Reality check

But with women we don’t usually treat it this way. Professional women who come off as “ball busters” are generally less likely to be fast tracked for promotion. The same types of “brown nosing” don’t usually work for women who instead are more likely to be rewarded by superiors and coworkers for things like flattery, flirtation, and coming off as “gentler” than their male equivalents. A man who speaks his mind and is right is a go getter, woman doing the same is often a “nag.”

It gets complex in relationships- but in general even a man with much less wealth than a woman he dates isn’t likely to put up with much “asshole” behavior and “alpha” ness from his partner as compared to a man with much money and a woman with much less. When both are relatively financially equal the threshold for dealing with a “strong” woman generally drops for men because they do not rely upon her wealth and thus would value it less in relation to her being compliant or otherwise more demure or “agreeable.”

Personally I think it has to do a lot with gender roles and tradition. Men are taught and pressured to have a “self respect” based in cultural values of a man as the “leader” and “provider.” A man with a traditional gender value of “self respect” is taught not to “sell out,” that no gain is worth “dignity” etc- and a large part of that “dignity” is in being self sufficient and a “master of his own destiny” and a “mover and doer.” The traditional value for women hasn’t placed that level of importance on such things, and “success” has been weighted in different factors for women.

Likewise, because the idea of protecting women and playing “softball” with women and the idea of women being in need of protection is so wide spread- aggression towards a woman that would be acceptable towards a man are not acceptable towards a woman and can backfire and instead of gaining ground as they might against a man can paint the aggressor even more negatively.

I’m not speaking “men’s rights activism” or such nonsense. Men often do look down on women in all sorts of ways. What I’m saying is that as a society we haven’t yet reached a point of equality where men and women can fight on equal grounds with equal weapons and rules. Many men are threatened by strong women because they are weak- but many are also threatened because they don’t know how to “fight” a woman when a woman swings “like a man” but is still seen in society as “a woman.”

To use the fight analogy- if the greatest female athlete at a given sport beats the greatest male athlete at a given sport- it is a huge deal. Many are likely to ridicule or judge the male for not being able to beat a female or being beater by a female. If the greatest male athlete beats the greatest female athlete brutally- it’s just as likely people at best will take it as a foregone conclusion but are likely to ridicule the male athlete for beating a woman so badly or “having to pick on a woman to feel big.”

It reflects the base attitude in society that women are still seen as inferior to men, or at the very least not equal on equal terms. So a man is passionately advocating the company take option A, believing it best. A woman is passionately advocating option B. Both are using similar “strong” and “aggressive” traditionally “male” tactics. The man is made uncomfortable even if he doesn’t have issues with women in the work place because in addition to the subject at hand and the regular politics of office discourse- he also must be mindful of how other people will perceive the exchange, self conscious that he finds himself the “adversary” to a strong woman even if he considers himself in general an “ally” of women- he believes in this case, this woman is wrong- and so even in winning he perpetuates the “male dominant” perspective.

So it is possible for a man to dislike interaction with such women when he finds himself in direct opposition to said woman on the same grounds that a child who likes to learn but performs poorly might try to avoid school. There’s complexity and confusion that breeds negative emotional association.

I’m not excusing the behavior mind you- I’m merely providing observations of others. I’m saying that the sooner we can truly see women as equal and treat women as equal the less of this behavior we will see. Ali Wong has a comedy bit where she jokingly says that career women “messed up a good deal” when she speaks about being a “stay at home mom” who’s husband is the primary provider. The truth behind the joke is that the price of freedom and equality are the challenges that one doesn’t face when the expectations put upon them are simple and straight forward.

But men and women do have differences. Without goin down the rabbit hole of what is or isn’t some part of social conditioning or the legacy of past gender roles etc- we do have differences. I’ve seen “strong professional” women cry in situations where it would not be acceptable for a man to do the same. But what is the solution to that? Society isn’t quite ready to accept men crying like women. Most women would not be ok with their male spouse crying regularly after a tough work day for example. But saying that being “strong” or “professional” requires any person to act according to traditional male gender roles is disrespectful of women.

