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One of the interesting things that I have noticed regarding the "s l u t" label in America - it seems that many/most women are more fearful of this label being thrown at them by other women. I began to wonder about this after I first heard the expression "Women dress for other women, but they undress for men". Women live in a rather "catty" world much of the time, and I have had many women agree with or easily understand the quote above when I have mentioned it to them.
I also do not understand the "fear" factor that AW seem to display more than women in other cultures. I'm talking about that fear that AW have of a man they do not know - "is he a serial-killer" kind of thinking. I do not think this fear is as prevalent in many other cultures - but it may be partially explained by Lenin's remarks that AW are so "emotionally detached" that they have lost the ability to "test" a man in a relatively short period of time like the RW that he used for an example.
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Perhaps in addition to the concept of shame, our government has become ass-kissers to those prudes that complain that there is "too much sex" on TVs or American society in general. Our politicians feel that they have to please everyone including those old haggy prudes, and with advanced medicine, there is unfortunately a growing number of them and therefore more votes against porn. I don't mean to place the blame on old ladies but a majority of the prudes are old ladies and advanced medicine keeps these old haggards alive to complain about sex. Our politicians therefore make laws forbidding sex because they want to get the votes of these increasing numbers of old hags. In England, there is a monarchy which in my opinion works in favor of porn and sex, if the monarch themselves are sexually liberal. The monarchy doesn't have to worry about votes or doesn't have to answer to old complaining prude hags and goats that are against sex. I think Queen Elizabeth II is very mature about sex, much more mature than these old crows we have here in America that vote against sex and have an increasing amount of power with their growing numbers. This is why England is more sexually mature than Americans. Guys, don't think this threat is not real, IT IS! And these old crows that hate sex are non-working old ladies who are retired and have nothing better to do than to pick on the sex industry and instill "shame" on us. They also have the time to vote because they don't go to work. Also we don't talk about sex in front of our mothers because we fear that mother think that that type of discussion is inappropriate and taboo. When it comes to sex, no one is open with each other. Even our fathers aren't open with their sons about it either. We had to learn it from the streets which is no good way to learn and yes, it does lead to consequences such as experimentation and teen pregnancy.
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I really rather doubt you can low the credit/blame for sexual attitudes in England at the feet of the monarchy, which is at this point basically a parasitic figurehead. If you're going to do that, you should probably be arguing about the liberalizing effect of Hollywood, which generally doesn't seem to have done all that much. And I think the "old lady" argument is a smokescreen -- how did all those old ladies get the way they are? (Not to mention that there are some pretty bawdy old broads out there -- for many age has meant a liberalization of attitude, as they simply don't care about conforming any more.) Most of the attitudes and laws we're talking about are long-standing in American society, and are deeply ingrained in the psyche.
Let's face it, there is and always has been a very strong "anti-pleasure" strain in the US, which says that anything that simply feels good must be bad for you, or at the very least a waste of time and money. Perhaps some of this comes from the frontier history, where the failure to get the necessary firewood, food, or protection could literally mean death. The frontier spirit is generally not exactly one which glorifies having a good time -- it's about carving out ownership of land as a way of generating wealth, with wealth equalling freedom. The American animal defines success by accumulation, and is driven by the religion of capitalism which preaches the same thing. (Not to mention the various actual religious with similar preachings.) This manifests itself not only in materialistic women, but in materialistic men who worry about being taken advantage of by materialistic women, as past postings in this thread have evidenced.
I think the suspicious nature of Americans comes from a variety of places. Every parent in this culture teaches their children not to talk to strangers, and has done so for countless years. They're considered to be bad parents if they don't do this. Why, when we become adults, should this training suddenly wear off? We are also in an environment absolutely saturated with media that plays up violence of all kinds (because it sells) and makes folk heroes of serial killers. (Is there another country that has a "Mass Murderer Hall of Fame" or sells T-shirts with serial killers on them?) And, of course, heroes such as Ted Bundy are charming seeimingly normal people, which drives home the point that anyone could be a psychopath, including the person right next to you who you think you've known for years. Again, why would this not have an effect on personal relationships?
