The big brother of PVC

I need help...

No, no! Before you start sending me the phone number of your therapist, I don't mean that kind of help :-)

It is more a literary kind of help.
I am searching for a word.

And so far, my cerebral 'Google' says, 'No results found'.

So I seek your help.


I have recently taken a step or two back from this blog.
Whilst I could use laziness/'busy, busy busy' as my excuse, this would not be the whole truth.

I have been doing what Danny asked me to do almost a year ago.
Which is to spend less time blogging and more time perusing other people's blogs.

This
1. Gives my blogging cortex a rest.
2. Gives me material to blog about.
3. Helps me establish that I am part of a blogging community and not an island.

Ahem!
That's the last time I listen to a man...

Just kidding, Maestro :-)

Me getting into a bit of trouble was not your fault :-) But thanks for saying that if you coulda, you woulda sat me down and given me some advice as to how to proceed...i.e. with caution, lol.

And your blogpost earlier today reminds me of an encounter with my big brother when I was about 5.

I got erm...beaten up by a boy of about 6 (yup, little ST got beat). I had no fighting skills, and even though I was bigger than him, the boy beat me up good.
I went crying to my big brother later.

Sympathy? Are you joking me?
This was my big brother's response:

"You allowed yourself to get beaten by a boy smaller than you? For sure, you deserved to get beat!"

My brother was treating me as though I were a boy. Always has, always will.
At least now I can have a sense of humour about it.

And after dusting myself from the latest clash with the Titans, in which my hamster got shot at point blank range, said hamster is now fully resuscitated and is ready to do business again, and I am back with you with a smile :-)

And to those men who are opponents of The Manosphere who would no doubt say the same thing my brother said and start off by saying, "What did we tell you about playing with those boys...?"
:-)
I know, I know, I got no right to come crying to you...



Joking aside, I want to do 2 things with this post:

1. Outline certain lessons I learned from my interaction with people on that post at TPM's.

(And I promise, no more rants from me. I got their message and I am cool with everybody involved. Honest. If you detect a rant, tell me and I shall give my hamster a slap).

2. And this will spill into the next post on this blog, where I shed some light on why I think JV's contribution to that post is important, even if not to the men on that post.

(Now, whilst it is no secret that I rather like JV (no homo), this is not the reason I supported one or two of her comments on that post about M3. I shall do my best to explain it as clearly as possible...).


Well, I told you I was slow...
The thought to bring the topics of interest (to me) that occurred to me when I read M3's post should have passed through my mind much earlier than it did.
In many ways I forgot I have a blog! I was so used to being a 'commenter' lately :-)

I like to make parallels between male and female 'ways'. I have previously done this with the hamster and 'frame' using the 'brother-sister' analogy.
I am about to do it again.


One of the lessons I learned on my recent brush with the Manosphere law is that sometimes, even good intentions from a woman can be viewed as BAD BAD BAD by a man. This can be so frustrating for a woman. But in the same way as women cannot expect men to act like a woman, I guess I can only expect a man to act like a man.

I, like most women will soak up empathy whenever and wherever I can get it :-)
This is closely linked, I think, to (in a nice way) our tendency towards what I call 'Perpetual Victim Complex' (PVC). Not all women have this problem, but I think the majority do. Now, what one does with this complex is up to the individual woman. I know some women, for instance, who only use their PVC not for themselves, but for others :-)

But some men (and definitely not all) prefer to stew in their own pain and exclude everyone from it. I guess this is part of the 'Quiet Man' phenomenon, although I must say, I have never encountered a man in real life, 'Quiet Man' or not, who didn't make it known that he appreciated genuine empathy when it was offered.

So this episode on TPM was 'virgin territory' for me.

The man is so deeply buried in his problems that he refuses any displays of affection. Even from a woman who is standing well outside of his 'cave' (like miles away) and waving a white flag and not offering anything remotely resembling 'help'.

To the man, all of that is 'noise'....? (Yes, someone used that word).
Anyone know how to better define this phenomenon in one or two words?
I was thinking...maybe 'leave-me-alone!' complex' or even 'stay away from me!' phenomenon, but that's more than two words...


