I think women may be more likely to rely on emotions and feelings when making judgements, yes. This does not always equate to irrationality, though. I think some probems call for logic whereas others require something less hard and unyielding. Women tradionally have found themselves in situations requiring more intuitive-based thought and action. An older woman who’s career consists of caring for house and home will not have a brain for military strategy…at least not right away.
I participated in a feminist science workshop where the participants–all women scientists–had to stomach some really estoric writings about why science has been male-dominated all these years. Most of us felt the writings were pretty much a load of BS because the gist was that women are scared of science because it is fact and logic-heavy, and women are intuitive and more touchy-feely. The authors went on to say that women who enter the sciences have to suppress their natural inclinations to “blend in”. I haven’t felt that kind of pressure before. I don’t think my “female” ways of thinking have kept me from doing science.
I don’t consider myself to have a big logic-centered brain, but I do analyse problems using a process more robust than intuition. On the hand, I do allow myself to get passionate about my so-called “objective” observations, and I refuse to delude myself into thinking that science can truly be pure and value-free. I also have a desire to do work that extends to society in beneficial way. These go counter to what science has been tradionally been about.
Men and women use their heads differently, and there’s nothing at all wrong with this. I think in the case of the OP, though, I think we’re talking about an older person who may have misunderstood your question.
OK, I’ll take a shot at this. I’m 39 years old, female, and single but not available. What I’m about to write in this post applies only to me, and I’m a notoriously odd duck who tends to shatter generalizations. Phase42, something you wrote particularly struck me, so I’m going to quote from your post.
Actually, I’ve got strong ethical prohibitions against interfering with relationships so, if you’re taken, you are going to be nothing more than a friend.
This is what struck me. You see, I consider myself a feminist, and I’m into masculine types, but not assholes. As far as I’m concerned, guys who have a proven track record of being assholes, should have “Do not date” tattooed on their foreheads before being released into the general population. I like nice guys; the reason I’m not currently available is a very nice guy indeed. He’s a bit shy, but he had the courage to ask me out after I gave him my phone number, and the foolhardiness to repeat the process after I went out with him the first time. I’m flattered when a fellow expresses an interest in me, and it might cause me to take a second look at someone I hadn’t noticed before or had the guts to approach. On the other hand, if you ask me out more than three times without me saying, “Yes”, give up. Please. After three times, you’re becoming an annoyance, which reduces the odds of me ever saying “Yes.” If you’re repeatedly asking me out while we both work at the same place, then it may cost you your job If your so-called “persistence” interferes with my ability to do my job. For me, I don’t date coworkers or clients. That has nothing to do with how attractive you may or may not be, and everything to do with my rules for keeping complications in my life to a minimum.
I’ve been on the receiving end of attempted sexual harrassment from a man who was head of a different section in my company. I initially turned him down because he was separated, and I don’t date men who aren’t available, let alone his being a coworker. It wasn’t the initial offer that led me to bust him; it was a pattern of behaviour which went on over several months and included his blowing in my ear twice. A week after the second time he did that, when I was asked to help out in his section which would have led to me working directly for him, is when I finally went to his supervisor. Even so, no disciplinary action was taken against him except for him being made to apologize to the company, not to me. Some time after I was laid off, he went after a new victim; a 19 year old girl who was engaged and who did work directly for him. :rolleyes: I don’t know of a reliable source for statistics, and the first bout of sexual harrassment I encountered in the workforce was a 40-something year old woman harrassing a young male college student. I do find it unlikely that men have to live in fear of being busted for sexual harrassment more than women have to live in fear of being sexually harrassed.
Women are illogical. I’m a programmer, and a good one. Needless to say, I dispute that statement. Among other things, I’m logical enough and enough of an SF buff to have read the reviews of Starship Troopers and avoided that movie like the plague! I have noticed that breakdowns in logic, at least when people are communicating, are due to the two sides operating on different assumptions. Trust me, having designed databases for men and women, both sexes can be stunningly illogical, and, especially when someone’s talking about an area they know well, but you don’t, what they may assume to be basic common knowledge and/or common sense, may be something you’ve never encountered before.