Excitement in the US is defined in terms of fear and the forbidden, not pleasure. The natural reaction to fear is withdrawal, as opposed to pleasure, which is about seeking closeness. We play up and glorify violence, and everyone wants to see it but no one obviously wants to be a victim of it. So the reaction to that is to gawk but not get involved. Thus we are a nation of voyeurs -- we watch but are suspicious of participation. There's a quote by someone, I forget who, that says, "Television is more interesting than people. If it weren't we'd have people standing in the corners of our rooms." Amen.
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jz, you make great points in your arguments. we are a nation of workaholics and materialists. i notice that my peers that don't travel spend all their money on material pleasures such as food, televisions, houses, and some spend a lot on their cars as though it's more important than a wife. we spend nothing on bodily pleasures like sex because bodily pleasures are illegal in this country. and the more material we have, the more we have to worry about like car thefts, divorce, burglary, etc. we spend more time worrying about making money to buy more things and protecting the things we already have that we neglect ourselves. some of us become overweight because we don't exercise because all of our energy goes to materials. they also figure that they don't have to look good because they aren't trying to meet the sexiest sex partner but they just want to accumulate and buy more stuff and make more money to buy stuff. there's nothing wrong with making money and owning things but being obsessed with it is what's wrong with american society and what makes us neglect our sex lives. this is what i also notice about sci-fi geeks. they spend all their time and money collecting and paying for very expensive star trek or star wars memorabilia that they have no time or money to move out of their parent's basement nor do hey have money to travel. and one of them is my co-worker who makes the same $70k a year a i do yet he cannot travel, why, because he spends thousands of dollars on star trek stuff which brings us back to american materialism. those that spend all their money on their cars or other material things have the same bug but to a lesser degee than the sci-fi geek.
i also agree that we are a nation of voyeurs. this explains why more than half of all americans are overweight and out of shape. most of us spend a third of our day watching tv and watching others do what we would like to do. instead of doing skateboarding, basketball, baseball, martial arts, gymnastics, skiiing, etc, we rather sit in front of the tv and watch others do it. it is a more comfortable lifestyle that way instead of spending hours praticing and being good at what we would have liked to do. well this is a curse casted upon american society. they end up being nobodies. i for one hated being like the average american and since i loved martial arts, i didn't just sit back and watch it on tv. i enrolled in the usa shaolin temple kung-fu school and practiced for 3 days a week to actually do what i loved. this same situation describes our sex lives. the porn industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and since sex is illegal in the usa, people watch others do sex. for some of us, we are thrusted upon just watching porn and not getting laid. having sex with aws is very difficult so we have nothing better to do than to fantasized about it with porn. most of us cannot afford to travel and fuck foreign women so those of us in this situation are also forced into this. and as i mentioned, some of us spend all of time and money on material things and run out of money to travel. but some of us travel and for the rest of the time between trips, we don't get much action in the usa so we end up just watching porn. i respect people on this board who take the time and money to travel if they can't get any action in america even if they are married to a prude. they are more like the athletes that actually want to participate in the sport and do so.
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Thanks JZ for good overview of history.
You showed clearly that Puritanism added one of the biggest negative parts to the
problem and Darkseid’s "culture of shame" is logical results of this problem.
Jak, you made excellent summary and yesterday I myself became victim
of that you are talking about.
My new RW girlfriend told me that she feel shame every Sunday when she go to Canadian Baptist church because now she think it is sin that we are having sex.
She never had such kind of problems before.
F*ck, this North American system can beat you unexpectedly from any angle.
Sometimes I think why are women so stupid?
Why they easily accept all this puritanism, feminism and other crap?
If you look in Stone Age - Hunter-man could survive even if his society rejects him, woman couldn’t survive.
Man could afford to go against society opinion, woman not.
Therefore women more willing to follow the rules of society does not matter how stupid this rules could be.