Well, it helps to know. Lesson learned.
If the point of this blog is to understand a bit better about men, then here is a lesson from the College of Manhood. (Oh, I was so tempted to say 'University of Man', but they are no longer with us...).

And...very importantly, I think it is wise to know a particular man's tendencies when it comes to this.
As I found out, the men at TPM were polarised on this 'empathy' issue, some refusing it (which is fine) and some welcoming it (which is fine). But the problem was, I was not to know who wanted what, so I was like a reed in the wind...
Luckily, M3 himself was a 'yes please, I'll take it' kind of man in this respect.
Phew!

I think it would be a shame for a woman to provide it when it is not wanted, and to not have it handy when it is needed.


Anyhow, now I move onto JV.

But before I do, a quick word about 'solipsism'.

As with 'hypergamy' and 'preselection', I have my own take on this.

The Manosphere view this as a predominantly female disease. I don't.
It cannot be.
Whenever we encounter a situation, we judge it by making it 'about us'.
Case in point:  many men responded to M3's post by starting off saying something like.
'Man, this is so what I went through...'
'God, this is so familiar...'

The only reason they are not judged for their reaction is that their reaction is identical to M3's (or similar enough) and therefore deemed acceptable, on a forum that deals with men's issues. Which is fair enough. I get that.

M3 gave a wonderful analogy to explain why he thought (as JV and I did) that it is indeed possible to empathise with someone even if you don't have an identical experience as them.

"Very few people on this planet had someone they’re related to die on 9-11. But for a day, the whole world stopped. Empathy brought the planet to a halt."

As someone who was neither anywhere New York nor knew someone who was, how can I 'make this about me'?
Easy. Find something similar that I can relate to.

IRA bombings in London, for example...

I HAVE to first make it about me, in my head, before I can relate.
If I can't, I'm done. It won't be possible to relate. If I tried to, it would come across as fake. Which would be clear for all to see.

JV and I tried to do that. Solipsism, yes. But necessary solipsism in this case.

I provided an example of a good woman who couldn't get a commitment from a man she loved.
PVW, you are right, I didn't make this analogy tight enough, and the picture you provide on Danny's blog is exactly what I would have said, if I had had a chance to.
But as you can see, it would have been the wrong time and place :-)

JV gave two examples, bless her :-)

The first one really ruffled feathers.
It was the example of a bad woman who was suffering the consequences from one too many 'pump and dumps'.
The unfortunate thing about this was that many commenters made the assumption that JV was equating M3's situation with this female situation.
I know she wasn't - like me before her on that post, she was simply saying that the way these women feel is similar to how M3 felt, and not that the path that took those women to where they were presently is similar to how M3 got to where he was - but it is a hard case to argue, especially when the issue of 'choice' came up.
So in fact I saw a reason to abandon this analogy.

The second analogy is much more apt.
For two reasons:

Because it is more an appropriate analogy for JV to have used, because it was her experience. Which means it is the best analogy she could use to help her see M3 as 'fellow sufferer'.

I shall go more into that analogy in Part 2. Because I think there are other aspects to it that deserve to go under the microscope.

With this solipsism in mind, I can now say that this suggestion by someone, cannot work, for the target audience intended:


A woman who wants to understand it better can imagine how she’d feel like if
* Men stopped paying attention to her
*To get any sex, she has to ask 100 men before one says yes, and a lot of rejections are brutal. Some express disgust.
*Guys she likes fuck anyone but her
*She is constantly horny like during ovulation, just constantly.

This would not work because women simply do not live this experience. If to understand M3, a woman used this strategy, it would be no more than an intellectual exercise. It would NOT take her to the place of pain that she needs to go to (that is still nowhere near M3's place of pain, granted - but is better than nothing).

I agree better with that same commenter's statement (elsewhere):

"Using parallells to understand how someone might feel is the only way we can understand anything. Were they asking you to imagine a color you’ve never seen before? Of course you can only imagine something with things you already know about/experienced."

