Men and Sex/Conquests

[EternallyBored]

I've never felt the "women as objects" thing was ever weird

Treating any living thing that shows agency and emotion as an object should feel at least a little weird.

I'm really REALLY hoping the OP is just talking about objectifying portrayals of women, like models in magazines in whatnot, as the prospect that he's actually talking about objectifying women face to face is incredibly depressing and that he would think that's normal behavior among men explains so much about some of his previous threads while still raising all kinds of red flag.

it felt like just a normal extension of the male tendency to treat everything like an object measuring it's value on what it can bring him and how far it can advance him.

#notallmen

That's more akin to a Pyschopathic/Sociopathic tendency than a male one.

It's a very narcissistic tendency as well, I am hoping that Paragon is just generalizing the competition point i.e. that he thinks objectification is just thinking about how something can be used to get ahead, as him thinking that a majority of men actually objectify almost everything is a baffling proposition.

I don't treat objects anywhere the same as I treat people I care about on any measurable level. I'm never going to take a bullet for my PS4, and if a fake woman in fiction asks me to stop something, I may very well ignore her without feeling an ounce of guilt. On the flipside, I will put myself in harms way for those I care about, and if any woman, even a one night stand in a drunken hook up, asks me to stop doing any sort of sexual act, I'm pretty much always going to immediately stop, because even a stranger I just met for drunken bar sex, still has agency and a general reasonable expectation to not be considered an object.

I hung out with some real dude bros in college, real hyper-competitive alpha male types, even among them, the type of person that treated a woman like an object wasn't considered a normal male, or just competing with the guys, they were douchenozzles at best, and imminent rapists at worst, and were often the type that had domestic violence problems. A healthy mind does not treat people like objects, competitive drive or not.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Whellll...p. This is certainly going in the notebook of psychological profiles. I would recommend some group social activities In the real world! Where you can maybe get to talk to your fellow ladyhumans as real people. Not just dismiss ones you find unattractive while running and hiding from those who are, or being inappropriate towards them. It will help you grow understanding hopefully.
There are indeed some people I have had the displeasure of socialising with that would objectify, or pretend to objectify if they wanted to appear "cool" to their perceived peers. But they are no indicator of an entire gender as a whole, perhaps the ones who can comfortably share the same intellectual shelf as an outspoken amoeba, but we are trying to get over that part of evolution. If your ignorance is preferable to the woes of understanding your fellow human, male or female, then there is not much that can be said to help. If these are Sociopathic tendencies, or...a type of anti-Social personality disorder, as it should be known, may make things trickier, but not impossible, whatever forms it may take. It could be a learnt trait which can be overcome. Malleable minds.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Well that was weird.

 

[Einspanner]

Don't look for weird shit from nutbars, on the internet. This isn't the real world, it's the portion of humanity who can't exist in the real world and so they troll the internet.

Stop worrying about stuff that only shows up ONLINE or in SCHOOLS.

 

[Thetwistedendgame]

What about gay men.

 

[mecegirl]

I've met guys that treat sex as a conquest or women as objects. They aren't that rare, but they also tend to keep to their type and/or hide it from their less warped friends. So its something you mostly see if you are the target.

To a certain extent they know that their behavior is frowned upon so they only behave in such a way when they feel safe. It isn't at all natural though and I'd go as far to say that it is a result of either disassociation(cuz they may not treat female family members the same way), or a personalty disorder. Even back in the day when women had less rights men didn't fully view women as objects. For instance in Victorian times if a woman wasn't interested in being courted by a certain man he was expected to respect her wishes.

 

[Zen Bard]

There's definitely some truth to this. Men are competitive and defined by their achievements. I agree with the idea. The problem is in its execution.

A real man is always in competition with himself. I know that sounds like some hippy dippy, New Agey bullshit. But most of the time, a man in society is always striving for self improvement...whether it's some sports achievement, conquering a level in your favorite video game, learning a new language or yes, successfully getting a date with that hot chick.

When I finally got the nerve to ask my wife out on our first date, the "prize" wasn't my wife...it was the date. When I was single and running around asking women for their digits, the prize was the phone number, not the girl herself.

Somewhere along the line, this got lost and attainment of the achievement got transferred to the person. And now we have a generation of sociopaths who think it's okay to text dick pics to a girl and get violent if she turns him down. But these pricks don't get a pass because it's "the nature of a man". Hell, a little critical thinking , common sense and empathy will immediately tell you why this behavior is wrong.

The problem is that they're not being taught how to properly do this by the previous generations (mostly the Boomers, but some of us Gen Xers as well). I think there's a failure on the mentor's part (and I have a host of reasons for that, but I'll spew that out some other time...).

It's a fairly deep problem with several factors. But anytime it's brought up, people just tell the guys to shut up and quit being whiny babies. So nothing gets done.

