Emerald

It was moreso when he first started the forum. It was a very different online culture.

Keep in mind that I'm talking about people who I know personally. Some of these guys were even my friends, despite their problematic behaviors. Most of these guys weren't sociopaths at all. Most of them really were just too lazy to operate from a code of ethics... and didn't really care about integrity. (and there are environmental reasons for the laziness and lack of ethics, which I'll get to in a minute) The vast majority of them were just low integrity guys with weaker ethical boundaries and less discernment about what kinds of behaviors they're willing to do and what kinds of behaviors that they're willing to accept in those they socialize with. To give an analogy, it's like the difference between a person who has higher standards for the cleanliness and tidiness of their house compared to other people who have lower standards for cleanliness and tidiness. So, one person might have low standards for tidiness and end up with garbage all through their house because they don't have the sensitivity or standards to even notice the garbage enough or see it as a big enough issue to deal with. And perhaps they stay in the status quo and follow the path of least resistance, so they end up too lazy to actively fix the problem. They don't have the activation energy to fix it because "Eh. It's whatever." This is what happens with people who have weak ethical boundaries too. They just are not sensitive enough and they don't have high enough standards to live in alignment with a code of ethics. And unless they have a "come to Jesus moment", they just follow the path of least resistance... which is what I mean by ethical laziness. It's doing things that make them less trustworthy... be being apathetic and not seeing it as a big enough problem to warrant the effort to change or fix it. But I recognize that there's a huge environmental factor to it... but not necessarily that they were the target of violence per se. Only some of them were in violent environments, but all of them were raised in low-standard environments with the philosophy of "things just are the way they are". But not every guy who was raised in those types of environments became like that, to be clear. In my hometown, one of the worst things about the area that I lived is that people had very low standards in general... relative to ethics, hygiene, the state of their house, who they're willing to accept as a romantic partner, etc. And that pattern of low standards is quite contagious to be around... especially if you've lived your entire life in it. So, I've known a lot of people who have been living their entire lives in a context that normalizes degenerative behaviors to where none of it feels like a very big deal. But it's a lot of people robotically or semi-robotically doing things that compromise their integrity, healthy, and overall quality of life. And a guy who has this level of apathy and "Whatever fuck it." mentality probably isn't going to do the work necessary to stick to a code of ethics... a may have a tendency to be less pressed about crossing others' boundaries... sexually and otherwise.

By that definition, every single man that's not sleeping with every single woman in existence is sexually frustrated. And there is no man on the planet that's sleeping with all 4 billion women. 1. Are you saying that every single man is sexually frustrated? 2. Are you saying that every single instance of sexual harassment comes from sexual frustration?

Thank you! I find that it really is the necessary vehicle to communicate about these kinds of topics.

@Shakazulu Thank you for sharing your story. And I hope that you mend quickly. And there's a lot of wisdom in the realizations you're speaking of. There is a line in the Bible that says something like, "Those who exalt themselves will be humbled." And I have found that, whenever I conceptualize of myself in an idealized way or try to build an idealized narrative around myself as "the special one" or "the chosen one", eventually that bubble gets burst... and then humbling happens. And there is great benefit to being humbled even though it's incredibly painful. It's like a disillusionment, grief, and embarrassment. But it's healthier, and it's more helpful for recognizing our place within humanity. If we exalt ourselves, we see ourselves as above other humans and it disconnects us from our place within humanity... and we experience a sense of exile, shame, and intense pressure that we often are unconscious to. But the humbling painfully reminds us that we are human and flawed.... and that we are not that different from any other person. We are ordinary people and we operate like ordinary people do. And knowing this in an embodied way helps us feel deeply intertwined and interconnected with humanity, nature, and existence at large.

