Becoming a woman!?!

Such a windbag T. What has this to do with nofap?

Our whole identity and way we relate to each other is grounded in our gender. No doubt we all have masculine and feminine traits to a greater or lesser extent, but people do incredible violence to themselves (even physically) when they declare war on their biological gender. Men need to, lol, make peace with their malehood just like women need to make peace with their womanhood. I also need women to be women, for my own benefit, just like they need me to be a man and kill the spider. Everybody wins, our mutual needs are fulfilled and love can flourish.

But no doubt it's true that feminism has split the notion of femininity in recent decades, with women being told that real power and worth is determined by a high-powered testosterone-fueled careers in law, politics, major corporations. But I think that statistics still show that most women would prefer to be wives and mothers, exercising their own unique power in the way that is natural to them (nurturing and complementing male decisions through their unique perspective - cf pretending to be men, suppressing their femininity and becoming these ice-queen, battle-axe, ball-breaking anti-women.

Although both gender norms have significantly eroded in recent decades and porn undoubtedly has something to do with it; just look at the threads of guys who gravitate to gay porn and even gay sex - just because it's quicker and easier to get. The other culprit is obviously contraception. Sex is no longer about new life and family because of it. So we're really in uncharted territory in human history. Can authentic masculinity and femininity exist in a vacuum, with their sexual identities molded by a secret porn culture? Or, if we change, can we sustain a collapse in the birthrate and the growth of an alienated youth who grow up without a mother or (usually) father, who would have otherwise shown them how to be a man or woman?

Frankly, the lack of father figures, esp in the home but also in schools, is a much more important issue. Angry young men are far more problematic than unsatisfied women in traditionally male careers.

(my 2 c)

 

Warning: some triggers in the second video

Both very interesting- as a straight, white male, I often feel that both feminism and traditional masculinity have very little to offer me. Traditional masculinity tells me to be tough and fight for myself, while the feminists tell me I have "male privilege".

I say to them "Never judge a person until you've walked a mile in his/her shoes".

 

"Becoming a man" is killing your first deer. "Becoming a woman" is getting your first period.
One you've got to go out and achieve. The other happens whether you want it to or not.
Rigid and exaggerated gender roles are foolish. Become the best person you can be.
You don't have to "prove" that you're a man to be one. Macho culture is dumb. Don't fall for it.
You shouldn't have to prove your worth "despite" being a woman either. Nothing can take away your human worth.
We'll know we've made progress when gender studies are no longer interesting. That's a long way off I'm afraid.

 

Maybe you should message each other private instead of declaring war in public on this site?

 

lol nah we cool

 

No matter what is right and what is wrong, one certainly isn't going to convince anyone to become "more masculine" by simply stating that being "less masculine" is the wrong way. I agree that the arguments about the "natural state of being" are cheap and intellectually worn out. If we, as the specie, always adhered to what is "natural" and what is not, we'd never have gotten off trees.

To me what is important however is the preservation of our civilization, in one form or another. The modern pop culture along with all these modernist bullshit ideas of feminism, equality, career etc. constitutes a severe danger to this, because it simply discourages people to actually breed, instead chasing for money and short-term pleasures. Unless the leftists today are actually aiming at the "Brave New World" order, where people are planted like flowers and grown under absolute control of the almighty government. Well, this is not my thing.

But I am no fool thinking that this can be altered by simply forcing people to do so. No, what must be done is: the willing, aware and clever individuals must set good examples, must display POSITIVITY (by stating, as proven with their own case: "look, family is good!") instead of NEGATIVITY (by yelling all the time about how lack of family is bad). One has to add something to the overall image, instead of only reducing it.

And even though the changes might not be visible in years or even decades to come, as the public opinion is constantly under siege of pop media that will obviously promote only what is beneficial to them, only that way can anything be changed for good. What I fear however is this world will rather collapse under its own pressure before any change can be noted. But at least the righteous people will die with clean conscience - and what is more valuable for a noble man than that?

 

This is awesome..... PC says this type of thinking is antiquated and out of place in the modern world.... but everything in nature says otherwise ! Sometimes we are just to clever for our own good. The notion of "if it feels right, just do it" is whats led so many ppl to this site in the first place.... a better quote would be "if it feels right, and once you've considered the consequences, talked to ppl wiser than yourself, checked history to see if it's been done b4... only then should you consider doing it" !

 

(Sorry if the following doesn't translate well outside the USA)

This reminds me of the fairly ubiquitous foul-mouthed insult lobbed at young men, "Don't be a pussy!"
And it is applied when? When the male is complaining about being hurt, and he shows his feelings ("Pussy!").
When a male is failing at sports, or cooperating instead of agitating, or submitting to legit authority ("Pussy!").
Or, when he's merely exercising common sense ("Won't go drunk dirt-bike racing with us on the train tracks? Pussy!")
The insult is so common, WOMEN and GIRLS use it to chastise boys. Sometimes we even slip up and use against FEMALES!
So of course we need to add positive adjectives to the word "woman".
We want to make it clear we're talking about a good state of being, not a weak, failed state of being.

What a crazy world we live in. When a four-year-old boy is told, "Man up!" it means, don't cry, be stoic, don't act like you're a child.
And when an ten-year-old softball player is told, "Don't throw like a girl!" it means, don't throw the ball badly, don't be inept, don't be incapable... "Oh, you ARE a girl? No matter. The advice still stands. What? You'd prefer that I use more politically correct language because of feminism? Ha! Pussy!"

