The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[Sundae]

An experiment for guys:

See how long your weird attempt to mimic female behaviour takes to p*ss off everyone around you.
Probably not long.

[DanaC]

Hehehehehehe. Well said.

[it]

Huh. That is actually more of a loaded statement then the BS I read that weekend I spent investigating the MGTOW movement, surprisingly loaded with much of the same notions though.

But no - thinking about it as female behavior without questioning why is being obtuse. The experiment's purpose is a two fold:

1. Guys come out of it realizing it actually makes sense to do so - judge women for who they are as people includes judging them for how they'd treat the guys as people - and questioning why they normally don't do it.
2. In the same time, it demonstrates that women aren't used to being judged by guys as... Well, people, judged for their potential agency. For the most part the desire for that is a bad cliche of it's greener on the other side of the fence fantasy that breaks down the moment it is put to the test - judging who you are as a human being is a lot more intimate level of judgement then simply judging your intimates.

[classicman]

... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.

[it]

Originally Posted by classicman

... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.

Again? Already? I have to admit the last session was pretty satisfying.. Ok we can go again but give me a few minutes to get in the mood.

[it]

Ok, I am ready babe

Originally Posted by classicman

... shakes head ...
There is a level of shallowness there I care not to enter.

Oh I am remarkably shallow - for instance if your posts are written with the assumption that other people will gaze into a vision of your knowing eyes and see the marvelous levels of depth that exists behind your artistically minimal output - such layers of depth into you are well beyond my reach.

All I see is someone whose entire expression and content generation comes down to a series of like/dislike about what other people say, like a facebook bot squirming out of water trying to adapt to doing it's thing without an available button.

But maybe I am wrong about you. Luckily for you, my shallow impressions are also quite fragile, paper thin constructs made to break apart by the first sign that they are wrong. In this case it's pretty simple - just say something. Not merely whether you agree or disagree with something someone else said, but a full thought of your own, a reasoning or argument of some sort, an idea or analysis, anything - I don't care whether it agrees with me or not, just something with any amount of meat to it. Even assholes can produce something - I am pretty sure that is not a title that should require grand delusions to be good enough for.

It shouldn't be that hard for someone of your depth - to disprove someone so shallow as to think that if your always on a wheelchair you probably can't stand on your own two feet very well - it's pretty simple - if you can walk walk, get off your ass and prove them wrong.

[DanaC]

Maybe I misunderstood your post Trace, but it did seem to be lumping women together as some kind of homogenous whole, entirely separated from the male of the species, who are invited to test and analyse 'women' in that scenario.

[classicman]

Yeh, thanks for that... I read some of it. whatever.

[it]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Maybe I misunderstood your post Trace, but it did seem to be lumping women together as some kind of homogenous whole, entirely separated from the male of the species, who are invited to test and analyse 'women' in that scenario.

I can sort of see how there might be a notion that experiments/tests are something you do on other species, but I am not convinced that was ever the case... my preferred reading for awhile has been psychology where almost all studies are on groups of people, so I guess I don't quite have that association.
I wonder if you would have had the same association with an alternative response to the square/model poster - quoting a study where hetrosexual women and men where given images of the opposite gender and while different men gave more or less the same rating to women, women gave vastly different ratings to the various men (and then ranting on the implication). Would that have the same implication of treating genders as different species simply because it was accounted for and lumping them up together into statistics? Is the act of examining generalized differences an immediate taboo that must not be looked upon for the wraith of the amazon goddess will smite us all?

I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.

Personally I have no doubt that if this was conducted on a large enough population there would be exceptions and it wouldn't be a 100%, and yet I have very little inclination to throw the baby out of the bathwater, or to deny it on the basis of ideological reasoning.

[DanaC]

I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.

So you're conducting your own little psyche experiments, on unwitting groups of people in a social setting, with no set parameters or control and think you've cracked the code of female behaviour.

I wonder if you would have had the same association with an alternative response to the square/model poster - quoting a study where hetrosexual women and men where given images of the opposite gender and while different men gave more or less the same rating to women, women gave vastly different ratings to the various men (and then ranting on the implication).

And therein lies the difference. In fact, I'd be very interested in reading that study and finding out more about the methodology employed - I find that kind of thing very interesting. I'd also be interested in (and have read many) studies about the psychology of attraction, group dynamics and social hierarchies.

