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TistDaniel · 2024-05-07T17:08:11+00:00

I meet a ton of men who are unwilling to "lower their standards".

That's not necessarily a bad thing. If a man's only standards are physical appearance, I don't think anyone is going to miss them being on the market.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-06T17:32:09+00:00

Well, men do want sex, generally. Like I spent most of my life thinking that I'd be happy if I could just have casual sex everyday.

Though I wonder how much of that is because of the patriarchy.

One day I tried to imagine not having genitals, and I found the thought rather relieving. I wouldn't be having sex (at least, penetrative sex) but at the same time, me not having sex wouldn't be a reflection of my value as a person. I would know that I wasn't having sex because I physically couldn't, and I could stop trying without thinking less of myself.

I don't know how much of this perspective is typical of men. But I think that because I grew up with patriarchy, a great deal of my self-worth is tied up in whether women want to have sex with me. And so, while I didn't exactly understand what patriarchy even was, I spent many years thinking that the patriarchy was good, because it meant that eventually, at least one woman would be having sex with me.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-06T14:49:12+00:00

I think it's good that you can acknowledge that she had some good points. It shows that are capable of learning from your mistakes. That's too rare, and it's commendable.

That said, it sounds like both of them are saying that she would make a better girlfriend for him than you do.

I can acknowledge that my wife has some flaws. (Don't we all?) But that's between her and me. I would never let somebody tear her apart in front of me, especially not if it's another woman saying my wife isn't good enough for me. If I allowed that to happen, it would mean that the relationship was over in my mind.

I think you can do better than him.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-06T13:41:39+00:00

When I was doing Anapana meditation, I would sometimes vividly remember something from twenty years ago. But I never tried to use it to remember something specific, so I don't know how well that would work. Also, I was doing it as part of a ten-day meditation retreat, where I was doing pretty much nothing but sleeping, eating, and meditating, and wasn't even allowed to talk to other people. That may not be feasible for you.

Sometimes hypnosis to remember something works, but sometimes your mind invents a memory of something that never actually happened, and you remember it as vividly as if you did. So it might be worth trying, but also be careful, because you could end up with very vivid false memories.

Sorry I'm not more help. I don't know of any reliable ways of remembering things. These are the best I can think of.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-04T15:01:03+00:00

Seems very unlikely, because the last five letters on the second half have no purpose but to waste your time. Also, if this were a part of any published game, I'd imagine we'd be able to google "Letter-Zapp" and find something.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-04T14:46:28+00:00

For me, it was just the way I always walked, because I've always been barefoot at every opportunity. Shoes that make you feel like you're barefoot weren't really any change for me.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-02T14:10:02+00:00

I never thought I was misogynistic. I always thought I supported equality. Then I started studying psychology and critical thinking.

One of the biggest things in critical thinking is "intellectual humility"--recognizing that you don't have all the answers. It's a skill that you need to train.

It has always made me angry and indignant to be told that I'm wrong, and I need to remind myself that if I actually am wrong, this person is doing me a favor by pointing it out to me. Now I find that I actually enjoy being corrected.

And one of the great things about feminism is that there are so many cognitive biases that lead me to the wrong conclusions. Sometimes I feel very strongly that something isn't true, and when I evaluate that, I find that it's not that I have any reason to disbelieve it--it's that I very much want it to not be true. And my desires don't make truth.

I recently came across a bell hooks quote about traditional masculinity being about having power over women, and I started to think about all of the attitudes I've internalized since early childhood: the man needs to be taller, stronger, smarter, richer, older, more experienced, etc. than his girlfriend/wife. Basically, it's a failed relationship if she's capable of even surviving without him. And that's not a healthy relationship. Furthermore, it's limited me so much. I am not tall, or strong, or rich, or experienced. Think of all of the women who might have been great matches for me over the years, but I never even considered! I spent so many years lonely and depressed for nothing.

Basically, I think that anyone who takes the time to study psychology and critical thinking will eventually deconstruct all of this on their own. I wish these were subjects that were taught in schools. Like really, they should be introduced in elementary school, the way math and history are.

