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I've been asked by a mod to repost this here, so here goes!
What Is The Problem With Women?
We've often discussed, and it seems we will continue to discuss, what is going on in the Battle of the Sexes. I have to hold my hands up and admit that very often in such dispatches, I am the one defending women and criticising the behaviour and the attitudes of men.
But it is also undeniable that some women are fudging stupid. Or at the very least, so it appears. We've argued over "women prefer the Bad Boys to the Nice Guys" but there comes a point where it seems to be sheer self-destruction at work, because how could anyone stick with a guy like the one in this story?
So, to do justice to the gentlemen here with whom I have argued, here is the sorry story of a woman who apparently had not a brain in her head. Her family warned her off, her friends warned her off, even on a first date she knew this was a bad idea - and she still ended up marrying him and having two children with him while he was irresponsible, controlling, and abusive.
Why? I can't explain it to you in any way that makes sense. Even she doesn't know why, looking back. There are some hints that, in line with theories of such behaviour, she was drawn (for whatever reason) to abusive men, like a typical victim who keeps going back to the same kind of relationship after getting out of the last one. But as to what was at work here, who knows? I can't imagine any evo-psych explanation for this that makes any sense at all, not even the "women evolved to tolerate rape because women who resisted rape got murdered when the barbarian horde over-ran the village and killed all the men and took all the women" kind of thing.
An Irish divorce story.
It gets worse from there, until finally she won't put up with it anymore and leaves. Why she didn't run a mile after the first date, I have no explanation. This is a stupid (and indeed, dangerous) choice she made of her own free (so it seems) will. Nobody was urging or forcing her to take up with this guy, indeed it was the opposite. She had plenty of chances, and plenty of warning signs. She got pregnant, of her own accord again, (I strongly suspect the first pregnancy was the usual hope around 'a baby will fix this' and the second time, what, she had no access to contraception? highly unlikely) and brought two kids into an unstable situation where the father had no interest in contributing to the family. It was only when things finally became intolerable that she left.
And I genuinely, honestly can't blame men or The Patriarchy or anything else for this. The guy in question was a shithead but she knew that from the immediate start. There's nothing in her story, as told, about her family pressuring her to get married or settle down with anyone, much less this guy. She did it all herself.
Explanation: Attraction is not a choice. Jerkitude is generally wetness inducing for women just as a young pretty face and slim figure are generally boner inducing for men.
For some women this can extend to jerkitude that includes beating them. As the saying goes, women would rather be with a man who beats them than one who bores them.
Rihanna could have dated any one of millions of regular non-famous men, and likely had suitors among many rich, famous men too. Yet, she still chose to continue getting railed by Chris Brown, including after the physical abuse became public. To have the cojones and ability to deliver a beating is a dominance signal. Teenage girls and young women only splooshed harder for Chris Brown afterward.
It's an open secret nowadays that chicks love getting spanked, hair-pulled, choked, etc. in bed, and many of them getting slapped around in bed too. Just like how evolution doesn't stop at the neck, this female revealed preference for getting violently dominated doesn't necessarily stop at the bedroom door either for many of them.
@TitaniumButterfly recently recounted how his wife likes to say that "a husband is a Daddy you choose." This would be reflected by a common online dating profile quote of young women that reads "you can't choose your father but you can choose your daddy." For many women, this would appear to include physical disciplinary action from daddy.
The #Fightfor35 continues.
Attraction isn’t a choice, yet how many relationships today are the product of genuine mutual attraction? Sex work still happens among all kinds of parties and only one side is typically paid for it, precisely because the exchange isn’t normally and mutually desirable. Attraction isn’t a necessary driving force for getting the two genders on with each other, but for the fact that the controls which typically mediated those arrangements got washed away beginning in the 1960’s. Inb4 some jagoff says “relations between the two weren’t a utopia for either gender back then either!” Yes, but that’s not the point.
Everyone will eventually put their hand on the stove and play with fire if there’s no downstream consequence to them doing so. If no measures were taken to prevent anyone from walking into a bank vault and talking whatever they wanted, you’d see a ‘massive’ upsurge overnight in the amount of ‘normal’ ‘ethical’ people who engage in the activity. There’s nothing that would prevent even me from doing it, save for my own piety, which is absolutely at odds with the prudential value of my own self-interest. But “good will” is no way to predicate a society upon. If there were zero consequences to any man who chose to beat a woman for any reason he wanted to, you’d see things absolutely flip the other way and there would be enormous compromises of attraction. Only the utmost dysfunctional people would stay.
All individuals have their hidden kinks and preferences but that’s a very insignificant comparison to the ‘real’ violence they’d experience if they dreaded coming home every night because they didn’t know what was going to happen. You need to revive the social controls that keep both parties in check and on their best behavior. Punish dissent and detractors on both sides.
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While I think it is clear that women largely prefer a harsh and powerful man over a decent but weak man, with some limits on the harshness, I imagine most women would prefer a decent but powerful man over a harsh but powerful man. That being said, for a decent number of women the harshness is the point and the cruel man is their favorite. Not the funnest preference to have, I imagine.
When I survey the decisions of most people I know in this area, almost ‘none’ of them are making great decisions about the people they pick.
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Alternate explanation: most women do not like jerks(at least not jerks to them), but in any group as large as ‘all women’ you can find exceptions to the trend. You can find plenty of men making terrible dating choices too. It’s not hard.
Any man who becomes infatuated with a woman as a love interest I used to tell them to beat off first, and then ask if you can stand to be around this person.
The problem I’ve since recognized with that logic though is you know you’re in love with a person when you’re in a dazzling euphoric haze about them and you don’t see them clearly. You see them differently from everyone else, even in ways the person you’re in love with may not understand about themselves. I’ve been there, and I’ve been burned. It’s disheartening but in the end we just don’t see things the same way. It’s not just interest incompatibility at the margins. We are truly incapable of understanding what is motivating the actions of the other and wildly misinterpret what they are doing.
Everyone has experienced the feeling of love at some point, but people still wonder if that’s how it’s “supposed” to feel, because of the ideas we’re taught about it. Where men often struggle is when they’re in love with the idea they have about a woman and they’re blocked from understanding that who they aren’t isn’t the fantasy you’ve imposed on them, and being in love makes it extremely difficult and mentally agonizing for you to break past that illusion even when you know it’s true, because you don’t ‘want’ to accept it; because you’re in love.
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