Reflecting on my relationship to this forum...

[questionreality]

1 hour ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Yup, welcome to the world of magical thinking, in which you can make up all sorts of ridicilous BS and claim it as true. And when someone dares to opose you, you can just accuse them of being close minded and not having experienced the exact same thing you have experienced. I could elaborate on that train of thought further.... but I'd be at a serious risk of being insta banned and we all know why😂

Yup that's a classic, I know what you mean

[Carl-Richard]

33 minutes ago, questionreality said:

According to psychology femininity is defined as a set of gender typed traits, behaviors and preferences that tend to be statistically more common in women, but which both sexes can possess. 

Models such as BSRI, big five personality traits, and evolutionary psychology are used for this.

And according to anthropology, it's what culture teaches a woman to be. Socially and culturally defined behaviors, norms, roles, and aesthetics associated with women.

Not one empirical discipline defines femininity the way that she did, that's what I am saying.

One time I read a definition in a textbook of something I can't remember which gave about as little insight as what that definition did. I think it literally only gave the methodologies for how the concept was studied, no information about the concept itself (ironically a very overly masculine and lack of femininity move). But in your case, it also just shifts the information onto another concept: "woman". So now I'll have to ask you: give me a list of "woman traits".

Edited 15 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[UnbornTao]

We like creating cosmologies and models, but they differ from what is actually true - which is unknown most of the time.

In a highly subjective, socially constructed world, it is incredibly difficult to pinpoint what is taking place accurately. We are not even clear on what's going on in our own experience, much less in that of others. Grand narratives inevitably miss the reality right in front of you, because they are abstract, conceptual overlays that we invent and impose onto things. It is tempting to do that, relatively easy to adopt, and sometimes useful, but they are untrue.

Edited 14 hours ago by UnbornTao

[questionreality]

8 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

One time I read a definition in a textbook of something I can't remember which gave about as little insight as what that definition did. I think it literally only gave the methodologies for how the concept was studied, no information about the concept itself (ironically a very overly masculine and lack of femininity move). But in your case, it also just shifts the information onto another concept: "woman". So now I'll have to ask you: give me a list of "woman traits".

The point isn’t that "woman" = a fixed list of traits.

Psychology doesn’t treat femininity as an essence, it treats it as a set of traits and behaviors that correlate with women statistically and culturally, not universally or absolutely.

Just like a height isn’t a "male essence" but men are taller on average

Risk-taking isn’t "male essence" but men score higher statistically

Agreeableness isn’t "female essence" but women score higher across cultures

None of these mean "all men" or "all women", you understand? 

Femininity is the set of traits that cultures and psychological studies consistently associate with women more than men.

So the question “Give me the list of woman traits” is already framing the topic incorrectly. It assumes femininity must be some metaphysical essence rather than a statistical set of traits historically associated with women

 

[Carl-Richard]

9 minutes ago, questionreality said:

The point isn’t that "woman" = a fixed list of traits.

Psychology doesn’t treat femininity as an essence, it treats it as a set of traits and behaviors that correlate with women statistically and culturally, not universally or absolutely.

Just like a height isn’t a "male essence" but men are taller on average

Risk-taking isn’t "male essence" but men score higher statistically

Agreeableness isn’t "female essence" but women score higher across cultures

None of these mean "all men" or "all women", you understand? 

Femininity is the set of traits that cultures and psychological studies consistently associate with women more than men.

I think "essence" and "traits" are commensurable and you're getting caught up in a word game. Nobody is talking about "all men" or "all women" here either, that's a hallucination you brought in through your other word game (substituting "feminine" for "woman").

 

9 minutes ago, questionreality said:

So the question “Give me the list of woman traits” is already framing the topic incorrectly. It assumes femininity must be some metaphysical essence rather than a statistical set of traits historically associated with women

 

26 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think it literally only gave the methodologies for how the concept was studied, no information about the concept itself (ironically a very overly masculine and lack of femininity move).

(Or you could call it a feminine move in that you want to include everything and are not willing to exclude things and prune down to [deduce] a single conclusion).

It does nevertheless show a pseudointellectual attitude that you can't answer a single question and rather bring up words that do not matter.

Edited 14 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[questionreality]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think "essence" and "traits" are commensurable and you're getting caught up in a word game. Nobody is talking about "all men" or "all women" here either, that's a hallucination you brought in through your other word game (substituting "feminine" for "woman").

 

 

(Or you could call it a feminine move in that you want to include everything and are not willing to exclude things and prune down to [deduce] a single conclusion).

It does nevertheless show a pseudointellectual attitude that you can't answer a single question and rather bring up words that do not matter.

