Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ECrownofFire]

I can't just know that I have issues, that doesn't imply me doing anything about them. Just acknowledging my flaws and ignoring them. That's my real flaw. Ironically, that especially applies to itself.

At this point I just want things with her to end on a somewhat positive note. I don't know how though. Anything I say just seems to make things worse and worse.

I'm still here for another 2 weeks. My birthday is this Saturday. What can I possibly do to make sure that we can at least have some fun? I want to stay friends with her. She wants to give me the $280 to cover my psychiatrist and meds. I want to at least have a happy birthday before I leave for Philly and am alone again.

I've known I've had problems for years, that doesn't mean I've done anything about it.

I'm not asking much of myself. Just go out and talk to people in a group, and actually go there more than a few times. Have a regular sleep schedule, even if it's waking up as late as 11 AM, that's better than waking up at 3 PM. Get to therapy on time once a week. Go out grocery shopping with my food stamps instead of getting delivery which I can't afford. Cook. Do the dishes. Shower more than once every week or two. Do the laundry. Just eat something instead of staring at my laptop screen for an entire day.

I've only asked myself the bare minimum that a 22 year old should be able to handle. A couple of them I'm not a complete failure at. But most of that... If I can't do that, where does that leave me?

try those meetup.com things, there are boardgame nights and the like. They're a good way to get into a group thing, because there's always going to be some group or other who has a spare seat at their game, and even though you feel nervous asking, i 100% guarantee that if you ask to join a game that's below capacity, they're going to welcome you in.

meetup.com is also great if you either don't know anyone in a city or you have social issues, because it's a whole social networking / organized thing focused around actually hanging out with people, so you can use it as a predictable way of having people to hang out with, without needing to put in so much effort and planning yourself.

I've tried those in the past. I get a lot of social anxiety. And if I don't make any connections, I just give up after a few meetups. I need to stop giving up so easily.

[Reelya]

The man cave thing is just one of many.  I think Reelya tries way too hard to justify many of his criticisms of feminism, but I'm right with him on the man cave thing. 

I'd argue that we go too soft on feminism as a field of sociology. There are a large number of examples of the field manipulating data in ways that would be straight-up scandals in any other field * **, yet the entire field basically gives them a pass on it and repeats the inaccurate data (I could cite page after page of examples where researchers cherrypick their own findings to make an ideological point, it's more common to happen than not). Exactly how much leeway should we be giving that?

I mean, we routinely mock other fields such as evolutionary psychology for not being 100% rigorous but they're like fucking Einstein compared to Gender Studies.

* Just the first example is that in one of the leading US textbooks on domestic violence law, the "rule of thumb" law (which is thoroughly discredited anyway) was attributed to Romulus of Rome in 753 BC as an actual law. Now ... that's just mythology and it's being linked to a non-existent law to make an ideological point. But this is being taught in colleges as FACT (and the author refuses to edit it out citing Plutarch as an authoratative source). And we're supposed to be taking anything else this field says seriously? In fact, we're giving them too much airtime by even listening in the first place. It's not much different to seriously debating with Scientologists or creationists.

** another example is in data omission. In Australia for example they highlighted in a campaign that almost 1 in 4 children have seen their father hit their mother. However, the original data was that 23% saw dad hit mum and 22% saw mum hit dad. So by omitting the context they can make something that's gender neutral appear to be gendered. So they cherry pick: Highlight similarities for good things, highlight differences for bad things. Even if the data doesn't support the claims, it will either be fabricated or manipulated so that they can make their "claims". It's pure advocacy through falsification of data, then they use political manipulation and public campaigns to get this stuff put into the textbooks and taught in schools. Again, they're going about this EXACTLY like Creationists did with their "intelligent design" stuff.

However: my vierwpoint is that "normal everyday women who want equal treatment" is qualitatively different to "ideological feminism". They're so opposite it's like night and day. The only issue is when people get indoctrinated with these evidence-free beliefs that are being created and diseminated by an academic movement that's effectively a cult with their own internal language, conspiracy theories and echo-chamber. I'll make the comparison to Alcoholics Anonymous, Scientology and Creationism again here. My view is that "capital-F" Feminism is in fact of the same ilk as these other cult-like movements.

[Rolan7]

I'm stealthily getting a little bit drunk because, while today was full of yet more progress, I'm growing more and more uncomfortable around my family.  Some justified, much not.  I get irrationally anxious around them after a few days, it's been a week and a half.  I need to go home, and hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to (for a while).

People are looking to me for all the answers and I only have a few.

