Emerald

The impression that I get is that you may be projecting your own disowned positive qualities onto her and your own Feminine qualities onto her... and attractive women more generally. So, getting her validation is going to feel like you found your missing piece... as you see your disowned qualities in her. And it creates a dynamic of desperation because connecting with her feels like she is the key to your own integration and wholeness. These are common dynamics that happen when we repress elements of ourselves. We tend to project them onto others... and either idealize or scapegoat those others that we project our rejected parts onto.

He was better in those regards than Obama and Clinton... that's for sure. His economic policies have been the most pro-middle-class politics that I've seen in my lifetime. But he still had the same problems as 98% of politicians with regards to being bought off by moneyed interests. And that is the primary eroding force of the middle class and working class.

Yes... Democrats and Republicans are both doing the bidding of corporate interests and billionaires. And zero Republicans and very few Democrats take a principled stance against this where they don't take any billionaire dollars. So, they have both collaborated on the erosion of the middle class... though not 100% equally as Democrats have to occasionally throw the working people a bone if they want to be elected, as they don't have a coalition of working class voters who will vote for a politician based solely on the left-wing equivalent of the right's "guns and Jesus" vibes. But even if it isn't 100% equal, both parties have tremendously and significantly eroded the middle class.

What I'm hearing as the underlying subtext of this post is that you believe that the acknowledgement of large-scale societal patterns that disadvantage certain demographics invalidates and nullifies the importance of your own struggles because you happen to belong to many of the non-disadvantaged groups. And you feel upset because you believe your struggles and hardships are being invalidated. I used to have this same issue when I was in my late teens and up to around the age of 21 or 22. I had a really strong identity of being someone who has struggled but still came out on top... and (in my mind) the struggle is what made my victory meaningful. And I saw myself and wanted to be seen as a hardworking person that could always pull myself up by my bootstraps and be successful at what I intend to... even if I'm in total chaos. And this especially peaked during a time where I was technically homeless. And I would think, "I'm going through all this hardship... and yet I have white privilege." I didn't understand what White Privilege meant at the time, so I found it to be offensive as I was really going through the ringer. And I held the same idea of, "Why do we focus so much on race and gender? I thought we were supposed to be operating in an egalitarian way! So, let's ACTUALLY treat people equally." But then, my identity and paradigm shifted. And I eventually realized that I was being myopic and didn't have space to integrate the macrocosmic picture int my worldview... because I perceived it as antithetical to my identity of being "the strong person who can thrive during times of struggle". And if I had white privilege, I felt like it nullified the validity of the struggles that I saw as central to my identity. And I had to be the one that uniquely struggled more than others to feel like my achievements were meaningful, as I saw life as one big competition to prove one's grit and toughness and willingness to do hard work under duress. But then, after I had failed to live up to that identity through a great and terrible humbling... my identity and worldview and sense of meaning shifted. In the humbling, I recognized how economic societal factors were acting as this oppressive force that I wasn't able to surmount and prove myself victorious... and it occurred to me that there are so many invisible societal patterns that can delimit people's ability to be resilient. And I recognized that the only reason I was able to be resilient during chaos is because (up until that point in time when I was 20) the chaos was mild enough for me to surmount. And in that great and terrible humbling and loss of my high horse identity of being "the one who struggled but surmounted the struggle without ANY help", realized that I was being petty and un-compassionate in my perspective. And because of that, I was cutting myself off from being empathetic to the lived experiences of people who are disadvantaged on a collective level. And it was preventing me from seeing the ways of the world with clear eyes. And it also caused me to repress a lot of my internalized misogyny because I was holding tightly onto the idea that "Everything is already equal. So, we should just act that way. So, women shouldn't get special privileges because of the history." I was very anti-Feminist as a late teen up until around the age of 22 when I started reading Feminist literature. Ultimately, in my anti-Feminism and in my refusal to acknowledge macrocosmic patterns of racism... I was avoiding the ugly truths that I am not and will likely never be seen as equal as a woman... and that I do have privilege because I am white. Both of these were hard pills to swallow for totally different reasons. I wanted to see myself as a victim... but I didn't actually want to be one. And in the realities that I was facing, I could no longer get the social clout of being the victimized that triumphed through hard work. But I had to face the assault on personal empowerment that actually comes from struggling with the psychological effects of being on the receiving end of oppression... a reality that I spent my entire life up until that trying not to acknowledge by proving myself. And these were also hard to see because I wanted to believe that the game I was playing was already fair. And if the game isn't fair in a way that disenfranchises me, there's no way to win the game... which is disempowering. And if the game isn't fair in a way that privileges me, then I haven't won the game fairly and the prestige means nothing... which means I can't build empowering identities off of my victories. It was only when I was willing to let go of the identity of struggle (a hidden form of victim's mentality, presenting itself as victor's mentality) that I could really have compassion for other people and see clearly. I wasn't able to see it before because I was trying to preserve my identity and the worldview my identity scaffolded upon... which already assumed everything equal and to be on a fair playing field.

