My Dear Hard Drive

Posts Tagged ‘beliefs’

If you find yourself thinking, that “all men/women are like this” and even if you added a sub group “all Australian men/women are like this” you are most likely wrong.It is time to look into some of your own decisions on how people are and challenge them a bit. There are some cultures in the world that don’t allow their people to grow into a direction they naturally would, but in the civilized world most men, like women, are individuals and should be treated as such.

If you find yourself thinking on behalf of another person, you have to stop yourself right there. You cannot know what they are thinking of you, and you are most likely coloring their thoughts with your own insecurities. Take me for example. I was a bald woman, by choice. Yet when I walk the streets, I often wonder what people think of my bald head. I’m guessing that one must think I’m a lesbian. He probably thinks I’m a Nazi. When in reality, the women most often admire my bravery and men think I must be an artist or a philosopher of some kind. Hardly bad thoughts! If you think men contact you because you seem like an easy lay, well… Unless you are not knowingly trying to put that image out there, they probably don’t think that way. They might as well think that “how in a world is a girl like that still roaming free?!”

Especially us women are “good at” seeing negative things in any comment. Stop that now! It’s good for you.

Online dating is not considered romantic by most people. This is, I think, because these people think it’s all too easy to type in the desired sex, age and location and click “search”. Obviously, they never tried it. Online dating is not easy. The advantages of it lie elsewhere, but it’s not about the ease of it. That assumption is also the reason why so many people fail. They go into it like they were using a shopping cart system, and are disappointed, when the response isn’t “your goods will be delivered to you within 3 working days.”

Dating online is easiest for the people who are fluent in people skills in general. The same people that don’t know what to say to women at a dance club won’t know any better online. The only group that gains significant advantage on online dating is the people who find writing a natural form of communication and speaking directly to people slightly scary – people like myself. This is why the belief that online dating is solely for losers, geeks and nerds is not true. Although geeks surely will find themselves more at home at the computer than at the disco bar, we’re still dealing with real, breathing people.

The advantage of online dating is that you don’t HAVE to go out to look for the right one, you can broaden your search outside your town, state or even outside your country (boy did I take that one to heart!) and do that at the time that is good for you. You will meet a lot more people than you would at your local bar, but you will also meet freaks and weirdoes in the same proportion. I’ve always said that the Internet is a great place for dating if you’re a loser or if you’re too picky for your own good. Being too busy aside, I don’t know why the average Joe would want to do online dating unless just for the interest in the method. That was a big motivator for me – besides being picky – I was utterly interested in the technical side of social internet. I’m betting I am not alone on that one, but there is probably more men out there with that side thought in mind.

We all belong to groups. Me for example, I am a woman, Barbie-collector, dog-person (or more specifically a spaniel-owner), nerd, photo model, fashion designer, migrant, wife… There are a lot of stereotypes to go with all of those groups. I’m in luck for not being blond and big breasted, I suppose, as that would give me a whole new stereotype. I even believe some of these things do come with a generic personality or even a body type (where you wouldn’t think it does). However I like to see these stereotypes as positive challenges rather than something I have to constantly “battle” against. Let’s take men and their attitudes towards women for example.

Let’s say I’m chatting with someone to get help with a php-script I’m working on, and find that my adviser is assuming I don’t know much about what I’m doing because I’m a girl, maybe. Do I take this as an insult towards my intelligence? Nope. I think it is a fair assumption to make that since I’m a girl I haven’t been involved with computers ever since I learned to crawl, and also most people, male or female, don’t know much about php. Instead I use language that indicates the level of my knowledge, and use the fact I am a girl to my advantage; If I don’t know something I’ll just say “you’ll have to excuse me for not knowing that, I’m just a girl you see. ” Do I downplay other women by saying that? Possibly, but I’m sure you girls can do your own fighting, and once most of us know what php.ini is, men can stop treating us as if we didn’t know.

Same thing with dating guys. I command to be treated as an individual. The way I do this is by not getting insulted every time a guy makes a reference to women who are bad drivers or who are too clingy or what ever. Let’s face it, there are a lot of women who drive really badly. I can handle my car, and the fact that other women can’t is an advantage to me and I can impress guys by knowing what a solenoid is. Most guys don’t know what a solenoid is and even though I have learned things I know mostly from guys, what sets me apart from other women is that I pay attention and I am interested in such matters. This in itself is impressive to most guys and what ever stereotypes people may have about women I take them as “they’re talking about the others, not me.” (Until they come up with a stereotype I fit in. Like girls like pink. I love pink, but since that’s true, it is not going to offend me.)

But knowing about guy stuff doesn’t mean you have to stop wearing pink and collecting Barbie. In fact, that’s just an attractive contrast to most guys. Femininity is a turn on as long as it doesn’t mean a complete shut down of the masculine side of things. I can watch AFL footy enjoying it tremendously while styling the hair of a Barbie. These things can go hand in hand if you allow them to.

I think one of the biggest flaws of a woman is to be touchy and easily insulted. Same goes with any group that gets insulted for every little thing that is said about them, like lets say black people who take offence every time someone mentions anything about black people, true or false. People who take themselves and their group too seriously are quite difficult to hang out with, and the last thing people want is to spend time with someone who is easy to offend. (It is because you have to throw your sense of humour out of the window and constantly be aware of what you say and how you say it so that it can’t be taken the wrong way. It is stressing and tiring.) There is one more advantage of treating yourself as an individual; it gives you a reason to do so with others as well. I swear I have never believed “All men are pigs” or anything similar, because to me each man is an individual to be found out. Sure, I have made generalisations of the like “Finnish men are hard to talk to” but at the same time I know that there are some Finnish men that are really easy to talk to.

Generalisations are sometimes often useful but they should not be treated as a fact. Each individual should be compared to the generalisation and decided where they are different, because it is very rare that a person will fit a stereotype in every aspect, and it is very rare that a person doesn’t fit any stereotype in any aspect. Also we need to be aware that some stereotypes are complete rubbish (like all black people steal) while some can be more accurate like “most men are not good at picking up women”. And it all starts by realising, that if you decide for that person what he’s going to think about you before you even give him the proper information about you, how is he ever going to know the real you? And if you think you can’t make men (white people, or the people who’s country you’re living in) change their mind about you, what does that make you? Someone who can’t let go of a prejudice, maybe?