You’re trying to collapse two different categories  ''traits" and "essence"  as if they’re interchangeable, but they aren’t.
Not in psychology, not in anthropology, and not in gender studies.

A trait is measurable and statistical.
An essence is metaphysical and universal.

They are not commensurable unless you redefine both concepts to mean the same thing, which is exactly the word game you’re accusing me of.

You asked for a list of "woman traits," which is a question that assumes women have some built in universal qualities.
That’s why psychology doesn’t frame femininity that way. It’s a pattern of tendencies, not a built in essence.

And calling my argument "pseudointellectual" or "feminine" is an example of rhetoric you use to avoid engaging with the distinction I made.

If you continue to argue in bad faith and play word games, I will not be engaging with you any further.

Edited 13 hours ago by questionreality

[Elliott]

On 11/19/2025 at 3:46 AM, questionreality said:

In countries like Russia, Ukraine and in Eastern Europe in general the society is more patriarchal than in western countries, yet the women there are way more feminine on average than in the western world. (I lived in both just in case). 
 

How do you explain this?

Something tells me what you said cannot be entirely true, there has to be other reasons, including cultural.
 

Do you still stand by this claim?

If so, what traits are you referring to that are feminine?

[Carl-Richard]

28 minutes ago, questionreality said:

You’re trying to collapse two different categories  ''traits" and "essence"  as if they’re interchangeable, but they aren’t.
Not in psychology, not in anthropology, and not in gender studies.

A trait is measurable and statistical.
An essence is metaphysical and universal.

They are not commensurable unless you redefine both concepts to mean the same thing, which is exactly the word game you’re accusing me of.

You asked for a list of "woman traits," which is a question that assumes women have some built in universal qualities.
That’s why psychology doesn’t frame femininity that way. It’s a pattern of tendencies, not a built in essence.

And calling my argument "pseudointellectual" or "feminine" is an example of rhetoric you use to avoid engaging with the distinction I made.

If you continue to argue in bad faith and play word games, I will not be engaging with you any further.

If your entire worldview is shaped by 21st century social science and you can't see anything outside of that neutered conceptual landscape, sure, traits are statistical constructs which social science nerds (reluctantly) believe are the holy grail of epistemology and essences are immutable characteristics which only dumb cavemen believe in. But if you're a little more flexible than that, you see that "essences" and "traits" are just different words for "characteristics" and that you're getting your pants in a twist viewing everything through a wannabe academic lens.

So what characteristics do you associate with femininity?

[questionreality]

20 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

If your entire worldview is shaped by 21st century social science and you can't see anything outside of that neutered conceptual landscape, sure, traits are statistical constructs which social science nerds (reluctantly) believe are the holy grail of epistemology and essences are immutable characteristics which only dumb cavemen believe in. But if you're a little more flexible than that, you see that "essences" and "traits" are just different words for "characteristics" and that you're getting your pants in a twist viewing everything through a wannabe academic lens.

So what characteristics do you associate with femininity?

You’re doing exactly what pseudo-intellectuals do when they get cornered:

1)You can’t refute the actual point, so you attack "21st century social science" as "neutered".

2)You dismiss rigor and clear definitions as narrow mindedness.

3)You collapse distinctions again because you need "essence = trait = characteristic" for your argument to survive.

4)Then you circle back to the same loaded question I already explained is a bad question.

This isn’t good faith argumentation. It’s an attempt to drag me into your frame while refusing to define your own terms.

Given that,  I will not be engaging with you any further.

Edited 12 hours ago by questionreality

[Yimpa]

There is no forum. There is only Infinite Intelligence using the forum as a vehicle to understanding itself. 

The forum is just one form of many forms you can shapeshift as

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, questionreality said:

You’re doing exactly what pseudo-intellectuals do when they get cornered:

1)You can’t refute the actual point, so you attack "21st century social science" as "neutered."

2)You dismiss rigor and clear definitions as narrow mindedness.

3)You collapse distinctions again because you need "essence = trait = characteristic" for your argument to survive.

4)Then you circle back to the same loaded question I already explained is a bad question.

This isn’t good-faith argumentation. It’s an attempt to drag me into your frame while refusing to define your own terms.

Given that,  I will not be engaging with you any further.

I acknowledged your point: traits are different from essences from a certain specific point of view (21st century social science). It's just that this topic is not limited to that point of view so the distinction is irrelevant, unless you believe 21st century social science is the only legitimate point of view. In that case, welcome to Actualized.org.

You're always free to answer the question I asked at the beginning.

[Elliott]

3 hours ago, questionreality said:

The point isn’t that "woman" = a fixed list of traits.

Psychology doesn’t treat femininity as an essence, it treats it as a set of traits and behaviors that correlate with women statistically and culturally, not universally or absolutely.