I am also, as usual, going to disagree with Abbie Carmichael, who wrote,
Now, you do. Actually, I can think of a few people in my circle of friends, both male and female, who are both, including the reason I’m no longer available. On the job, as an engineer, he is supremely logical. When figuring out which card to play to best thwart my attempts to win the game we’re playing, I’ve seen him be pretty intuitive (as well as infuriating!;)). There are situations in which both are appropriate, and I used both gifts accordingly. Some things even do call for both, such as some projects I’ve knitted. Logic dictates what will work well together; intuition dictates what will work well together.
As I said, I’m not typical, let alone stereotypical, and my upbringing wasn’t all that conventional, either. My father taught me value logic and clear thinking very highly and to use them as effective ways of solving problems; exposure to too many assholes taught me to value kindness and have as little to do with assholes as possible. I’ve never hung out in singles bars, because what I’m looking for isn’t there, and I’m not what the people there are looking for. I’ve hung out in other places, and done quite well indeed. JoeSki, if you don’t like the women you’re meeting, try looking elsewhere. You might be surprised.
Wow. Someone needs to pass that on to hubby DeathLlama. Apparently either he’s an asshole and hasn’t yet embraced it, or I’m not really attracted to him.
Siege - I should have said “radical feminists”. I am, like many other men, supportive of the original principles of “old school” feminism - it is the radicalization of those principles that I believe have contributed to the present situation. Things like the “all heterosexual sex is rape” stuff. Some women have bought that line, and it sometimes seems like it’s my bad luck to somehow always meet and be attracted to those women. It gets discouraging when I do work up the nerve to approach a woman and she reacts as if I’m some sort of threatening freak.
As for sexual harassment, I think we would all agree that what you described was indeed harassment. I’ve had the misfortune, more than once, of being called into the manager’s office and told to “leave so-and-so alone” after a single inquiry about a date. However, that was right at the time when the whole concept of “sexual harassment” was first getting a lot of press, so if the women I approached were following the news, they may have been influenced by those news reports and simply overreacted. Who knows.
In any case, I can understand women being attracted to an “aggressive” man. On the other hand, is it too much to ask for women, if they have any interest in the men they are around on a daily basis, to give some sort of clue? (A fairly obvious clue at that - some men don’t do subtle very well.) I’m sure there are a lot of “nice guys” like me who would be far more “aggressive” if they had an inkling that they might be successful. Because frankly, it only takes being shot down a few times for some of us to become a bit gunshy. Even among wild animals, the females will express interest. And I’d like to think we’re a little bit more advanced than baboons
I would personally prefer to have a serious relationship with a woman with whom I’m already acquainted and who is a friend. I gave up on casual sex a long time ago - I’ve been celibate for almost nine years - so I’m not going to suddenly start approaching random women in bars. Just not my thing.
Here’s something y’all might not be aware of: in recent years there has been an explosion of interest in erotic spanking and BDSM. If you visit forums dedicated to those topics - spanking in particular - you will find the boards overwhelmingly female. I think this is partially a reaction to what the radical feminists have done to the male population. We men have been “tamed” if you will, and that has left a big void for the women who do indeed want men who are men. And so some women have responded by searching the spanking/BDSM world to find dominant men. Fortunately, these women tend to be pretty smart, and they seem to understand the difference between a “dominant” man and an “asshole”.
I think that what the radical feminists have done to men also goes a ways in explaining things like “Girls Gone Wild”. Women want to be seen as attractive, but they’re not hearing it from the men (because the men don’t dare tell them). That has created a culture among the younger women where they feel the need to go to the extreme of publicly exposing themselves for video cameras. The knowledge that men will be paying money to look at them partially fills that need to be desired. This is all probably completely subconscious, of course, but I think that’s part of what’s going on.
If women are attracted to the Confidence because you’re with a woman, but you don’t have the Confidence to get a woman…then how do you get the Confidence in the first place so you can attract the woman?
