::shivers:: Creepy, weird, old guys!
Seriously, I am not sure what it is about men that truly believes that a 21 year old girl would be interest in someone ten or fifteen years their senior. There are only two exceptions, naturally: 1) You must look like a greek god, or 2) You must have enough money to buy anything I ask for. If you are over 30, and you do not fit into either catagory, then please don't hit on me! And especially don't hit on waitresses! It's hard enough that we have to give you all the queso you would ever want. Why do you force us to keep coming back to the table while you make pseudo-sexual comments and watch your eyes roll on down our bodies! You put us in the awkward position of finding some fine line between protecting ourselves and protecting our tip. Bastards!
posted by Jesi E. at 6/27/2005 11:37:00 AM
14 Comments:
If I know anything from the movies, you need to spill coffee all over the jerk. You'll get in serious trouble and may possibly get fired, but in the process you'll meet the male lead (about whom the two of you the movie revolves). He'll be impressed with your spunk and intrigued by your beauty, and through a series of unlikely but convenient events, the two of you will fall in love
...And no, I don't watch chick flicks, so let's not go jumping to conclusions here.
Actually, I've found that spilling things on my customers is a highly successful strategy. I was serving these 4 young adults (18-20) and normally that means a very bad tip anyway. To make matters worse, when I went to go trade out their drinks, I lost balance of my tray and spilled a glass of water on the two guys. I felt horrible, but they left me like an $8 tip on a $30 tab. I was thinking that I should do it more often, but then it occured to me that my managers may not appreciate that.
1. At least you've never spilled red wine on a guy's white shirt right before he and his girl go to the theatre....
2. I didn't even know you were a waitress....where does this take place.....
3. If you slap them really hard and then trade table with someone else, all is solved (if not forgiven)....
Love,
J (Ruler of Mamoosa)
Yeah, our classes are all four hours, so I don't want to hear it.
J
I sent an email - to summarize what I sent.
You'll miss the hits, when no one hits on you later.
Be young, be beautiful - you only get one shot.
Men are conditioned to think about sex constantly. Those who refuse to recognize this and act in opposition to their training will base the majority of their moment-by-moment decisions on the pursuit of sex.
This conditioning is not paired with "appropriate" age-groups or constraints of any kind. Look at American popular/media culture and you will see certain underlying principles that when actively observed, expressly encourage the behavior you have spoken of.
Men are taught to pursue a certain physical appearance vested in females, and to pursue that to the lowest age possible. They are enamored with a fate-like concept of destiny which preaches that regardless of your own age, appearance, status, or mental/character qualities, that there is a young hotty out there just for them that must be pursued and found in order to fulfill their accepted view of ideal happiness; long nights of romantic James Bond-like foreplay and "love", followed by days of showing that woman off in public to other men who aren't as special as he is, incrementally filled with small feats of bravado and suave coolness that make her swoon at each word. Also, secondarily, she is to love him unconditionally regardless of his qualities, and in spite of his flaws; he deserves this after all.
Furthermore some men will find themselves inadequate and unqualified in the eyes of their idealized peer females. They are overtly self-conscious of their own most minor flaws and at the same time pursue women who might be considered "out of their class" by the same contradictory cultural standards. This unending pursuit of superior physical and mental aspects have no grounding in reality, they latently accept that despite their inherent flaws and incapacity's who's improvement will never be pursued on any serious level, that they are special to the "world" and will somehow in spite of the world fatefully succeed at their goal..eventually. Because they are incapable of obtaining these women that they mindlessly pursue, they look to young women who possibly might be less mature, and enamored by an older male. Perhaps they can obtain what they seek in the form of a younger woman. (easier to manipulate) Instead of a constant mental state of paranoid self-analysis they can be the superior, more mature, more qualitative counterpart that had in so many attempts rejected these men. Once they recognize this feeling of mental/physical superiority they are addicted to it like a chemical high. They are still woefully incapable of solving their own problems and pursuing their peers, and return to this travesty of a relationship time after time.
These to related and interconnected ideas are at least one part of the "why?" question you asked; they are the major psychological drives of the unexamined man. To the self-examined man, these concepts are generally considered to some extent, self-evident; though in fewer words. G'day.
