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Cake day: September 23rd, 2023

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  • I like your example with that song. If we interpret the scene as both acting out the behaviour the’ve been taught, they are both reinforcing each others behaviours. Assuming that both wanted to be together but there was an established “dance” around it. They can only work together. What if one (and only one) of them had not done their part? If he hadn’t, she would have left, possibly feeling that he didn’t really want her to stay. If she hadn’t, she risks being labeled “easy”. In both cases, again if we assume they both actually wanted to stay and feel good about it, they don’t both get what they want.
    So… if we now, as a conscious effort from society, are trying to get away from this bad system, it seems to me that the only way is a gradual de-escalation from both sides. It also seems to me that if we only tell men to never “pursue”, but do nothing about the “hard to get”-behaviour, then men who follow the new instructions or script will be left with no chance to meet someone.
    What I think is missing from the discourse today is that it’s a hard sell to young men to change their behaviour, if doing so is punished by the same people asking them to change. We’re caught in a stalemate where we need to help each other simultaneously, with mutual understanding, trust, and care. In that very sensitive process, trying to move it forward by telling someone they are a potential rapist is probably just making men dig deeper trenches and refuse to listen. Some people want this, I believe. The conflict that lets you feel righteous anger and resentment. But it’s not helping.







  • It could be a David Foster Wallace reference. “In the eighth American-educational grade, Bruce Green fell dreadfully in love with a classmate who had the unlikely name of Mildred Bonk. The name was unlikely because if ever an eighth-grader looked like a Daphne Christianson or a Kimberly St.-Simone or something like that, it was Mildred Bonk.”