So there’s a lot to discuss and understand about each other and society. Not many women would agree to date a guy who wore make up and women clothes, but a woman who doesn’t wear make up and wears pants suits or jeans and a T-shirt is supposed to be accepted by society. So we clearly seem to want some type of gender roles between men and women. A common complaint of women in relationships is a man is not decisive enough or is too passive, too sensitive, in essence “too womanly” by traditional standards.

But by and large men won’t respect a woman on equal terms unless she is seen to carry an equal load. The military is a prime example. The Army is looking into a radical and unprecedented change to its physical fitness requirements and program. The traditional program isn’t oriented to functions that directly relate to a soldiers usually activities- but also is geared towards male bodies. Because of this- women face reduced requirements. If you speak to many male soldiers they have resentment or mistrust in female soldiers because the requirements are less for them- many males assume that means those women cannot perform equally in combat. That’s one of the driving factors behind the Armies idea to change their fitness program. To help integrate female and male soldiers.

So there’s a real challenge in society and business in how do we integrate different types of people and ways, and what do we want that to look like? How can we accommodate women (and possibly men) who want to be Decisive and aggressive AND those who don’t? Who are by nature more passive or less assertive? How do we do that while also respecting these differences and gender differences? How do we tell a man that he cant get time off to bond with his new born or help around the house and with the child, but give a woman 3,6,12 months off? There’s a biological side. A woman NEEDS to recover after a major medical event like a pregnancy. But it’s no more a random man’s responsibility or care that she got pregnant than it fair to say that it’s solely “on her” without protection for her career that she got pregnant. It gets complex. How do we make things equitable between the sexed with our biological and other differences so that people FEEL things are fair?

"I’m not excusing the behavior" - yes, you do. All the fucking time. You use all the bandwidth of all-too-well-known meninist bullshit and then some. That's just pathetic.

Hammerhead- there is a HUGE difference between trying to understand behavior and excusing it. We can look at the life of a criminal, examine the choices they make, how they think and the factors that would lead them to rationalize a behavior, and NOT condone their crime or excuse their behavior. We can however not only gain an understanding for what it is that leads to such behavior- but perhaps even ways to help them or others recover from it.

The “bandwidth of all too common menisim” was somewhat the point- that you missed. That these are certain factors to contribute to commonly heard or experienced statements. We can’t ask others to see things from our perspective if we do not try to see theirs. SEE. Not agree with or support. But to have any discourse which might productively attempt to change the perspective of another we have to understand what THEIR issues are, their fears or challenges. Otherwise you just get angry people yelling insults at each other with nothing but their assertion they are right to back it up- against a person who is inclined to believe they are wrong. You may have noticed my frequent use of quotation marks perhaps? To show clearly that these concepts weren’t my own but taken from another’s perspective?

Do you happen to perhaps see in this very thread, that I laid out a comprehensive and even toned theory and your response was effectively a tantrum akin to: “THATS ALL CRAP YOUR CRAP I HATE YOUR CRAP SHUT YOUR FACE!!!” Now- if your goal was to challenge the validity of points being made or to otherwise further your point of view- you’ve given myself and anyone else very little to even understand what your specific perspective is, what specific issues you have or why; and created an adversarial tone to the conversation where the only point for dissent was two people with different ideas or a misunderstanding of ideas.

If you want to have any hope of changing peoples minds as opposed to bludgeoning to death anyone who doesn’t agree with you- you have to engage them in discourse, preferably civil discourse, as it is an established fact that people tend to become defensive when their ideas are challenged and arguments tend not to be an exchange of ideas as much as they become opponents trying to preserve their self image and world view against perceived assault. And ironically- my reply makes me guilty of mansplaining- but at the same time that this is likely all things you already know- you could have fooled me. I do apologize if I triggered you, I knew as I wrote it that someone would inevitably not be able to read the actual words past their emotions, but it was my intent to have a discussion perhaps. I’m not interested in arguing.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it" -unknown

Eloquent- and far more succinct. Lol. Thank you.

