Why are so many women hellbent on acting against their own interest?

I’m not sure what my grandmothers would have said about that, but you concede the basic point: the behaviour of the individual affects the behaviour of the group and the behaviour of the group affects the individual.

I wouldn't feel comfortable with a big hairy bush

Can we stop calling it this? I'm constantly amazed by women who consider themselves feminists yet talk about natural pubic hair with disdain (including most of my friends). Removing pubic hair is not a nice process whichever way you do it and, after years of this, I've had enough. You can do what you want with your hair but don't shame me for mine.

@LittleMissSunshiner right...I'll leave you to it as I don't think there is a point of discussing this topic in context of someone's spirituality, but you sound very blueprinted to me, exactly like every other spiritual person I have ever met

Ironically this post makes you seem a bit brainwashed 😂

@MercanDede Teeth straightening can and often is cosmetic. Your teeth need to be very poorly aligned to be considered in need of straightening. I know a few people who had slightly irregular teeth and had braces. (twice in one car). It was purely cosmetic.

I am not judging people for straightening their teeth for cosmetic reasons I am merely pointing out that there are some cosmetic practices that are widely acceptable. I just think it's worth thinking about that too.

Leave moths alone, they are beautiful! This is the elephant hawk moth, which is very colourful.

I do like make up and nail polish and wearing skirts and dresses, I don't shave, wear high heels or dye my greying hair. I wear colorful clothes. The rest of the stuff mentioned in the OP, like 'sex work', surrogacy, the idea that men treating women like sex objects is empowering, and that men can become women, if the stuff I really fight against. I know there's a whole conversation around make up, I wear it because I like colourful and sparkly things, I don't use it to cover my flaws. Currently got adult acne, like hell am I covering it up, it'll only make it worse!

Hmm I dunno

I used to be brainwashed and unconscious and other people still are, naturally. What other people call me is none of my business, I wouldn't care a jot because I'm not self conscious self obsessed and ego filled with anxiety about what others think of me, that's the whole point.

When one is awake and has had an awakening then one is no longer asleep and going through the motions of life that we were all imprinted and blueprinted and conditioned with. That is freedom IMO. The function of freedom is to free someone else.

@LittleMissSunshiner I'd say that as a spiritual person you probably should refrain from calling anyone brainwashed...you may be upset if people were to talk about you the way you talk about them

I agree with this point.

Women are conditioned to the be 'the observed' and not the observers. Subject of the male gaze and the critical female gaze, encouraged by advertising which is deliberately designed to brainwash and mesmerise people into feeling inadequate and 'less than'.

This makes people self obsessed and self conscious and essentially trapped in the victimhood of caring about what they look like in all circumstances over and above than how they're being, what they're doing, and what they want from their life. People can become performative and unreal.

For those of us who don't watch TV, don't watch adverts, don't buy glossy magazines or engage in that side of life whatsoever we are probably a little less brainwashed.

I push back against this stuff as I'm a feminist and also have spiritual beliefs and all of my interests and curiosities and goals and desires exist outside me and beyond the end of my own nose. People who find themselves fascinating terrify me and sadly there's a lot of people these days who care more about their eyebrows and what other people think about their eyebrows than what's going on in the world.

@Plzdontaskmyname I've come to the conclusion that people's brains work differently. You have perfectly described my brain in that I have no strong mental image of myself. I don't look in mirrors much and I care more about how my body feels than how it looks.
I suspect that other people's brains keep more of an image so that how they look matters more to that person's sense of who they are.

@Plzdontaskmyname for me its about vanity, i love looking at myself in a mirror and I love putting makeup on...even though I work from home, never really show myself on video calls (not sure why, most people seem to avoid it if they can) and now I'm on maternity so I rarely leave the house except for a walk (either with my baby in a pram or by myself to a nearby store). I'm playing peek-a-boo, changing nappies, getting puked on and contact napping with a winged eyeliner on.

I always loved a certain look on myself and I will be dead before anyone can take that away from me.

Even more so now that I have a baby and there was almost a social expectation for me to "let myself go" (I hate that term, btw) or to tone down my appearance, yet at the same time I would have been expected to feel bad about it.

So in a way now is the first time where I am acutely aware of others paying attention to how I look - my weight, clothes and makeup were commented on by near -strangers. Both positively and negatively. If anything, this causes me to dig my high heels in even more.

I often wear makeup when working from home and I do not have video calls etc. I just like the enhancement. Nothing again to do with society and all to do about me. What makes ME as a woman feel good. It is a ridiculous argument this it really is.

I've always been puzzled by the idea of wearing makeup "for myself." Makeup goes on your face, and you can't see your face. If you are looking at someone else wearing makeup, that may be an aesthetic experience, but if it's on your own face, the only internal experience you're having is a sensation of something touching your skin, if anything, right? I assume that sensation is not what women mean when they say they wear makeup for themselves (if I'm wrong and there are people here who really love the sensation of having goo on your skin, please respond, I have questions!). I suppose you could enjoy looking in a mirror while putting on your makeup, but unless you take it off again before you walk away from the mirror, you're left with the sensation of makeup on your face as the only experience you're personally having as you go about your day.

Otherwise, if it's not about your own internal sensations, then "wearing makeup for myself" must really translate to "wearing makeup to change how other people treat me," which is pretty much exactly what feminists mean when we talk about how women wear makeup "for" other people. It doesn't mean you're being altruistic and just giving other people a pleasant experience, it means your choice to wear or not wear makeup is made because of how other people react to you when you do or don't.