Just like a height isn’t a "male essence" but men are taller on average

Risk-taking isn’t "male essence" but men score higher statistically

Agreeableness isn’t "female essence" but women score higher across cultures

None of these mean "all men" or "all women", you understand? 

Femininity is the set of traits that cultures and psychological studies consistently associate with women more than men.

So the question “Give me the list of woman traits” is already framing the topic incorrectly. It assumes femininity must be some metaphysical essence rather than a statistical set of traits historically associated with women

 

This is what we're asking for, "statistical set of traits". You listed agreeableness, what else?

[Emerald]

8 hours ago, questionreality said:

That's not addressing my point at all though. You’ve shifted completely into your own mythological system where “femininity” is a cosmic force you experienced on psychedelics. That’s fine as a personal new age belief, but it has nothing to do with real world cultural or psychological femininity.

Everything you've described such as mother nature battles, patriarchy as a war against hurricanes, ayahuasca revelations, stage green catabolic cycles, etc - is your symbolic world. These are subjective experiences, not objective data. Thus they can not be universal explanation for gender expression.

You are basically treating your personal spiritual experiences as if they’re objective truths that override observable cultural patterns.

You can’t just redefine femininity as a mystical force, then dismiss real world differences between women in various societies as “patriarchy costumes” because it doesn’t fit your cosmology

You seem to be under the impression that the only valid perspective on this topic is some evidence-based cultural perspective on it... which would be like if you expected some kind of evidence-based cultural perspective on enlightenment and saw that information as superior to the direct experience of it.

You are looking at the Feminine from a materialist anthropological perspective. But I am looking at the Feminine from the perspective of someone who has had a direct mystical experience of the Feminine. (And Masculine and Feminine is mystical... meaning it cannot be studied empirically)

This is my perspective based on my own direct firsthand experiences of the subtle Feminine polarity in my medicine journeys... and the symbolic understanding of Yin and the Feminine principle that I gained through exploring archetypal and mythological conceptualizations of the Feminine to make better sense of these experiences when culture offers so little understanding of the Feminine beyond simply what's attractive to men.

And this deeper exploration of the Feminine has been necessary for me personally to connect to the Feminine, as there is no outlet for me to connect with my own Feminine energy through the cultural lenses... as those simply aren't boxes that I fit into. And they just moved me further away from the Feminine power when I tried to find my Femininity there.

And you can't find deep Femininity in those cultural boxes anyway... as boxes and categories are archetypally Masculine. The Masculine is always trying to put an organizing principle around the Feminine and to conceptualize of the Feminine through the categorical box. And the deep Feminine cannot be boxed.

So, the deeper energetic polarity and the Feminine principle (archetypally) is what I mean when I speak of integrating the Feminine. 

So, you can stick with the cultural definition of Femininity and what men generally find attractive about women. It's fine that that's your perspective. 

But simply figuring out how to appear Feminine doesn't go deep enough for my own purposes of integrating the Feminine, as those are fairly surface-level ways of conceptualizing of Femininity that has more to do with Femininity as a costume to be seen as Feminine in society and to attract men.

Culture offers very little of the deep Feminine that I had a direct experiences of for the first time at the age of 20. Culture just hasn't developed a deep enough understanding of this principle.

So, I have had to look beyond cultural perspective and into the energetic and archetypal perspective... like Jungian psychology, depth psychology, Taoism, and other perspectives that offer a lens for exploration of the Feminine and Masculine principles.

Edited 7 hours ago by Emerald

[Emerald]

16 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

But a male dominant society doesn't strip a woman from being a woman.  It actually emphasizes it which is the problem. 

It does very much strip the majority of the Feminine power away from women... only leaving a very narrow gender role of the conception of what "woman" is based mostly on quiet modest innocuous motherhood.

Edited 8 hours ago by Emerald

[Emerald]

8 hours ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Yup, welcome to the world of magical thinking, in which you can make up all sorts of ridicilous BS and claim it as true. And when someone dares to opose you, you can just accuse them of being close minded and not having experienced the exact same thing you have experienced. I could elaborate on that train of thought further.... but I'd be at a serious risk of being insta banned and we all know why😂

Usually, people in the rationalist paradigm (like Stage Orange) will confuse people operating from a post-rational perspectives as someone operating from a pre-rational perspective (Stage Purple).

You confuse an archetypal understanding of the Feminine based in direct mystical experience for someone who is engaged in magical thinking, like an inexperienced peasant who believes the plague comes from "the vapors" and that mold grows from "spontaneous generation".

[Inliytened1]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

It does very much strip the majority of the Feminine power away from women... only leaving a very narrow gender role of the conception of what "woman" is based mostly on quiet modest innocuous motherhood.

