Masculinity and men

[Buddha1]

If a man feels strong but is actually physically weak, is he being lied to by himself? Is this NATURAL, or SOCIAL masculinity he is experiencing (or not experiencing)? What again is the definitive difference??? It's escaping me at this time.

Like I said, physical strength is not the same as natural masculinity --- which is an inner thing.

 

[Buddha1]

The very act of 'being fucked' has been denigrated since medieval times. Then any sexual desire for men is 'forcibly' equated with 'being fucked' in order to stigmatise the whole array of male-male sexuality.

In the past it was gender orientation (feminine gendered) coupled with the desire of being 'penetrated' that was given a 'different' status. Masculine man's desires for another man was considered an integral part of manhood, and not considered different, minority or alternative at all.

The heterosexual society combines the masculine gendered desires with the feminine gendered ones into one head --- and considers all male-male desire feminine.

The homosexual identity is 'invented' just for this purpose!

 

[Buddha1]

Colour sense??? As in, Queer Eye for What Can't be Seen by the Straight Guy? Who suggested that one?

For a minute there, I thought this a reference to women being able to distinguish certain shades of red better than men.

Even the heterosexual society doesn't always distinguish between masculine adn feminine as the distinction between heterosexual and homosexual.

So a heterosexual person may too have a color sense, although the society may not notice this. Color sense in 'homosexual' men may be seen as a feminine trait.

Now it remains to be seen if a colour sense in indeed a feminine trait.

I don't know who mentioned this. Maybe I just wrote it on a hunch. When I say colour sense I mean the ability to 'match' colours --- you know what goes with this and that --- as in walls and dresses.

 

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

Ah Buddha! Ya need a vacation man! Go to Paris. You can find many men at minitel who would welcome your conclusions and perhaps you'll encounter a Nico Claux to help resolve your obsession...it will only hurt for a little while.

 

[Buddha1]

Ah Buddha! Ya need a vacation man! Go to Paris. You can find many men at minitel who would welcome your conclusions and perhaps you'll encounter a Nico Claux to help resolve your obsession...it will only hurt for a little while.

Thanks for the advice. But, to tell you a little secret of the male world, it's not only me, the entire straight male world is obsessed with 'being a man', which is linked to their social survival. All I do is to study this phenomenon in order to sort out a lot of things for men. And that can hardly be called a 'freaky' obsession. Although the heterosexual society may not care much for men's issues.

Why do you women think that only your issues are important. And men are just nasty exploiters -- the problem to be corrected? Why should work on gender only mean working on women's issues? Why do you belittle a serious attempt to address issues of men as 'obsession'?

 

[Satyr]

Well, since humans NATURALLY evolved to have such complex emotions, certainly NATURE must have had a purpose?

The purpose of emotions are numerous and specific to each.
In a general way emotions are meant to cloud the mind's reason and make it react intuitively, often against its better judgment.
It makes creatures reactive (instinctive) rather than rational.

If bonding, which is EMOTIONAL (at least for humans, hopefully) is to facilitate BREEDING and PROCREATING, why something so inefficient as EMOTION?

“Inefficient” compared to what alternative? Do you suppose that we’ve reached some evolutionary pinnacle where no improvement is possible?

After all, emotions have caused distraught mothers to kill their own children. Or fathers to behead their girls on suspicion of rape, in order to uphold personal honor.

If emotions evolved simply to facilitate procreation (and keeping a certain genetic identity alive) WHY ON EARTH WOULD THOSE EMOTIONS CAUSE A PERSON TO KILL THEIR OWN OFFSPRING???

And here we see how memes replace genes in the mind.
Why someone would “KILLL THEIR OWN OFFSPRING” has to be looked at on a case by case basis.
In the wild, when resources are low a mother might kill her young so as to allow the group to survive.
Here the young are seen as a liability that can be easily replaced when times get better and before too much has been invested in them.
In other cases such actions could be a result of mental illness or memetic imperative - morals, social pressures and so on.