 

Hey e5s, interesting post. I certainly find this kind of behavior childish, but perhaps your solution to the problem isn't the most ideal.

Language is illusory, so I think blanketing more elaborate and complicated patterns of meaning by attempting to alter words goes in the wrong direction of the ideal goal, which is to not denigrate a particular group of people, in this case women.

I think a fundamental failure of feminism is its inherent desire to be masculine in this field (as with most things it criticizes)- as in it asserts its dominance in the interpretation of the effects of language, but all it's doing is essentially slapping a band-aid over a problem rather than root out the problem and move on to constructing a new way of thinking- what I believe your suggestion as doing.

You were getting at the root when you talk about how men are expected to act in a particular way. In order for the majority of men to feel socially comfortable as what they perceive to be masculine, one easy way they know how to subjugate men who are straying from the norm is to emasculate them- call them pussies.

But I see this problem as degrading the content of the male character more so than the woman's, at least from my perspective. This is mainly some men manipulating other men through emasculation. If you wanted to say, command every man to start saying "idiot" instead of "pussy" it wouldn't root out the deeper problem which is actually primate in nature. Do you see what I mean? This is men being apes competing over women, subconsciously of course. This is how men gain power (it's the most temporary power) and how they can gain self-confidence too.

 

Thumbs up!

 

Thanks, Tshoo.

I think it's always harmful to both boys and girls to limit the possibilities of what they can become.

Like, if a boy is naturally very emotionally attuned, or very into book-learning, interested in sewing or cooking, it isn't right to say, "Oh, no, these things are not for you. They're much too feminine. You'll be like a girl, and that's bad. Don't be like your mother and your sister, or nobody will respect you!"

Or, if a girl naturally wants to climb trees, build things, compete in sports, or fix cars, it would hurt her very much to say, "No no! Those things shouldn't be what you want. Only those bad feminists are trying to make you into a tomboy! You must embrace your true nature, which is to sit still and wear a dress."

Yes, there are masculine and feminine things. Yes there are males and females.
But within a WHOLE person there are many good things from BOTH the masculine and feminine sides.
Some of us are way out on the edge of the spectrum in nearly every way, being a very "manly man" or a very "girlie girl" (Heh, notice it's not womanly woman!) but a lot of us are closer to the middle, and that's okay. Some of us are even more like the other gender, on balance. And you know what? Society will not crumble if we let people be what they are!

 

Hi Kosh32. I appreciate your response!

It looks like you mistook my description for a proposal. That's okay. I think I can see where the confusion came from. In that last line in my "pussy" post, I wasn't trying to say that anyone should change their language to just satisfy the PC police. That was actually a quote, as accurate as intervening years allow me to recall, from my own dear ol'- *ahem* butch softball coach, whom I wouldn't trade for the world. Even now I only censor myself from the alliteration, not for her sake (Oh Lord!) but because of my own tender sensibilities.

You're right that papering over a problem doesn't solve it. If you tell people they can't say this or that word, they'll find another one. Kids are smacked for saying "retarded" so they switch to "special" or "short bus" in a flash. And then nice people have to stop saying "special" too, because it's insensitive. This really happened. I tell people that my husband works in "what used to be called special education", because nobody knows what the new word means, and the word before that is too offensive!

But... language both reflects and reinforces our underlying attitudes. It's the attitudes I would hope to change.

I'm a little bummed to see in this thread people distancing themselves from feminism, as if a few ivory tower loudmouths spoke for the whole idea! Feminism is, at root, the basic idea that women are people, and that women are equal to men in their humanity, the same kind of equal as referred to in, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [humans] are created equal." Not equal in the ability to move heavy objects and write in the snow, not equal in the ability to gestate and bring forth new life, but simply equal, in the sense of being ends, not means. Equally worthy of consideration as human beings. If you can agree with that much (and believe me, not everyone does!) then you're a feminist. Wear it.

 

Thanks for the response es5, don't mean to derail your personal journal!

I agree that the inner attitudes produce the language, which reinforces the inner attitudes and so on and so forth ad infinitum. Chicken or the egg situation I guess. Regardless, all language is small mouth noises and syntactical constructions, a complete illusion, and can not even touch the underlying emotion it tries in vain to convey.

There have been a few conversations with particularly militant feminists where I felt like I was being bulldozed over and not really given a chance to exchange ideas.

I actually believe that women are more valuable than men. We all start out as women and women carry the more fragile and precious sexual genetic material. I think the whole "women, children first" thing is an intuition from evolution, such that nature already decided what gender is more capable of sustaining humanity. Guys are super prone to short-term impulses, I mean look at the guy:girl ratio for porn addiction. Nature is inherently feminine. So I guess... that doesn't make me a feminist?

 

How do you know that this isn't the result of exposure that came from social and cultural norms? PMO is considered less socially acceptable for females, but it's not as much the case for males. So it's easy to see how males could have been exposed to such materials. In addition, if for whatever reason, more material is aimed at males, then the industry could have been created around that, and developed. There is enormous data on the effectiveness of marketing, and also ample material on how sometimes arbitrary decisions led to much bigger things down the road. So I don't believe that males are inherently more susceptible to this addiction.

What is it supposed to mean that nature is inherently feminine?