choice by cost and benefit calculation.   

By living arrangements I mean complete personal involvement, not living as separate and independent households under one roof.   When the preferred living arrangement is a free choice, the decision to prefer and enter a specific arrangement is based upon a cost and benefit calculation, that includes not only material, but also emotional and psychological factors, which are at least equally important, if not predominant.   

Sharing a home as a safe haven means sharing material resources, security against inclemencies of life events, mutual support and advice and mentally stimulating shared time and activities.  All this is very beneficial and for many people a basic need in life.  
Sharing a home means compromising, self-control and the acceptance of restrictions of the freedom to follow every whim due to acting only by agreement with another person.   The own needs are only equally important compared with those of another person.  Additional costs are the risks by making oneself vulnerable.   Sharing very private information and unrestricted access to personal belongings bears a huge risk of being exploited, harmed, hurt and betrayed by someone trusted too much.

Seen as a cost and benefit calculation, dyads have logically the highest potential of life satisfaction for both partners compared with polyamorous groups of any kind.   

Comparing dyads with triads as living arrangements.

To illustrate this, I will compare the living arrangements of a dyad with that of three persons, no matter their gender or orientation.    A dyad by choice is independent of their sexual inclinations as either of two heterosexual or two homosexual persons, as long as they consider themselves as an involved couple.  

1. Material and practical. 
   Sharing the home and household with one person reduces all fixed costs like rent, heating etc, by one half.   Would one more person be added, the additional reduction of costs would only be one sixth more.  
   But the cost of sharing resources is doubled.   Two persons block the bathroom twice as often as one.  
2. Safe haven concerning life events.
   A person living alone is at the risk of becoming helpless, when sick or financially in trouble in the case of loosing a job.    This can cause anxiety and worries.   But one person is enough to alleviate the worries by supplying the feeling of security and being protected.   One partner in a dyad is enough to be able to care for someone sick or to share resources.  
   A third person is of no or little additional benefit.   
3. Supportive emotional safe haven
   When a person is in emotional need of another person's empathy, support or advice, usually one supportive partner is the best situation.  It requires a lot of trust, which is difficult to build with any one person.    Revealing the innermost feelings implies making oneself vulnerable to being taken advantage of, hurt or being damaged by indiscretions.  Overcoming inhibitions due to shame and embarrassment to ask for support is difficult with every person.  Getting support from one partner is of high benefits compared with the cost of the vulnerability risk and strain of overcoming inhibitions.   
   Sharing the troubles with a second person doubles the vulnerability, but does not add many benefits from support.    Having more than one person listening with empathy does not add much to the relief of being listened to by one.
4. Intellectual companionship.
   Being alone in a museum or other enjoyable cultural situation is often dreary, communicating about one's thoughts, impressions and experiences is joyful and rewarding.   But one person is enough to talk about the picture in a museum.  
   A second person may add a few more different ideas, but does not add much additional benefits to the communication of a dyad.
   
5. Man's physiological need for homeostasis
   When the experience of sexuality is controlled and modified by cognition as explained in entry 496, men's physiological need of homeostasis are as real as are the collateral emotional needs.  Most women and also those high quality men, whose sensitivity and bonding ability has not been destroyed, get emotionally attached and their attachment reinforced by physical intimacy. 
   Biologically, there are two genders, and maintaining homeostasis does not require a group or a third person, two partners are enough.  I doubt that even those in favor of polyamory and such would really choose to share a treble bed with two others snoring and tossing.     

The emotional importance of the exclusivity of the dyad.   

The viability and benefits of a dyad as a living arrangement depends upon the realistic expectation and trust, that the partner is reliable, predictable, responsible and bound by accepted obligations.   This depends upon the exclusivity of reciprocally fulfilling each other's relationship needs. 
Exclusivity does not automatically make a partner reliable and predictable, but the refusal of exclusivity prevents the possibility of being able to rely on someone in the case of need.  

Exclusivity is an emotional state of feeling bonded with and committed to one specific partner by a one time decision, which is the result of a careful cost and benefit analysis.    
Exclusivity is more than the repeated self-control as the result of a new cost and benefit calculation every time, whenever some external temptation triggers it.   
  

1. Material and practical. 
   Sharing the home requires the reliable expectation of a lasting commitment.   Financial entanglement of shared mortgages, shared rental agreements and no place to go lead to a person's dire situation, when the other's behavior destroys and betrays the trust.   Reliable agreements concerning the exclusivity of the relationship reduce the risks of such entanglements.
2. and 
3. The safe haven concerning life events and being emotionally supportive.
   All the benefits of feeling safe and secure and protected depend on the partner's reliability and predictability.    This means to be able to trust, that the partner is always available, when needed.   
   When a partner needs support in any emotional crisis or care in the case of sickness, an exclusive partner is available as a result of his exclusivity.  He has no need, reason or obligations to be somewhere else.  Nobody else is competing for his attention and care.   
   But when a polyamorous partner is part of several dyads, nobody can ever trust, that he is there when needed.   There is always the competition with someone else, who may have a stronger hold or influence over the partner.   A partner refusing exclusivity to the dyad cannot be relied upon, he is not predictable, he is not trustworthy.   He cannot be, even would he wish to, because he cannot clone himself and be present in two dyads at the same time.
    
4. Intellectual companionship.
   Only the intellectual companionship can be substituted by sharing activities with just friends having similar interests, so this does not require exclusivity.  But it requires at least the priority of sharing activities with the partner rather than with others, whenever this is the partner's wish and need.
     
5. Man's physiological need for homeostasis
   A dyad fulfilling the emotional needs of two persons does not automatically imply sexuality, if for whatever biological or medical reasons both partners have no such needs.  But since for most people except oversexed promiscuous jerks, sexuality is not completely void of emotional attachments, exclusivity of all sexuality to the dyad strengthens and protects the emotional bonding, while sexual entanglements with persons outside the dyad destroys or damages the trust and the reliability of having the dyad as a safe haven. 

I do not imply, that the preferred living arrangement of dyads by a cost and benefit analysis is conscious.   But this preference is an expression of the fact, that dyads are the best representation of the biological dichotomy and its cognitive and emotional perception.  

Monogamy in the traditional sense means the exclusivities of the heterosexual dyad.  Even the people, who are in full denial of the benefits of monogamy as the complete package of exclusivity of sexuality, emotional significance and living arrangements in the full commitment with only one person, are usually not preferring triads or group involvement.   Instead they want to be in more than one dyad.   They want the benefits of more than one dyad without the costs.  They are in denial, that they cannot be present and available all the time in more than one dyad and therefore not equal partners.  

Therefore, while monogamy may not be a part of the animal instincts of humans, especially not of promiscuous males, monogamy is the best way of fulfilling the emotional needs of humans as being determined by their cognition on a long term basis, when monogamy is redefined as the exclusivity of fulfilling all of a partner's relationship needs in a dyad of two committed persons of any gender.   .    

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.