Moderator: Fist and Faith
I went hunting for some statistics to refute this... and ended up convinced you're right.Vraith wrote: There's something about maleness in it, though. Not all males are violent as a matter or course [Stop at Starbucks for coffee, get to work, check my email, go to staff meeting, submit progress report, punch someone in the face, lunch with a client...] yet they commit something like something like 8x's the violent crimes as women...
Heh...that's kinda funny cuz although I suspected men do most of the violent stuff, and people say it a lot, the reason I actually looked it up to see if it was true is cuz I was standing in line at a bus station. I live near a major border crossing. Border patrol came down the line checking peeps bags...a woman asked why they were checking most of the men and skipping most of the women and he said [roughly] "cuz 95% of the time a woman isn't gonna hurt anyone, and the ones here look pretty safe to me" Turns out he was a little off...but not very far.Rigel wrote:I went hunting for some statistics to refute this... and ended up convinced you're right.Vraith wrote: There's something about maleness in it, though. Not all males are violent as a matter or course [Stop at Starbucks for coffee, get to work, check my email, go to staff meeting, submit progress report, punch someone in the face, lunch with a client...] yet they commit something like something like 8x's the violent crimes as women...
Men really are dicks, aren't we?
Hahaha, no, my point it that for each person who operates in some construct, that construct is the reality. You can't recognise what isn't true for you.Cambo wrote:Perhaps a better way to put it would be we need to recognise the particular constructs we operate in are not the reality.
Damn, I never liked Foucault. (Not necessarily his ideas...just his writing...he didn't know what a concise sentence was.Vraith wrote: Very Foucault-ian. And also true in an even worse way because even our subjectivism is guided by constructs put upon us before we even have an "I" or perspective. Many are almost impossible to even recognize in ourselves, let alone root them out and manipulate/alter/reconstruct them.
)Can you elaborate on "you can't recognise what isn't true for you?" Can't seem to grasp that one.Avatar wrote:Hahaha, no, my point it that for each person who operates in some construct, that construct is the reality. You can't recognise what isn't true for you.Cambo wrote:Perhaps a better way to put it would be we need to recognise the particular constructs we operate in are not the reality.
Reality is built of all those constructs intersecting.
Damn, I never liked Foucault. (Not necessarily his ideas...just his writing...he didn't know what a concise sentence was.Vraith wrote: Very Foucault-ian. And also true in an even worse way because even our subjectivism is guided by constructs put upon us before we even have an "I" or perspective. Many are almost impossible to even recognize in ourselves, let alone root them out and manipulate/alter/reconstruct them.
--A
There are several things at play here.Cambo wrote: Can you elaborate on "you can't recognise what isn't true for you?" Can't seem to grasp that one.
Once you recognise something (say, to be topical, the ideal of hegemonic masculinity) as constructed, surely you couldn't continue to think of it as an absolute truth?
HAH! I wish it was that easy, but it ain't.Cambo wrote:Okay, I gotcha.
So...what's the answer?
. Unless you already know that it's a construct, and that we operate on the basis of these type of constructs, (which makes you unlikely to think of anything as an absolute truth), you probably won't recognise it as such.Cambo wrote:Can you elaborate on "you can't recognise what isn't true for you?" Can't seem to grasp that one.
Once you recognise something (say, to be topical, the ideal of hegemonic masculinity) as constructed, surely you couldn't continue to think of it as an absolute truth?
--ARichard Bach wrote:Everything in this book may be wrong.
Vraith, as the resident acolyte of Jung, I have to ask whether and to what extent any of the process you are describing is archetypal?Vraith wrote:There are several things at play here.Cambo wrote: Can you elaborate on "you can't recognise what isn't true for you?" Can't seem to grasp that one.
Once you recognise something (say, to be topical, the ideal of hegemonic masculinity) as constructed, surely you couldn't continue to think of it as an absolute truth?
One is: if you recognize something as constructed, you do so in terms of another construct. Analogy: there's the old story of people born to the woodlands being sharper-eyed, seeing things others don't. But what's left out is that if ya take that guy from the woods and put him in the city, he isn't so sharp-eyed anymore. Vision is constructed from a different basis...BUT--one can, in time, learn to see, build a new construct. Until you do, though, an array of things are literally not recognizable/true for you.