A guy committing sexual harassment against a woman doesn't necessarily mean that he's doing so because he's sexually frustrated. In my teen years, I had been on the receiving end of sexual harassment many times from many different male peers and occasionally adult men. I was really unprotected from it because of the social situations that I was in. And it wasn't that all (or even most) of these guys had no sexual outlet. Every male peer that I'm talking about had girls in their social circle (because I was in their social circle and many other girls were too). So, the vast majority of them had girlfriends at one point or another. (Remember, this was the early 2000s and young men socialized back then.) In my experience of being the receiving end of sexual harassment... they most commonly were just morally weak guys who lacked ethical boundaries in many facets of life and sexual harassment was just one of those ethical lapses that are common with this type of person. They would also cheat on girlfriends, steal from people and stores, lie without care, and do generally untrustworthy things. It like, 'How a man does one thing is how he does everything." And it was usually that these guys were too lazy to maintain a code of ethics. Several of them were also bitter misogynists who had contempt for women/girls and wanted to degrade a young woman as an expression of sexual aggression towards women, and used sexual harassment as a way to do that. Or sometimes the guys just didn't view girls as whole people outside of being vessels for their own pleasure. They just weren't conscious that they were actually going over a person's boundaries because they weren't aware enough to see women as people. This one was usually just a result of a lack of reflection and lower critical thinking skills. Some of them were also guys who were incredibly socially inept and would transgress sexual boundaries into the realm of sexual harassment because they just didn't get it. Like, I remember in my freshman year of high school one unattractive guy with poor hygiene that was very socially uncalibrated would say, "Where's my hug at?" whenever he'd see me. And for context, I was in a very huggy alt-kid group where everyone hugged one another all the time. So, it would have been a clear act of social rejection to refuse someone a hug in this context... which wasn't something I felt comfortable doing at the time. But when he'd come to the group specifically to ask me "Where's my hug at?", I'd reluctantly give him a hug to be nice. And I'd try to give him a quick 2-second hug, but he'd physically hold me there for 10-15 seconds and caress my sides and back up and down while I was trying to squirm away. And he was socially clueless that he didn't really belong in the group, as he just wasn't on the same wavelength. And he was also socially clueless that the long romantic sensual hugs were unwanted despite me trying to squirm away. But the majority of these guys didn't sexually harass because they lacked outlets for sex... or couldn't get a girlfriend. There was even one guy on my bus who I never crossed paths with personally. But he was like a stereotypical rapey classically handsome jock guy from a movie. And he'd be saying very disgusting sexually degrading misogynistic things very loudly on the bus. I honestly would not be shocked at all if I found out that he got convicted of sex crimes. And I just thought he was a vile person. And he was certainly not lacking outlets to girlfriends or sex. He was frequently talking about his sexual escapades on the bus. And he was saying all sorts of disparaging sexual things to and about other young women. It was like a daily occurrence on the bus, him saying really disturbing sadistic things. So, that guy is a perfect example of how sexual harrassment doesn't come from sexual frustration.

You may not recognize it, but I am doing you a great kindness right now in challenging your ideas. But you must understand that you're not asking me for empathy. You're asking me to coddle you and to tell you comforting lies, so that you don't have to take personal responsibility for your own dating problems or take responsibility for solving them. And I am giving you VERY specific actionable advice... get acquainted with women, make friends with women, and interact with women. It doesn't get more concrete than that. And it's quite simple to understand that that's what you must do, even if there are challenges to doing so. And let's be real, it isn't that women don't like you. You haven't even interacted with women enough to know whether or not a specific woman likes you or not. And women are not a monolith or a hivemind. Some women will like you. Some women will dislike you. That's how it goes with people from any group. So, it's not that women (as a hivemind in your imagination) don't like you... it's that you don't like women as a collective group, which is why you refuse to interact with them or make acquaintances with them. Take responsibility for your own feelings of dislike towards women instead of projecting your own dislike towards women as a group onto female strangers and believing that they collectively and monolithically dislike you. I think the reason why you don't find our exchanges "productive" (aka comforting) is because I'm telling you to take personal responsibility for your own issue that blocks you from doing the legwork to become acquainted with women... which is the only way of finding a partner and getting your desired outcomes with women. It's more comfortable to see this problem as a problem women must solve for you... and that women are to blame for. You just don't want to take personal responsibility. You'd rather just finger-wag random women you aren't acquainted with for not fulfilling your fantasy of spontaneously given charitable romantic love. If 100% of women are strangers to you, you simply cannot rationally expect that women that you don't know are going to come breaking down your door to give you romantic love and kindness. That is the fantasy that I'm trying to break you of. And that is why I am sharp and not soft. It would be incredibly mean of me to re-inforce your victim's mentality rationalizations and coddle you and be like, "Don't worry sweetie baby honey pumpkin. None of this is your responsibility. It's not your problem to solve. It's those mean women who are at fault that are responsible for the problem, and so they are the only ones who have the power and responsibility to fix it. You are powerless in this situation, so you obviously can't fix the problem. So, you have no responsibility at all in the matter. Just wait for a selfless stranger woman to come and save you purely out of the goodness of her own heart." And it would be incredibly unkind to validate this idea because it would allow you to languish in victim's mentality and powerlessness where you never solve your own problem.