When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun.
and let's not forget:
The wise are not learned; the learned are not wise
Here's something else to not forget: there are creepy guys on the internet, too! and they're watching
Hell... I'm one of 'em...
Now... let me see here....
I read some of these posts here - since the site creator claims to be an objectivist and John Galt's diatribe is off the mark at best. Here's the reality of the world that you will discover when you leave the theoretical realm of university and transition to the real world.
Men, by nature, think of sex constantly. It's their role to attempt promulgate the species.
Men, by condition, don't think of sex at all. It's simply not worth the hassle to obtain.
In fact, it's impossible for men to think of sex constantly - e.g. when would the next Formula One car be designed and built?
There is no "ideal happiness" everyone ages - looks fade. Even further - the man in John Galt's post don't dream of "long nights of romantic James Bond foreplay and love" The man described in John Galt's post is in it for the climax - 10-20 seconds tops. A long night would require conversation and intimacy - this is only genuinely possible in the average male, if genuine feelings are involved.
The "swoon" concept et al in Galt's post quickly fade after 22 or so. The return of this concept occurs - if it actually happens. Yes, it's possible for men to have "chemistry" with a female.
In the long term, if the post is really Galt's true feelings - old and lonely will be Galt's fate, just like Rand.
Loxley spends his lines of text fumbling to refute my words. He state how reality is, and how cultural/societal ideals do not exist or in the least are easily and plainly discarded. In clarification I have stated that man has based his values on these cultural and societal ideals that do exist. (how can they not?) I had assumed that the idea that this "average man" of our society would eventually hit too many walls and discover the falsity of those ideals, as a non-question. We know what assumptions do...they lead to re:comments. I'm going to refute Loxley's post line by line.
Man's nature is that of a creature of reason alone. He requires reason to survive. Everything else is a matter of choice. If the pursuit of sex, and consideration of said pursuit are an inescapable part of human nature than those things should be entirely automatic and there should be no choice in the matter. However a man can choose not to be sexually aroused in the presence of a naked human body, he can choose to suppress any sexual considerations (thoughts) that might arise, and he can choose not to kill the nearest alpha-male with the nearest rock and choose not to proceed to mate with the alpha's female. If you question the comment about the naked body please consider this: A 380 pound, six-foot, naked female with large breasts normally causes the opposite of arousal or sexual-consideration manifested in myself, and at least a few others. In the natural sense, this female could probably kill a caribou with her bare-hands and has an excellent body for childbearing. If our nature was to pursue sex for the promulgation of the human race, then my "natural" response should be to pursue the best candidate for sexual promulgation/reproduction. The majority of men I know would screw an incredibly "hot", skinny, short, blonde chick in a heartbeat regardless of the fact that her body will not be able to nourish, carry, or provide for a baby as well as other women who they are not so quick to respond to. (or at all)
A man does not require sexual activity for his life to continue to exist. Man's nature is not based on the promulgation of the species; this would imply man's nature is based on some sort of altruistic concern for the human race. It is not man's nature that causes man to think about sex more than other non-required biological processes. Man is volitionally conscious and accordingly his nature is that of a creature of reason. He can refuse to use reason, but doing so will kill him. Everything beyond that fact he is a creature of reason is a choice down one lane or another; life or death. (we do choose and accept many things without thought up until psychological maturity; this the reason for the age of majority in law)
Condition presupposes a conditioner. Man's conditioner is the world outside of him and all that he perceives; that which isn't filtered out by a rational mind. What are the major influencing factors in the world around us? Media, family, church, peers, government all condition us; conditioning is the absorption of information through our senses that is not rationally judged for content, and integrated into our mind and value system as an axiom. If you look at aforementioned influencers and the majority of human beings in our particular culture you will see an underlying current of ideas which are becoming less and less subtle. These ideas can be seen present and acting in the majority of human beings in America. (not only here, but this is the example) The ideas I spoke of regard sexual activity. You say that "Men by condition, don't think of sex at all"; thus you are saying that the majority of human beings successfully filter out the sexual related information transmitted by media, friends, peer-groups, and government and their sexual activities, choices, and values are based entirely (or even mostly) on their own judgments and ideas gained through personal experience or learned from sources actively judged to be accurate. I refuse to believe that based on my experience and knowledge. I see human beings in mass numbers clothing themselves as they have been conditioned to by society and culture. I see human beings pursuing jobs and careers that society and culture condition them to believe are the most acceptable. I see human beings buying commodities in general not for the sake of functionality, but for culturally created acceptability. We do things that we don't really want to do in order to be popular, in order to be liked, in order to be normal, in order to fit the "ideal" presented to us by the varying elements of society and culture. This conditioning is no where more evident than the transition from a parent's home to college and personal residence. For most people it is during and in the year or two following this relocation that they begin to realize how man untried axioms they had mindlessly integrated into their value system. This concept is sometimes known as "the box" in rudimentary philosophy.