Jak, It also can explain why many/most women are more fearful of this label(s l u t) being thrown at them by other women. They afraid others women more than men because others women more loyal to the system than men. (They more were afraid to be thrown out from the Stone Age cave than the men)
About "fear" factor of AW.
A also think AW need to compensate theirs emotional communication shortage with man by watching TV which is in many cases shows men like criminals. Seems American TV dangerous not only for children but for AW as well.
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JZ - I have to complement you on your last post - I found it to be thoughtful and eloquent. I actually printed it out to reflect on a little later.
I do feel inclined to emphasize the role that the puritan thinking has on our culture. Lenin's recent and timely example with a current RW really hit home. It seems that shame is a very strong cultural trait in our society and is quite insidious (seemingly more powerful of an influence on women). Lenin, I'll have to think a little more about the Stone Age argument you present. Whatever the merits of your argument going back this far in history, I would have to agree that women in general seem to be a little more concerned with staying within the norms of society.
I have also wondered about the "child-centered" argument many men make about AW. This was first made clear to me when a girlfriend of mine in my mid-twenties talked about the pictures on the desks of the ladies in her office (she worked in a larger office with mostly females). She laughed when she talked about how a woman with a boyfriend or new husband would have a big picture on her desk or under the clear plastic in the middle of her desk. When the first child arrived, the husband's picture would get moved off to the side or a smaller picture would replace it. When a second child arrived, the husband would almost always disappear. The implication of this is symbolic of the place the man has in the eyes of his wife.
Is this phenomenon, or what it seems to represent, typical of most women around the world in relation to the husband in their life? Or is this more of a particular to our American culture?
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I think that women of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds will put the children in front of the husband if and when it comes to that. Perhaps women from different cultures will do this to different degrees, but I think it is pretty universal. I think it is probably natural as well; the children came FROM them whereas the husband only came IN them.
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Well put, DH, I completely agree.
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Seems our discussion most advanced in whole internet.
I made searches and could find anything similar.
I mean comparison women
from different cultures based on different criteria.
We are made a lot of analyses. May be based on our previous discussions it is time
to start think how and in which areas is possible to improve situation with AW?
JZ, is anybody before had some ideas about it on this forum?
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I'd say that discussion on making things improve have been pretty thin here, actually. They've generally fallen into a couple of main categories:
1. Change the legal situation surrounding marriage so that it doesn't "favor" women. (This was pretty much a firestorm discussion, I'd say, with little positive outcome.)
2. Have men change their own attitudes and behavior toward AW. (Again, rather a firestorm discussion that tended to devolve into a blame game.)
3. Forget it, it's not going to improve, time to look elsewhere.
Looking at change here tends to lead to more personal testimony or complaint and gets off track, and there are also few people here who actually offer a positive model. Those who do are often either a) condescending about it or b) are handed their lunch. Either way, this kind of discussion in the past has pretty invariably ended up devolving into personal attack. But the recent discussion here has had a pretty minimal amount of that, so maybe we'd have better luck tackling it again.
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It is very logical to move in the direction of discussing "how and in which areas is it possible to improve our situation with AW." The easy way, and the way which many men seem to feel here, is to give up on them and forget them - accept looking elsewhere. While I generally feel the same way, I do have an interest (for whatever reason) in exploring the issues relating to AW (and how they are similar and/or different from other women) or I wouldn't be here.
If JZ's "main categories" are rather accurate, it would seem that a focus on #2 would be the more interesting. While a small number of guys like us can talk about a "cultural and legal revolution" (#1)in this country, I just don't think that I have that much desire or energy to realistically move a country in that direction. That would leave #3, in which case we could probably ask Jackson to remove this thread from the forum.
With #2 in mind, one of the interesting weekly articles I enjoy checking in on is "Doc Love" on the site www.askmen.com. All of his past articles that respond to "questions?" written in are archived. He's a politically incorrect Dear Abby that focuses on guys. It has the general focus of the #2 (men change their own behavior and attitudes toward AW).