First off, some women genuinely do enjoy casual hook-ups. And I'm sure that that's a sizable minority... like at least 10% or 20%. But most women want long-term relationships because that's where the most emotional stimulation and intimacy is... and it's more possible to have deeply erotic experiences with a longterm partner than with a short-term partner. But it often does require some level of sexual experience to know this and figure this out in a way that transcends the theoretical. In many cases, women have to discover it for themselves instead of just holding themselves back from their genuine curiosity about hook-ups out of a desire to go along with social mores around female sexuality. So, before women know their preference for sexual expression within a relationship, they may be more open to casual hook-ups... if for no other reasons than to satiate their curiosity for the experience. And if it resonates for those women, it's good to have these experiences to come to know yourself and your sexuality better as a woman. But most women end up finding that hook-ups are emotionally boring... and that the juice isn't worth the squeeze as it doesn't deliver much in the way of true eroticism or intimacy. With hook-ups, it's just the concrete physical sensations associated with sex, which typically doesn't interest women as much as it does for men. Like men usually seek out sex because of a yearning of the loins for physical stimulation... while women tend to seek out sex because of a yearning that emanates from the center of the chest first before any desire arises in the loins. To expand further on this... when I was a teenager and in my early 20s (and especially in my pre-teens), I held a perception that casual sex would be something that would be fun, exciting, and erotic. And I have always been drawn to that which gives off erotic and sensual vibes... even when I was a small child and didn't yet know what sex was. But it takes a while to learn this about yourself as a woman. It takes women usually 3+ decades to know themselves sexually as there's so much that's emotional and nebulous. But society thinks about sex mostly physically... and so women can seek out sex because they see it as a physical representation of the feelings they want to feel. But it's a mirage... because the act of sex itself isn't the thing that arouses those feeling states. It's the intimacy and vulnerability. I remember when I was 11 or 12 years old, I was watching this show that used to come on MTV called "Undressed". And it was basically a fictional show where a bunch of early 20-something who lived in an apartment complex would hook up and have casual sex. And I remember thinking... "When I get into my teens and twenties, I'm going to have A LOT of casual sex!" And I was also really excited at the idea of things like Spring Break partying because of all the overt sexual expressions that I saw on tv. Then, at age 13, I actually started getting a lot of attention from guys my age. So, that wore off some of that novelty around sex because I saw that there was no scarcity of opportunities for it. Before then, my perception was that male attention was scarce as I had been getting crushes on boys since I was 3 years old and they were never reciprocated. Even in movies where the men would be super attracted to women, I genuinely thought it was just one of those unrealistic movie tropes that doesn't happen in real life. But once I turned 13, suddenly those movie tropes became the reality and I was getting tons of male attention. And male sexual access got devalued in my perception because I recognized it as common and not rare as I once believed. So, that cooled off my desire for casual hook-ups quite a bit from what my 11 year old self's perspective was as I realized that I could have that if I really wanted to. And there was also a lot of social punishment for perceptions of sluttiness. So, I learned that (even though everyone is obsessed with female sexuality, which led me to be believe as an 11 year old that being slutty was a good social strategy) that sluttiness wasn't the way I could feel the most sexually empowered and respected. Instead, I would be more desired and respected if I was perceived as very selective. I learned this by the time that I was 15 that the rarity of my sexual expression gave me more power. And I built an identity around being fairly selective and chaste. But the reality of the matter was that there was still a part of me that was very excited at the idea of having hook-ups and casual sex... even though it went entirely against my identity and worldview... and I would be socially punished for it. But I tamped down on the drive really hard for the social and sexual pay-offs of doing so... as it gave me a vibe of being rare. But when I was 20, and I got out of my first serious relationship (who I thought would be the only sexual partner that I ever had)... I ended up having terrible boundaries with my sexuality. And I slept with a handful of guys in a relatively short period of time. And I was baffled because it went entirely against my identity. But I kept repeating the behavior without feeling like I was in control of it. And I was very confused and asking myself, "Why do I keep doing this?" And the more conscious part of me genuinely didn't want to because of all the negative associations with female sexuality and promiscuity that I had learned and built my sexual identity in opposition to. But an unconscious part of me was actually wanting to have those kinds of experiences. So, from the vantage point that I am in now, I can see that this driver for a plurality of sexual experience was actually really strong in me back then. It just went against my own identity of goodness and chastity... as I had a lot of slut-shamey beliefs that I had internalized. And in the experience of hooking up, I realized that the experience was emotionally lack-luster. It didn't actually provide for me what the fantasy in my mind at the age of 11 indicated it would... which was that it would be an erotic experience. So, it was only in having casual hook-ups that casual hook-ups lost their charm and curiosity factor. And I realized in a more experiential way that the depth of erotic sexual experiences that I want to have can only be had if the relationship is as serious as a heart attack... as that is the determining factor that unlocks the capacity for meaning and surrender. But plenty of women don't know this about themselves yet. So, they are drawn to the experiences that will help them understand themselves... which is often sought out in the physicality of sex itself. But sex is just the chalice and not the elixir itself. And it takes experiencing empty cups to understand the difference between the chalice and the elixir. And casual sex is like the false grail that women need to experience in order to find the real grail. Plenty of women are in that phase of their sexual journey.