I've made it a habit not trying to change anybody's mind about anything. I speak my mind and people who choose to act like it was 50 years ago can just blow me. And I honestly believe there is no merit in trying to argue with complete dicks, cause all you do is giving them and their fucked up positions relevance. We are decades behind the times when people would generally listen to arguments and reason. Civil debates with racists, misogynists, flat-earthers and Trump voters are a fucking waste of my time and as I said, I believe doing it anyway would make me a tool.

Dismissive insults aren't working? You just gotta spit out more of them! Be sure to include everyone who disagrees with you, that way you don't actually have to back your views.

Learn to read Famoussolini. I'm not trying to achieve anything.

Double down!

@halfdeadhammerhead- I can understand your frustration, and you’re certainly free to speak your mind as you see fit. If your intentions are to just scream your opinions into a void then please do, carry on. Society has a long way to go on many fronts. The unacceptable state of civil rights for many groups in America is the result of hundreds of years of debate, war, and fighting. We still aren’t there yet. Social change is slow. There are stumbles along the way that in a very short time can erase far longer so worth of progress.

We just keep moving forward. I was a huge fan of the young Malcolm X’s philosophy when I was younger, the black panthers too. A very “American” doctrine to hit back so hard that eventually they stop hitting you. I grew older and realized, Like Malcolm X himself eventually did- that a philosophy akin to Dr. King’s was the true way to lasting results, real progress. Making enemies breeds resentment, or sets up the next generations conflict. But that’s just my take. We all have our ways. Who knows which is right? History seems to show us that conflict met with conflict begets more conflict unless we completely erase whoever it is we are fighting, and even then that’s not always the end.

"We still aren’t there yet. Social change is slow." - "We" have been so much further than today in so many aspects, it's frightening.

Yes and no. Things change- those changes upset other things. The access to wealth and opportunity let alone sheer volume of choices big and small in life is greater than any recorded period in history. We can communicate globally with ease, and directly influence things farther and faster than ever before. Few periods in human history have seen technological advances and changes to life style as radical as we have in the last century. So at different tiles and places certain aspects of life and social issues were closer to perhaps the ideal- but it’s always been bad to be someone somewhere in history, and generally been worse to just be any random person. We can’t say with certainty of course how societies of the past would have reacted to being within less than a day from pretty much every other diverse culture on the planet.

How having the information technology or other technologies we have would have changed things in that society for better or worse. But as I said before; it’s cyclical. It’s much easier to tear down the progress of an egalitarian civilization to build or rebuild it. Oppression is almost always good for the oppressor. It eliminates competition making success easier for those outside the oppressed group.

Be it outright slavery or indentured servitude or a proletariat controlled by an elite to serve their will, or a capitalism based on sweat shop labor and a mass labor force making below a “living wage-“ the price we have paid for progress has been to build such systems on abuse and oppression. We use China or India as cheap labor and then get scared and start trying to knock them back down as soon as they start to become wealthy enough to afford the quality of life they e produced and powerful enough to demand a fair deal.

But if you look past the rose tinted lenses of history this isn’t anything so new. The party serving changes, gender, race, religion, social class, nationality, whatever criteria changes through history- but there are few of any periods in history we can’t say if given a choice: “I’d rather be this person that this person in this place and time.”

Time wasn’t perfect by far- but it was very progressive even by modern standards in some way and gave fair footing to many diverse groups. It took many centuries to build and when it fell much of the world in its grasp wouldn’t see the same progressiveness it had under Rome for many centuries more. Slow build, fast destroy. But that’s why it’s important to safeguard what progress we have made and protect and nurture it.

Things are unacceptable now- but they could very quickly and very easily become much worse. The genocides and mass killings if WW2 and post WW2 Europe and Asia came on swiftly. The revolutions in the Middle East that saw women go from enjoying status not far removed from their western counter parts took less than a generation from brew to boil. It doesn’t take much to jump right over the edge.