Oh! "Well, the offending children were seen as impractical from a biological standpoint (a subjective observation, might I add), and so the parent simply terminated them in order to make room for more VIABLE offspring!"

OH! IS THAT HOW SIMPLE IT IS? So, honor, which is a subjective, emotional, HUMAN concept, suddenly dictates what is biologically viable???

Exactly. Ideals replacing instincts. Memes replacing genes.

THAT is what emotion does. There is no other example in nature of the complexity of human emotions. Certainly if emotions evolved simply to facilitate procreation, they could do a much better job of it, eh Satyr, you cloven-hooved one?

You take a single phenomenon and consider it from a very limited horizon.
The motives behind emotional acts might have long-term concerns and be completely irrational in the short-term.
Nature has her own logic.
But who’s arguing about emotions? Emotions are reactions to environmental conditions – social or natural.

Exactly! We only have to look to bacteria and their meiosis for a perfect example of EFFICIENT reproduction, WITHOUT the vagaries of HUMAN "LOGIC" and EMOTIONS to obstruct the perfect replication of genetic lines, let alone the imperfections of any kind of social interaction or bonding.

Then you would agree that emotions are evolutionarily recent, meant to facilitate certain cooperative unions and enable larger brained individuals.
The original motive is harsh and cruel and pragmatic: procreation.

Creatures evolve and so require more resources, longer gestation periods, a longer maturing period, or existing in threatening environments they require the safety of groups and unity with others so as to increase their survivability.
This in turn creates different dynamics and a suppression of some individuality. Emotions make this possible.

As the group grows – due to its own success – the individual must suppress more.

The safety of the group also creates the conditions for the emergence and nurturing of certain genetic mutations, which have no genetic fitness – in that they cannot reproduce on their own – and act as social lubricants.

In any group there is only room for one dominant male. The others are forced into subordinate, more effeminate positions. In fact their acceptance by the dominant male relies on them mimicking female behaviour enough so as to not appear threatening to the alpha male.
It would explain homosexual acts in the wild.
Some do it as a way of biding their time and waiting for an opportunity to take over.

But this is not homosexuality in that there is no exclusive attraction to the same sex.

In some species an excess of males forces some into all-male temporary groups living on the peripheries of procreative groups, making attempts at usurping power.
In lions for example males challenge dominant males. The females support their original male, hoping to save their investment in time and energy. If the challengers win the cubs are killed and the females become ready for a new investment.

In human modern groups, institutions have replaced the role of dominant male, forcing all males into more feminine roles. This would explain the “Feminization of man” but also the emergence of ‘homosexual’ memetic ideals which make effeminate behaviours into social virtues.
Since females are more easily integrates into groups (Due to temperament evolved because of their procreative role and dependance on others), males that exhibit more feminine traits become more socially viable.
So maleness becomes socially unwanted.

It is these SAME emotions that cause men and women to fall in love with each other. It is these SAME emotions that cause men to fall in love with other men, or women with women. It is these SAME emotions that cause men to abuse the ones they claim to love. It is these SAME emotions that tell one person that heavy metal is awesome, and another says that it's lame, but classical music is awesome, or the Talking Heads are a righteous musical creation.

These SAME EMOTIONS also tell certain people that they should prevent NATURAL procreation from occuring, because it is "wrong" or unsupportable etc.

Exactly!
Memes (ideologies, moral) can infect a brain and make it behave – as in the case of the Lancet Fluke - in ways that go against their genetic programming.
Emotions become the method of control.
In nature they serve natural selection, making individual minds go against their immediate interests so as to enable species interests.
In social environments emotions act in the same way, but this time to facilitate memetic interests.

The lower lifeforms have no qualms to this proliferation of life and reproduction that are observable or ascertainable.
Bacteria don't need emotions to reproduce, and guess what, they do it with far more efficiency than humans could ever dream of. They don't need sexuality (only asexuality, and hence, no bonding) and they have no definable concerns for their offspring.

Bacteria have “concern” for their offspring?