If you're struggling with attracting women even though you match certain male beauty standards, then it's probably the case that there's some kind of social barrier that's holding you back. I would focus less on trying to operate a certain way (ie. building a frame) and go more towards social basics. What I mean by that is to just learn how to connect with people and generally be social. Talk with men and women without an agenda. Just be yourself and let loose and have fun. Once you know how to open up. Then, you can think about frame and stuff like that as flourishes that will help you. But you have to have the foundation of just being able to cut loose and have fun with other people in an agenda-less way.

I'm not so sure that that's where the "ick" actually comes from... in terms of men suddenly expressing too much all at once and women not having the bandwidth for emotional compression. (though that is certainly true of some women) I don't think the "Lots of emotions all at once" thing is the actual ick factor. It's more a correlation than it is a causation. I believe it's moreso that frequent and intense emotional expression in a man tends to correlate with a general skill-deficit regarding emotional compression and social attunement. And it comes across as immature and potentially unsafe because the guy doesn't feel socially calibrated... nor does he have the capacity to do the difficult things when necessary like adults need to do. Also, some of that ick can come about from emotional expression being an amplifier that draws attention to other issues... like victim's mentality and neediness. But if a guy otherwise has these skills and opens up... and he isn't being needy or going into victim's mentality... and is socially calibrated... then men's emotional expression is a very welcome thing that indicates emotional intelligence... even if it is sometimes a lot of emotional expression all at once. Like I remember a situation back when I was a high school teacher. And one of the math teachers (who was a Masculine even-keeled middle aged man) was giving a speech. And he started to tear up in speaking about how much he appreciated his colleagues. And it was just a genuine expression of feelings from an otherwise chill and level-headed guy. And he had no agenda attached to his emotional expression... it was just him opening up. And it made him come across as more secure in himself in his willingness to be vulnerable in front of his colleagues. But if a guy is constantly a weeping mess and looking for everyone to be his personal therapist 10 times per day, that indicates that he is needy. And that is an ick. And if a guy is always whining and complaining about how unfair the world is, then that's victim's mentality... and also an ick. So, I think the ick factor is more like... "I can sense this guy's neediness and victim's mentality. And he is unable to emotionally regulate himself and wants me to do it for him"... rather than, "This guy is expressing too much at once and I don't have the bandwidth to hold space for it."

