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saya shiver
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Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 10:47 am

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So I posted this in this other guild I'm in, BURN, and I just want a lot of people to read and react, so here it is again. It's kind of a rant-post, but I think it has a point.

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So I've been having this thought lately that's really been eating at my mind...

I recently read a bunch of books by a man named Barry Lyga. For anyone who hasn't read anything by him (the majority), all his books have a common thread - they're all from male perspectives save for one (Goth Girl Rising) and they all have some kind of really heavy topic involved. For example, sexual abuse from a woman to a boy or obsession and addiction... but one of them was different.

Goth Girl Rising is from the perspective of, well, a "Goth" who I thought was a lot like me. Her mom died (my mom didn't die) and she had a lot of guilt because of a lot of things that happened with her mother before she died and the main character (Kyra) eventually turned to self-injury and was hospitalized twice because of it. She eventually started hating her dad, who was responsible for her being hospitalized because he's her only family member.

Anyway, all that's mildly irrelevant. What really struck me about Kyra is that she has these huge, huge boobs, but she wears extremely modest black clothing and uses minimizer bras to make them look smaller so as not to attract attention to them. She wanted to be seen as a person, not an object. And she would look around all the women she came into contact with who threw themselves at men subtly (but definitely) and frowned upon all of that.

And that somehow made me think about how guys will do anything for sex (almost) and how it's the most important thing to teenage boys and I went through this whole thought process about how girls grow up wanting to hear that someone loves them and that they're beautiful, but it's so easy for someone to say that. Girls sometimes don't even get in relationships because they like a guy - they just LOVE that the guy likes them. Girls crave that. And guys can offer it up like THAT. So how many guys lie to a girl's face for sex?

So I asked my therapist about this. I was like, "do men really have the capacity to love a woman?" And you know what she told me? She said that teenagers often mistake the strong feelings that hormones induce for love, and that "some" men can love. But what the hell is love, anyway? And how much is "some"? And what's out there for me if "most" guys don't have the capacity to love someone?

This whole thing's been making me really depressed - girls (like me) bend over backwards with a guy whips out some smooth words. I mean, he may not show that he "loves" her at all, he just has to say it and a girl will completely freak out. For example, my best friend is in HUGE trouble with her parents right now for having a secret boyfriend and her reason for staying with him is that "he said he loved me and that he's never going to leave me, no matter what." This is after they had oral, by the way. Was that just a suave way of saying thank you or something? "Hey, thanks for the BJ, I love you!" What does that mean?

Like most guys would have a hard time forcing those words out of their mouth, right? So does that mean he meant it? I would hope so, because he already girlfriend-hopped once between my friend and this other girl. He's dated each of them twice, on-and-off.

I guess I'm just a little spooked right now. I'm a sexual abuse victim and sex was the first thing I learned about male-female relationships, and the whole concept sometimes scares me a little. Yes, I've had sexual contact, both willingly (boyfriend) and unwillingly (someone else, a long time ago). Maybe that's why this is scaring me so much.

I'm just afraid. If men can't love, then what's the point of ever being in a relationship? If men can't love, I won't get married. If men can't love, then women are meant to be alone. And it's society's fault for teaching little boys that sex is what women are for.

Congratulations if you read all of that. Here are my questions: Can men love? Gentlemen, have you ever felt "love"? Have you ever wanted a girl for something other than physical contact? How do you know if you LOVE a girl? And I'm not talking about "She's really cute I get a rush when I talk to her" I'm talking about "I love her and I would do anything for her."

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Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 11:15 am

I know I'm not a guy but I can add to this. I know from past experience, as you know already, that most men will do anything from sex. They'll sweet talk you and claim they love you and they'll drug you and take advantage of you with a few friends... but I really think this is just the minority vs. the majority.

First of all you have to understand that the society we live in idolizes women as sex objects. That's just our society, the only thing we can do to stop it is to boycott the media in every form and stop making sex sell. Alas, we can't... because like it or not sex is the main human drive.
That's another problem with sex is we, as humans, have developed the ability to over think an otherwise very natural process. We naturally and biologically desire sex and the reason we do is because of reproduction. Whether you want to damn this to hell or accept it as fact humans are creatures of sex. Just like every other animal out there.
However humans give birth to extremely fragile offspring, extremely so, and so we females have the desire for a strong father for those offspring because of this. We were biologically and evolutionarily developed and designed to mate with a single person for as long as we have children; here's the issue with that. Naturally a child who has hit puberty would be completely free to run off in the wild and thus they no longer need their parents. Our society has delayed this process years and years past what nature intended, so we all end up with conflicting feelings. (both parents and children)
Now here's the thing we know about men, they produce sperm constantly while women only have a certain amount of eggs to last them their entire life. Men should be, biologically speaking, creating offspring until the day they die... while women on the other hand should be taking care of their children, and not constantly having them, until the day they die. This creates issues when the woman has finished being fertile and the man's biological desires tell him to continue reproducing.

