I’ve seen this belief before on the Slack, namely perpetuated by … Srid 
Notice how Geoffrey didn’t say anything about what the song says of how a woman is valued. You inserted that in.
Upon further reflection do you really believe that women are just valued for what they are, that they don’t have to do or say anything or act in any way to promote an appearance of how their self-image should be to others?? Note that such things as putting makeup on and choosing outfits count as doing something 
I appreciate the thread @claudiu
Yes, that is a fact. Women work hard to project the image they deem correct.
Just finished a walk, recording as I went. Trying to regain my surrender on this issue.
I finally understand what Richard meant when he said “compliant soul”.
Instinctual passions are a weakness.
To your point, I have been considering more and more to stick with the AFT on issues such as this. As in identity issues, how is this thought going to increase enjoying life?
I am sorting through this at the moment. How unless I have sincerity within myself, to give myself permission to enjoy life, all the talk and theories are meaningless.
I am reflecting on unilaterally ending the war of the sexes. How so much of that war is shifting the blame.
There is still a lot to unpack, and as I get healthier, I will continue to look after myself more thoroughly.
I anticipate that as my sincerity grows, as I become stronger in the face of my historical weakness and compliance, my views will broaden, and my experiences of women will become more open, nuanced and intimate.
It’s funny you mention makeup. I absolutely hate makeup. Sticky, messy stuff which gets in the way. I have a lot of respect for women who don’t wear it. Infact, I started to consider that I should use it as a filter when I am ready to find another partner. Fake eyelashes especially.
It is more accurate to say I believe some women are valued for what they are.
Which is my issue. One I was just reflecting on. Which lead me to consider how instinctual desire is a weakness. It blinds me from getting to meet women, as it seperates them out into desirable and not so much desirable.
Not that I had any luck over the years with less desirable women. Hence posting a while back that it seems women, at least the ones I have been with, are operating with “one mind”; and identical set of values about who I should be, irrespective of who they are.
The flip side of course is I am the common denominator.
I attracted/ was attracted to them. Of course I would find the same mentality in them.
Birds of a feather flock together.
So the challenge is to fundamentally change myself, then go looking.
Just noticed that your last comment about makeup greatly triggered me 
as someone who works in an industry where fake eyelashes and full glam makeup is an absolute must, reading your opinion on it got me riled up. I love the process of getting ready for a dance gig or going out and putting on makeup, deciding what colour lipstick or eyeshadow to do or trying to match the brief on my contract is great fun for me. I think your comment triggered me because as a woman you tend to get more validation when you wear makeup so it’s a big part of my identity for sure, when I’m dancing on stage with a full face of makeup and costume I’m “special”, I look “special” and more importantly I look pretty. I think looking pretty means a lot for women, you get treated differently when your pretty and that’s what makeup does for you so when someone comes along saying they hate makeup and have a lot of respect for women who don’t wear makeup It pokes at my identity of being pretty and what it means to me. Day to day i don’t wear makeup, but when I’m working it’s a whole other transformation poncho (my dog) didn’t even recognise me for a bit I equally enjoy wearing makeup as well as having a bare face but something about wearing makeup and being extra pretty validates my sense of self for sure.
Initially, when I read your view on makeup I got upset. I took you saying you hate makeup and have a lot of respect for women who don’t wear makeup as you saying you have no respect for women who do wear makeup which obviously is what I projected. My instinct at first was to try defend myself and place blame on you for disliking makeup, I guess trying to change your view on makeup. Anyways, even if someone might have less respect for women who do wear makeup it’s nice to see how that thought triggered me so much and I was able to pick up on it and investigate it a little instead of getting mad at you and trying to change you 
Thanks
Yo this is funny cos when I saw @Andrew’s post I thought he should have a chat with you about the 2 sides of the gender battle but then I thought it could get spicy 
What about when there’s something obviously not factual about such a broad/categorical statement but there are discernible biological and social patterns that are aligned with such notion?
In generalizations like these (that seem to pertain to a “yes but no”, half-truth kind of nature), the disentanglement can be challenging, regardless of any fervent beliefs and morals implicit there as motives. Stereotypes debates are always tough for this reason.
To be fair, this is a point that Richard makes on the site. So Andrew may just be unconsciously referencing:
Your feeling of being – the real ‘me’ – is what is evidenced when one says: ‘But what about me, nobody loves me for me’! For a woman it is: ‘You only want me for my body … and not for me’. For a man it is: ‘You only want me for my money … and not for me’. For a child it is: ‘You only want to be my friend because of my toys (or sweets or whatever)’. This intuitive sense of ‘me’ – this being – arises out of the basic instinctual passions that blind nature endowed us all with as a rough and ready ‘soft-ware’ package to make a start in life.