Solipsism. We need it. All of us. And it ain't a bad thing if used correctly.


The third and final lesson is....
As ever....

Vive la différence!

Just eat your soup and let her talk

The above was LL Cool J's response to the question: 'Tell me about the woman in your life'.

The interviewer burst out laughing at this answer and brought the interview to a quick close at this point.
I laughed out loud too at this answer.
Because it is oh so familiar.

The opening scene of 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' sees a man brought in to the village doctor's house by his wife because he is 'deaf'. After a brief examination, the doctor works out the problem and duly fishes out a pea out of the man's ear. A pea, which it would appear he may have accidentally inserted into his ear from childhood.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin' is a war-film.
There are horrific scenes of death, betrayal and pain.
But by the end of this film, this man's only complaint is about the nagging of his wife. In the last scene of the film, he is practically begging the doctor to put the pea back in his ear because he can't take it anymore.

:-)

I don't know much about LL Cool J except that he is a rapper and actor.
I have never heard him rap but I have seen him in a sitcom or two years ago.
But like most men, he seems to have certainly figured out the key to a peaceful life :-)

My own musical hero Ludwig van had no such problems. Deafness, although of course is an unfortunate medical difficulty, could be, for the man looking for a silver lining to his raincloud, the perfect way of escaping some of life's little stresses.

What is it about women's chit-chat that men find so unbearable?
What is it about women's chit-chat that make men brave outside temperatures of minus twenty for hours at a time when they are not even smokers but need a desperate excuse to leave the frenzy of female conversation?

Even with 'masculine eyes' I cannot seem to get to the bottom of this one.

I do like one-word answers. Even to 'open questions'. I really do.  It is reassuringly familiar. In this, I am probably one of the outliers.

But I cannot live with this all the time.
This is one big reason I have female friends :-)
One of the functions of  'the herd' is to preserve sanity :-)

There is an evolutionary benefit to a quiet man of course. Out on the hunt, if the wild deer heard you, neither you nor your family would be getting any dinner that night. In fact, if the hunted were dangerous enough to become the hunter, you might not even make it home to dinner.

I get that.

When I asked the question about why men are quiet during traumatic times, in The Quiet Man, I got decent answers that satisfied my curiosity somewhat.
"Men are stoic."
"It is not worth speaking when no-one is listening."
"It is just male nature."

I get that.

I also get that most men need a certain 'quiet time' usually after a transition from one activity to another, typically the transition from work to homelife.

I get that.

But the situation I am describing is neither 'out on the hunt', nor traumatic nor an infringement of 'quiet time'.

Take dinnertime, for instance. Which is precisely the time LL Cool J is referring to.

Is it physically painful to indulge in a little chit-chat about the day's events, or the political climate, or the economic crisis?
Or any other topic?

Or during social settings where the general theme is not sport- or work-related.

Why do men clam up?

Is there a reason other than boredom?
Is boredom ever a valid reason?
Or am I just in the wrong crowd?
It is known that a woman's 'corpus callosum', the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres is much more developed than a man's, even though a man's brain is bigger in mass, corrected for body surface area.
The part that deals with language skills is also better developped in women.
Hence to say that a woman is wired to communicate is in fact a biological truism.

But is there not a design fault in the system if the talker has no audience?
There would be no need for this post if men were known to be good listeners :-)
But again the number one (number two?) complaint about men is that they do not appear to listen to or hear women.
Which is odd, because the hunter has to have a keen sense of hearing, no?

Something does not quite add up.

Is there a chance of selective hearing going on, maybe?
Or is it really the case that men are not wired to hear women at all. Just each other, i.e. other men.

Is this a cruel trick of Nature that women can only communicate effectively with each other?
Or is it a design fault that God hasn't quite gotten round to fixing yet because he is procrastinating, but 'watch this space'?
Given that 'one day' to God equals a thousand years, we might be in for a long wait...

What you don't see is the woman yapping away in the background. This man is in 'tune out' mode :-)
Where do men learn how to do the 'tune out' thing? Is this part of the 'locker room' training?