What I don't find interesting, is men treating the women they encounter in their everyday life as labrats or specimens. It is grotesquely dishonest and manipulative to use someone in that fashion. It reminds me very strongly of the attitude many pick-up artists / wingmen exhibit when they talk about women and the various social understandings and interactive tools and strategies to employ when engaging with them.

I'd find it just as revolting if one of the dwellar women suggested all us gals should perform ad hoc psychological experiments on the men in our lives.

[it]

Originally Posted by DanaC

So you're conducting your own little psyche experiments, on unwitting groups of people in a social setting, with no set parameters or control

You are getting pissy about a post that presents the parameters as well as the control - are you particularly bothered that they were unwitting, s every single person who's entered the visual perception of every other single person in the world? And if it was just day to day pattern recognition without awareness would it have been better? Unless you take a moral stance against the working of human minds in general, then by the process of elimination your disgust comes down to a disgust at awareness - doing what our minds naturally do consciously and knowingly.

And disgust at awareness is problematic... Willful ignorance really has made me puke in the past. Our previous instances of friction surround your offense at my criticism about applying designated walls of ignorance too. And we were friends from before I really understood it as a tool and it's ramifications well enough to have any problem with it... I suppose it makes sense I wouldn't have noticed that. Yay for value differences - always fun.

[Clodfobble]

Hey trace, in case you're curious, it's not the so-called "experimental" nature that's irritating people. It's this kind of bullshit:

Originally Posted by traceur

When the last women leaves the table in discomfort or disgust, stop the timer, and check the results.
...
As far as the control, your battery will most likely die before you get to stop the stopwatch. A good few of them will feel quite comfortable joining in.

You have (sexist, and revealing more than a little anger) assumptions and expectations about how it will go. When pushed on these, you first claim it's to teach the guys a lesson (typical sophomoric urge, by the way, to need to educate the world on why they're not as sophisticated as you are) and then retreat further, into the assertion that it's somehow scientific and therefore innocent and unassailable.

[classicman]

There ya go buddy. You're welcome.

[it]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

You have (sexist, and revealing more than a little anger) assumptions and expectations about how it will go.

I have 'assumptions' on how it went:

Originally Posted by traceur

I suggested the experiment because having stumbled upon it accidentally by actually doing it. A friend's date for her behavior for things I thought reflect poorly on her as a person and then seen how gradually the women around the table started leaving with facial expresses varying between discomfort and disgust. I was curious and later tried it with several other groups, and each time it works, and I found it both fascinating and disturbing that it does.

One of my two gender-based assumption is generally that for the most part it would continue to repeat itself along gender lines the same way it has so far, while hopefully producing some exceptions along the way. I could be wrong, and would actually like to be wrong.

The other - and the one I view as the cause - is that most men don't naturally judge women on their internal merits, which is why I don't think women are used to being judged by men on their internal merits. Note that the ones who responded by calling it "behaving like women" were sundae and Dana. I stumbled on it by doing it myself the first time around, and I am pretty sure it's not a cause for me to change my gender identity.

As far as been preachy to other guys... Absolutely. Do you disagree that guys should judge women on their internal merit? Who she is as a person? I don't know about you, but when women speak about their relationships, current, past or future, I constantly hear "him treating her right" as a ruler to measure it up by, whether it's herself or her friends. Which is a fantastic thing - one I learned to adopt myself (alongside handbags - seriously pockets are horribly limited). What I never heard is the equivalent said to me as a guy, and have never heard it said to other guys, ever. It may seem obvious, but it surprisingly not. Even guys who do judge women on internal merits more instinctively - including myself - will do so more on the basis of what impresses them, not how good of a human being they are in treating others. So much so that the idea of doing it myself seemed out right alien until it became a solution to a problem. That is worth getting angry over - I don't think that making sure your potential partner is a decent person and looking out for your own emotional well being in thinking how they would treat you should be "behaving like women".

[DanaC]

When did I say anything about behaving like a woman?
I don't remember that.

Trace - I get that you are just interested in psychology. But the assumptions that clod points out are reductive in the extreme. That you can sit in a handful of group situations and try this experiment out and then extrapolate that out to predict how 'women' will respond, or indeed how 'men' will respond in general is ludicrous. That you conduct these experiments on people you're socialising with is frankly creepy.

Are these your friends?