Some constructs or more conscious than others, some built of stronger materials.
Also, some are built on actual facts, some on falsehoods [whether intentionally or just mistaken], some on hopes/desires, on "oughts" instead of "is-es." Often the ought is intended to interfere with the is.
Males [in general, across species] ARE more violent. We OUGHT to control it. We build a construct...lots of variations of the same one, because the "oughts" are environmentally dependent, can change/grow/alter, sometimes quite rapidly [your literacy comes into play there]. But you can't be free of the is...the is only changes, if at all, very very slowly.
How many generations did it take for even the beginnings of a construct that says "women are as competent as men?" But even all those generations are an instant compared to the fact of male violence, and the constructs built around/to channel/control it.
Men send that hate because they are, factually, more aggressive, and because there are both constructs that approve male aggression AND other constructs that are threatened [their reality is threatened]...they cannot "recognize" a truth about women that opposes their truth.
I see. And I'm pretty sure I agree. But wouldn't it suit what you're point better to say you can't recognise what is true for you? Ie we see another constructed reality, we simply think "that's not true," while we fail to recognise our own reality as equally constructed.Avatar wrote:Unless you already know that it's a construct, and that we operate on the basis of these type of constructs, (which makes you unlikely to think of anything as an absolute truth), you probably won't recognise it as such.Cambo wrote:Can you elaborate on "you can't recognise what isn't true for you?" Can't seem to grasp that one.
Once you recognise something (say, to be topical, the ideal of hegemonic masculinity) as constructed, surely you couldn't continue to think of it as an absolute truth?
In a certain sense, what I'm saying is that everything is true. Or might as well be true.
If you believe something to be true, you act as though it is, and therefore to you it is true. It's effect on your actions is identical.
Reality is what we believe. Therefore one reality, (the one you exist in) and another, (the one I exist in), might be utterly mutually exclusive. Yet to each of us, our respective construct is reality. Even recognising the fact that we have constructed it does not remove us from it. Because its effects are integral to our perceptions and therefore our experiences.
--ARichard Bach wrote:Everything in this book may be wrong.
In many ways, very at the root/primitive. If people grew up without any human/social input the archetypal would be what their identity/consciousness/"culture" would be built on. Archetypes are the first interaction between thought/experience/mind processes and biology of the brain. They range so commonly among all people because the biology of the brain is so similar.Exnihilo2 wrote: Vraith, as the resident acolyte of Jung, I have to ask whether and to what extent any of the process you are describing is archetypal?
That is the very powerful tendency. Because our constructs [and our nature] are strongly recursive and algorithmic. HOWEVER: we also have some counter functions in place. Intuition is one, and an innate sensitivity to spot difference. How we deal with that difference depends on many things...but the fact that it's nearly impossible to not see it is the shock-point or lever we can use to reflect on our own constructsCambo said wrote: But wouldn't it suit what you're point better to say you can't recognise what is true for you? Ie we see another constructed reality, we simply think "that's not true," while we fail to recognise our own reality as equally constructed.
I think I see what you're saying...Cambo wrote:...to say you can't recognise what is true for you? Ie we see another constructed reality, we simply think "that's not true," while we fail to recognise our own reality as equally constructed.
This is already highly illogical, IMO. The idea that the first connection to the world is privileged in the individual's mind as they develop is not necessarily correct. Moreover, the handing of the child to the mother for the first few instants of bonding is a choice made by society, not a natural thing - there is no inherent reason not to hand the child to the father and allow the father to bond with the child first. For my part, I was handed to my grandmother first. Those in closest proximity to me have always felt I had a special bond with her. I would say I have a special bond with no one, or rather I have a special bond with everyone (same difference).ussusimiel wrote:It has to do with male identity. Male identity, IMO, is founded in the female. This is a consequence of birth and the womb. The female power of fertility means that everybody's first connection with the world is through their mother. For a woman this is simply an introduction to her own power and nature that she will, hopefully, grow into and experience as she gets older.Rigel wrote:Are we really still so primitive ...?