Concern (love) comes into paly when a longer maturing process is necessary. Then emotions acts as that which makes a parent sacrifice personal interests for the offspring’s benefit.
It’s a way of making the brain supress its original concern and refocus it on another.
Emotions always cloud reason, they never enhance it.

If emotional bonding is meant merely to facilitate procreation, it's doing a VERY POOR and INEFFICIENT job of it. I'm sure, though, that you're aware of that.

That’s funny, are you not living in a civilization constructed on procreative motives and driven by emotions?
How is not “efficient” when it has resulted in us dominating the Earth?

Of course, I have this feeling that you're merely being sarcastic towards Buddha1, and that is why you made such ill-founded remarks.

It’s too bad that you so desperately want to preserve your idealized view of the world, that you find my remarks so unattractive.
Can't help that.

Emotion does not always facilitate procreation. Often it HINDERS it.
If an insane or depressed mother can drown her PERFECTLY VIABLE children in a bathtub (because of emotion), how does that support the bearing of offspring, or the continuance of her genetic heritage?

So, we are to take extreme mental disorders as proof of what?
Like everything else, the mechanism isn’t fool proof. The human mind is so complex that, often, things go wrong in it.
Homosexuality is such a phenomenon, where a hormonal imbalance creates an alteration with no genetic purpose. It's a genetic dead-end, just like the memetic phenomenon that infects Shakers.
It gains purpose when it is protected and allowed to flourish or when the social environment finds it enhances uniformity.
When a meme cannot reproduce on its own, it relies of infecting others. It becomes parasitical.
Homosexuality is attempting to become so.

And keep in mind they don't have to be hearing voices to do such things. People can also kill themselves (or others) because of unresolved problems, emotional or other. Some people who see nothing but empty biology in a hollow universe can be driven to suicide for the lack of meaning. That is emotion. How many animals kill themselves because of a lack of higher meaning in their lives? And I'm not referring to animals trapped in small cages.

So, you take illness to prove health?
Some people are born with six fingers, does that mean that the norm is not five?
Some people are born retarded, does that mean that intellect is not healthy?

Animals do not need meaning.
Humans do, because they have been taken out of their natural, more austere environments and made comfortable and safe.
Ennui makes them seek out an alternate purpose.
They cannot and so they become ill, dis-eased.

Does this biological imperative they supposedly have give them this meaning?
I personally fail to see how that is biological efficiency when emotions can make someone kill even THEMSELVES. And I thought preservation of life was right before procreation on the big To-Do list that controls us all. Why do emotions override that? Or is that somehow preservation?

People kill themselves for numerous reasons.
Most of which involve them not being able to live up to a social standards or not being able to be like everyone else and feel accepted and acknowledged.

So, how many women has the cloven-hoofed Satyr bedded?

None?

How many times has this heterosexual god Pan had intercourse ("natural" no less), where birth control was used to disrupt the normal cause-and-effect course of natural reproduction?

I’m a virgin.
A hairy-armed princess.
I'll be whatever you want me to. If it makes you feel better, go for it.
I’m a girlish-man.

How is that any different from homosexuality, when heterosexuals practice birth control? Not? If that's your answer, then you're correct. If you can't understand that, I guess you may also have trouble adding 2 and 2 together.

I’m beginning to see that you and Buddha1 are on the same intellectual level. It would explain why you are so compatible.

When retards talk, it is best to not get involved.

What do you think?

I don’t, dear. I emote.

Lucysnow

Ah Buddha! Ya need a vacation man! Go to Paris. You can find many men at minitel who would welcome your conclusions and perhaps you'll encounter a Nico Claux to help resolve your obsession...it will only hurt for a little while.

You know I have no problem with exploring maleness and male issues, and in some ways I agree with this freak, but to start from the premise that sex has evolved for bonding and that sexual orientation is exclusively a social construct, is absurd and exposes a motive other than the exploration of maleness.
To say that sexual attraction is imposed on us from without only exposes this thread starters own experience and has nothing to do with most men. He sees what he desperately ant to see, so as to feel ‘normal’and to construct his thesis upon which he psychologically relies on.
Imagine nature creating the feminine form to attract males and must be forced to find it attractive by a society that evolved ages after sexual identity came to be. This is so remarkably stupid, that most have not even bothered with this moron.
I do because I love mocking stupidity.