I gotcha now.  But power is different from raw femininity or raw masculinity.  Power is selfishness lol.

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

I gotcha now.  But power is different from raw femininity or raw masculinity.  Power is selfishness lol.

It is self-related. But rather than selfishness which has to do with getting your way over other people... it's more accurate to call it sovereignty, which is not related to having power over others at all.

It's about self-governance.

Power is always in relation to the external world... not always about dominance over other people, but at least having leverage over external circumstances. For example, if I am hungry, I currently have the power to go to the fridge and get something to eat. But it can also be power over others too. Power is a mixed bag... and can be wielded selfishly, neutrally, or positively.

But sovereignty just is... and is more of an internal grounding in the unshakable validity of one's own being and the unshakable validity of the objective facts of one's own subjective experience.

It's basically about rendering yourself "gaslight-proof", so that you don't come to mistrust your subjective perspective, as your subjective perspective is your only navigational compass and your only anchor-point within truth.

It's kind of like how the child in The Emperor's New Clothes doesn't fall for the illusions of external power that that the emperor falls for with the conmen who trick him, rip him off ,and sew his invisible clothes.

Nor does the child fall for the illusions of external power that the adult crowd falls for when they gaslight themselves into seeing clothes on the naked emperor. 

The child possesses sovereignty of perspective and trusts their eyes... and not the mind's rationalizations around the illusion of external power.

So, because the crowd trusts the illusion that the emperor can't have made a mistake or faux pas because he's the emperor...

...and because the emperor trusts the illusion of the power of the conmen to truly be sewing beautiful clothes (and believes that he cannot be tricked because of his own position of power)...

...neither the crowd nor the emperor possesses the sovereignty to simply see what they're seeing. They gaslight themselves out of the truth.

But the child is still in touch with their sovereignty. So, they can simply see what they're seeing because they don't have the experience yet to do that kind of heavy-duty self-gaslighting. And they don't gaslight themselves out of the fact that they are seeing a naked emperor.

And a major part of sovereignty beyond simply stating the facts of your subjective experience... is all about developing an awareness deep enough to answer the question, "What do I really want?" and to see the answer to that question has being valid in and of itself.

[Inliytened1]

2 hours ago, Emerald said:

It is self-related. But rather than selfishness which has to do with getting your way over other people... it's more accurate to call it sovereignty, which is not related to having power over others at all.

It's about self-governance.

Power is always in relation to the external world... not always about dominance over other people, but at least having leverage over external circumstances. For example, if I am hungry, I currently have the power to go to the fridge and get something to eat. But it can also be power over others too. Power is a mixed bag... and can be wielded selfishly, neutrally, or positively.

But sovereignty just is... and is more of an internal grounding in the unshakable validity of one's own being and the unshakable validity of the objective facts of one's own subjective experience.

It's basically about rendering yourself "gaslight-proof", so that you don't come to mistrust your subjective perspective, as your subjective perspective is your only navigational compass and your only anchor-point within truth.

It's kind of like how the child in The Emperor's New Clothes doesn't fall for the illusions of external power that that the emperor falls for with the conmen who trick him, rip him off ,and sew his invisible clothes.

Nor does the child fall for the illusions of external power that the adult crowd falls for when they gaslight themselves into seeing clothes on the naked emperor. 

The child possesses sovereignty of perspective and trusts their eyes... and not the mind's rationalizations around the illusion of external power.

So, because the crowd trusts the illusion that the emperor can't have made a mistake or faux pas because he's the emperor...

...and because the emperor trusts the illusion of the power of the conmen to truly be sewing beautiful clothes (and believes that he cannot be tricked because of his own position of power)...

...neither the crowd nor the emperor possesses the sovereignty to simply see what they're seeing. They gaslight themselves out of the truth.

But the child is still in touch with their sovereignty. So, they can simply see what they're seeing because they don't have the experience yet to do that kind of heavy-duty self-gaslighting. And they don't gaslight themselves out of the fact that they are seeing a naked emperor.

And a major part of sovereignty beyond simply stating the facts of your subjective experience... is all about developing an awareness deep enough to answer the question, "What do I really want?" and to see the answer to that question has being valid in and of itself.

Well you called it power not me.  And you're right power can be wielded for good or ill.  But this has nothing to do with gender. It's just that the woman was born into that body and this world unfortunately is a man's world.  If you're born in a man's body you have certain advantages.   It is more the lust for power that is the selfishness not the power itself or what you do with it.  Sovereignty again is not gender specific.  Like I said it goes back to the culture and what you are born into.  

So you should adjust your steps to say women are stripped from their freedom or sovereignty. Not their femininity. Sovereignty is ultimately freedom because you answer to no one when you are sovereign. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Inliytened1