Yes, that's definitely a good step in the right direction of integration... as feelings are an element of the Feminine principle as it applies to being human.

The way I could describe this phenomenon that I experienced that was clear that the closest word to describe it in the English language is "Femininity".... I would say that you may be able to get a taste of it by being outside at night near a misty body of water... and feeling calm and serene in the silence. But this isn't how it feels to be a woman on a typical basis. The experience of woman-like-ness does overlap with Femininity in many ways... but there's also uniquely human things that are not specifically reflective of the Feminine. But if you're going for the direct energy of the Feminine subtle quality, I think outside at night in the silence of nature and sensing your interconnection with nature is a good way to get a taste of the Feminine polarity in a non-gender-focused way. But I have a video where I talk about qualities to integrate if you want to integrate the Feminine...

Thank you for sharing that. The deep Feminine definitely isn't just a woman thing. It's just that, within the English language, the closest word we have to describing the phenomenon of that polarity is the word "Feminine". But it doesn't derive from human gender.... but it supersedes and informs human gender expressions. Like, when I went into that first medicine journey, I believed for most of my life that Masculinity and Femininity were only social constructs with nothing real underneath them. And I was nearly 100% certain about that. But then, when my consciousness expanded in the medicine journey, I experienced this subtle energy all around me and within me in the plants, trees, night, and myself. And the only word in the English language that fit to describe this subtle energy was "Femininity". And it was my first glimpse that there's something real and not socially constructed about the Feminine (and logically that would imply a realness about the Masculine as well). But it didn't remotely resemble any of the cultural constructs around the Feminine that I was familiar with. It had nothing to do with pink, dresses, make-up, shopping, etc. It was dark and quiet and peaceful... and full of life-potential in waiting. And it was me. And I could see what my very Masculine value-system imposed on me by the culture had disconnected me from. And years later, I recognized that other languages had better and more accurate words to describe this subtle quality. So, the closest word that I know to describe it is Yin, as in the Taoist perspective... or Shakti from a Hindu perspective. But the closest word in the English language to describe it is Femininity. But there are problems with this. And that problem is that it gets confusing for people because colloquially people believe "Femininity = woman-like-ness". And we associate the word Femininity with female gender norms and pop cultural ideas around Femininity... and ideas of what makes a woman attractive. But the Feminine supersedes human gender expressions and human gender norms. So, both men and women have this Yin/Feminine polarity within themselves. But it can be noticed that women (as a group) tend to have more Yin in their "energetic signatures" as a collective group. So, there's a lot of muddying of the waters around this topic because we use the word Femininity to describe several things at once. And when I suggest for men to integrate their Feminine side, they often believe that I'm telling them to act like a woman. But all people should integrate their Feminine side and depolarize their values-system and identity, so that one can find their natural energetic signature which is a unique blend of the Masculine and Feminine (Yang and Yin).

Yes, we're definitely discussing two perspectives on the Feminine. I'm just not very interested in exploring the anthropological expressions of the Feminine, as the deep Feminine has been buried for many millennia and will not be found very much in culture and anthropology. And it doesn't help me find my own Feminine that I frequently become conscious to in my medicine journeys when the blocks temporarily fall away. The organizing structures of society (like gender roles) are Masculine-principled. And expressions of woman-like-ness are external structures of persona-expression of the symbolic conception of Femininity within a given cultural container. What I am calling the deep Feminine is more internal... and doesn't have to do with organizing principles. Culture, roles (including gender roles), external expressions, categories, and the like are in the Masculine principle. The Feminine principle is organic, un-organized, subjective, and internal. It doesn't have much to do with the layer of reality you're speaking about. It's deeply embedded in one's inner world... which is part of the reasons that the deep Feminine is more resemblant of the physical body of the women (who have their reproductive organs on the inside). But if I were having a discussion about gender roles, cultural patterns, man-like-ness, woman-like-ness, and what's empirically observable... we can certainly have a more Masculine principled conversation on that and explore it through the lens of the Masculine principle. And I'm not opposed to operating from that perspective if that's the right perspective for the job. But I find the Masculine-principled lens too detached from the direct experience of the Feminine and how I can internally and subjectively reconnect with my own repressed Femininity and how women as a collective can also walk the same internal, subjective path. You can understand all you want about what women statistically do in a culture, but that gives you no effective tools for the doing the deep excavation work necessary for finding your repressed Feminine sovereignty.