Except that once the cord is cut, the world can easily be engaged with without the female, as I myself have experienced. I have sexual desires towards women, and am not really sure if I would turn down sex given the chance, but I have no enacted desire to make bonds with attractive women that become intimate in nature to get sexual gratification. Women simply aren't sex objects to me.For a man, however, it is something altogether different. For the male, the experience is that the world can only be fully engaged with through the connection with the female, something he (erroneously, as it turns out) feels he doesn't possess.
Again, I disagree. Besides the fact that this world is not male controlled and dominated, because there are decisions made by women every day that effect what happens in the world, and research done by women that effect those decisions, etc, and most importantly women had a role in raising many of the men who take a part in controlling the world. In other words, you can't claim feminine dominance in the realm of experience with the world and then turn around and say this is a male dominated world - if the female is the primary source of experience with the world, for maternal reasons I suppose, then she is at fault for it becoming a male dominated world.Now it gets complicated, because even though the world we live in is male controlled and dominated it is quite possible for a man to feel that he is powerless and has nothing. This will intuitively (and correctly) be felt to be related to the female. The man will (wrongly) believe that he is nothing because of women (his lack of success will be due to a lack of connection to the real world, a connection that requires a female element). For those who are frustrated by this, women will start to become a focus for their anger.
The woman who enters into such spheres doesn't become threatening, she actually becomes attractive as a mate, because she brings more income to the table and more intelligence to discuss.The post-modern world allows women to be successful in ways that were not possible before, for example, through the Internet. A successful woman is a double threat to the powerless, frustrated male. She not only possesses what he needs, she is also seen as colonising a previously male dominated area (e.g. the intellectual, business, science etc.).
I think these are the most fruitful, potentially, areas. I'm tired and won't go into detail, but the main reason they are prime is because, as a pure matter physical fact, the answers are related to each other and, most important, the answers right now are entirely different than they once were...though the social milieu is struggling to deal with it.Holsety wrote: I think if you were going to get to a fruitful discussion of why this is a "male dominated" world, the most useful things to talk about would be
-do women tend to be biologically weaker than men at physical tasks, despite their vaunted reputation for bearing pain during pregnancy.
-Does pregnancy have an effect on a woman's ability to enter into and maintain a place in the workforce?
The purpose of my original post was to attempt to focus on the centrality, IMO, of the psychology of the individual male in terms of violence towards women (separate but not unrelated to the more general and political feminist/patriarchy issue).Holsety wrote:I just disagree with the extent to which you have attempted to explain it through material events etc.
I may have been too brief here. I was not speaking of the bond that a child forms with their mother/father after birth. I was referring to the biological (and in the alternative worldview, energetic) fact that a child is carried within the womb and thus connects with the world initially through a female. It is during this time that the primitive part of our psyche is formed, which is prior to language and logic. And my point in all this is that because it precedes language and reason it is immune to those forms of intervention. Getting a handle on the primitive elements of our psyche must be done, I believe, physically through bodywork or symbolically through dreams or art.Holsety wrote:This is already highly illogical, IMO. The idea that the first connection to the world is privileged in the individual's mind as they develop is not necessarily correct. Moreover, the handing of the child to the mother for the first few instants of bonding is a choice made by society, not a natural thingussusimiel wrote:Male identity, IMO, is founded in the female. This is a consequence of birth and the womb. The female power of fertility means that everybody's first connection with the world is through their mother. For a woman this is simply an introduction to her own power and nature that she will, hopefully, grow into and experience as she gets older.
In relation to these two issues, I think that in our contemporary Western world we have moved on (as Vraith indicated) to a need to reassess work/child-rearing/equality in relation to both men and women.Vraith wrote:I think these are the most fruitful, potentially, areas. I'm tired and won't go into detail, but the main reason they are prime is because, as a pure matter physical fact, the answers are related to each other and, most important, the answers right now are entirely different than they once were...though the social milieu is struggling to deal with it.Holsety wrote: I think if you were going to get to a fruitful discussion of why this is a "male dominated" world, the most useful things to talk about would be
-do women tend to be biologically weaker than men at physical tasks, despite their vaunted reputation for bearing pain during pregnancy.
-Does pregnancy have an effect on a woman's ability to enter into and maintain a place in the workforce?