I can't think of very many careers that offer more survival value than childcare and nursing.

I'm glad to hear that you've broken up. It's difficult to end a relationship. But that controlling behavior would have never stopped.

That's accurate in my experience. I've always excelled at math and science in school. And I have no doubts in my capacity to go into many of the careers under the STEM umbrella, if I wanted to. I honestly feel that it would be straightforward in the sense of things being fairly formulaic with mathematics-based careers. But I would only ever go into a STEM career if I was forced to, as it just wouldn't be that interesting. I need for things to be subjective and creative and open-ended and human-ish for me to be profoundly interested in them. What drives me crazy is the implicit sexism that hides inside the idea that "We need to get more women into STEM." And for women who do want to get into STEM but feel blocked in some way, those campaigns could help. I'm not saying there isn't a sizable minority of women who want to go into STEM who feel discouraged from it. I'm sure that there is. And they should be encouraged. But in this framework of "We need to get more women in STEM", there is an assumption that "It's only because women are conditioned to go for lower paying careers that women avoid going into STEM." But in this nurture over nature assumption... this line of thinking gets it ass backwards! It isn't that woman are conditioned to go for lower paying careers. It's that the careers that women naturally gravitate towards are devalued and underpaid because Femininity is culturally viewed as inferior to Masculinity. So, Feminine careers are not valued as much as Masculine careers. And if hypothetically, STEM suddenly became a female-dominated field and was seen as Feminine in the collective consciousness, STEM careers would pay very little and wouldn't be valued as much in society. STEM careers would start getting teacher-level salaries. This has happened with many other fields that have experienced major changes in gender dynamics, where a female-dominated field changed over time to a male-dominated field and the pay increased. And where male-dominated fields become female-dominated and the pay decreases. So, if STEM (through cultural forces) did come to be a more gender-equal field, the amount of pay and prestige would likely diminish quite a bit... and moreso if it became female dominated. So, in the notion that there is no Masculinity or Femininity beyond what's socially constructed, there's a lot of hidden space to hide patriarchal anti-Feminine bias from one's self... as it assumes any career discrepancy between the sexes is 100% conditioned and 0% innate. Therefore STEM is seen as gender-neutral... and as an inherently superior career choice to the career choices the average woman makes. And the idea is that women are being conditioned to value the inferior humanities over the superior sciences to disenfranchise women. But the disenfranchisement comes from the devaluation of Femininity itself... and viewing the humanities as inferior to hard sciences. Like, you always hear "We need more women in STEM." But you almost never hear, "We need more men in caring professions." And that's because STEM is seen as superior to caring professions like childcare and nursing... because on some level (even people who don't believe in innate Masculinity/Femininity) STEM is recognized as Masculine-principled. So, it's kind of like 90s Feminism where the message was... "Women can be just as good as men." or "Women can do anything that men can do." But in that, it assumes that maleness and Masculinity is the standard to match up to... and sends the message that Masculinity is superior to Femininity... and that, if a woman want to be valued, she just needs to un-condition herself from being Feminine and condition herself into being Masculine (as these are mere social constructs and not innate parts of our nature.)