Now lets look at other societies for a while. Many, many, many, many societies expected the man to have more than one wife; a primary wife who basically ran the household and the secondary wives who were there simply to help the primary wife. I believe that if you add a few more men to the mix this is how ancient humans (the non-civilized ones) survived. Large family packs, quite like monkeys. I also believe that they survived like this because of the biology I spoke of above.

Well... lets jump to present day. We still have all those biological desires and yet now we have a rulebook set in place by the society in which we live in. France accepts and even loves martial affairs. The United States doesn't and yet it occurs with little punishment. Third world countries will punish martial affairs with death. See the societal influence?
Well... what exactly does this say about men? It means that men feel 'love' differently than women (men love a woman for her childbearing, her ability to care for their children, and her ability to be a wife; and yet in our society we have destroyed this position and made women just as capable as men. Like it or not this goes against biology.) (women love a man because he is strong, protective, a provider who can protect her and their children.) However both of them have a desire to be there for their children. Sexuality, love, and everything else involved revolves around offspring. We can't help that, this is human nature.

But lets remember that we are human, we have the ability to think coherently and come to our own decisions and control our biological desires. This is what ultimately separates man from every other species of animal out there. We have the ability to decide and control our otherwise perfectly natural desires.
We can say no to sex. We can say no to food. We can so no to murder. We can decide where other animals cannot. This also means that a man and a woman can find a way to forge a perfectly meaningful and lasting relationship in which they are sexual only with each other.
It's all about control and using your mind over your natural desires.
Some men are wonderful at this and despises those other men just as much as you and I and most women do.
Some women are worse than some men.
It depends on the couple, the individual, and communication. (And the society which has given them their morals... because morals are a societal creation and not a God-given knowledge.)

Now... as for how do you know when it's love. I don't think anyone knows when it's love honestly... simply because love means a different thing for every person. Ultimately it comes down to the desire to make it work. It's not obsessive, it's not controlling, it's not over whelming. It's the desire to communicate, the desire to work things out, and the desire to want to spend the rest of your life with that person.
And lets be bluntly honest here... many of us have said "I love you." to a person we really didn't want to spend the rest of our lives with. I think it comes down to a feeling... you simply meet them, and it's not overwhelming or obsessive but you just know. You know because you saw them in your dreams for years. Of course you have to remember that life sucks and you'll have times you're sitting in the darkness of your bed room with a knife just waiting to kill them, but that's when your human mind must start working over your natural desires.
Life's hard, but we have been given the ability to think our way through it. I think that's what it comes down to.

So do I think a man can truly love a woman? Yes I do, but everyone has to remember that we have natural desires. That's just us not being capable of removing ourselves from what we actually are on the inside. (Instinct driving animals) I also think the longer we refuse to accept that we aren't actually any better than monkeys the harder it is to accept that we just have to be able to think ourselves through life.

I hope that helped <3

LifeNoLongerWorthIt

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Irako of the Desert

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Posted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 7:13 pm

(High five for being in BURN. I'm a mod there.)
Love is an extraordinarily hard thing to find.

I've never been treated as someone who is a sex object. I've had the good fortune to have guys become infatuated with me because of my personality rather than my moderate good looks cool . I always treat them with respect and expect the same from them. The guys often mistook this respect as a personal interest in them and developed crushes on me. I've even dated a few of them, one of which turned into a rather long relationship (I seriously thought I would end up marrying him until we broke up).

Guys do have the capacity to feel love for a woman. It's not always "Omigosh, I saw you across the room and I just knew you were 'the One'." Sometimes it has to grow out of a mutual respect for one another's feelings. Unfortunately, guys aren't born knowing what respect is and sometimes aren't taught what it means. This results in them treating women like nothing more than sex objects.

The trick is recognizing when you respect a guy and knowing when he respects you back.

Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 7:51 pm

I hear people ask this about guys alot. And people always place the majority of what men do with all men and it becomes a horrible stereotype. And they all know the answer is that they can. But it depends on the person.

Yes you can blame the media Because it's not just females getting oversexualized. Men get it as well. And you can blame all these relationship self help books. Who stereotype men and teach women they need a man and to manipulate or handle men to make them perfect. Or vise versa. Even eviornmnets.

But I believe until people stop treating people like their gender or race or whatever and start treating them like the individual they are. Stop comparing men to the stereotypes they hear. Then it would be better. The question is mostly about people and what they do. Not a problem about females, or males. Just that person.

It's better to just be a person not an amazing person. I believe in that completley.

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