 

[crimsonspear4D]

There's definitely some truth to this. Men are competitive and defined by their achievements.

...And women aren't? lol

Yeah, but when women are being the alpha she-wolf or the lioness/cougar, whatever the popular term is for those who are sexually driven and accomplished, most men always see them as whores and sluts and other less savory terms. As if women who are "playas" goes against some natural order or they're just jealous and/or upset that this person knows the game.

And with intellectual achievements, its kind of the same deal, only that they are undeserving of whatever they have and might've got it through under-handed means.

It's messed up either way.

 

[Lacedaemonius]

There's definitely some truth to this. Men are competitive and defined by their achievements.

...And women aren't? lol

Yeah, but when women are being the alpha she-wolf or the lioness/cougar, whatever the popular term is for those who are sexually driven and accomplished, most men always see them as whores and sluts and other less savory terms.

No we don't, and it would be terrific if you could lay off the industrial strength generalizations across cultures, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds for the whole fucking planet.

'Mkay?

In terms of reproductive strategy, men are r-selected, women are K-selected. Though r/K selection theory is usually used to describe the reproductive strategies of species as a whole (such as rabbits being r-selected, and bobcats being K-selected), it can also describe differences between males and females in the same species (reproduction is a much more expensive, risky, and dangerous investment for human women than it is for men, hence women are far more selective and chaste than men are. Generally speaking, and presuming they are living in relatively normal and stable circumstances... don't lynch me..

Biology 101 explains why courting is different among the sexes, especially of sexually dimorphic species such as human beings.

We don't live in caves anymore. Most men don't sit around competing with each other over who has the breeding rights with the local females. There are other, more important prime motivators then sex. If you think that psychologists think that, then you've clearly never read an actual psychology book. I think you'd find that the "experts" would disagree with your extremely broad, somewhat sinister statements.

If you treat everything as an object, that doesn't make you a man. It makes you a sociopath.

This is why I hate soft-science; it's so easily corruptible and monopolizable by ideologies that it can be misused to deem rudimentary human nature and instinct to be something evil and corrupt, and people just buy into it because it sounds simplistically true.

I wish more people would read this post instead of spamming gifs.

I also wish people in general would stop denying their nature. You can acknowledge it without surrendering to it completely, you know.

It's in human nature to assume that everyone shares our own worst qualities; that what each of us deals with is a universal "Nature".

It isn't. It's probably just you.

 

[Phasmal]

Eh, everything that exists is a logical outcome of something else, doesn't mean everyone is absolved of blame.

Also...seriously? Can we at least use this thread as a discount for the next "Men on the forum/gaming industry/scoeity don't have issues with women, really" threads?

Yes, my sympathy for the oppressed nerd dude act vanishes entirely when "Maybe not treating women as people is okay" is seen as an opinion worth considering.

It's times like this I think the negative nerd stereotypes are something we've all collectively earned.

That's the nicest thing I can say in this thread without getting a warning.

 

[crimsonspear4D]

There's definitely some truth to this. Men are competitive and defined by their achievements.

...And women aren't? lol

Yeah, but when women are being the alpha she-wolf or the lioness/cougar, whatever the popular term is for those who are sexually driven and accomplished, most men always see them as whores and sluts and other less savory terms.

No we don't, and it would be terrific if you could lay off the industrial strength generalizations across cultures, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds for the whole fucking planet.

'Mkay?

I apologize, I should've stated that it wasn't something that I thought was widespread or common knowledge or anything, but it IS something that I have witnessed more than a few times. It's almost hilarious, and kinda depressingly surprising, the hypocrisy you can witness in that type of environment.

Like a friend who treats women like tissue paper, thinks he's a stud, and nothings wrong with that, but then he meets a woman who bags and tags him and doesn't call him back or something and now she's a ***** or a slut and he's all bitter and shit about it. He's an asshole and not indicative of my entire gender, but there are entire groups of d-bags like him that have been popping up and getting loud and, well, they kinda don't make it easy saying "hey, I'm not like that, I just want to have fun."

Men are hypocritical assholes wasn't the point I was trying to make, it's that women can be sexually driven and confident but -some- guys view it as an insult or unnatural, or something.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Most feminist critiques of these behaviors do note that men are trained to behave in exactly those ways by society. However, the fact that things are that way doesn't mean that things should be that way. If someone is consciously aware of the previously subconscious biases that have been trained into them, it is possible to mitigate them. For example, men (and women, for that matter) are subtly trained to put less stock in what women say than what men say. Being aware of that, it is possible to make a conscious effort to pay attention to what everyone says equally. Furthermore, if you're aware that you treat the women you have sex with as trophies, you could make a conscious effort to treat them like humans instead.

So yes, men are trained to act in a particular way by the society in which they're raised. Indeed, that's pretty obviously the case because so many men do act in those ways and a large potion of people behaving in the same way doesn't just occur at random. That doesn't make it okay. Saudi Arabians stoning women for getting raped is a culturally trained behavior too, but that doesn't make it justified. If immoral behavior is culturally instilled, all that means is that the culture is, at least in part, immoral.

