pasithea | An article I shouldn't read

Current Mood: sick

An article I shouldn't read

Okay, I had to abort after only one page of this 5-page article.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article6992299.ece

Perhaps it is meant as humor or sarcasm or something but I confess it FAR too closely matches my view of men and heterosexual relationships and it just fills me with the kind of contempt for humanity that makes me want to find some way to get a rocket to the asteroid belt so I can shift a few massive rocks to send them crashing down on the Earth in hopes of obliterating mankind.

If this is really truly what you people are like, please do the entire planet a favor and either evolve or die out. I really have a low tolerance for such pathetic simian behavior.

If this article honestly is not you, congrats and thank you. This article has literally upset my stomach. :/

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Haha, common folk wisdom dispensed as cold hard facts about psychology. What could go wrong? I like the cited neurolinguistic programing "expert." That's a brand of pseudoscience that's popular in Europe that doesn't quite have the same foothold over here in the states. It's sort of like being an award winning chiropractor. Well, except that Americans do believe in chiropractic.

It's hard to tell if stuff in The Times is satire or not. I'd recommend you steer clear of The Daily Mail entirely! It'll really make you claw at the walls (of the bathroom).
Skimming through it it seems to be one mans view that marriage is supposed to be a continual psychological battle for supremacy, a fight of passive aggression, simply because it's something you have to do in life. Depressing. Sadly I have to land more on the side that it's not satire, as The Times is more likely to be bought by men who'd appreciate the reinforcement that the only fight they're ever going take on in their lives is somehow sociologically vital as opposed to admitting their own poor choices.
Though of course this isn't bought, it's free on the internet, so..

You're just jealous that you don't have a dick to bang your wife's hot lesbian friends with!

No Kidding!!! So many men are such vile pathetic pigs it's staggering to think about. It almost makes me believe that mess in the Bible about women being doomed to suffer. Actually, I do believe that it's the bs that we ate some apple that misses the mark for me.

What makes me the sickest is their pathetic, bio-based bullshit rationale that they can't help it and shouldn't be held accountable or expected to change. It's really just little more than exactly what the article says that many men are just immature little snots who think that all women are a continuation of their mommies for them to rebel against. Grow up, fuckwads! Get over it.

And their whole poor me, puppy-eyed justification and rationalization for lying.... Shits. What a bunch of shallow, spirt-less bitches. And the dude you didn't read about that rationalizes leaving the child care to his wife because HE wants his kids to see him at his best not frazzled after a day of work and ferrying to ballet lessons. He wants to save his kid time for tossing the frisbee. Like his wife loves to be frazzled or wouldn't like to save herself and her rship with her kids just for the good times.

What a bunch of spoiled buttwhacks. The whole penis-vagina intercourse thing can be fun. It's just so unfair that men are the ones with the penises. It sucks that women can be pretty mean also. Alas, there is no safety on the other side of the fence as I found out.

We have a lot on this planet. There is so much potential for beauty and people just waste it with their lies and their laziness and selfishness.

I'm all for that asteroid strike. Bring it on!

Part of this to keep in mind is that these are british journalists. I'm reminded of John Cleese, who commented that they're "Rather sad creatures". This article is pretty much standard link-baiting, taking some stereotypes and pop-science, sexing it up (Pun not intended) in order to drive outrage and increase advertising revenue sales. To give you an idea of how vacuous this article is, it later delves into the 'sins' of men secretly enjoying porn, or secretly being gay. However, let's set aside this tripe to address the underlying claim.

Yes, there's evolutionary reasons for men to cheat (Spread more genetic code). Yes, testosterone increases sex drive. Yes, some people play the part of the stereotypes. But it's noteworthy that stupidity is equal-oppurtunity, and these comments apply regardless of gender or orientation.

Furthermore, these environmental factors should not matter. While genetics might have a heavy hand in programming, what matters is act, not thought, because we do have impulse control. Whether or not I "want to shag [my wife's] best friend" due to some obsolete wiring is irrelevant. If I do such, my inability to control such impulses has no valid excuse. If I resist such theoretical urges and do not act such, then any claim about my morality based on errant thoughts would be prosecuting thought crimes.

I tend to avoid such articles because they do drain faith in people. The problem is that there will always be lows, things to get outraged about, things to make one hateful, but that really doesn't help. But they do you a great disservice in that they can blind you to the things that people do that are beautiful, that make use of potential, that help each other, and that which redeems this species.

I guess you'd better not look at 'Maxim,' then. Your head would explode.

Bigots will believe anything in print that validates their existing beliefs.

I couldn't get past the first paragraph just because it was poor-quality writing. It semed to have no point.

Anyway, now that I've gotten past my initial irritation at your posting (and the truly bigoted responses)...

From a bored skimming of the first few paragraphs -- all I could stand -- the article is ultimately dealing with perceived differences in *style* between men and women. Unless you're a cloistered individual, that should be no threat. That's what *diversity* is all about.

And I see the article latched onto quotes from obvious douchebags. If you buy this as representative, then all furries really do fuck their dogs.

I'm frankly disappointed.

I wish I could disagree with you but I really can't. I really am very biased on a lot of issues. I've been working on them and am better than I used to be. My comment on this article was really about my biases. I didn't finish reading it because it was dredging up a lot of nasty stuff that I'm trying to reprogram myself away from. Intellectually, I want to say that I believe most straight people aren't like the ones depicted in this article and in truth the few straight people I know are not like that (but I would note they're nearly all poly) but emotionally, the article falls too close to everyone in my family, extended family, and most of their friends and our neighbors when I was a child and I've certainly met a lot of people who do carry around this kind of vile social programming. So the article hits buttons for me. I can't deny that I had a knee-jerk emotional response to it but I did at least recognize that and quit reading rather than further re-enforcing negativity. I am not perfect, only a work in progress. :/

Thanks for acknowledging that.

Just as your reaction to this article is based on bad childhood history, my reaction to the reaction is as well. I grew up in the shadow of the "men rape" dogma. And I believed it. It wasn't until my 30s that I realized what a horrible, damaging lie it was. Then when I read comments like those from anaisdjuna, and there are no words. Sadly, she's only one representative of a large cult.

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