From: ecsd@tfs.com (Eric C. S. Dynamic)
Subject: Re: displacement
Organization: TFS
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 17:38:15 GMT

There is a phenomenon of displacement, which I am sensitized to through
working through emotional abuse as a child. A simple example:

I got drunk at a friend's party. His girlfriend told me: "you alienated
everyone at the party."

At first I believed this, out of the syndrome that either everyone likes
me or everyone hates me. Two days later I ran into two people who were
at the party, who showed me that the truth was probably that almost
nobody at the party had taken it seriously. I thought about it at great
length, and realized that this was the mechanism that had been used to
control me quite often as a child. My mother would say things like
"everyone expects ...", "people don't do that", etc. - I finally
understood that in essence I had always known she was lying, except for
the unfortunate fact that throughout my childhood I never found refuge
with people who would correct these images for me, so they stuck.

The fact was that the fellow's girlfriend was the one who was offended,
but she wasn't willing to take personal responsibility for saying so.
In effect, she was willing to use 'group reinforcement' to keep me in
line, except there was no group upon inspection. I don't think she was
consciously aware of doing this, and therein lies a problem. It's my
estimation that this is a "feminine" 'technique', on the lines described
in D. Tannen's book (You Just Don't Understand) - in which in a group of
women, as I recall it described, the expectation is for consensus and that
no one person would take the spotlight. So it is not "I feel that X",
but "we feel like X". This is just fine in the appropriate context, but
between her and me we now have a culture clash. My estimate about this
person is that the mechanism of displacement in her is so entrenched
that there would be no point in trying to discuss it, because I would
be trying to force her to admit that her feelings are the ones making the
judgement about me, and this would make her too uncomfortable, and she
would deny it. But now I cannot share space with this person, because she
is not being honest (as I see it) about who wants what. I say, I am not
willing to negotiate anything with someone in a context where when I want
what I want, I say that _I_ want it; if she refuses, she says "but nobody
would think your request reasonable"; but when she wants what she wants,
she says that anyone would want it, and if I refuse, she says "but everyone
wants what I want".

In my e-mail at work, I dropped a little line into something sent wide,
"So, is she good-looking?" out of play. I expected people to take it as
I meant it (don't we all), which was that it was a well-known line, and
intended as humor. A woman wrote back, roughly, "What are you doing?
You've ruined your chances with every female at the company!" - this sent
just as wide. I wrote back what did I do wrong? And she said, we don't
like having it reinforced to us that we are considered for our
attractiveness. She followed up by saying, while everyone knows that
attractiveness is a consideration, we don't like to hear it.

I've been told that I'm taking this much more seriously than I should,
but I'm not so sure. (1) This woman would be regarded as attractive by
the majority of people I know, male or female. (2) We're talking about
open exchange of mail where the majority of people attack any individual
who tries to silence a discussion in the mail, or who launches a personal
attack on someone whose view they dislike. Yet I am put in a context where
now I must consider very closely what I will and will not say for fear of
offending 'female sensibilities'. (3) The woman did not say that she was
offended, nor did she say that I had ruined my chances with HER. She said
I had ruined my chances with every female in the company. (4) She sent this
mail to every female in the company who had originally received my note.
(5) I received a sarcastic note from another female as part of this exchange.

As a male, and especially as a reclusive one, I am obliged to stand alone
(I have no experience with having been "supported by a group") and to deal
'singlehandedly' with things that confront me. It was ever this way and
I've had no notion that there were 'alternatives' of any sort until fairly
recently. I watch this unfold in the mail, and the image is: this woman
will bid other women to reject me out of the hurt she experiences. She has
succeeded in that at least one other female there concurs with her judgement.
She has not considered that it is possible that her interpretation of my
remark is not shared by "all the females at the company"; and she has not
done the one thing I would consider honest, which is to say "I was
personally offended by your remark." Nor has she addressed the anomaly
that since (if she knows so) she is attractive, I cannot be injuring HER,
because she does not lose if I ask "is she good-looking" about her; it must
be that to 'correct' me, she is defending the feelings of other women - but
she has no need for this protection. Further: if she does NOT understand
that she would be 'objectively' considered attractive, I certainly don't
know what to do; she can look at herself in the mirror, but if despite
seeing an attractive woman in it she still needs external validation to
believe it, she's denying reality in a certain specific way that I cannot
address for her. As I see it I am being attacked for injuring feelings
that should not be hurt, and being made to answer to "all females at the
company" for the injury this one person perceives. Worse than all this is
that I am now told that to be considered 'good' or 'polite', I am expected
to "not say" things which we all experience in common. "We all know this,
but we don't want to hear it." While I understand that there are many things
that people would prefer not to deal with and that to bring them up causes
tension, anxiety, despair, etc., there are two things in operation. One is
that if it is an objective fact, we should have gone some measure toward
integrating it into our awareness. The other is that I was expressing
mySELF: _I_ feel X, _I_ think X. If I censored of myself everything that
anyone in the company felt awkwardly about, I would have very little to
say - that _I_ cared about. And I feel I am being asked to deny reality
(my feelings) in favor of a conspiracy around an illusion (erected to
protect "women's feelings".)

