calling a woman,''beautiful''

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Of course you see she's a woman. But pointing it out by telling her how lovely etc. she is also carries these messages, whether you want your statement to do it or not -- particularly if you're a man:

1. You exist for my gratification.
2. The most important thing about you at this moment is that you please me visually and perhaps sexually.
3. That other stuff you do and the fact that you're a person -- not important next to the fact that you gratify me.

Why does your statement mean all those things? Because you exist in a social context that values women primarily for their sexual attractiveness, and women struggle daily to exist as, and be recognized as, actual human beings rather than sex toys. The things you say are heard in that context, whether you want them to be or not. And, if they're the things you're thinking, you'd do well to examine your own motives, and why it is that you find this the most interesting thing about the woman -- so interesting that you want to tell it to her. Perhaps it's because in fact you're objectifying her and thinking of her, at that moment, primarily as a sex toy. In which case you've got some work to do on yourself.

Personally, I've always thought it bizarre that the *most important thing* about small children is supposed to be whether they're girls or boys. It's amazing, we drive right away from thinking about them as people even before they're born.

Tarantella and GiantHockeyFan

Of course all women are human beings why would I see that otherwise? I do not see women as sex objects or sex toys.

Both of you asking me though to disregard logic. It's like you're asking me to perceive or see certain squares as not squares. All women are women. All squares are squares. All dots are dots. How can any square not be a square?

LKL said something that made no sense to me.

I don't understand. How do you derive this? What do you mean here?



Why would I do this? To me, it is irrelevant as to what your appearance is. If I have a complex algorithm to develop how does your appearance factor into play? Why wouldn't others be mindful of their work?

That's fine, but you live in a society that does. It doesn't matter if your use of "You look lovely in that top" has nothing to do with your sexual desires or recognition/nonrecognition of that woman as a person. Once out of your mouth, the phrase is instantly clothed in societal context. And that context says, "I wanna shag you and that's why you're noticeable/important." That's what'll get you in trouble, particularly if the woman doesn't know you well.

Same if you're openly critical of a woman's appearance or competence, by the way. Younger women, esp. well-educated women, will assume you're trying to manipulate them by undermining their confidence, because that's a standard PUA trick.

Tarantella, if society said that dihydrogen monoxide was poisonous and did not check out the facts what would you think? I'm asking this to make a point.

Then I would think it would be unwise to go to the dentist's office and offer the pretty lady there a drink of dihydrogen monoxide. You could always hope that when the cops showed up one of them would turn out to be a chem major, but I wouldn't count on it.

I am slowly starting to get what you are saying here. This is another reason why online dating is a bad idea that warps our view of women. If I never met a woman I would assume they were all arrogant, stuck up narcissists. I can also relate to your last sentence. Even though women tell me I am exceeding good looking all the time all I can think over and over is how the girls in school used to call me the ugliest kid in school. Its hard to overdo that conditioning no matter how ridiculous it is, especially at 31 with only one relationship under my belt.

In a more general sense, though, cubedemon, it's really not people's responsibility to make a Rubik's cube out of every statement and imagine that people might mean other than what's generally meant by those statements. I mean it's not a tenable thing, nobody's got that kind of time and energy, and besides most of the time it'd be wasted effort. My ex-bf runs into this problem all the time -- he'll bother to state clearly what he means, but it's clear only if you're starting from his pov. So he spends a lot of time getting angry and essentially trying to bully people into hearing the phrase from where he stands, rather than hearing it as most people would mean it.

Okay Tarentella, You said " I mean it's not a tenable thing, nobody's got that kind of time and energy ..."

Maybe therein lies one of the problems. No one has any time and energy to think at all and I mean do some philosophical and critical thinking. We live in a society in which one has to go, go, go.

Why is it wrong to give his pov at all? Why do others continue to take offense even after he makes clear this is what he meant? Here is another question. How is he expected to derive the context of what everyone means if we're all different genetic wise and personality wise as human beings? No human being is the same, is that right? We all have different tastes, desires, needs, etc. How is he expected to suss out what will offend anyone he meets? This to me is an unreasonable demand placed upon him and anyone.

How is there a true safe social code for anyone to follow whatsoever in which one will not offend anyone?

there are agreed upon social graces, people follow them to avoid many things. If diplomats just spouted anything they wished and did not care what anyone thought, every nation would be at war with every other one tomorrow.

" Never insult anyone by accident." - Robert A. Heinlein

“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.” - Robert A. Heinlein

By this logic, every culture is a dying culture then because one can learn all of the social graces he wants but may still unintentionally still insult someone.

This is one of the issues I have with our culture. It demands a level of perfection no one can achieve. This man is very intelligent and I have read many of his works and in theory I agree but in practice how can one follow this? Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone gets things wrong from time to time. Besides if we're all supposed to conform to a social code then why tell us all to be ourselves when it is certainty not true whatsoever. This is another issue I have and another issue is this. Why have contradictory norms?