The only answer I can think of to this is: When you focus on succeeding in other parts of your life, you’ll gain confidence in those areas and forget about not having a “woman”. Paradoxically, that is when you will attract a woman. That’s usually how my relationships have come about.
Otherwise, it’s damn near impossible to acquire confidence when you feel lonely and desperate unless you can do a hell of an acting job. I guess you can “pretend” to be confident every time you talk to an attractive woman and eventually you will become confident, but I think I give up too easily after a few different rejections.
All I have to say about the “all women want assholes, not nice guys” thing is that very often, the so-called “nice guys” aren’t nice guys at all. They don’t seem to understand this about themselves, and I am not saying that any guy here fits that description. It’s just something to think about.
I am seized with an urge to go visit those spanking forums, for some reason.
Some women are illogical, just as some men are illogical. It’s definitely not divided along gender lines.
Now, about wanting someone only once they’re taken…I have been guilty of a renewed interest in someone once I find out they’re taken, but often when someone starts dating, they have an air of happiness and content that is very attractive. I would never try to break up anyone’s relationship, however: I just chalk it up to not knowing someone’s worth until it’s too late.
Many women were and are raised to be illogical. If you’re growing up in a group that has the underlying assumption that men are inherently smarter than women to the point where a woman is automatically wrong if she’s disagreeing with a man on logical grounds, you’re going to give up on logic. If you’re growing up in a group that has the underlying assumption that a logical woman is unfeminine, you’re going to give up on logic.
If your group holds that a man who loses a logical argument with a woman has been lessened, then it’s rude for a woman to argue with a man logically, especially in public. The only chance such a woman has to win an argument and not be seen as nasty, is to be illogical and possibly childish as well, so that the man she is arguing with has the opportunity to give in as an indulgence, rather than as a defeat. However logical she may be in fact, she can never show it openly.
And, yes, I’ve seen all of these in operation, though less and less as time goes on.
If right brain/left brain studies still hold any merit at all, I tested at exactly 50-50. I have the benefits of “logical” thinking (except in my senior moments and within the limits of my intelligence) balanced with a consideration for other aspects such as intuitive thinking and emotional responses.
Judging from the arguments that I have seen in Great Debates and in the Pit, women are neither more logical nor less logical that males. Men may tend to stifle some of their emotional natures because of cultural pressure.
Only a small and insecure portion of women want to be with assholes. Another small and insecure portion want to be with men they can use as doormats. The great majority of women enjoy the company of men who have confidence, intelligence, integrity, compassion and a sense of humor. Now that is my idea of a nice guy.
It doesn’t hurt to know that a man is considered desireable by other women. But I think the same is true of men, isn’t it? When I was a young woman, if I found a man interesting, it wouldn’t really matter to me if he had been involved before.
Phase42, I’m glad that you at least qualified your statement with “radical” feminist and not just an ordinary feminist – one who believes in social, economic and political equality of the sexes. After all, many men are feminists too. Further, they see that equality benefits both men and women.
What you have written is actually highly illogical in my opinion. You seem to equate strength with masculinity and yet you use language that describes men as victims:
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This is a game called “See What You Made Me Do.”
Your statements have so many errors in logic, expressions of bias and wild exaggerations that you might want to reconsider some of the reasons you are turned down by 21st Century women. For starters, they are not beneath you. You cannot be “pulled down” to their level. We don’t “let” you be anything.
If you want a glimpse of a “sensitive” male, consider the role of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. That’s just one example.
Yllaria, I agree with you about how many of us in the past were schooled to play down our intelligence. But at this point, if we continue to do that, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I minored in Women’s Studies in college, and I can’t say I knew more women than
I could count on one hand who subscribed to Andrea Dworkin’s rather insane declaration. Sounds like you drastically need to change your “selection sample” of dating candidates. :eek:
Great responses everyone! You folks really put things into perspective for me. It’s nice to see that there’s a place where I can ask such question without being stormed by a group of outraged people sporting torches and pitchforks, beaten to an inch of my life, and left in a bloody, sterilized ( :eek: ), and catatonic mess. I like to think everything is up for discussion. Anyways, thanks for responding to my questions .