Meanwhile I'm weighing life-altering options for a new home, and I'm getting abjectly terrible advice.  Just, like, the worst.  Some deceitful and selfish, fortunately transparent.  A lot just absurd.  The most supportive person is very insistently against any place with carpeting, for example.  And most people are suggesting I go *deep* into debt.

But yeah, simultaneously I've got someone going through stuff similar to CrownofFire, and I just have no idea how to help.  Long ago I fought through my own ennui in order to spite a naysaying parent and live to see the world burn, which is probably terrible advice.  I've only partially moved on from that spite-based reason to live, it's still deep in me and my relationships with others.

[Lord Shonus]

The man cave thing is just one of many.  I think Reelya tries way too hard to justify many of his criticisms of feminism, but I'm right with him on the man cave thing. 

I'd argue that we go to soft on feminism as a field of sociology. There are straight-up examples of the field manipulating data in ways that would be straight-up scandals in any other field *, yet the entire field basically gives them a pass on it and repeats the inaccurate data (I could cite page after page of examples where researchers cherrypick their own findings to make an ideological point, it's more common to happen than not). Exactly how much leeway should we be giving that?

I mean, we routinely mock other fields such as evolutionary psychology for not being 100% rigorous but they're like fucking Einstein compared to Gender Studies.

* I mean, just the first example is that apparently in one of the leading US textbooks on domestic violence, the "rule of thumb" law (which is thoroughly discredited anyway) was attributed to Romulus of Rome in 753 BC as an actual law. Now ... that's just mythology and it's being linked to a non-existent law to make an ideological point. But this is being taught in colleges as FACT. And we're supposed to taking anything else this field says seriously? In fact, we're giving them too much airtime by even listening in the first place. It's not much different to seriously debating with Scientologists or creationists. I mean, really.

However: my vierwpoint is that "normal everyday women who want equal treatment" is qualitatively different to "ideological feminism". They're so opposite it's like night and day. The only issue is when people get indoctrinated with these evidence-free beliefs that are being created and diseminated by an academic movement that's effectively a cult with their own internal language, conspiracy theories and echo-chamber. I'll make the comparison to Alcoholics Anonymous, Scientology and Creationism again here. My view is that "capital-F" Feminism is in fact of the same ilk as these other cult-like movements.

That's not really unique to feminism. Alternative religions/atheism have a fair bit of that as well (compare what a serious neo-pagan journal has to say about witch hunts to what you find in pop-pagan works, for example), and there's a ton of bad data involved in LGBTQ+ or racial studies. Basically any studies relating to a group that's been historically denigrated (not quite the word I'm looking for, but close enough) get a lot of leeway in their methodology in an attempt to avoid biases.

The reasoning for doing so is sound enough, but it doesn't always lead to good data. 

[EnigmaticHat]

Y'all are being reasonable but maybe the sad thread is not the place for this?

[redwallzyl]

Y'all are being reasonable but maybe the sad thread is not the place for this?

Is there actually still a religion thread or was that locked?

[Reelya]

Y'all are being reasonable but maybe the sad thread is not the place for this?

We made you sad about it, so our job is done ...

To the earlier conversation:

Our culture encourages a lot of incredibly toxic attitudes towards relationships, generally.  Like... just about everything short of physical violence that makes people miserable in a relationship in reality is played for laughs or portrayed as evidence of true affection in our media, and this poisons people's expectations.  It's disgusting. ... on the man cave thing.  Most of the time I hear women use the term it's in a very clear context of "That space I begrudgingly allow him to have for that childish shit he refuses to give up, and inconveniently have to drag him out of when I want attention or service to my priorities."  And I don't hear men use the term much, except as code for "Yeah, I'm in that kind of relationship", usually with a chuckle of resignation.

Actually, that just got me thinking of one of the main arguments in the article. First, they are saying that "it just sounds like a lounge room" which backs up my idea that it's the stuff that you would have had in the lounge room in the first place (e.g. while single). e.g. they're saying that since it's like a lounge room, you don't need it because there's already a lounge room in the house. Which misses the point: the other person isn't willing to let you put your stuff in the lounge room, which is why you have a special room for it.

Second, the article made a major point out of the fact that men don't actually spend all that much time in their "man cave" environment. So that fits with what you're suggesting that it's actually all about marginalizing someone else's interests that the other person doesn't share. And then the article says "well if they don't spend that much time in that space why do they even need the space in the first place?" while simultaneously saying "spending so much time in the man cave is unhealthy!". However, arguing that you need to lose your personal space because you spend too much time and too little time in there at the same time seems like a total catch-22 argument.