 

[Gorrath]

I'm gonna disagree, like, a lot. I think it is extraordinarily weird that anyone would treat any sentient/sapient creature, human or not, like an object. But then I have a feeling we are playing really fast and loose with the term "object" here, which has become exceedingly common when talking about male/female relationship dynamics.

Whether a woman or man is treated as an object seems to be linked more to culture than to the natural inclinations of the species. If women are viewed as something that you defacto "own" by taking away her agency, there's a good chance more men will find it acceptable to act on them without taking their own humanity into consideration. In cultures where women are seen as being independent agents and given the right to act as such, a man treating her like he owned her would fall outside of that cultural norm and thus be an outlier.

To say that it is simply natural for humans to see other humans as objects is, I think, a bizarre statement. I say that knowing full well that what people mean when they say "object" or "objectified" in this context is almost so broad as to be meaningless. I say that because in some significant theories dealing with humans and objectification, merely being acted on renders one an "object" even though humans acting on one another carries no inherent assertion by the actor that the person they are acting on isn't an independent, sapient/sentient creature.

Is it natural for men to desire to procreate with many women? There's some reason to think so, though this drive is certainly mitigated or enhanced by culture. But that doesn't mean that a guy who sleeps around a lot thinks the women he's sleeping with aren't people. The logical leaps between how people tend to act and think vs what meaning is assigned to those acts/thoughts seem rather poorly supported.

 

[axlryder]

Don't you all see, this has been an elaborate play by Paragon to UNITE us against his... "hypothesis". Jolly good show, chap. It appears we are unanimous in our agreement to disagree.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

Bruh, you need to go to a real therapist or some shit.
You need help.
Maybe lay off the anime titties and porn too, shit is obviously really fucking with your perceptions of reality.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Alright a lot to go through here, but I'll hit a few of the things I noticed right out;

1: No, I didn't "skedaddle" just because I got a negative reaction. I went to bed because I have to leave for work at 03:00 in the morning. Paragon needs sleep too.

2: I think people are taking the most extreme definition of objectification here just to try and add something to be mad about; everyone objectifies everything as a normal part of your brain assessing things. This doesn't mean you don't understand that someone has feelings or their own needs or their own personality, but rather that most people, particularly men just don't care until that person has been elevated to the point where caring is an acceptable cost for what that person can offer.

3: This is the difficult one; since I'm no longer in college, most of the articles that I could link that support my claim earlier are locked behind pay walls and fees. Instead I have to rely on weaker free articles;

- Objectification Theory being present and a significant part of modern feminism/feminist theory
http://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf

Self-objectification in Men/Women
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1740144509000412

Scarcity or belief in scarcity of mates correlates (strongly) with increased male competition and recklessness
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112134334.htm

There were a couple more I could've linked, but they were so SJW'y that even Winter Wyvern might've gagged.

4: I never said I would take 2D over real; rather I've accepted that I'm so far down on the desirability scale and so...messed up, for lack of better phrasing right now - that any meaningful relationships with women won't occur for me and it's not worth the humiliation, awkwardness and wasting other people's time and making them uncomfortable/unhappy to try.

5: As much as we don't like to admit it, humans are still driven by our base animal brains. Everything we do is still controlled and guided by those base principles; we've just added tons of filters on top of it as society has advanced. And yes, that means people of both genders size each other up using some very...demeaning tactics and measures. Point being...men haven't advanced as much because the older tactics and values are still effective, work and are easy enough to understand and employ. Most of the people, even the "nice" ones that men try to model themselves after didn't get to the point of being envied by being nice - they got there by doing things that even most men would find disagreeable in order to get the point where they could employ "nicer" tactics and values without fear of being overtaken by their competition.

 

[MeatMachine]

It's in human nature to assume that everyone shares our own worst qualities; that what each of us deals with is a universal "Nature".

It isn't. It's probably just you.

Yes, the will to procreate is not just my biggest flaw but also pretty much exclusive to me.

(2 posts and I'm noticing you have a habit of making posts so ridiculous I can't help but be sarcastic in response. By all means keep following me around but don't expect anything more.)

Yes, actually, those really are universal elements of the human condition. The emotions of envy, aggression, and lust ARE universal, hence why social workers use the "universalization" strategy during therapy for clients who feel alienated or alone with their particular problems or circumstances, to demonstrate that they are responding to their issues in normal and healthy ways seen in very similar cases.

If you truly do not feel envy, aggression, or lust at all, then you are an exception to what human beings are supposed to be; most likely suffering from a disability of some kind.

That, or self-proclaimed nonconformity status just sounds really cool... and it is, dude! Trust me, I know - I'm actually a stingray dressed up as a man!