How true

"I've actually met more toxic women than toxic men" - I often hear that from women who see themselves constantly competing against other women and generally trying to be attractive to men. So that's probably a self-fulfilling prophecy in many cases.

Im always in a competition against everyone. That's how we move forwards, by always trying to be better than the people around us and ourselves.
Being attractive to men is overrated since most of ya is clueless about makeup which I'm passionate about (being attractive to women though, a true battlefield)

"Im always in a competition against everyone. That's how we move forwards, by always trying to be better than the people around us and ourselves. " - Uhm, no, that's how people become pretty annoying.

Annoying to the ones who lose

Exactly what I'm talking about.

I don't consider myself a "feminist" woman, but from my personal experiences, those who do consider themselves feminists are super toxic. They seem to have this sense of moral superiority, and try to make it a competition on being more morally superior, without actually trying to help people.

I don’t know why you were downvoted- that’s your personal experience. So long as you aren’t saying all or most “feminists” are like that. A true “feminist” is just a decent human being- the fact we needed a special word for it is sad. But like any group there are extremists and those who aren’t actually in it to make things more equal- just “better” for themselves or to as you say- justify a sense of superiority. We all at some point get frustrated with another gender as a result of our interactions with a few members. But there’s a difference between venting you’d launch people into space and not meaning it- and actually believing that’s a feasible or advisable course. I’m sure you are speaking of people more to the latter than the former. Just as being “right” or “left” doesn’t make a person terrible- being terrible does and terrible people will do terrible things regardless of the labels they give their views.

Lol @Rosalinas is the dictionary definition of insane, but she’s not wrong. Any of you morons who think we’re all not in constant competition are lying to yourselves.
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I imagine losing must be annoying or discouraging- I wouldn’t know, and I don’t intend to find out

No society "praises victims", that's your usual neanderthal attitude talking there. Modern societies (something you obviously fear and loathe) respect victims and take their side against those who victimize them.

While there’s some subtext there that I don’t agree with- and I certainly don’t agree with the victims parts- I’d call it “direct aggression” and “passive aggression,” and I do agree with the idea there. Women traditionally weren’t allowed to be direct and aggressive in society and so had to find more subtle and passive ways to communicate and do vs men who have generally been encouraged to be directly aggressive in pursuing what they want.

In that view I would say that toxic masculinity is when a man gets the idea that more is better. Like perfume/cologne- and being told “this will really attract people...” So if one spritz will attract people- some say “well... then if I put on half the bottle I’ll be a super model!” After bathing in scent- any poor soul near by them is likely to gag at their presence- and they themselves will find they are likely less popular than before. But if someone should say- “hey... that’s a bit heavy don’t you think?” Ego steps in and it’s “this is what I was told is attractive- and if you don’t like it something is wrong with you!” Hence- toxic masculinity.

Yes, that’s an excellent analogy!

Humans are not a blank slate, and women have different inclinations that men, which is why they express them differently than men. But the dichotomy between strength and weakness is one of the best ways of framing these, provded you set the value judgement aside.

Hmmm.... the comment is a little too philosophical for me to discuss without us having to go down a road that science nor philosophy have come to a definitive conclusion on. What you’re saying basically sounds like a debate of nature vs nurture. It’s hard to say to what degree ant differences in thought process or information processing and response might be due to genetics or biology and what degree is imparted socially. There’s no compelling data that a male baby and a female baby would show any difference in preferences- and by the time children tend to be old enough to show discernible preferences they’ve also been immersed in their environment for long enough to skew any results.

So we do know there are certainly differences between the sexes- but we don’t really know to what degree or how profound those are, what is native to biology and what is imparted through environment. Many assumptions taken for granted as true have been challenged by studies showing that even the opposite could be true. Ideas such as women are inherently less aggressive or less likely to use violence for instance. Often blind tests show women are as or more likely to do so at least in principal- but is that their “true” nature or a result of modern societies effects? It’s hard to get a control without locking a male and female baby in a sealed environment away from other humans and in complete freedom to grow up and observe.

It’s seems just as likely in such a “fish bowl” the female would be as prone to primitive tendencies like resorting to violence- but die to most women having biologically less upper body strength than men- in an untrained fight a female is generally at a slight disadvantage there as well as likely reach- so perhaps she’d be just as naturally inclined to violence- but experience with unsuccessful attempts at its use might curb that tendency.

That would be mirrored in our society in the fact that we tend to more actively dissuade young women from exercising physical aggression as well as being less accepting of socially acceptable forms of expressing such impulses in women. But without controls groups of male/male and female/female pairs isolated from birth from all elements that might impart any existing social values on them along with male/female pair we wouldn’t know- and even at that a study based on 6 participants isn’t a large enough sample to make a definitive conclusion on and wed need scores of redundant pairs. So that question I can’t address as we can only speculate what if any fundamental behavioral biases exist in men or women independent of imparted social norms.

