where's the orginal

Macdoc wrote::yuk: where's the orginal

here social&fun

Bronwyn,
You appear very angry and I have no doubt that arguing with me will make you angrier still as you will not find logic to undermine my arguments. I am going to cherry pick your post as the points I have selected will be sufficient to illustrate my points. I concede that my generalisations have been too sweeping and I will retract these, but still maintain that some behaviour do typify women, although not every woman does behave in this way – see my comments in an earlier post about the biological inheritance that women carry as different to men ,meaning our behaviour can typify a gender.

And this can all be explained away by social constructions of gender which make shoes, handbags, hair and makeup appropriate interests for teenage girls but not boys. It’s not at all the result of their sex.

Social constructions are created by biology, even though you do get aberrations. The idea that social norms somehow arise in a vacuum that have no bearing upon our biology is naive. Men are more openly promiscuous than are women in many societies, and from a biological point of view this is logical, yet social norms also arise to reinforce this behaviour, but it does not mean social norms define the behaviour.

Here we go. Females don’t work on their appearance because it makes them feel good like males do. Females do it because they want something.

Women do work on their appearance because it makes them feel good. The question is why does looking good to other people make you feel good? Men and women all ant something for themselves, individuals are inherently selfish because if they were not they would not have survived through countless of generations of natural selection. This does not mean they do not do unselfish things, or conform to social norms, it just means that women are more defined by their looks than men are. This means that uncertainty about your looks means uncertainty about your value in society. Looking good makes you feel good, not just for women, but more so than men. For men, its being in a powerful position that makes them feel good, and since this can be done in micro environments, this is also possible. The out for both men and women is they do not see themselves as others see them. If they did they would not feel so good about themselves, but because they cannot they are lulled into a false sense of feeling good, that often gets overturned when a photo is flashed up in public and they wriggle to see themselves as others do.

Yes, because the reason women work on their appearance is because they want something from men.

Didn’t I predict this? I think I did!

OK I am confused. You are saying that women work on their appearance to manipulate men? And it does NOT make them feel good when they think they look good? Which is it?

Because males are only interested in women who emphasise their bodies. Nice to see you hold men in the same low regard you hold women.

There is nothing ‘low’ about this. All moral standards are social constructs, our biology dictates that you do what ensures your survival, but this creates social issues so we construct morals to keep them in check. Males are interested in women primarily for sex. This has been overlaid with romance, deeper feelings than just lust, wanting a family, wanting to be a good provider etc, however if a woman portrays herself as available easily to all men, they are likely to get some easy sex and move off and find a woman who is a bit more choosy that they might stay with. Men will take easy sex unless they have been given reasons not to, strong moral upbringing, fear of disease, retribution, in themselves male biology says mate as often as possible indiscriminately. Womens biology however says ‘be choosy’, if you get pregnant it s a big cost.

Has it ever occurred to you that women have the power to say no to being used and discarded whether they emphasise their physical beauty or not? And that their physical beauty might be something they work on for themselves and aren’t using to seek what they want from males?

Why should ones appearance mean anything to oneself independent of others? Just how is it possible for an individual to get any any whatever from their appearance except when they can use it to better their position in society. How could it be that there are so many common themes that we imitate from others that do this? From lipstick itself, to its color, to the same hairstyles, dress styles, these are so socially conformist that we choose them to satisfy our individuality? Unlikely.
People have power relative to others in society, if a woman is able to use her looks to get what she wants successfully then this is not being used, this is being a user. A woman can only demonstrate this if she hides it and can overcome it by getting acceptance from others in society. Women use sex as a powerful weapon to control male behaviour, but its two edged. I watch teenage girls being used by teenage boys for easy sex, and almost without exception they are scorned by the boys and ostracised by the girls (some exceptions). If you are able to remain indifferent to social judgement without bitterness, you would be a saint.

If you spent any (quality) time with young people you’d realise most of us raise them not to be shallow and to ignore any suggestions that they engage in the superficial pettiness you ascribe to teenage females.

Thats a nasty comment in a rational forum. Western teenage females are generally more concerned about their appearance, their clothes, their social status, their pop idols, their mobile phones, than they are about the real issues of the world – except these are increasingly being indoctrinated in schools because that is the only way they can get traction.
The boys are equally self centred, they just do it in different ways. If their parents let them get away with things, this does not help them understand that freedoms need to be balanced with responsibility.

Lots of teenage girls dress however they like because it makes them feel good.