I realize in many of my past posts and threads (including this one I suppose), I may have come off as a whiner, esspecialy when I first started posting at the SDMB and got off on quite a few rants on Florida. However, I’d like to say here and now that I’m quite different in real life. I am a self described nice guy, but I’m also a red meat eating, Un-PC joke loving, man with plenty of confidence. I don’t believe there’s anything I can’t do. I’m also an introvert and not very social, so I have asked for wimmen advice at this board, but I have no problem telling people exactly what I like and dislike when I’m in a conversation with someone. I love good movies, books, and games, and spend most of my time on these three things, I dislike people that are too yappy, and telephones. I’m open to doing anything outside. I love fishing, always wanted to go hunting, and like treks through the woods. I’m also not afreaid to get dirty. When someone isn’t into these things, there just isn’t much to talk about. I don’t complain about this, I just think of, and receive reccomendations of, solutions for this problem. Just how do you meet someone who spends most of their time being as much as an introvert as I am? Well, much thinking and message board reading later, it seems that my best bet is to look online. Of course I’m not into shape, so I’d rather lose a few pounds before doing this.
That sounds about right.
I think some of these troublesom relationships are easy to recognize regardless of howho you are. At my last job, I was a line cook in a kitchen, and had to work with the world’s oldest five year old, who was often in charge of the window where we place the food we cook for the waitresses to come and pick them up. One of the waitresses was my co-workers grilfriends. On many days, this guy would do nothing but complain every single time his girfriend approached the window, call her a bitch, and really, just be a pain in the ass. If she asked for a side of something for a customer, he’d protest, ask why she didn’t come into the kitchen and get it herself even though it wasn’t her job to do so, and cop as much as an attitude as he possibly could. In half an hour intervals, she would scream “WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM! I’M TRYING TO DO MY JOB!”. Granted I could only see the exterior of this relationship (as another poster pointed out), I couldn’t imagine what made this guy think this was a good way to go on with a work day. Whatever his problem with his girlfriend may have been, he should have left it at home like his girfriend did so I (and everyone within hearing distance) didn’t have to hear it all day long. You’d have to be pretty oblivious to ignore this, esspecialy since said waitress normally had a bubbly happy go lucky attitude.
Amazingly enough, the two are still together, now working at different jobs. They come by the deli I work at every now and then to buy stuff.
How do you figure? I’m generous, helpful, enjoy a good conversation about things I like, not selfish, and respectfull. So because I describe myself as being nice it automaticcaly means I’m not? I often think some things people say about themselves must be untrue if they just had to go out of their way to say it because they couldn’t wait for someone else to point it out, or because they hope that if they say it enough everyone else will catch on and repeat the mantra. A good example of this would be everything the personals at rottentomaotes have to say about themselves. I understand where your coming here, but I strongly disagree that this applies to people who seem to think they’re nice.
Not really meeting women anywhere right now. I attend a community college, but it has no clubs and you can hear a pin drop in most places on campus, a search for book clubs within my county at yahoo and google brought up nothing, the local game stores arn’t much of a hangout since they’ve started to rid themselves of anything that would keep customers hanging around for too long, and there’s no movie theaters that show cult classics, or have midnight showings of flicks like Casablanca. I have two friends, and see them about once a month, so this pretty much rules out me meeting any women through a social circle. I haven’t ruled out the libray yet. The old women working there are cranky as hell for the most part, but It’s not them I’m looking for and there may be a group of regulars that hang there I don’t know about. Plus, I’m starting my second semester of college soon, and this time around I’m taking classes with a good deal of socializing. If all else fails, I’ll be using the internet to look for dates, after getting in shape some preferably.
Actually, I’ve pointed out where these RFs have succeeded, and the result of those successes. When men in general are portrayed as, say, abusers, those of us who are non-abusive gentlemen tend to go to the opposite extreme in self-defense, to show that “no, I’m not an abuser.” And to a certain degree, it is a case of “see what you made me do”. When something becomes law, like sexual harassment laws, then I, being a law-abiding citizen, am indeed “made” to comply. Granted, a lot of this is a lack of understanding of what exactly constitutes sexual harassment (on everybody’s part).