Or. Orrrr. Maybe because as you said, women are biologically not as strong as men, and therefore their inclinations to violence have tuned to be much less prominent than those of men.
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Society is built on biological reality and the practices that worked best over the years. And social engineering is unethical at best, and utterly disastrous at worse.
And when people claim that something is a societal construct it pisses me off. Because, yes, it is, so what. Not all of these constructs are bad, moreover, most of them are directly reponsible for advancing humanity to this point. And nobody created them, they evolved on their own through the development of society, so trying to rapidly change them is like replacing a card in a pyramid of cards. One wrong move, and everything will come tumbling down.
The argument of nature vs nurture is only valid if nature comes before nurture, because nature is the biological, scientific reality. We can debate how much comes from nature, but it comes1st

Rapid and drastic change does tend to be disastrous in most cases and the few it isn’t tend to be luck more than anything. We agree there. But much of your other points miss the entire point of my reply. When you say that perhaps due to a disadvantage in strength women revolved to rely less on force- this is possible. But that’s my point- we don’t know. We can’t prove wether women have some evolutionary programming that makes them less likely to use force, or if they are simply socially conditioned and in absence of society of an individual woman wouldn’t be as likely as a man to use force until she “learned” it wasn’t advantageous to engage on that level- we can’t even prove that women ARE inherently less prone to an instinct of force- merely that we observe it less. But again- those observations are tainted because we KNOW there is social bias against it (especially traditionally,) but we do not know to what degree there is a biological bias.

Steroids- synthesized testosterone being the sort of “load stone” of steroids. On a cycle a person may run at many times- even up to hundreds of times over the natural peak hormone production of their gender in prime age, conditions- and genetics. However- “rood rage” is largely reported as a myth- although many users and observers of users do report that they may experience shorter tempers- meaning it is possible but not proven that a large increase in test can provoke inherent violent behaviors but not that increasing test CAUSES violent behavior.

Another large symptom of test use is often increased libido. Men and women report similar effects in general when using an eater of test- with the effects often being dose dependent bit within a group of men or women compared to those of the same genders the response of each individual to a dose mentally and physically is not proportional- with some tolerating larger dosages with little or no ill effects and others having drastic reactions to what is considered a mild dose. Women of course are more sensitive to test in general.

The point being that when we adjust the hormone levels of a woman to be inline to a man- wether it be for performance or gender reassignment, or when we adjust a man hormone levels to many times their natural state- we do not find a proportional increase in raw aggression as a default. So it seems dubious that hormones would be behind it. That would mean either the structure of the male brain would either have to be fundamentally different in a way that triggered increased propensity for violence, or that there would be a genetic component. Yet science has not made any such declaration. Behavioral science has noted differences in studies of men and women- but there isn’t a consensus on meaning or even cause of observed behaviors.

So skipping more tech stuff @vitklim- nature by default comes first chronologically. However nature and instinct go counter to social order in many regards. Were we having several of our past discussions in person your instincts might tell you to punch me- hopefully for your sake your brain would tell you Therese because you know that in our social system reacting that way would lead to trouble. Your genes do not tell you not to get arrested for violence as that is a social consequence and there isn’t a gene coding we’ve found that includes state, local, and federal laws in it. You have to be taught those. You have to be taught you ant take what you want from other people in crimes like robbery or rape.

So nature may come first, but of conditioning couldn’t override nature we wouldn’t form a society. The instincts social animals develop to thrive begin when a group of animals develops a loose society and that social sub set is more successful in procreation than non social members. Their genes endure as do the lessons they teach- even dogs are taught by their parents how to socialize properly- their instincts are keen but genes only do so much. Those genes that increase the odds a creature will be socially acceptable tend to be kept however.

And they get stronger as we go forward so long as those traits lead success at procreation. However our social relationships also shape evolution- comparing a domestic dog to a wolf shows the adaptations made or lost to evolution as dogs began to coexist with humans and so certain traits that made them successful in the wild no longer equates to success and traits that weren’t useful in the wild became useful in a canine society which was linked to humans.

So we can’t even say what degree of “nature”or “nurture” is afoot because our natures influence our interactions with the world and our interactions with the world impact the future natures carried in subsequent generations. Even non domesticated animals can be- to varying degrees- socialized to better get along with societies foreign to ten provided they are given motivation or its to their advantage. Hence many of the warnings to not feed or socialize wolf animals less they become dependent or accepting of humans.

So nature, nurture- no one can say. The only real and relatively certain tests would take many decades or even generations, and would be seen as unethical. It’s all maybes. Hypothesis- not even theory in most cases.

We can prove the biological aspect. We can prove that the link is causal. We may be able to measure the biological aspect and ascribe the rest to socialization, but the socialization itself is built upon the biological premise.
You can have nature without nurture. You can't have nurture without nature.
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wrote this before saw another string of replies.

No worries. And you can have nature without nurture- but nurture becomes part of your nature over time. What’s more- we don’t have a comparison of humans with nature but not nurture to act as a control- there’s no such thing as a human completely untouched by society. The two concepts are separate but often influence the other. We cannot answer wether trading the lives of two people at birth would drastically change certain inherent things about them- but we do know that a single person can be manipulated or have their personality changed through life experiences. So we know for a fact that while some aspects of how we react to stimuli is genetic- some aspect is influenced by experiences. Unless destiny is the order of the universe and all that will happen to you in life determined by your genes- that no such thing as choice or free will exists and all your choices are determined for you by your genes.

Observation would say otherwise however because the closest we can get to swapping a persons life at birth is in observing twins raised in different environments separately. Who tend to run the gamut all over from leading near identical lives unknowingly to living almost as polar opposites. One twin is a criminal and one is not. One is successful and responsible and one is not and so on. If it was their genes alone shaping their actions then we could expect a near 100% match in overall outcomes and preferences- but reality is more complex as usual- and while their biology does seem to dictate some things or cause them more weight- it also does not completely seem to decide their fates.