Poetry of Flesh left a couple of comments on my Tale of two women post and it stirred some additional thoughts and observations that I wanted to share. Here is her first comment,
When women are conditioned the way we are, it’s incredibly difficult to break out of these behaviors. That poor little Latina, worst of all. Her own female family members betraying her… cycles of socialization.
I continue to support the idea that raising a little over half the population to be this way, basically emotional children, especially when it comes to sexuality and relationships, is an unhealthy idea, not at all beneficial to the population as a whole.
The phrase, when women are conditioned the way we are…, I think assumes that how women are raised has more to do with why game works as opposed to an innate part of a woman’s nature. Yet, many of the examples in Robert Greene’s book The Art of Seduction are taken straight out of history. Others examples are from literature. Almost all of them are from a time before the four sirens of the female apocalypse reared their ugly head. In my mind there is something more primal going on.
In regards to Poetry’s statement about raising women to be emotional children, I honestly don’t disagree. More than half the population seems to be indulged in their every whim. Catered to when they don’t get their way. And God forbid they get offended, but the entitlement mentality doesn’t solely seem to rest with the female half of the population. In the late ’80s we had the yuppies which Bret Easton Ellis satirized so well in American Psycho. That seems to have morphed now into the SWPLers and the Hipster fad. The manginas and white knighters are akin to the enablers of the alcoholic who feed the addiction while overlooking the damage it’s doing.
The thing about children is that you can (so I’m told and have read) start to teach them responsibility and how to make good choices from a young age. By the time they reach adolescence the odds are better that they’ll make the right choices when you’re not around to watch over them. They’re still children, but parents can give them the tools to succeed. Giving children some leeway to make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences gives a better chance of having a responsible adult when they reach maturity. What happens if, as Talleyrand suggested, women have been selected for child like qualities? The implication is that childish behavior in women will always be there and a part of their nature because ultimately that’s what men want.
Poetry continues,
It’s… not quite sad, but something along those lines, that the enjoyment and exploitation of this weakness in females is so celebrated in parts of the community. Bringing down sick (but, of course, hot) gazelle isn’t really an accomplishment, in my eyes at least. At best, one feels to be a mighty hunter, at worst, you’re consuming rotted meat.
I’m going to be honest and say that I’m not sure exactly what Poetry is getting at with this statement. I hope that she may provide clarification. My thoughts. Men display, women choose. Since women are the choosers, they set the rules of the game. Men are adaptable. Put them in a situation where they have an 0bstacle that must be overcome and some will set out and devise a strategy that works, others will drop out. Regardless of how we’ve gotten to the sexual marketplace of today, game is an adaptation (or a rediscovery of an older truth if you will) to the situation men find themselves in today. I fail to see how the bringing down sick gazelles statement isn’t a logical fallacy. A variation of the no true scotsman argument.
I commented about women being celebrated and celebrating their emotionality to which Poetry responded in part,
As for celebrating their emotional response? I’m not quite sure I find that completely accurate or, at least, the sentiment I’m reading into it to be accurate. Celebration tends to have positive connotations, and I find the social support of the what is the “standard” feminine emotional state not to be a celebration at all.
I mean, this is more a celebration of, essentially, unharnessed, unexamined stupidity, not really a celebration of feminine emotion. It’s a social crippling, an overindulgence of emotional hedonism that we term “girl power” and validate its continued existence by telling the girls who do not engage in such behavior that they are unfeminine and, therefore, undesirable. It’s a constant pressure to be stupid, a value system shoved down our throats because we are defined, as a sex, by our desirability and what quality of man we can attract.
So I don’t find it to be much of a celebration, but, perhaps, more of an unexamined surrender to social pressures where we attempt to hide what we are doing to ourselves by justifying it through false attempts at glorifying our sad behaviors.
Ah, but there’s the rub. You don’t see it as positive, I for that matter don’t see it as positive either. But the message that seems to be transmitted to women is that it is positive and should be celebrated. Oprah, Tyra, Disney, feminists, et.al. promote it, laud it, and provide the social proof necessary to get a large portion of their female audience to buy into such celebrations.
Poetry finishes by saying,
I cannot imagine a society of healthy women.
Yeah, me neither, but then again I can’t image a society of psychologically healthy men either.
God tells me he can get me out of this mess, but he’s pretty sure you’re fucked.
Just kidding. I’m pretty sure we’re all fucked.
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