The thing about the speedos is that you have to be careful putting things down to patriachy (or whatever) just because you see a particular thing in, say, England. Some things happen a certain way for other reasons. The reasons French and English men wear different kinds of suits is a bit of a cultural accident, and what that suggests is that they, and also women's trends in suits may not be as simple or one dimensional as you are suggesting.

I absolutely think there is a lot of independence between male and female social hierarchies. It's lesser where you have a very integrated society or sub-section of society, and comes out more where one sex dominates or the sexes tend to naturally segregate. I was in the army for many years, and it was very male dominated, and male hierarchies really ruled. As a woman, I was somewhat integrated into those, but also a little outside of them - there was no female hierarchy as such. I've seen the opposite in my current, female dominated workplace - the few men tend to be in some ways outside the main hierarchy although accommodated within it to some extent.

I think these kinds of hierarchies can partly be about access to desirable males but it's also a lot wider than that. It's probably fair to call it access to resources, but that includes power over others, the ability to set the agenda. If we lived in the right kind of society it might directly include access to the best food and shelter. I think male hierarchies are more often about access to women as a primary element. Female hierarchies are a lot more complex, in my experience, especially when you are talking about young people. And in a lot of cases more brutal. Men can be pricks, but usually not within what is supposed to be their "friend" group. Girls hierarchies are commonly brutal even among friends.

@TempestTost and yet consent was never before so widely spoken about as it is now, and shaming sexual practices (including being a prude) is increasingly frowned upon. It really works both ways

However, I also think its a good think thay sexual compatibility is a thing. Because it also benefits women - yes, getting dumped over not wanting to do something may be unpleasant, but you can also get dumped over not being into hiking or whether you want children

The importance of sexual compatibility and consent also means that it is, for the very first time in recent history, a socially accepted attitude that men have to try and please their female partners. Previously it was all about man's pleasure and no man would consider whether his wife actually enjoyed any of it. Some men even honestly believed that women simply don't like sex at all by nature.

I'd much prefer to have more limited but more tailored choice of lovers than endure lots of ceiling staring like our grandmothers may have done

“It makes you wonder if the notion that men value a woman's beauty and women value a man's resources is as biological and essential as the reproductive roles.”

I don’t wonder at all, because it’s nothing to do with biology and purely based on a quickly becoming antiquated society.

Not at all. I recognise those social influences and I still remove most of my body hair.

It's not a case of 'once you've seen it, you're no longer susceptible to those influences'. I see them. And I'm as susceptible as the next person.

I'm not quite sure where the implication of 'this makes you less strong-minded than those who forcefully reject every such influence' comes from. We are all of us, without exception, affected by what we see around us.

What's designated 'masculine' and what's labelled 'feminine' are purely arbitrary distinctions. These have always been made in human societies which are primarily set up to benefit the interests of men. It might be more interesting and beneficial to dismantle those oppositions, rather than merely noting that the things women 'like' are of less value than those favoured by men. Who is the final arbiter?

In sum, gender stereotypes are regressive and harmful to everyone: male, female, conformists and non-conformists alike.

Social hierarchies are about getting the best of everything and yes this includes access to the best mate for producing offspring, regardless of whether you are male or female, heterosexual or not. Best of everything means your offspring get the best of everything and so are more likely to stay at the top of the social hierarchy.

The accusations weren’t really baseless as you did say can or should we do something about women who are doing things that harm themselves or women as a whole. This question only gives to options can or should, you didn’t write or perhaps we should do nothing and let women be. So the accusations were picking up on the bias in your loaded question.

Men have different choices because the social norms for them are different but I doubt they are any fewer. Hairiness is more tolerated in men than in women, but being a skinny weed is less tolerated in men than in women. Naturally clear skin is more pushed for men than for women, because we are allowed to use makeup to conceal blemishes without being mocked.

Men get to be attractive in their natural state; women do not.
🤣 no they do not!

“While we can all choose how much to care about social norms, it is the human condition to do so. Most people want social approval; we want friends, families and jobs and it’s not a “me” problem if I don’t want particularly want to jeopardise that. To not give a shit is to take a risk (which may only be perceived) but nevertheless it is a decision that men will not have to make.”

Men have the same decision, it’s very strange you are denying the existence of social norms for men. You can’t have social norms for women, without social norms for men.

I'm not so sure this is true, there has over the past decades been significant changes in expectations of sexual behaviour due to social pressures.

Choking is a much more common thing than you seem to realize, polls suggest that lots of women now have men trying to do this to them quite unexpectedly, without treating it as an unusual kink. It's also become a thing very quickly, 25 years ago it really was unusual, now it's seen as just a usual thing.

You could say the same about oral sex for that matter. It was unusual enough before the sexual revolution that not wanting to do it would have been seen as pretty standard, and even up into the 1970s it wasn't ubiquitous. And that lasted longer depending on where you lived, a good friend of mine who grew up in the Caribbean told me that when he came to the UK as a young man in the early 80s, he was a bit shocked, because where he was from women didn't want men to do that, and often weren't willing to do it themselves.

You don't have to think that it's a problematic practice to see that what was once considered a matter for unusual tastes is now considered something that, if you weren't willing to do it in a sexual relationship, you must be a prude, a bad lover, and actually could well be a deal breaker in a relationship (imagine the AIBU.)

Sure, someone can try and find a partner who doesn't mind. But where that once would have been easy and not represented a limit, now it would be hugely limiting. That isn't insignificant.