Don't get me started. Most women seem to have an underlying contempt for men based on the fact that men like them and are willing to spend virtually any effort to have physical contact with them. What this says about their opinion of themselves goes without saying - so to speak... ;) Unfortunately, this contempt is often justified, at least in the context. How many times have you seen some guy making up a whole romantic fantasy about some female whose only virtues are a carefully practiced smile and the right topology?
Also, the first thing that most women want someone in a relationship to do is to compromise. Among groups of women, they all tell each other some embarrassing secret. That proves trust supposedly, and then they feel safe to be intimate. This behavior carries over to how they deal with men. The man is supposed to tell them all kinds of sweet lies, proving that he cares more about them than the facts of reality.
On a related topic, even among women - the "libertarian," or "extropian" women to whom you refer - who do have something on the ball, isn't it obvious that they are not judged by the same standard - by men?
There are some very smart and responsible women in the world, but how many times have we seen airheads running organizations made up largely of brilliant men who allowed some ambitious woman to take the reins simply because they wouldn't stand up and state the plain truth: "you don't know beans about the subject matter, and you have no business running this organization." Fact is that women tend to love group projects and "organizing," and being the leader and getting to determine who gets to speak is a real rush. After all, unlike men, women are taught from birth to make their relationships with others the primary purpose and goal of their lives. Their own personal capabilities in the real world are of secondary importance - or so the cultural programming goes. So a lot of these obnoxious "leaders" are just women running with that ball.
Then the best people leave and the organization is slowly run into the ground. One of my tests for women - or men, although it rarely applies in their case - in positions of power is attention span. Usually I can come up with something worth saying that takes about a minute to say. In the same context, most of the men - say 90% - usually have no problem listening for a minute. They expect good ideas to take time to present. About an equal percentage of the women, however, glaze over at 30 seconds.
This is not to say that there aren't plenty of airhead men out there. When they try to get into positions of power, however, they tend to get judged more critically, and that expectation no doubt stops a lot of the would be power seekers in their tracks. In technically oriented organizations, the men in power tend to be overqualified and are usually stealing time from their work, at which they are often the top of their craft.
I really feel for the women who are very competent and who constantly fight the battle of being seen first as a female and then also being judged by the kind of experience I noted above.
>From: Alex Future Bokov <alexboko@umich.edu>
>Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
>To: extropians@extropy.com
>Subject: Re: buns vs brains
>Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 11:07:05 -0400 (EDT)
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
><RANT>
>Is it just me, or does Mr. Brains eventually see how pointless
>relationships are, and lose interest? A few months ago I've realized that
>every relationship I've ever been in has basically required that I
>surrender some of my individuality and autonomy. Even with women who call
>themselves 'objectivists' 'libertarians' 'feminists' 'career-minded' or
>'tom-boys'. I always have very free-form friendships, where each
>individual has all the space they want, but it doesn't work the same way
>with romance.
>