Re:Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot
by groby_b on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @11:13PM
(#3769468)
At least partially that might well be because society perpetuates the stereotype that gut-reactions are a female thing, guys are really bad at listening to their heart, and in general emotionally stunted. At some point, it becomes internalized - and you see men simply ignoring emotions and feelings that they're well aware of.
Sure, it's dressed in sugar coating ("guys are rational!"), but it's still affecting behavior. That's the thing with gender stereotypes - they actually hurt both sides, just in different ways.
Re:Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot
by hosh on Thursday March 29, 2012 @01:46AM
(#3769803)
Ignoring your gut or your heart is a behavior that can be unlearned through various means, including meditation. Being mindful of your emotions has nothing to do with society and stereotypes, and everything to do with your own habits of the mind and experiencing reality as is.
Re:Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot
by groby_b on Friday March 30, 2012 @06:45PM
(#3778494)
And society and prevalent stereotypes shape your habits and how you experience reality in the first place. Nobody is saying you can never get rid of this behavior - just that we're all being indoctrinated from a very early age, and that it takes lots of work to break that conditioning.
Twenty years after writing Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, the Arbiter of Badassness, wrote in Reamde:
"It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn't have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn't have to decide. She just had to pass on the news."
I've noticed this in myself and other guys: even if our guts or our hearts tell us we did wrong, we tend to rationalize and defend our actions instead of simply apologizing.