Gender expressions are socially determined and contained, but genders are naturally constructed.
Females are not physically smaller and weaker than men, by accident - vagina’s aren’t a mistake.

Each sex evolved for particular procreative purposes and the environment determined what characteristics, both physical and psychological, each would have.
Now, in recent times, the environment has altered making many of the sexual attributes lose their purpose.
Muscle power, for instance, is obsolete in a mechanized era.

So males wear muscle like ornaments of genetic pasts - symbols of maleness they are forbidden from using, unless sanctioned by the system.
The role of males has so diminished over the ages, that we find ourselves, today, in a time when even sexual orientation is considered a trivial characteristic and gender is considered a social construct with no natural function.
In a world of 6 billion and of restricted resources, procreation becomes a secondary concern.
It is no accident that in more affluent systems birth rates fall, dramatically.

Here we see the effects of superfluousness, coupled with the restriction to maleness, combining to create an atmosphere of adolescent privilege and where nature is reinterpreted to fit into our memetic contexts.
Sex becomes trivial and so does gender roles, as a consequence. Women do not need males to raise children, sometimes they do not need males to have children, and what made males necessary to a group is diminished though technology and the systemic safety network that protects each individual indiscriminately and makes nature something we experience on TV or at the park.

In these environments who you fuck doesn’t matter. It’s all for the harmonious coexistence of the group – bonding.

Here we see the institutionalization of the human mind.
Ancient Greeks used it to create more cohesive army units and social peace. In prison it is used for the same purpose.
Take man out of nature and you scramble his perspective, you make him adapt to artificial (manmade) environments. You force him to suppress parts of himself or make him find alterative routes to alleviate his needs. You make him feel stressed from the effort required to suppress his nature, causing a many mental illnesses and a sense of disconnection and meaninglessness.

Memes, as a relatively recent evolutionary phenomenon, and the full effects on the human condition have yet to be seen.
One only wonders how our involvement in the process of natural selection will affect our species. So far medicine has taken over the role of repairing the damage we’ve done.

 

[Buddha1]

Giambattista, kindly take this discussion about 'homosexuality' and 'heterosexuality' to a different thread!

 

[Buddha1]

Giambattista, kindly take this discussion about 'homosexuality' and 'heterosexuality' to a different thread!

And kindly take the little girlie with hairy arms with ya! (you're welcome here though!)

 

[Giambattista]

The purpose of emotions are numerous and specific to each.
In a general way emotions are meant to cloud the mind's reason and make it react intuitively, often against its better judgment.
It makes creatures reactive (instinctive) rather than rational.

Emotions have meaning?
Huh? That was precious.
I thought meaning was a human invention meant to comfort and offer hope against existential anxiety.

“Inefficient” compared to what alternative? Do you suppose that we’ve reached some evolutionary pinnacle where no improvement is possible?

Then you would agree that emotions are evolutionarily recent, meant to facilitate certain cooperative unions and enable larger brained individuals.

Emotions always cloud reason, they never enhance it.

I thought the last billion years of evolution, including evolution of emotions, was supposed to have been an improvement.
Emotions are meant to facilitate something, and enable larger brained individuals, yet emotions cloud reason, they never enhance it?
Effeciency?

Nature has her own logic.

Apparently, and some logic it is. So nature has a gender, and it's female?

You take a single phenomenon and consider it from a very limited horizon.

Actually, it appears you're doing a pretty good job of it yourself.

Bonding serves a purpose and is a consequence of a weakness and a need.
The need is survival. The purpose is reproduction.

How much more limited can it get than that?

Bacteria have “concern” for their offspring?

I said "they have NO definable concern" for their offspring. I suppose you thought I said "they have no DEFINABLE concern" didn't you?

When a meme cannot reproduce on its own, it relies of infecting others. It becomes parasitical.
Homosexuality is attempting to become so.