I have enjoyed exploring the recent compare/contrast of AW with other women from other cultures. It's always good to have someone from another culture to give their firsthand impressions. Narratives and personal stories can be helpful to support arguments, since research only shows correlations by definition and never proves anything. I think the idea is to have some balance.
Well, with all this said, I'm ready to forget AW for the next week. I'm leaving for Buenos Aires in an hour and am looking forward to experiencing the women of that particular culture for the first time.
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Ah, hey, that's just [i]my[/i] impression and summation of things in this thread -- by all means, if someone else sees it differently, please correct me!
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In order to change the problem of laws favoring AW, we have to be the majority vote to send a bill to Congress to amend the divorce laws. However, we are only a drop in the bucket (so many men in America are complacent about it and are blind to this problem including the happily married men and don't see the problem like we do.) We cannot outvote the feminists and prudes that favor these divorce laws because they outnumber us. That is the problem with democracry. Politicians have to be people pleasers so since there are so many feminists in America, they rule America. If you want to avoid spoiled women, I would take Jak's advice and go elsewhere. Forget America, and it's spoiled women. It's a no-win battle. Some foregin men like Lenin and even my foreign co-workers from the Phillipines see this problem and don't get involved with American women. They decided to spend 5 to 10 years here in America and take their earnings back home with them. In fact one of my former co-workers from the Phillipines quit after he worked in my office for 10 years and kept complaining that American women are snotty and decided to go back to the Phillipines with the money he saved to get married. He is now back in the Phillipines happily married with 3 kids. He also found the same type of job BUT makes only 1/3 the amount he made in Verizon. However, the standard of living is a lot cheaper which compensates for the lost income. He also saved a lot of US dollars to live like a king in the Phillipines. I wish I met this guy earlier because I knew him for just 3 years. If I saved all my money I would have been able to make a run from America by now.
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darkseid, I am agree.
I wonder however how gays in US managed to get right legislation and respect in spite they are minority?
Darkseid, I am curious about Brazilians in NYC.
Did you try to find Brazilian women in NYC.? They have big Brazilian community there.
One more cultural phenomena I found here which
does not exist in Russia or in Brazil for example as I know.
A lot of songs in which man humiliates himself in front
of his woman or crying. Seem such songs are quite popular here.
It is so embarrassing and shocking to hear.
Holly shit! If it is already cultural then you can do nothing about it.
Unfortunately I am not very well in listening English
songs. If somebody remember can he, please, print
such text with names of the songs and authors.
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A majority of people voting in favor of gay rights are NOT gay and they feel sorry for gays because they are persecuted, beaten, or killed for WHO they are. I for one support their rights to live as people in America because I hate bigotry of any kind. Being persecuted for the way you are is not a pleasant thing and I face that as an Asian guy. It is the NON-gay people that fight for their rights as equals in America.
On the other hand, NO one sympathizes with the divorced man in America. People are taught that the divorced man deserves to be screwed and that he brought it upon himself to be taken to the cleaners. That is why there is such a high suicide rate among divorced men in America. People don't vote in favor of these poor men like they would vote in favor of gay rights. Divorced men have no one to back them up and that is why divorce laws are fucked up the way they are. Women tend to get more sympathy than men in the sad situation of divorce. They play the victim and the courts favor them. They also get sympathy in general. All they have to do is cry and people give into their demands to make her happy. If divorced men cry, they are looked upon as crybabies and people tell them to grow up and accept their losses. This aspect repels me to the prospect of marriage.
Actually, Lenin, I involve myself with the Brazillian community in New York City by taking capoeira which is a brazillian dance martial arts. Unfortunately, the ones that were born here have learned the ways of shame. They also make you wait for sex. The ones that come from Brazil are less into shame and are more willing to have sex. However, my relationship with one was cut short because she wanted to sleep with as many different guys as she could and yes there is more guys than women in NYC so she was like a kid in a candy store.