It can kind of go both ways when it comes to ‘doing’ vs ‘are-ing.’
For example some women are perceived as very pretty makeup or no, they can just roll out of bed and be perceived as pretty, while some get a lot more attention when they dress themselves up some.
But it’s similar in the male world: some are born into situations where they can more easily get high-status jobs, or born into wealth as well. We aren’t responsible for our family situations growing up, but they have a large impact on how we are as a person, for example being confident vs. unconfident based on the feedback given by parents.
So it’s always some “I did that” and some “It just happened that way.”
That’s making me think that it’s all the same thing, like one universe that ‘I’ am not having much of an impact on at all really… things are just occurring, some people wind up high on the social ladder and some don’t.
I was just thinking last night about the times I’ve felt high on the social ladder, I felt like it was something I deserved, like it was something I had done that was inherent to me. But that narrative fell apart when I later didn’t have those high-social status things happening anymore. It wasn’t ‘me’ at all that was creating that situation, many factors went into it.
Yeaa I noticed like, I’ve been working with the same people for many years now, and we’ve been successful the last few years. While at the start I would get more made fun of or be the brunt of the jokes, at one point I noticed that that had stopped happening to me (and noticed it was still happening to some of the newer people). And I thought to myself wow this is a lot nicer for me. But ‘I’ didn’t change at all, I was the same ‘me’. It’s just that the situation changed.
I don’t mean to pile on, andrew, because I’d be lying if I pretended I don’t have the same thought you related.
However here are some thoughts I’ve had while investigating my own beliefs in ‘the battle of the sexes’. First I agree with the point made by a few people that shaping one’s appearance is indeed ‘doing something’. I would add that there is a constant effort to being pretty that has to do with being agreeable, being submissive, being cute, portraying weakness, portraying silliness etc. These things make you so vulnerable if someone ever decides to not be affectionate or turn on you. You make yourself more materially dependent on the opinions of others than is the case as a man. So it’s a tradeoff and assuming one side has it easier is most likely an easy escape from introspection.
I’ve also been trying to learn from these behaviors as I observe them in women. Like there is something admirable in putting yourself out there in these ways. It may be a path to greater intimacy generally. I’ve been trying to be more willing to be silly, needy, appreciative, and even concerned with my physical appearance. I got some face moisturizer and some teeth whitening gum 
.
The desire to be wanted for who you really are seems so fundamentally painful and frustrating. The desire for intimacy itself seems more productive. There’s still something big missing though in my understanding of all this.
The problem is that ‘who I am’ is fundamentally a non-existent but desperately-trying-to-exist, unintelligent (as in birthed-from-blind-nature), self-centered, not-sensible, insecure, fearful, impossible-to-satisfy ‘being’. As such ‘I’ am really fundamentally… perhaps “unlikable” or “un-want-able” in some sense of the word. Who would want to be / or fully accept that?
Part of ‘love’ is trying to accept the other in this unconditional sense. But you inevitably come up against these quality in the ‘other’ and are thus never satisfied. That’s one possibility anyway. The other is you find yourself unable to unconditionally accept the other because of these qualities in yourself. And two choices there, one is to blame/resent yourself, the other is to turn it on the other. Either way it doesn’t work on a fundamental level, the foundation is shaky. Hence the saying that the key to a successful marriage is “don’t rock the boat” 
. Cause if you start digging you will see the foundation is rotten (not through any fault of either person).
The key with intimacy is that ultimate intimacy comes when ‘I’ am gone. That’s why it can work. But you have to see that it is ‘me’ that gets in the way of it. The way to intimacy is ‘me’ getting out of the way, not ‘me’ trying to be wanted/liked or ‘me’ trying to want/like the other per se. Then once ‘I’ am out of the way you see that you are automatically likable and you automatically like the other person, you don’t have to do anything to like yourself/the other.
That makes sense and I like that description of who I am. Yes indeed fundamentally unlikable. Also yes I can see that the times where intimacy was most present were times where I was at least mostly ‘out of the way’.
From the position of being still in the way, what can “i” do? I think the options I’m stuck between are trying to have ‘no agenda’ vs. trying to have an agenda of pursuing the ‘purest’ of ‘my’ desires. Which seems to be the simple desire for intimacy.
edit:
In practice these options are like:
option 1 (no agenda): being attentive and interested in others, responding to what I see. Open to intimacy once they demonstrate interest. Open to reservedness and respectfully keeping a distance if that’s the vibe.
option 2 (pushing for intimacy): making an effort to connect. Inviting people to hang out. Choosing to push conversation towards our ‘private selves’ more than our ‘public selves’ whenever possible. Still responding to other’s level of reciprocation but with some intent of my own.