Of course it makes them feel good. Just see what happens when someone tells them they don’t look good, then they feel bad. They are totally dependent upon how they think they look in others eyes.

Lots don’t give a hoot about their appearance.

Lots go to a lot of effort to show they don’t care because beauty is an ugly business, especially if you are not beautiful. The rejection of this, and often way out looks are compensations for the difficulty they have to find a way to make their looks make them feel good. I hear plenty of teenager claim loudly ‘I don’t care’. This is just a front.

It’s founded in the reality that men and women are physically different and that people with more similar bodies provide fairer competition to one another. There’s nothing sexist about it.

It is sexist because it discrimination on the basis of ones sex and it is to the detriment of one sex. Its known as benevolent sexism. Wimbledon bowed to pressure of being sexist and paid the same purse to men and womens singles. Why not remove all sexism and make it one event?

Lots aren’t competitive.

You must be living in Disneyland. Life is competitive at every level, life is defined by being competitive, anything not successfully competitive could not have evolved. The key point is that we all compete at different levels and in different ways.

Lots are secure without engaging in petty superficial combat with their peers.

Tell me how this works. I have four teenage children, I coach kids sport, I work in community service, I have worked on 4 continents, been a member of sports clubs, community groups, churches, charities and in every case people try and get things done their own way in competition with others. You and I are competing on ideas in a forum.

And there are plenty of teenage boys guilty of doing all those things. They are also plenty who don’t do any.

Boys are not exempt from competing, they just do it in different ways.

More importantly, teenage boys have nothing to offer so there’s nothing for teenage girls to compete for.

Observation says you are wrong. My teenage daughters are very interested in teenage boys, I would agree that these teenage boys offer very little, but this does not seem to dawn on the girls.

Wow. So, the only things men are initially interested in in women are physical attributes. Nice.

You got it – the moral measure you are placing makes this a political discussion, but the fact remains that men and women gravitate towards each other because they are sexually different – if you changed the physical attributes of either sex, the other sex will largely lose interest.

Lots (and by lots I mean MOST in my personal experience) of men absolutely do not set their expectations accordingly as they do not feel they are in competition with other males and go after whatever appeals to them, no matter how “out of their league” it is. The vast majority of dudes who go after me are old and take extremely poor care of themselves. Lots of women are guilty of doing the exact same because they do not view courtship as some kind of competition with others vying for the same prize as they. For most of us, it’s personal and has to do with ourselves and whatever we’re after, not who we might be competing with.

Most people are not conscious of the deeper drivers, these start to dawn after more life experiences, however there is plenty of theory to support this position. People do not go out with defined competition in mind, just as they do not think about breathing to stay alive, we just do what happens naturally. Most of our automatic responses appear to be personal choice, even fashion choice, for many this unconscious behaviour will always be outside their awareness, for others they start getting it after they have been through more stages of life. You don’t really understand teenage behaviour until you have some of your won, you don’t understand kids until you have them, etc.

As if this is something unique or overly prominent amongst young people. It’s something some young people engage in as do some old and middle aged people. These generalisations are making me dizzy.

Its not unique, but adolescent behaviour is far less controlled while their social sense ias still dwvwloping and this takes around 25 years for the brain biology to mature, then they still have to establish where they fit into society. Older people are also less transparent and realise that they will get more benefit if they are more subtle. Having said this, they also learn and adjust to other people more, making compromises with other people by observing the social norms.

Again, as if women’s magazines represent women in general.

Womens magazines offer a wide variety of topics that essentially cover how women look, fashion, how they feel, how to have better sex, decoration, cooking, what celebrities are doing etc. Given the number of titles and the circulation of some of these, and what I observe women reading, this is what draws their interest.

Cosmo is absolutely full of that sort of shit, by the way. They have all kinds of “How to be a better partner” articles.

Not my daughters copy that I am reading as I write this. Its full of ads for beauty stuff, the articles don’t give much idea on how be become a better social citizen, or how to rsie above the material world, or give your life to charity, its about how you appear and how this makes you feel, relationships and sex.

Wow. This is my favourite generalisation yet. Pray tell, what study did you conduct that clearly demonstrated ugly powerful men are more attractive then ugly powerful women?

Use your eyes and your brain. Men are primarily judged by their achievements, and there are plenty of ugly looking men with power who have no issue getting women. Good looking men also score OK, but there is no significant industry for good looking men that compares to the one for good looking women. Miss World/Universe/female supermodels, once again the cover pics of womens magazines (and some mens) show women with exceptional looks. You don’t get too many mens magazines based upon good looks, or with cover pictures on how to look good – there is some around fit/strong male bodies, but its still dominated by achievement stuff, car racing, rockclimbing, martial arts etc.

