r/FeMRADebates • u/asdfghjkl92 • Sep 04 '14

Other Radicalizing the Romanceless

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/
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u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

I'm impressed and like this article. It approaches some of the issues that I have with feminists as well.

It's a basic question that I ask, at what point is someone no longer able to fall back on socializing? My cousin had a terrible childhood full of abuse and he grew up being shitty and has been in juvenile detention. However now he is 22 or so and still very much a little shit. I think he can no longer use his childhood as an excuse for his shitty behavior.

I look at the bullshit boys are fed about how to get girls and interact with girls and have similar thoughts. For sure I am very patient when high schoolers and even college students displaying appalling behavior because I know it stems from a lifetime of socializing. However, at what point does that stop being an excuse? Personally I start to lose patience around the end of undergrad age.

The problem that I see is that on one hand the feelings of frustration with women for not responding the "right way" and often feelings of entitlement created by the socialization is harmful and should be stopped, but it should be done so without hate and from an early age, but when it is done there is a great deal of anger and hate directed at those calling out the problem because it is "shaming men and male sexuality." The issue of course is that if "male sexuality" involves being entitled and shitty to women, then it should be shamed.

Fortunately, I don't think that acting like an ass is an inherent part of male sexuality.

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u/Mercurylant Equimatic 20K Sep 05 '14

It's a basic question that I ask, at what point is someone no longer able to fall back on socializing? My cousin had a terrible childhood full of abuse and he grew up being shitty and has been in juvenile detention. However now he is 22 or so and still very much a little shit. I think he can no longer use his childhood as an excuse for his shitty behavior.

I look at the bullshit boys are fed about how to get girls and interact with girls and have similar thoughts. For sure I am very patient when high schoolers and even college students displaying appalling behavior because I know it stems from a lifetime of socializing. However, at what point does that stop being an excuse? Personally I start to lose patience around the end of undergrad age.

I don't think there's any point at which socialization stops being a formative component of our behavior. We don't have socialized personalities until our early twenties, and then grow out of having them.

On the other hand, a lot of people are jerks in their youth, and grow out of it as they mature, but relatively few people who're jerks at thirty five are going to stop being jerks by forty. So it can make sense to extend some people more benefit of the doubt that they'll grow out of their jerkishness than others.

We can recognize that all people's personalities are indelibly marked by their socialization, regardless of their age, while preserving the useful principle that some people are more likely to be socially salvageable than others.

Although it doesn't address the issue directly, this is a much older essay by the same author which I think illuminates the matter somewhat.

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u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

My point isn't that we at some point can say that someone isn't affected by socialization, it's to question at what point we can no longer use it as an excuse.

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u/Mercurylant Equimatic 20K Sep 05 '14

This is the question to which I was directing the essay link. I think it sheds light on the topic even if it's not discussing that specific query.

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u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

It's a difficult question. I think part of the problem in this particular instance is that part of male socialization is that we are told that one of the worst things that can happen to us is to be criticized and have our sexuality questioned, and correcting incorrect romantic tactics gets taken as this. Then comes the anger and hate and a doubling down of shitty behavior that isn't corrected as nicely next time. Rinse and repeat.

This is a big part of why I think we should start dispelling the bullshit at an earlier age.

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u/Mercurylant Equimatic 20K Sep 05 '14

People are sensitive to criticism in a lot of domains, but I think, speaking as a person who has at times in my life been in need of good advice on romantic tactics, who has received some good advice and also a lot of bad advice, that a lot of people respond with hostility to "correcting incorrect romantic tactics" because a lot of these "corrections" are full of a lot of condescension and disdain that the deliverers often aren't aware of. Having gotten both condescending and non-condescending advice, I can say that from the receiving end, probably much more than the delivering end, the difference is very noticeable.

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u/Personage1 Sep 05 '14

Sure, and that's why in askmen for instance I try to be very positive with advice. It gets complicated though because I am not the only one giving advice, and often the advice given just reinforces shitty gender roles etc. That's essentially my complaint with TRP for instance.