It's 100% exactly that with these gender superiority narratives. It has this double-whammy of "I'm not inferior! They're inferior!" AND a scapegoated group to play the victim off of.

Yes, that's the way I see a lot of the threads on this part of the forum. It's just a lot of intellectual theorizing about differences between men and women... and about women's nature. And they get it so incorrect. Or the things they do get correct, they exaggerate in an extreme way to where there's a total distortion. And half the time it's like... "Here's my overarching intellectual framework of female nature, which will guarantee that I will be able to have sex with the hottest women." The other half the time it's like... "Here's an overarching intellectual framework of female nature to show (once and for all) that men are superior to women in every way that matters. And that means that (by virtue of being a man) I'm superior to those hot women! And reality is unjust because these women have too much power despite being inferior! So, I am a victim of society and women are to blame!"

I watched the video. First off, of course women can be abusive to men. It happens all the time. Abusive behavior doesn't have a gender. Abusive people just use whatever tools they are capable of using to abuse their partner (which tend to vary a bit between men and women). And it's quite common that men don't register abuse from a woman as actual abuse because culture has this idea, "Woman weak. Man strong." So, men have a harder time recognizing when they're being abused by a woman, as they see it like, "Because I'm a man, I am stronger and more stoic... and anything she does to me can't impact me that much because I am less vulnerable than she is." Men also tend to grow up with lots of inter-male ribbing and fighting. And part of the challenge is to be able to absorb the ribbing and some degree of pain/violence to show they are able to be cool-headed in challenging situations. So, this also makes men susceptible to being harmed without realizing it, because they have conditioned themselves through their lives to be stoic in the face of pain and to show they are strong and stoic enough to absorb it. It's sort of like that Jeff Foxworthy comedy bit where he jokes about a man accidentally getting his foot cut off with a chainsaw and playing it off like it's nothing. Like, "Eh... just throw the foot in the cooler and get me another beer. I'll deal with that later." So, men in abusive relationships tend to take quite some time to notice when that's the case. I have had to inform a couple of my male coaching clients that they are in an abusive relationship because they don't quite grok the idea that they are capable of being abused by a woman. They just didn't see the woman as capable of causing them real harm. Secondly, the reason why this guy gets so much pushback is because he has a red pill slant and says a lot of ideological things like "Women are worshipped in society" and frames society as being tilted in women's direction. And because of his Red Pill ideological slant, the real message of "Men can be abuse victims too." is cheapened and framed as some societal gender war thing. If he just came on there and shared the message that men can be victims too, he wouldn't have gotten any pushback. But he should expect that, if he's using the fact that men can be abused too as a cudgel to say, "See! Men are the victims of society because women are worshipped!" that he's going to get some pushback... and rightly so.

I see you being very adamant on many threads that having an intellectual model of women being starkly different from men is somehow helpful to men. But I find that the men who have an ideological framework that's intent on differentiating men and women in stark ways tend to understand the least about women because they're so keen on defining us as totally different from men. So, they miss the common humanity of women and tend to wrap us up into a stereotypical 2-d image, which impedes their ability to relate to women on an ordinary human-to-human basis. And it's noticeable that these intellectual distortions and stereotypes tend to negatively impact these men's ability to have relationships and positive interactions with women. These men also seem to struggle in other areas of life for the same reason. They tend to be the type of person who engages more in the imaginal world than in the real world... and lives in a world of constructs and concepts without applying anything (as it would shatter the ideal in their mind). So, they also don't have success in other areas because they are so attached to their intellectual frameworks that they don't want reality to upset them.

I've heard Leo say that "sex = attachment" before. But that's not actually true. It's actually more like "attachment = sex." I think his perception comes from the fact that women are more likely to have sex with a man she feels attached to... and are relatively unlikely to have sex with men she doesn't feel attached to, as that just isn't emotionally stimulating. So, the attachment comes first before the sex... not the other way around. But chances are (unless the woman is into casual sex), her decision to sleep with you has a lot to do with already feeling close to you and attached to you.