Rock is still a predominantly male industry and most rock stars and their groupies are straight. It has nothing to do with the behaviours associated with groupies being predominantly female. Were there more female rock and rollers for whom being sexually open and outgoing wasn’t stigmatised, there would be male groupies all over them too. Societal expectations set these things into play, not differences between the sexes. For a woman to be sexually open and for a man to seek a woman is considered degrading.

I am not restricting this to rock groups, any male celebrity has groupies. Sportsmen, politicians, top businessmen, actors, musicians all get an exceptional following of young and not so young female followers, many of whom would be delighted to have sex with a celebrity. Note that when women do bed celebrities they are often open, because these are important achievements when they get screwed by a celebrity. Men have no issues seeking women, they do this for much of their youth, and they are often not very choosy, that is why female celebrities don’t get the same mobbing from men, because female power is not an aphrodisiac for men.

Lots of groupies are nuts. That they behave bizarrely has nothing to do with their sex.

Cop out, many women are groupies to some degree, they follow sport, and celebrities without really understanding or appreciating the activity itself, they just like men with power. Female groupies might be weak and easily led by men with power, but their behaviour is not bizarre at all, its quite predictable. Powerful men offer good genes, so women try and get access to them, this manifests as feeling they love men with power. It might be love, but its based upon their genetic drives.l

Again, what comprehensive studies have you conducted or been privy to that clearly demonstrate this to be the case for men?

Look at the logic before you even think of the studies. Evolutionary biology offers logical explanations of this process, its not a big issue to science that things work this way in human and non human society. Its only an issue where it undermines political agendas.

That’s an assumption and a half and not one you can demonstrate to have any veracity whatsoever. Will it sometimes be the case? Sure. Are there all kinds of reasons people make themselves look good outside of competition for desired resources? Yes. Is suggesting women emphasising their physical attractiveness something they do in order to compete with other women for desired members of the opposite sex an incredibly offensive sweeping generalisation about women and their behaviour? Yes.

You are still in Disneyland. Basic biological drives ensure that organisms that achieve their self interest will survive better than those that do not. Humans are sexually reproducing and this exists and is successful purely because an exchange of genes takes place that allows variety and adaption to changing environments. If men want women, and women want men, it means you must compete to get the one you want. I see this every day with my teenagers and their friends. There is plenty of conflict and competition between the sexes and within the sexes over their mating behaviour. Just as kids compete for exam results, sports, friends, they also compete for potential mates. I am not suggesting that mens mechanism to compete is better or worse than with women, there is no innate moral value in what we do, society just tells us there is (and very successfully). You seem to imagine that society has somehow got to the point where all this beauty stuff for women has arisen. Society reflects the nature of its members, these are moderated by group dynamics, and you get exceptions, but our culture is underpinned by our biology. Our instinct to survive reflects in our society and our behaviour in many ways. Our instinct to reproduce is also reflected in our behavior

More generalisations about how women view and treat men. As if no man has ever sought a female partner for exactly these reasons and made a slave of her.

I agree. This is certainly one of the risks that women run. Men are striving to get women and one way of restricting them from other men and having a monopoly, to physically dominate them. This was more so in the past than today as society has changed the way men and women exert influence over each other.

Believe it or not, LOTS of women AND men wouldn’t do this to the people they engage in relationships because for them relationships go a little further than game playing and getting what they want. If all you know of relationships is competition and self-interests, I don’t know where to begin.

You should read Dawkins passage on communication as a means to manipulate rather than transfer information. We are mostly unconscious of what drives our behaviour and we have been socially conditioned not to describe our behaviour in socially negative terms. I watch young teens go through courtships and its a very tricky process, with risks on both sides and only the very foolish play with totally open cards, most are keeping part of themselves hidden and protected. We don’t enter into relationships with the opposite sex or same sex for their benefit. There is usually reciprocal elements, but unbalanced relationships have high levels of conflict and might not last. Your issue is that you see these as being bad aspects, I no longer attach any baggage to the deeper drives we .have

Blah, blah, blah, generalisations I can’t demonstrate to have any veracity, blah, blah, blah

Seriously, all you’ve done is spout textual diarrhoea. You haven’t provided a lick of evidence for any of your claims. You think typing lots of words is a convincing argument?.