To me the solution sounds like it's clearly to integrate what's in the "man cave" into the main living area of the house, e.g. if it's so unhealthy then there needs to be compromise here, but the article doesn't address that at all, so it's incapable of addressing the social issue here. The only solution given is to create special "manly" designated social events where you can do your cliched "man-stuff", in exchange for abolishing that small space that you have your hobbies in, in the home. And ... that just reinforces the old gender stereotypes that the man's natural place for doing stuff is outside the home, women's place is the home.

[misko27]

It's been 31 degrees in Canada for like three days, and only dipping below 20 on Thursday.

What the fuck, it's nearly October and it's *hotter* than it has been all summer.

Hey we have the same weather haha please kill me.

And Bipolar is similar in that people tend to brush it off when it has very real and serious effects. It's hard to consider that as a source of your problems when others don't take it seriously.

Is it? Really? In my household it's seen as synonymous with  "really serious and scary mental problems," right up there with schizophrenia. But maybe my experience is unusual.

It's people who cannot conceive that they HAVE a flaw that end up going downhill forever. In essence, you are already ahead. Next time you catch yourself in that bad habit, remember that you are strong enough to admit to yourself that the problem exists, and that you are therefore strong enough to fight against it and win.

Meh... I have hyperawareness of my problems, and while I can certainly agree awareness is ahead of nonawareness, it really is not by itself useful. In fact I might go so far as to say that awareness, when coupled with powerlessness, can be worse than being unaware.

I've been very aware of my problems all my life, due to what I might call an - if I'm being particularly charitable - aggressively thorough critical voice providing constant awareness. Awareness is not a solution. when success is attempted and failed repeatedly, awareness (the virtue of which lies solely in what is potential in it, the potential of improvement) ceases to have any positive value. As solutions become more distant, either due to impossible factors or perhaps worse, improbable factors (for improbable factors tease you with the possibility, however unlikely, of success, and thus sting all the worse), than the vices of awareness - namely anxiety  - come into play. Unrealized awareness is objectively more painful than unawareness, and so the value of awareness is linked decisively with one's ability to do something about it. where that does not exist, all one is left is despair.

Sorry, I know I'm not helping at all. I apologize for that. I've just had a very bad day, in large part due to things I cannot change, no matter how desperately I've tried and continue to try.

[Dunamisdeos]

No its cool. And yeah, Bipolar is a thing that I have often seen swept under the rug due to a lack of understanding. It gets pooh-pooh'd off as someone just being a moody asshole for no reason. They just want you to think they have a condition so they can get emotional whenever they want.

I've known people who have had a hard time seeking help because of that. 

[TD1]

I'd not be as vehement as Reelya, but any argument by a feminist lecturer I've heard has always been weak and one sided.

Not to mention, the office of one of them has a statuette of Aprhrodite on which certain body parts are graphically represented.

Hardly material for a respectable professional, and certainly not what I want to see in the office of someone claiming to follow an intellectual path.

[Dunamisdeos]

I always find it delightfully amusing when my wife involves herself in what she thinks of as my "guy" stuff. Conversely, she loves it when I go over and involve myself in what she considers her "girl" stuff.

I was sternly told that I am not to allow her favorite dwarves in DF to come to any harm, and have they found a mate yet and are their kids being taken care of properly? Don't let her take the baby dwarf into a fight, the baby will get scared. I think they need a living room she says, make sure it has the nice kind of chairs.

Then I get to make fun of vampire diaries while cuddling and watching supermodel centenarians whinge about how their crush just doesn't understand them while simultaneously pitching a plan to blow up hell. I usually get punched for that. It's great. I don't get punched for laughing at Buffy, because literally everything Spike says is amusing from some perspective.

EDIT: Wow yeah none of this has to do with Sad anymore.

[LordBaal]

Our first baby (yes, we did make it through my stupid mistake) it's only a month old and is sick and we don't really know what might be.
Living in a Venezuela which is ran by a drug cartel means most imported supplies are gone and labs don't have the reactives to discard some pretty basic stuff.
One doesn't know what is really suffering until something like this happens to you. Never imagined it was possible to feel such pain over a broken heart.

I would give my life for him to get better.

[Hanslanda]

My wife is upset with me because... I don't know. Sex I guess. I have difficulty finishing and I guess she is taking it personally.

[NullForceOmega]

extremely sad

I am so very sorry to hear this, I really, truly hope that your baby pulls through.

[Avarice]

Snip

Hey man if you want to talk about that I can try to help with that subject in public and private. I'm sure there are a few of us here that can help.
It can be a sensitive topic but you bringing it up shows its importance to you.
Please get help cause more problems stem from that kind of are of 'comfort and communication'
I hope i make sense