When a young boy acts the way young boys have acted for thousands of years, and is diagnosed as supposedly having ADHD and his parents are told he has to go on Ritalin to control his “abnormal” behavior, he is indeed “made” to stop acting like a young boy.
Cause and effect, as it appears to me.
Based upon personal experience.
Hyperbole, a valid literary device which uses exaggeration in order to make a point.
No, see, I’ve been voluntarily celibate for almost nine years - I gave up around 1996, so I haven’t tried any 21st Century women
Title IX, which states that colleges and universities must spend as much money on women’s sports as they spend on men’s sports. In theory, this means more women’s sports. In reality, it means the dismantling of men’s sports programs. Equality by taking away from the men rather than giving to the women.
I’ll add that to my reading list. I’m working on Oliver Twist right now.
On a side note, I have given some consideration to pretending that I’m gay. I’ve heard there are women who would try to “cure” me.
Women aren’t illogical, they just may use a different logic than men.
As for the OP’s example of this.
Frankly, I thought the guy should have shot the bug first.
Here’s a theory on the “logic” behind the reason you got in an argument over this. It’s because you were talking during the movie. Friend’s mom made a quick comment to shut you up and you argued with it and kept talking during the movie, this got annoying and the more you tried to explain your point the more she just wanted you to accept what she said and shut up and she just got more and more frustrated because you wouldn’t shut up about it. Friend’s mom was just too nice to come out and say “shut the f— up I’m trying to watch this bad movie!”.
The moral is; don’t talk during movies unless it’s in your home and you’ve all agreed beforehand to give it the MST3K treatment.
JoeSki, I did not say this applied to you. As far as I can tell, you are not one of those guys. I’m simply saying that there are people out there who think they are nice, when they are not, and they are using the “women don’t like nice guys” excuse when it really doesn’t apply to them. I never said describing yourself as nice automatically meant you weren’t.
You sound like a genuinely good guy (if I typed nice one more time, I was going to have to scream) and I wish you success in your endeavors, dating and otherwise.
Provided you tell me the secret of dating success, of course.
Actually, although I guess you could look at using Ritalin as anti male (if it’s primarily or only boys who get the ADHD diagnosis), but I’ve always seen it as lazy parenting. The kid keeps bugging the parent for attention, so the parent gives the kid some pills to get the child out of their hair.
I hear references to these hypothetical Dworkinite women all the time, and yet while I hang with a fairly radical crowd, I have yet to meet a single one. I don’t doubt that there’s a few out there, even nowadays, but there’s not a lot. And most, if not all, of my female friends are avowed feminists.
There’s a tinfoil hat crowd hanging around the edges of every group, but it seems to me that feminists often get accused unfairly of the crimes of the real fringe types.
Baboons, however, copulate freely in every possible combination in order to promote group bonding. Unfortunately, we hairless apes have yet to achieve the same societal advancement.
You’re sorta asking here, though, for women to make that leap into potential rejection for you. In fairness, it’s no easier for a woman to put herself out there (by dropping hints obvious enough for you to pick up on) than for a guy to. No one likes that risk, and for good or for ill, even today it’s still basically the man’s role to do the asking in our society. Women are like wild animals - they’re just as scared of you as you are of them. Or something. The point is that if you’re waiting for others to make the first move, expect progress to be slower.
Isn’t that quite a leap? Isn’t it more conceivable that over the past few years, BDSM has gotten considerably less stigmatized in society? At least that’s how it appears to me, and it’s not a shocker that that would lead to more interest in it. Besides, eroticized dominance is a ton different than the real thing. Seeking a sexually dominant partner is a completely different thing than wanting a guy to order dinner for you. I’m not sure how familiar you are with BDSM, but from what I’ve seen it seems like the psychosocial dynamics of it are much more complex than you’re making them out to be.
“Girls Gone Wild” is not entirely a realistic depiction of college life. Ok, sorry, that was slightly snarky. But those videos, according to what I’ve read, are pretty heavily staged. “Girls Gone Wild” exists because guys’ sexuality can be a powerful marketing tool.