So are musical ideals, and the appreciation of them. You're talking about practically everything that is a product of emotions.
So what's your point?

I take offence. I rarely try to make sense.

Oh.

When retards talk, it is best to not get involved.

Describe yourself in one word.

 

[Giambattista]

Giambattista, kindly take this discussion about 'homosexuality' and 'heterosexuality' to a different thread!

Now listen hear! It was about much more than that, I assure you.

But, I am done discussing things with a self-admitted retard.

His profile states that he has the following interests:

Laughing, Mocking, Caricaturing, Deceiving, Satire, Parody, Immitation, Regurgitation, Aping, Parroting, Razzing, Riding, Roasting, Insulting, Self-Effacing, Joking, Jeering, Scorning, Poking, Scoffing.


I have come to the conclusion that his "insight" is less than valuable.

 

[Giambattista]

Like I said, physical strength is not the same as natural masculinity --- which is an inner thing.

So, if he FEELS strong, that's inner masculinity, regardless of his physical strength?

 

[Giambattista]

What about looks? Apparently, women are supposed to... AH! So, it's number seventeen, is it?

17- uncaring about looks

So, women (or femme gay boys?) are supposed to look pretty and petite, and men are supposed to be rugged and burly and perhaps even ugly?

Obviously, I'm exaggerating, just to get your attention!

But, I have heard that bit of "wisdom" more than once, that men are very unkempt (or SHOULD be, unless we need to stroke our suspicions :bugeye: ) and leave it up to the women to be attractive, and somehow the women just find that rugged natural look irresistible, while men fall head over heels for something so... UNnatural? Well, I can't help it if the feminine beauty ideal is so aided by cosmetic technology! But that's another issue entirely, thank goodness!

Okay, Buddha1! You work with men all the time, or at least claim to! What do YOU observe about their preening and grooming habits?
How important is it to them, REALLY? You have this psychic sense of what men are REALLY thinking, after all. What does this have to do with inner and outer, natural and social masculinities? Is one type of dress or grooming characteristic of one or both? Or does the overall effect it has on them determine whether this is natural or social?

I personally am a mixture of both. I'm not careless, but I could sometimes care less!

You never commented on this post, Buddha. I thought that since you counsel men so much, that you would have something to say on this.

 

[Buddha1]

You never commented on this post, Buddha. I thought that since you counsel men so much, that you would have something to say on this.

I don't quite feel like straining myself intellecutally for sometime, and I'll just make a few light posts for the moment. I'll leave the serious stuff till the time I feel better.

 

[Giambattista]

I don't quite feel like straining myself intellecutally for sometime, and I'll just make a few light posts for the moment. I'll leave the serious stuff till the time I feel better.

Do you need to be cured or something? Counsel yourself into a stupor. A heavy dose of wine should do the trick! Always makes ME intellectual!
Just look at what I have wrought! Surely a glass, or two or three or four or five couldn't do the SLIGHTEST bit of harm.



Ah, just bein' silly, dear Buddha. Just bein' silly.

I don't feel like being intellectual either. I feel like roughhousing. Until I get hurt. That's not cool. I'll punch, but if you punch back, I'll be mighty displeased. Like the Incredible Hulk. Don't make me green! :m:

 

[Buddha1]

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Yesterday I heard a bunch of kids playing outside my apartment. They were big kids like 12 to 16 years. The girls and boys were playing together --- and since I've interacted with them for sometime I was taken aback and dismayed to find them talking about sex.

In my days, they would stop girls from playing with boys as soon as they reached puberty.

But today there are no restrictions on women. And this makes me think:

Women in heterosexual societies have it really good. The heterosexual society is particularly anti-man --- particularly masculine gendered men, and hostile to their needs, especially their special needs (i.e. when they don't concern women).

Women, especially masculine gendered women have all the freedom in the world in such a society. There are no social restrictions, no social responsibilities --- just unlimited rights and freedom --- which soon translate into undue priviliges and exploitative power over men. Their artificial socio-sexual power over men is also increased thousand times.