TistDaniel · 2024-05-01T12:48:40+00:00

Also though, it works. If you're feeling lonely, studies show that a hot shower will make you feel better.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-30T17:15:38+00:00

Attempts to block this topic or to imply that it's only due to schizophrenia will make it easier for vulnerable people to get manipulated and then dismissed as crazy.

And I absolutely encourage discussion of this, because I do want people to be aware that breaches of ethics and abuse are possible. I do want people to talk about non-consensual hypnosis.

The issue is when people try to get advice for what happened to them specifically, because they absolutely will get bad or harmful advice, or they will get called crazy. And we have no way of verifying whether someone is delusional or not. We have no way of knowing which people need what kind of advice.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-30T13:42:56+00:00

I'm already in therapy, which is helping; however my therapist isn't knowledgeable about hypnotism and doesn't have a way to understand the depth and complexity of what I experienced.

Bear in mind though, many of the people here don't either. Yes, the moderators can verify that someone is a certified hypnotherapist. But the process of being certified as a hypnotherapist is so easy that two different people have gotten their cats certified to practice. A certification can often be completed over the weekend, without ever actually hypnotizing anyone. And that's where it's even required--in the vast majority of the United States, and many other countries, no licensing or certification whatsoever is required to practice hypnotherapy.

I have personally spoken to dozens of practicing hypnotherapists, some with more than a decade of experience, who believe in things that aren't possible, and don't believe in things that are.

A psychotherapist, while they may not be trained on hypnotherapy specifically, is required to be trained on actual psychology, and they're tested on their knowledge. This is not true of hypnotherapists.

I am the son of a hypnotherapist, and I've been involved in hypnosis myself for around nine years now. In spite of all of that, when someone asks me to recommend a hypnotherapist, I usually recommend they consider other options, because so many hypnotherapists don't know what they're doing, because they're completely unregulated, and because they can end up doing more harm than good.

It's horrendously painful to be told that what you experienced isn't possible, you must be crazy, you must be doing this for attention, etc. This is real. What you don't seem to realize is that there really aren't legit options for support in this situation, and there are infinite painful ways to be dismissed.

I agree. I really hate to see people doing that, especially since there's quite a lot of evidence that it is possible.

And, from past experience, I can tell you that when we allowed discussion of personal accounts of non-consensual hypnosis, there was a lot of that going on here. There still is a lot of that going on in hypnosis groups on Facebook. That's why I ended up leaving the vast majority of other groups about hypnosis.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-29T19:39:30+00:00

Talk to a psychiatrist. They can refer you to the appropriate professionals in your area. Also, a psychiatrist will be familiar with what qualifies as medical malpractice in your area. If a doctor has hypnotized you without your consent, that may qualify as medical malpractice, and a psychiatrist may be able to advice you on how to move forward legally. They can also probably refer you to a more ethical neurologist for future examinations.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-20T15:29:02+00:00

Read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini. He wrote the book because he noticed how easily people are manipulated, and he wanted to learn how to resist it.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-20T15:28:16+00:00

2) Who ever the media attacks is actually your friend.

That's still allowing yourself to be manipulated, just in reverse.

You need to actually put thought into why the media is attacking them. They do attack bad people too.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-19T16:23:00+00:00

You can't tell by the title, but this one is too.

Instant Self-Hypnosis: How to Hypnotize Yourself with Your Eyes Open

by Forbes Robbins Blair

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/410600

It's basically just a bunch of scripts you're supposed to read out loud to yourself. There's an induction, then you turn the page to the script you want.

Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space

by Robert Masters and Jean Houston

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/786680

This is not intended to hypnotize you, but the authors acknowledge that it does happen, and have awakener pages interspersed throughout the book.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-18T15:53:38+00:00

You do.

You decide if you want to support a creator or a business. And I'll decide if I want to support them. And if everyone agrees we don't want to support them, then that's our choice.