Then try logically deconstructing what I am saying with a logical counter argument. Empirical evidence needs to attach to base logic. There is no point in offering any evidence until the logical basis has been established. You are just copping out.

I find this type of discussion, particularly with this type of person, boring and never would have created a thread dedicated to it. I consider it rather insulting and degrading to everyone on this forum that such profoundly offensive generalisations primarily about females though also about males are allowed to be spewed as fact without evidence being required.

I think you find this debate with me infuriating. You have not offered a single logical point in your response. If you are able to take apart the argument without making personal comments about homeopathy and myself you might learn something.

Mr P, you said,

How about the consent of the other party? Having a look is harmless in and of itself but the point of controlling our actions is to respect the other parties dignity, a respect brought about by a sense of empathy and a strong desire not to inflict suffering on another.

This is the moral aspect, which as is normal is established before we have fully understood the phenomenon itself but it usually brings in the third and fourth elements of this sort of discussion, ie. the politics and the remediation. We formally state that adults have the highest and equal level of consent, while we limit somewhat for children and almost totally do so for most non human life. This position is a negotiated one that has evolved presumably since we were social humans and social protohumans. Social mechanisms teach us that if we do not respect the defined boundaries that are norms I a particular society and even in a particular scenario, we will be punished. This means we allow soldiers to kill the enemy and thus subvert the consent of the other party. With sex in the west, the matter of consent has caused lots of issues about how to interpret the way a woman dresses and exactly how much responsibility goes with it.

However simply look at the biology behind it. Men find women visually stimulating, and women pay a high level of attention on their visual attractiveness – two and two add up here. This is evolved behaviour for women to attract eligible males away from competing females so they can acquire the best genes for their offspring. All the layers of refinement in terms of courtship, love, fidelity are very real and significant, but still subject to the basic drives. The empathy you mention and desire not to inflict suffering etc seems to be skin deep. War time atrocities seem to be the norm, just as war itself is. Look at the experiments like the Stanford Prison, or Milgrams obedience experiment to see just how thin our civilised facade is and how much it is socially imposed.

The logical conclusion for your line of reasoning is; 'she was asking for it, just look at the way she was dressed/all men are penis-wielding potential rapists'. A conclusion I strongly disagree with.

This conclusion reminds me the incorrect attributed quotation from Dostoevsky that goes, “if there is no God, then everything is permitted”. This is a patently foolish observation. Every social group exacts a penalty from its members to ensure it does not undermine the integrity of the group, in return it benefits from being a member of the group.

Women are not asking to be raped by men. They are however driven to dress in ways that are designed to make them as attractive as possible in order to get the best genetic male possible. This manifests in different ways, some do it more, some do it less, some are aware of why they do it, others are in violent denial. Not all men are potential rapists. Natural selection has been removing people with strong and transparent anti social behaviour as our society has evolved. The brutish behaviour of a pack male 30,000 years ago does not surface in normal circumstances and logic suggests that these individuals who were really useful in cave man days would have been killed or excluded from society, so diluting their traits from modern society. Having said that, we have not evolved that far. Watching the sex and violence that occurs in very modern peace time (and filled with consenting, respectful, empathetic, well dressed citizens) society when their inhibitions get lowered by alcohol and under the cover of night, and you realise that almost none of our restraint is innate, its all socially imposed. Visiting a poor nation where the basics are in short supply this behaviour surfaces in different ways.

There is nothing inherently good or bad about this, but morals are socially constructed and designed to moderate our behaviour for the good of the group. Hence we get very excited at the idea that women could be ‘asking for it’, and all men are potential rapists. The resulting positions on all of this are political, defended to the death and have little basis in truth.

Simply put, we provide remedies to ensure that we manage these fundamentally selfish drives, one of which is to provide political slogans and ideals that we should conform to. All humans have inalienable rights, etc. While many people do not benefit from these empty words and others do not believe them, almost all people still echo them.

It seems some of us have not progressed very far from the old days at RDF, using voluminous generalisations as substitutes for hard evidence.

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Fallible wrote:It seems some of us have not progressed very far from the old days at RDF, using voluminous generalisations as substitutes for hard evidence.

Maybe you are being to hard on yourself?

Mark, you said,

They're all conforming to fashion. Dressing frumpy or even the wrong shoes with the outfit would make them stand out and inhibit their interactions between peers. That they dress the way they do isn't primarily about attracting men. They want to look good in front of their friends.

I agree with you, however they are just the effects of deeper causes. Of each of these ask why this should be the case. What motivates us to look good in front of friends? Does it improve our status with them, help get their support? Place pressure on them to do likewise? Why do we conform to fashion?