The society also indulges feminine gendered men --- homosexuals to some extent, but especially the heterosexuals (true ones), who are part of the vested interest group of a heterosexual society.

 

[James R]

Yeah, women have it easy! Higher pay for the same jobs compared to men. Over-representation in positions of power in politics and in business. The freedom to be raped whenever they want. Double standards by which men are chastised for being sexually promiscuous, while women are applauded for the same behaviour. All the child rearing mostly falls on men.

Yeah, women have it all.

 

[Buddha1]

Yeah, women have it easy! Higher pay for the same jobs compared to men. Over-representation in positions of power in politics and in business. The freedom to be raped whenever they want. Double standards by which men are chastised for being sexually promiscuous, while women are applauded for the same behaviour. All the child rearing mostly falls on men.

Yeah, women have it all.

Everything you say above will be correct IF ONLY we believe in the heterosexual principle of Men and women are the 'same'.

But I'm afraid it is not so. And there is no basis for equating men and women if 'being equal' means being the 'same'.

Men and women have different physical (and in some aspects emotional) capabilities, different potentialities, different natures, different ambitions, different and different way of looking at life.

Actually, this is where gender becomes important, because as far as the emotional/ inner aspects are concerned feminine gendered males share a lot of commonality with women --- but their physical aspects are still way too different.

To say they are not equal doesn't necessarily mean that we can oppress one group over the other. Our goal should be to let each sex and gender grow to its full potential not to grow alike --- doing what the other is doing. That just doesn't make sense, apart from attempting to make people 'heterosexual'.

When the society brought man and woman together in the 'marriage contract', it forcibly took away many of woman's freedoms. It was easy to subdue women because they are physically weak. Besides, her real concern was to give birth and to ensure proper safety, security and upbringing for her children. Which the marriage institution did provide. However, she suffered a lot through all these ages --- when she was reduced to being a property of men. Her condition further deteriorated in the medieval ages.

While the society so openly oppressed women (as well as feminine gendered males), masculine gendered males (Men) were a different matter altogether. The society could not reign them in so easily. They had to be tricked. And the society had to use social mechanisms that governed men's life --- manipulating "social masculinity" was the most obvious choice. They cleverly took away men's freedom, bound them to 'unnatural' roles --- especially sexual ones to ensure that they stayed in marriage. The restrictions on men were deep rooted, they sought to restrain even the minutest aspects of men's lives. And to make sure that men never become any wiser, the society put restrictions on the discussion of 'masculinity' issues. In due course of time the fabricated lives of men became their 'first' nature. While their original nature was shoved behind a social curtain, where it survived superficially, often with guilt and shame

So women and men both were oppressed. But there was a vital difference. The oppression of women was obvious, and that of men was hidden --- often from his own eyes. He had no way to tell that he was being oppressed because his roles were seen as 'nature'.

When the dark ages scattered which had taken an especially heavy toll of women's freedom, the outer/ visible nature of women's oppression worked in their favour. Now people could discuss women's situations and there was a strong movement to set women free. So far so good.

But, the problem was that this movement was either:

(1) started by the forces which wanted to consolidate the importance given to male-female sex by the traditional society (albeit onlly through marriage) into a 'heterosexual' lifestyle ----

(2) hijacked by these forces (the vested interest group) who equated freedom for women with "equality with men". These forces could easily do that because men were still oppressed, and since their oppression was hidden, they were not going to get together and press for their rights.

Thus, came the heterosexual society and the oppression of men intensified, as the society went ahead from making women equal to making them more powerful than the men. So women were given a lot of outer power over men. While the society slowly --- casting men as exploiters --- took away their outer power in the society as well. Men in a heterosexual society today are totally powerless --- their inner power had already been taken ages ago, today they have lost their outer power too. And they are as voiceless as before.

 

[Buddha1]

Now to respond to each of your statments separately:

Yeah, women have it easy! Higher pay for the same jobs compared to men.

