From: lib@cbnews.cb.att.com (Lib)
Subject: Re: displacement
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 18:30:13 GMT

!In article <1992Sep5.173815.23081@tfs.com> ecsd@tfs.com (Eric C. S. Dynamic) writes:
!>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
     
Get a life.