Also I realize I’ve moved away from main topic, willing to split off if it seems necessary.
Well, I now know what to say to get you involved. @Sonyaxx
Now for my views on each item of women’s fashion…
I like seeing the lines on peoples faces. The spots. The creases that a smile makes. I don’t enjoy that women wish to manipulate my instincts by trying to appear like they are all 16 years old carbon copies of each other.
Funnily, I read a study years ago which actually refutes this view of mine. It basically concluded that women primarily dress up for each other. That it is female attention and hierarchy at stake most of the time.
Another study showed that both men and women responded more strongly to pictures of attractive women, rather than men.
Female attractiveness is certainly leagues more valued than male.
I also am still sorting through the issues with my recent ex emotionally.
It really bothered me that her entire value system revolved around her attractiveness. As if that would last forever, even though her best years are decades ago now. How persistently this was her entire focus. Whilst ignoring everything else, the more she felt attractive, the more she expected “rat catching” from me.
Live and learn. As Claudiu pointed out in my journal, being with someone whose focus is control, really isn’t going to help someone interested in actualism.
Out of the blue, I am talking with another woman who may just value something more verbal and discovery based, rather than the cliches I have been pushing myself to live.
It was always my own sincerity which let me down. Not my exes. I was the one that persued this style of relationship with my morbid optimism (read: cunning) thinking I would change them.
Each person has the birthright to live and believe as they see fit.
That was her belief; that if she was attractive, good things would happen to her, that she would get to feel good. And of course part of that narrative had to do with someone else chasing & providing.
I was just noticing at work that there are loads of women here that seem to care only for their looks only superficially; their identities are primarily preoccupied with other markers of success, perhaps career success, competence; perhaps that they are a “caring, compassionate person.” It’s not the same game across the board. But everyone is doing something.
While that is true, I think the original intuition also comes from something even deeper than the individual implications and efforts in the intersexual/intrasexual competition struggles. There’s another layer mentioned in evolutionary biology contexts about the cheapness of sperm and the expensiveness of eggs in humans and mammals, that later can turn into social constructs such as “women and children first”, as means for blind nature to perpetuate the species as a collective.
I have really been going over the unilateral ending of the war the last 48 hours.
Despite the front of my amygdala be twice as large as a woman’s and devoted to attraction.
What I am leaning towards is the identity aspects. Although it’s plainly obvious to anyone that the female of every species is hundreds of times more valued by nature than the male, each human has a ‘self’ and an ‘identity’.
As it is the ‘self’ that has to agree to change, to become in my case, conducive to allowing EEs , PCEs,. rather than my “absolute” value to nature.
As a male human, I am factually less valuable to the survival of the species.
As a ‘self’ I am equally capable of ending the human condition as anyone else. And that contribution is infinitely more valuable than a 1000 earth’s full of billions of species.
One human, actually free, is worth endless worlds of blind nature’s folly.
fucking A man!!! I’m loving this new spirit Andrew!
I am loving the fact the conversations here are sparking ideas towards better approachs in myself.
The make-up conversation is interesting. @Sonyaxx, thanks for sharing your honesty on how Andrew’s comments triggered you. It is interesting to hear about the process and experience, it sounds like something quite fun with all the options available to you, like a form of artistic expression.
Personally, I have always liked both, women with and without make-up. I love the variety of women that exist, the different races, shapes, styles, I love different shape noses, freckles, people’s idiosyncrasies. I have always had this uncomfortable voyeuristic behaviour towards women, well men as well if I am honest. It is probably the part I miss most about not working in London anymore and not commuting, not getting to people watch. I would always appreciate that women went to such effort. I was always too much of a defeatist to make any effort as a male, never bothered to try and look stylish or sort my hair out nicely.
In my high school years and early adulthood (18-21), I definitely was holding on to feelings of misogyny and apathy towards women, starting to be on board with AF at 21 there was a lot there that I had to investigate.
I always find it hypocritical that I got so much anger and hate and cruelty from women as regards having bad skin (spots/rosacea) and yet all these women are not even showing their real face by hiding behind make up.
It was made worse that as my skin conditions improved, I started to have more positive female encounters as well. Rather than be happy about it or grateful about it I felt bitter and more that women were superficial, that it is only now that my physical appearance isn’t as bad that I have some validity and can be dated.