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Analects

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Analects

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On Love

stuff On loving and being loved

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Men and women engage in identical behaviours—complaining, offering solutions, needing validation, resisting criticism. The difference isn’t biological, it’s interpretive. We cast the same behaviour as reasonable for one gender and unreasonable for the other. Gray’s book is a perfect case study: emotionally troubled men are normalised while women’s ordinary needs are pathologised.

Men Aren't From Mars

audio

Gender essentialism is having a moment. Everyone’s reading books about what it means to be a man or woman, and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus keeps getting recommended to me like it’s gospel. Here’s the thing: the book perfectly illustrates a pattern we see everywhere. The same behaviours—complaining, offering advice, needing reassurance, getting defensive—are cast as reasonable when men do them and unreasonable when women do them. Gray’s men are emotionally fragile and his women just want basic partnership, but somehow it’s the women who need to lower their expectations. This isn’t about men and women. It’s about how we frame identical behaviours differently based on who’s doing them.
Men and women engage in identical behaviours—complaining, offering solutions, needing validation, resisting criticism. The difference isn’t biological, it’s interpretive. We cast the same behaviour as reasonable for one gender and unreasonable for the other. Gray’s book is a perfect case study: emotionally troubled men are normalised while women’s ordinary needs are pathologised.
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betterment collective-architecture connection on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture

article

BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.

BDSM as a lazy ideology

article

I write a lot about ideologies here. Rituals of thought and behaviour that come out of our need to automatically solve predictable problems of a complex world. I also point out that ideologies ‘stack’. They all sort of ‘stick together’, making these bundles of beliefs and behaviours. Most of these are lazy: stacks of ideologies we adopt just because they’re there. I reckon BDSM might be just one of these. It might be an ideology stack that people gravatate to, not because it’s the most efficient way of expressing some core human need, but because it’s just the most common. Let me explain what I mean.
BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to tell. It seems easy to explain away parts of it as hormone hijacking and socialisation, but there is something deeper there.
Check it out

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connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture thought-architecture

article

This book is basically, “men are terribly emotionally fragile, and they can make small steps to be better, but women need to just <em>stop bothering them with all their pedantry</em> and just let them be who they are.”

Men and women are from earth, fool pt. III

article

I’m going to shit all over this ridiculous 30-year old pseudo-psychology book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus that people keep trying to talk to me about now that gender essentialism is getting trendy again. Here I cover Gray’s astonishment that ‘women’ might have ordinary needs. It is the most amusing, and infuriating, aspect of the book.
This book is basically, “men are terribly emotionally fragile, and they can make small steps to be better, but women need to just stop bothering them with all their pedantry and just let them be who they are.”
Check it out

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betterment collective-architecture connection on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture

article

I guarantee, no matter how sexy traditional gender roles are to you, that you do <em>not</em> want to be like Gray’s ‘men’.

Men and women are from earth, fool pt. II

article

I’m going to shit all over this ridiculous 30-year old pseudo-psychology book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus that people keep trying to talk to me about now that gender essentialism is getting trendy again. Here I cover, in depth, the emotional fragility of whatever it is Gray considers to be ‘men’.
I guarantee, no matter how sexy traditional gender roles are to you, that you do not want to be like Gray’s ‘men’.
Check it out

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betterment collective-architecture connection on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture

article

Not only is there is absolutely no difference between men and women in how they complain or offer criticism, but the ‘men’ Gray describe could be used as textbook example of people with social anxiety.

Men and women are from earth, fool pt. I

article

I’m going to shit all over this ridiculous 30-year old pseudo-psychology book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus that people keep trying to talk to me about now that gender essentialism is getting trendy again. Here I cover the obvious grifter that is John Gray, and his first, disturbing chapter.
Not only is there is absolutely no difference between men and women in how they complain or offer criticism, but the ‘men’ Gray describe could be used as textbook example of people with social anxiety.
Check it out

filed under:

betterment collective-architecture connection on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love somatic-architecture
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