Learning to overcome paradoxical socialization

[Abe27]

I feel like i have been told my whole life not to objectify women, not to descriminate and to treat others like, you would like others to treat you. And i have always liked to be a "good" person, my moral instinct is simple to strong to go around and treat others bad and lie to others about how i feel or think. Which makes it from my point of view very difficult about how i should try to act socially.

If i embrace to not discrimitate, then i don't see how i would not act extremely naively? Treating two diffrent people diffrently is everything i do, and almost everyhing that can be done. Acting this way has seemed to not work very well at all, with people rejecting me. 

Discrimination can be defined as "make an unjust or prejudicial distinction in the treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of ethnicity, sex, age, or disability." But i suppose we could also call it making decisions about others for them, about them. Unless i was absurdly honest and asked straight away about my intensions, then i don't see how i could not prejudical distinctions. but at the same time my questions would only come from the then psychical traits a person has, again prejudge, or just judge. If not then they would be just like a stone or animal, then again that is also to judge and categorize. Also what i see as the root problem. A problem that cannot be solved with my current tools or knowledge.

Treating others like you could like to be treated also seems to work like shit. I would always like a honest logical answer. But it seems very clear from my experience that diffrent people would like to be treated in diffrent ways, often not that simillar to onces owns preferences. Sure only i can know myself, and a way to do is to take onces own experience + variens as a guidence. But in a general remark, it's weird how morality only seems to be said if it invols oneself as the object. Cound we not just do something, since it's the right thing? Rather than me, me, me. 

The main problem comes with dating. where i am somewhat forced to all of the above + more. My original attraction is purely psychical, which i suppose is very very closely related objectify women. I also find most women very beautiful and i honestly don't want to reject anyone on thin prejudge ground. I also feel like dating can be a very much selfish thing for me. In therms of treating others like i would like to be treated, then i should almost not date, since i would never like to be with another man. And i very much have a hard time understanding why a woman would find a guy interesting sexually. It can feel like i am just using them for their body, and not those they are, other than their gender. Which i cannot deny that i am, but that might not be a bad thing in this case or?

I have also had some rather uncomfortable experiences with me showing my sexual interest for women, or just in general showing affection, where i feel like i have been strongly stigmitized for doing so. People might say that they are not christian, but they sure act like sexuallity is bad and should be repressed. I can feel these thoughts and pathways of thinking is holdning my back, especially in dating, but also to a lesser degree in day to day life. 

thanks for playing psychologist  

[LastThursday]

3 hours ago, Abe27 said:

I feel like i have been told my whole life not to objectify women, not to descriminate and to treat others like, you would like others to treat you.

These are good guidelines for being a decent person. It seems like it's causing you some amount of confusion or trouble socially though.

In practice these guidelines take work to maintain, it's easy to slip into behaviour that goes against them. The reason for having these guidelines in the first place, is that they are needed, it doesn't come naturally to many people. It all comes down to intention. If you intend to discriminate or to objectify or treat others in a way you wouldn't like yourself, then you're probably causing someone else suffering.

So the more important guidline to follow is to keep asking yourself: am I causing suffering? The thing is, is that you will cause suffering to others at some point, we all do - and we may not even mean to. The best we can do is to apologise, help fix the suffering and not repeat our bad behaviour in future.

The point is not to rigidly follow a set of rules as if they were absolutes, and make our social interactions rigid and inflexible. Instead work to raise your awareness of when others are suffering, and improve your social skills in not causing suffering in the first place or at least help in reducing suffering when you do cause it. This is what the term EQ is all about.

Edited May 10 by LastThursday