Before making her reply, cc'ed to "all the females in the company" who
received my original note, she did not send private mail to make her views
known to me, nor did she try to establish my intentions. She apologized in
Private mail for having rushed to judgement - but this was not sent "to
all females at the company", etc. In effect, to protect, or avenge, her
feelings, she abused me. According to her, evidently, she is justified
through doing what she does in defense of "women in general" although
there are women at the company who don't need this protection. If I were
to have sent a defense through the mail ("I can say what I like", or
"If everyone knows this, why are we behaving like ostriches"), I _know_
I would receive angry mail from other females there - in support of their
fellow. If I were lucky, the debate might be joined by others (male and
female) who would defend my point of view, or me at least.

So I remain rather dissatisfied. Some group of people will close ranks
with each other to bash me and my point of view in defense of their feelings.
Not one of them will admit that they have an actual personal stake in the
debate. Not one of them begins with the "feminine" model of rapprochement
to address the issue with me in a way that includes, rather than excludes
me. Not one of them has presumed from the outset that (a) what I did was
not intentional, (b) it was not directed at any specific or named person,
(c) it was said with humor and intended as such, (d) it was not _intended_
to injure. Not one of them has reflected upon the fact that I am suffering
direct injuries as a result of their actions and this at their hands in a
deliberate, intentional way.

The lament is not so much over the specific situation. A couple few people
there are put out; I will not censor myself; I haven't "ruined my chances
with every female at the company" unless every female at the company is
un-self-possessed and follows the judgements of others to the exclusion of
her own. What disturbs me is the blind way in which the particular woman
pursued the issue and the same lack of sensitivity she accuses me of -
I'll admit my consciousness is expanded about the issues involved, such
that now it will occur to me to consider whether I am saying something
I could in advance understand would offend the 'sensitivities' involved.
What I'm afraid of is that I am the only person doing the learning, and
that this woman will continue to assert the same attitude without inquiring
in herself what she might have understood in our exchange. As a black-and-
white archetype I say I am not willing to be 'corrected' and 'to make
adjustments' without the same occurring on the other side; I'd say to her,
I'll begin to comprehend and integrate these "feminine" considerations into
my consciousness, no problem. Will you do the same? Will you begin to look
at what you don't understand within "male culture", begin to say "it's
pissing _me_ off" (not "it pisses people off"); will you trust me, that
if you and I are going to tussle, it's only fair that it should be you and
me tussling, and not me tussling with everyone you can invite to help you;
will you begin to trust that while men think attractiveness is important,
they know very well that human beings live in those beautiful bodies;
will you consider that since YOU TOO think attractiveness is important, even
if you might use somewhat different criteria UP FRONT (perhaps "is he nice"
versus "is she good-looking") you very much discriminate - and that men, like
it or not, are prepared to hear your criteria!!

I wonder how surprised women would be to understand how men, many men at
least, are simultaneously aware of two things:
One, how lust and sexual desire drive them throughout the day; how keenly
attuned they are as designed by nature to track and hunt and recognize and
evaluate the female; how instinctive and reflexive and automatic and
thought-less it is (because it is not a function of the 'higher mind').
Two, how much they _love_ women, and want to please them, and want to be
with them, and want to make them HAPPY; how dependent they are upon women
in the sense of wanting to conduct things nicely with them and to get along
with them, to know them and understand them, to share with them.

Women seem not to understand how deeply social men really are. In our
culture at least, women objectify men as being interested only in sex.
They seem not to understand how the sex-drive is actually a socializing
force which they can 'use' to their benefit. I'll suggest that the women
who view sex as a commodity to be bargained for are the women who end up
complaining that men seem 'unavailable'. This is very simply because most
men implicitly understand that sex is a part of life, and a woman who
denies them sexual involvement is denying them life; of course they will
move on. The society bids that sex must have been cultivated towards
certain ends, but the sexual energy itself recognizes no such bounds.
A female who makes sex conditional upon satisfaction of external
parameters is someone who has recognizably denied both themselves and
their partner. The mature male has already internalized the perpetuation
of the species (the female drive) and is seeking a mate, in the same way
the female does. The female has but to recognize that she will choose the
person (her mate) when she identifies him and that in the meantime, as
he does, she can satisfy her urges to 'pretend' procreation, i.e. enjoy
sex for its own sake.

It's difficult for me to comprehend that at the deeper level, men and
women love each other very deeply, while at the social level at least
in this country they are constantly at each other's throats.

hey. pornography objectification blah blah all we want is sex.
Yea. What else is new. The naked female for us is pretty much the symbol
of the whole God-damned universe. And in this country the females are
thoroughly and totally alienated from themselves in this aspect.
No damn difference as human beings, yet such a philosophical divide?
Not for me. I want to procreate with one of those delectable creatures,
who does not have her head up her ass about it. Who is willing to stand
up to me and say yea Jack, how is it fer you lately. In whom I can invest
my entire heart and soul. It may be a fucking lot to ask, but still it's
not more than any of us deserve.

Jesus. I do so desperately wish to be honest, truthful and fair,
to be self-aware and responsible to others. Energy, it's all a
matter of energy.

Yay-huh. Hoping my energy to you was _sufficiently_ honest. Best I can
do on a first pass.

Yr faithful servant:
-ECSD
Newsgroups: soc.women,soc.men