I just don’t see enough to support your thesis in what you’ve said. I don’t mean to sound argumentative, but I haven’t seen many signs of the radical feminism you talk about in real life. There are very, very few women like that, and while the tinfoil hat crowd may go around claiming that all men are potential rapists, the average feminist finds that as ridiculous and offensive as men do. I don’t see how a fringe movement like that could have the extensive societal power you’re giving it.
I think you’re looking for villains behind your own difficulties. I don’t mean to be mean, but frankly, I know nice guys who get plenty of girls (I’m a gay man, so I’m as close to a neutral observer of the mating habits of the heterosexual as you’re liable to find, and I’m probably privy to more of the woman’s view of relationships than most straight men are.) In fact, I’ve known some eminently nice guys who have tons of women after them.
While this isn’t the place to debate whether or not childhood is being medicalized, approximately 6% of children have been diagnosed with ADD (which is, admittedly, a high number) and from my readings on the subject (several lay-person oriented books, since I have it myself) girls tend to be underdiagnosed, but still a large number of those diagnoses are in girls.
Obviously most boys are not being treated for ADD, and if you want to argue that ADD is a medical diagnosis for “being a kid” (or “being a boy”), you’ll probably lose that argument, but again, that’s for elsewhere. The kids being treated for ADD are not ordinary little boys by any stretch of the imagination.
It’s not a judgment on you personally. It’s just a useful pattern: most guys who claim to be “nice guys” either aren’t very nice, or else blame their ‘niceness’ for having trouble meeting women when it’s really caused by something else. Most genuine nice guys, frankly, have little trouble getting girls from what I’ve seen, and when they can’t meet women, it’s because of something else. The idea that “guys who claim to be nice really aren’t” is not a rule, it’s just a useful pattern, because there are a certain number of guys who are actually wimps, or manipulative jerks, who claim to be nice. It’s probably a fairly small number, but they’ve managed to give the rest of you nice guys a reputation.
And here we find the real cause for your dating troubles. It’s not because you’re too nice - it’s because you don’t run into women in your daily life! It sounds like you’re having trouble meeting people in general - you don’t have a huge number of friends through which to meet women, you aren’t engaged in activities that bring you in contact with a huge number of people, and so your pool of potential candidates is just really, really small. It takes meeting a lot of people to find someone you click with; short of being Brad Pitt, it’s gonna take meeting lots of women before you find one to have a relationship with.
Sorry for the misunderstanding there and thanks for the compliment .
I’ll sell out every secret I have the moment I have them figured out. Unless you’re living in the same area…no point in increasing the competition .
That’s the problem right there. Beyond my job, I don’t meet anyone, but like I said, I’m taking a social class or two this semester. Who knows, maybe I’ll meet someone there. I’d be more than willing to go out, but I don’t know how to dance (I suppose I’d be willing if I knew how to), and I’m too young to drink. The more I look around for clubs and gatherings I’d be interested in, the more shocked I am to find my town doesn’t have any. I keep an eye on all the bulletin boards I see, but most of them just have Ziggy comics, ads for cars, and pet Shit Zus that need good homes. I’ve though about starting some of my own, but this would be quite a feat for someone with little legal tender and very few relations with people that have the same interests.
I think the best solution would be to move to Orlando, someplace close to my sister and brother, but I need a better education so I can get a good paying job. Otherwise I’ll be working 40 hour weeks, and going to school, which wouldn’t leave time for anything since I insist on getting good grades, or at least doing a good job. The two aren’t always the same thing.
Naaah. My moms friend is usually the type to talk during a video rental movie herself. No one likes someone who yaps constantly, but this was a Sci Fi bug blasting movie, so some talking is to be expected. This happened a very long time ago, but know her I’m sure she made her fair share of comments too. We’re a pretty good group of people to watch flicks with.
And for the record, all three of us think the death sentence should be used on people who talk in movie theaters .
Never started a thread that had more than one page. Here’s hoping this one stays up long enough to make it to two pages.