If women are in competition with other women, and men in competition with other men, we would expect to find some differentiation, some sameness and conformity and agreement in some standards.

Women are in competition with each other, yet they still work with and relate to other women, this means the relationship is complex and often strained. There is a need to conform as well as differentiate oneself, so people will get piercings to make sure they fit in, but some will look for one that is a little different. Trying to be different is just another way we conform, because we still operate within accepted boundaries. Males use cars as status symbols, but the cars themselves are different so we can look at one and see its owners identity. Girls need to feel that they are comfortable with their appearance among their friends and there is a lot of checking to see what others are doing and if following that identifies with their chosen group

It's a kind of uniform but more subtle, complex, changeable and varied than any military garment could ever be. With ever varying cues, colour schemes and assorted accessories. The "prize" not going to the one who shows most skin but the most skill in assembling their ensembles.

Once again I agree, its not about showing all your skin, even for those in professions where they get naked, they still follow a pattern of revealing their skin in stages, its usualy the promise of what lies unseen. Strip shows are about the skill in removing their clothes. Nudist colonies are a little different, but even here body ornamentation, (tattoos and piercings), shaving etc is used to replace their clothing as symbols. The bottom line is still the same. Our driver is to position ourselves relative to the competition, and to compete for something better for ourselves, biologically this is mens genes and we get these from men.

That's why women like to shop. For very much the same reasons as generals like to plan and beg lots of money from politicians. Tanks, ground to air missiles-shoes and handbags. Same thing although women nearly always spend their own money and for a far worthier cause.

The drivers are the same – try and control outcomes in your favour and/or for you offspring/group (in effect its our genes trying to control outcomes in their favour, so offspring are the replication of those genes). Women shop because it is part of the environment that provides them with some element of control, its gives them a belonging and status. However its subjective and as with males no individual sees themselves as others do. This provides us with protection and we live in a partly illusory world. We can see fashion and behaviour blunders in others, but not very well with ourselves. This means we can kid ourselves about our status, and while we think that being a Brangelina wannabe is sheer optimism, we do consider ourselves to have a special something that means we will find a niche for ourselves in life, and for many this is partly true.

It's not really about men.

Once again we agree. Women are doing this for themselves, just as men do everything they do for their own benefit. Women and men need each other for many things, the most fundamental being the product of sex, everything else is subordinate to this. Romance, love, fidelity, honor, respect all of these are offshoots of our genetic drivers, regardless of how seperate they appear. Life hangs together around a few laws of physics and if it were possible to disable one of these, physical matter could change, and alter the world as we know it. Physics is much further removed from our culture that our genetic imperatives, while the links between our behaviour and its roots in sex are well understood more connected, but it seems that admitting to these deeper urges somehow devalues us, so many people are made very uncomfortable by this, especially younger ones. I think by the time you have had kids and seen how little control we actually do have and watch our bodies degrade over time, you understand more.

I think that people with this opinion should learn more about women and learn to enjoy the show. It's fascinating.

My opinion was that our innate behaviour is not really socially acceptable, so society moderates this behaviour. Social values etc exist to make behaviour manageable, when people inhibitions drop through alcohol/drugs etc or extreme circumstances you see that the veneer is quite thin. How would holding an opinion like this prevent me from learning more about women and enjoying the show? I find human behaviour fascinating, every facet of life is truly remarkable, however I find our ability for mass social delusion of greatest interest.

Cherries, you said,

i don't see there is such a big difference between men and women anyway,i was brought up not to be "girly" and didn't dress that way,i liked clothes and make up etc but the results were more designed to be repellent rather than attractive,see the new wave punk era

The way we look makes a statement about who we are and what group we belong to. Dressing in this way is still using your looks as a means to define yourself. Rejection of what is considered to be the norm for attractiveness creates just another ‘look’ that people desire – men and women both do in order to establish a position in society or sub society. In this way men and women are the same, we both need to find a position in society that gives us some sense of control, and ability to get some of what we want. Most of what we want are material items that we hope will give us control and make us happy, however men and women do express it differently. Its not a surprise to learn that the biggest market for cosmetics are women, cosmetic surgery, clothes, accessories. This does not mean men do none of this, or that every woman does it to the same degree, they just it more than men. Men have traits that typify them, again not every man, and no woman does them, just that men do them more than women. Some behaviours are strongly stereotypical, other less so. Either way you cut, the work that science has done to define these is well supported by evidence and logic