Yes. He's not aware of what my perspective entails. Like I said, it makes sense that he wouldn't be. He's thinking more about cultural conceptions of woman-like-ness, when I'm speaking more about the Yin polarity and what Femininity is in terms of a direct mystical experience of the subtle energy and the Feminine archetypes. But the argument on his part is moot, because his paradigm on the Feminine doesn't have any tools for me to use to reconnect with that part of myself. And this has been a nearly 2 decades-long journey I've been on where I began with his perspective and found it to be an ineffective way of thinking about things for my journey. So, to my perception, it's just the dilemma of the Dunning-Kreuger... a person who doesn't know how much they don't know. The Dunning-Kreuger knows enough about the surface-level of a topic to where they believe they're knowledgable... but they don't understand that they're operating off of a dearth of knowledge about that topic. But when encountering someone has explored the topic at a deeper level, the Dunning-Kreuger is like, "That's not how it's done!" because it doesn't match with their more surface-level knowledge. For example, when I was 5 years old, I learned that "When you subtract numbers, you take away the smaller number from the bigger number." And so, because I thought I was in the know about math, it certainly could have happened that child-me interacts with some PhD in a math-related field. And then, I correct their math because "Hey! You're not supposed to subtract bigger numbers from smaller numbers. Silly!"

I do understand that. And while I do think it's important for men to integrate their Feminine side (which requires some deeper know-how beyond the cultural conception of the female-like-ness), I get that it may not be their top priority to do so. The main thing, with my conversation with the other poster is that he's focusing on the question of "What's empirically true about cultural conceptions of Femininity according to studies?" But my focus is, "What is going to be an effective subjective paradigm on Femininity that I can use (and other women can use) to reconnect with the Feminine in a word that is either unaware of or actively devalues deeper expressions of the Feminine principle?" So, my perspective is "What's effective for integrating the Feminine?" And his perspective is, "What's empirically true about woman-like-ness and female gender roles on a cultural level?" But the answer to his question doesn't give me any tools or perspectives to work with that are effective for my own ends. And to be fair, I did try his way first. I experienced the Feminine directly at age 20. And I tried to shove myself into the traditional female gender role for the first few years of my twenties. And I was with my husband at 20. And I was a mom by 22. So, I was really trying to be just a mom and wife and to carve away my previous identity. But this diminished me and didn't feel anything like what I experienced at 20... which was this deep peaceful essence pregnant with eroticism and power that existed in the night and the trees. And I had made myself very very small. Then, at around 22-23, I stumbled into reading some Feminist literature. And for a few months, I got really into that. And it unwired some more surface-level barriers to reconnecting with m Feminine. But it didn't go deep enough. Then, at 23, I was listening to Tool in my room and pacing around and was in deep contemplation. And the phrase "Masculine and Feminine principle" jumped into my mind. And I hadn't heard those phrases before. But they felt like something interesting to me. So, I went immediately to Google and typed it in. And I found this woman's blog called Matrignosis. Her name is Jean Raffa and (at the time) she was in her early 70s. And she is a Jungian enthusiast who speaks a lot about Feminine integration... and her experiences with integrating the Feminine. And as I read her blog, I felt like I was reading the work of a 70 year old version of myself. And she was wise and deeply connected to the Feminine. And the struggles she spoke of with her own polarization into the Masculine was so relatable... and I'm sure many women would find it relatable. Then, that was my first effective in-road to the path that leads the deep Feminine. Prior to that I was just looking in ineffective places... first in traditional patriarchal Femininity, which is very man-centered and Masculinity-centered. Then, I looked into Feminist perspectives, which were more helpful... but still very surface level and still very Masculinity-centered. So, finding deeper perspectives to go on the journey was necessary. It's been my main internal journey over the past 16 years.

@questionreality is an ironic name for you, for one. I just realize that it's funny that someone with your perspective has that username. But I understand if you don't recognize the depth or validity of my perspective on the Feminine... because you haven't had the direct experience of it that I have. So, you'd have to simply believe me because these were direct phenomenological experiences... and it's fine that you're skeptical. And perhaps your more materialist cultural definition of the Feminine works for your purposes. But for me, I have had to dive VERY deep into this topic and do tons of inner work and contemplation and study various disciplines to reconnect with my Feminine side. And simply using the cultural costumes of Femininity would not be sufficient for my purposes. So, you can believe what you wan. But the materialist viewpoint that you're paradigm locked on has no efficacy for my purposes.

Yep.