Going by this logic, the USA is a dying culture. http://morrisberman.blogspot.com/ What if personal rudeness and rudeness is the norm and politeness is rude?

Eye contact is the norm here. What if the person is blind? How does he do this? How are all people capable of following all norms no matter what? What is considered consideration and what is rude? If society does not consider the blind person and subjects him to the eye contact standard is society being rude? Can society in of itself be rude?

These are my writings and opinions. http://whyifailedinamerica1.wordpress.com/

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche

IMHO, this society doesn't need more conformists. We need more people like Socrates who are willing to question beliefs. If everyone truthfully conformed then how can society ever progress? If no one questioned what was considered rude then how would a society ever improve upon itself? What prevents society from atrophying and stagnating?

Of course you will think like that, you are autistic. Society's basic underlying principle is that of conformism. If you think about it, you will see what I mean. Of course, societies change and evolve but it's usually done by conforming to a new standard. If everyone went their own (different) course, there would be chaos.

Agreed!



Again, agreed!

If everyone went their own (different) course, there would be chaos.

Sometimes to make things better one has to introduce a bit of chaos into the prevailing system.

Because unless they know him, understand that his pov is radically different from others', and are listening very carefully and openly, they still won't get what he meant. It's like his word for "orange" is "black", and he's there yelling, "Black and I mean black! Listen carefully! Black!" -- and, of course, almost everyone else will hear "this fellow is nutsy-angry and unreasonably emphatic about black and thinks I'm stupid when all I was doing was offering him a cookie, stay away from him," not "orange". But he means "orange".

What you're resisting is that social contexts are meaningful and attach to language. People don't hear other people literally; they hear phrases clothed in consensus-meaning -- which changes -- and informed by tone, body language, what the speaker wears, the speaker's age and sex, all sorts of things.



Well, this is why AS involves social deficits. People develop and use conversational conventions all the time, and there's broad buy-in about what various phrases mean when said in various tones of voice and in various contexts. That's why they don't have to spend lots of time and energy figuring out what the actual words in the phrases mean. The phrases are mostly just signals, tokens. Only the burnt and legalistic -- and aspergian -- will listen to your every word.

The trickier the social context, the blander and more generic the language is likely to be, and the conventions more rigid in when you use it. For instance, if a good-but-not-best-friend's father dies, you say something that amounts to "I'm so sorry for your loss", and throw in a little eulogy, some gilded memory, and say, "Please let me know if there's anything I can do, anything I can help out with." If the bereft is someone you know very very well, then after you hear about the death and go through "How are you," and hear about all the relief that this awful man who's been out of his mind the last three years is dead, you can say, "Good. Good, you need this rest, I'm glad it went easily."



There isn't; people get offended all the time. But there's a difference between being out in the weeds where you're likely to offend most days you talk and having a good feel for social conventions, so that you don't often offend. And apologizing sometimes helps. It's also true that some people are just very, very insecure and will be offended by almost anything, and for that I rely on coworkers/friends saying, "oh, some people are just looking for excuses to be unhappy."

It helps also to become aware of how you're likely to offend just by existing. I'm from a big city that has a serious attitude (and with some reason). For decades I've lived in a part of the country that's desperately insecure about, and resentful of, what people think of it on the coasts. My accent and manner have never gone away, and whatever ASishness I have doesn't help. The moment I start talking, I'll put some people's backs up, and they'll think: "She thinks she's better than us." How I can compound the social error about a millionfold: Start talking about awesome thing on east or west coast. How I can turn a collegial relationship downright icy: allude to the fact that no such awesomeness exists for three hundred miles around our little burg. That will put me on the outs almost permanently. The correct follow-on phrase to mention of awesomeness elsewhere: "But that sort of thing gets exhausting after a while. It's a relief to come back here and get back to normal life, get some peace and quiet."

After such a long time here, my attitude is largely "f**k it", because in fact those things are awesome and I'm sick to death of people's geographical insecurity. But I'm also aware of alienating people by saying so. And in a sensitive negotiation with someone local, I'll bring along someone who's local to do the talking -- they've got a whole secret regional language of manners that I'll never be able to speak.

That was a broken quote tag, not me.

However, it *is* the first question that people ask when a baby is born. Not, 'Is it healthy,' but, 'Is it a boy or a girl?' We start with the gendering right away - pink or blue, and if the kid's wearing yellow or green, everyone asks what sex it is. Studies have shown that parents respond differently to babies depending on the baby's perceived sex, too, with different response times to crying and different lengths of comforting (I don't remember which is which, just that they're different), so boys and girls experience different social worlds pretty much from the second they're born.

What if a woman asks a man "do you think im pretty?" How are we to respond? Will she get mad if we say yes? She might cry if we say no, maybe just not answer and run away?

Okay, when it comes to children what do you believe ought to be done?