My society has not been completely heterosexualised. And already women are taking the jobs of men. Including higher managerial posts. They have huge support from the government, and other establishment which gives them preference in jobs etc.

While it is true that there are certain jobs where women will be less productive than men --- and maybe in a few cases they are paid lesser. But look at the priviliges they get. They intrude in every male space and take away their privacy and freedom --- because they are equal to men, but they still need their separate bathroom and can't stand sharing it with men.

At the same time there are several jobs where men are paid much much less for the same job that woemen do. E.g. 'receptionists', 'air-hostesses', 'models' etc., etc. The list is long. But then who cares for men. The last of a heterosexual society's concern is men --- who are actually the 'problem'.

Over-representation in positions of power in politics and in business.

Positions of power and politics were not really women's arena. Not for most anyways. Power and politics are more masculine things, because men have all the time to do that. In nature men don't have to look after children.

However, the society through articificial propping up of women in postitions of power has tried to bring around this 'unnatural' equality too.

But like happens in my society, women are inducted into the army --- taking away men's spaces, freedom and privacy (while maintaining their own!), they will not go to fight in the frontline --- well because they can't. That is something only men can do!

However, some women are masculine and can do a lot of things that men do, and they do on their own rise to positions of power.

The freedom to be raped whenever they want.

Ahh rape!

The society forces men to see women as sex objects in order to prove their manhood. That has not changed. The women are encouraged to be whores --- and they will use you exploit you, have sex day and night with you, and when suddenly she doesn't want it becomes rape --- many a times in retrospect. That is she can well cry rape when she has to take it out on someone. I was threatened by an organisation head (who was a cunning woman!) --- who wouldn't pay me for my services, that if I didn't keep quiet she would report to the police that I was sexually harrassing her. I had no choice because everybody told me not to pursue the case. The police just wouldn't listen to you, if a woman complains.

And why is the female body given such importance and treated like holy cow! In the past it was understandable. Women had a social character to maintain. They could have sex only with their husbands and a rape was like attacking what was due to the husband. When the woman's body has lost that sanctity and she doesn't even count the number of people she goes to bed with, why should we still hold the female body in equal 'sanctity' and get as outrages as we did in the medieval times about 'rape' as we today. After all it is just like having sex with one person you don't like, when you're having sex with 10 you do like. It is still a crime --- but is it such a big crime that some people talk of a death sentence!

And why shouldn't a man be allowed to feel the same degree of outrage and violation when he is raped by a woman. You have seen on the other two threads how men are still extremely disempowered to feel violated sexually. And most men still have to give in to unwanted sex in order to maintain their
social manhood.

Is this double standard 'equality'?

My next door neighbour who is getting married much against his wish --- he just doesn't want to be with women. Isn't it 'rape' by the society? Doesn't the fact that man's 'rape' is not even acknowledged make it even all the more oppressive for men.

And what about the boys who were forcefully made to strip in front of girls their own age? Or those who were made to strip in front of women officers and teachers either in their schools or in their armies? Does sexual exploitation lose its significance which it is carried on on men, or by the authorities?

Double standards by which men are chastised for being sexually promiscuous, while women are applauded for the same behaviour.

Who made those double standards? If I don't prove my 'manhood' by going with a dozen of women every now and then, they'll call me sissy and homo, and I will not be able to live with dignity amongst other masculine gendered men. Did I make those roles? Why does the media encourage those roles? What has the governments done to reduce this pressure from men to be promiscuous?

The double standards that you're talking about are not FOR men, they are against men --- they act as pressures on men.

And as for women, they are really applauded for being sexually promiscuous by the heterosexual society. If you challenge that I'm willing to provide enough evidences to you.

All the child rearing mostly falls on men.

Men are not made for bringing up children. It's not a woman's job, it is her privilege to do that!

 

[Tnerb]

Men are not made for bringing up children. It's not a woman's job, it is her privilege to do that! "

Gesus, christ! It is boths privilege. :rolls eyes

 

[James R]

So, Buddha1, if you ruled the world, what would be appropriate roles for women in your ideal society?