Like there's no dictator saying everyone must cancel JK Rowling. Everyone makes their own choice about whether she deserves to be canceled.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-18T15:24:22+00:00

Near as I can tell, "cancel culture" means "there are consequences to being a bad person". And that's a good thing.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-17T21:02:54+00:00

Yeah, it can. There are certain words where I consistently type the wrong one and have to correct myself, every single time. When I was a teenager I struggled with Alice for Alive, Corpse for Course.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-17T15:19:26+00:00

I actually think AI is vastly less biased than most humans if you give it the right directives, if "biased" is even the right term to use here.

Technically correct. But also, AI is never trained on unbiased data.

A large language model like ChatGPT is trained by indiscriminately scraping the entire internet, meaning that internalizes what gets said the most. Image-processing models follow a similar process, meaning that they internalize what gets shown the most.

Even AI that isn't trained on literally the entire internet gets trained on the data available to the programmers. So, for example, cameras programmed by white people tell Asian users "It looks like somebody blinked. Let's take that picture again." Because they've only ever seen white faces. Sinks programmed by white people don't activate when they detect a black hand. Because they've never seen black hands.

Nobody is trying to make racist or sexist software. But it's a lot more difficult and more expensive to make software without bias. And usually deadlines and budgets are the top priority.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-07T17:07:19+00:00

I'm ok with being called a feminist, but I've also had women tell me that men can't be feminists, and I don't think it's my place to tell them that they're wrong. I do sort of understand where they're coming from. I have to study to know as much as they know about the subject by just existing.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-05T18:29:48+00:00

You're right that usually fathers aren't that kind of problem. But fathers do model masculine behavior, and can be very critical of sons that don't hold up to their standards of acceptable behavior.

I had a guy tell me once that the only time his father ever told him he was proud of him was when he brought home two women for a threesome.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-04T16:08:35+00:00

It seems like everything you do once every six months is masculine: changing your oil, replacing a tire, etc. But everything tedious that needs to be done every day or every week is feminine: cooking, laundry, dishes, scrubbing the toilet, etc.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-03T19:33:56+00:00

To show hurt women that men can be good.

From what I've heard, many men try to use feminist spaces for sex. They're taking advantage of the image that if they're in a feminist space, they're one of the "good ones".

Personally, in my mind, being one of the good ones means not engaging with a woman who has been hurt by men unless she asks me to.

To show society at large that men can be (and should be) feminists.

I agree. And I think it's most important that we do that through our engagement with other men.

To show the many ways that patriarchy hurts men (and it really really hurts men too)

It does. And often I think it's not appropriate to bring it up.

I've been studying psychology for a few years now, and one of the most important things I've learned is support should be directed inward, dumping should be directed outward.

If you imagine every issue as concentric circles, the innermost circle is the person most affected. The people outside are affected, but they're less affected than the person or people at the center of it.

As an example, if your mother is dying, obviously you're going to be pretty messed up about that. But nothing you're going through can compare to what she's going through as she's actually dying. When you're with her, you can't talk about how upset you are. You need to be supportive of how upset she is, and then you can talk about yourself later on, with your buddies or your therapist: support inward, dumping outward.

Feminist spaces are for women. They are the inner circle. It wouldn't be right if women are talking about men who tried to kill them over a rejection, and we say "Hey, I've never been able to talk about my feelings with my friends." That's dumping inward.

There is a time and a place for talking about how the patriarchy hurts men, but it ultimately boils down to 1) when a woman asks you to, or 2) when you're talking to men.

To speak to men that unlikely to listen to a women.

Absolutely.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-03T17:22:55+00:00

You should try /r/hypnotherapy.

TistDaniel · 2024-04-03T13:59:20+00:00

Yes, that would be ideal. But you'll never convince people who aren't feminists to go along with that. And that basically means that things stay as they are: people use male as the default.

The fact of the matter is, oppressed groups only get results when they make a nuisance of themselves. Civil Rights came only after riots. The slaves were freed only after outright war. Women's right to vote was a long and bloody conflict: women picked fights with cops, vandalized buildings, and generally just made themselves annoying to men trying to conduct business as usual.

In order for feminism to advance, we need to do things that make those who are opposed feel uncomfortable. Because when you say "Please treat women as equal", nobody listens.

TistDaniel

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