Yet you propose that sexual activity and consideration thereof are exempt from societal conditioning. You deny that men have garnered an ideal concept of what woman they should have sex with. You deny that men ignore their rational judgment and pursue irrationally accepted axioms leading to risky situations and harmful consequences, and that many of these axioms are absorbed from television, magazines, movies, parents, friends, government ect. I chose to not filter the information thrown at me by institutionalized religion for most of life, and it has not been long that I've been examining and discarding practices and ideals and values that were not my own; values that when judged against situations warranted action that I would choose differently having discarded those values. If you cannot see this evident in yourself or our culture then you must be blind; surely I must have understood you.
There exists in reality no "ideal happiness" or path to it. Each man's ultimate recipe for happiness is different and unique as each man is. You must have misunderstood my point entirely. Though there is no "ideal happiness" in reality, this does not stop men from falsely accepting certain things to be ideal truths. The word ideal relates to the mental image one associates with an object or concept. Look at the concurrent themes in today's media, especially those geared towards younger audiences; high-school sexual activity between certain types of people as the norm, certain types of houses and clothes as the norm, certain types of cars being the norm, all apparently making them happy in between scenes of melodramatic bullshit; these things are ideals. There has been some movement recently to show the more unhappy side of these actions and ideas, though because the characters refuse to rise above the causes of their unhappiness both unhappiness and these ideals become a norm. If people can't be happy, in the very least they want to be normal. Everyone does age, looks fade, and sex is discovered to be overrated. You confuse the ideal with reality.
The man considering "long nights of romantic foreplay and love" is the man who has accepted a false ideal or a false value. In reality this man in general has 3-6 minutes of feeble and awkward movement followed by a "few" seconds of climactic sensation. The chronic mental emptiness in aftermath, the risk of disease, risk of baby, and human emotional complications between individuals do not halt meaningless sexual activity. This is not because it is nature, but because they are conditioned to keep trying for their accepted ideal, believing that the next sexual encounter will be different. Soon its no longer a search for the ideal, because they've realized it never existed. Now their search is for something to feel that mental emptiness that has become the norm, and they attempt to fill it with sex. They fail to see that the emptiness is a result of the mind being left idle, alone, unstimulated, unattached to the sweating, thrusting, and pumping of animal sex; sex for sex's sake. Furthermore I never denied that their are individuals who choose sexual activity as a celebration of love and happiness instead of pure lust; you challenge something that was never in question. You imply that "feelings" for the other person are the prerequisite for the love and intimacy that was noted as an ideal. Feelings can only be used to tell man about himself, and are not a map to the world, or a magical connection to other individuals, or a compass that points in the direction of the one you love. The man who guides a relationship by emotion will guide it to ruin. You again confuse the ideal with reality.
Swoon? A concurrent ideal exists in society demonstrated in image after image of men performing "manly," "smooth," "suave," Don Juan-like actions and lines that cause women to look at them in an unguarded stupor that reeks of lust. (The "I want oral sex look") What do you think these dating games are on television and television advertisements. I never denied that men eventually discover these ideals to be false, or at least discover that they have failed to achieve them. Whenever men ignore reality by choosing not to make rational judgments, reality will hit them smack in the face like a man complacently choosing not to look both ways before crossing a street and getting creamed by a hurried Pakistani taxi-driver. You once again put words in my mouth. You confuse the ideal with reality.
My true feelings indeed. My observations are that of my existence and the existence of those around me. I have learned from personal experience many of these concepts, but my comments are not the result of a lonely and empty soul attempting to fill itself by spouting the mirror-text describing my dilemma. My words are the result of past life lived in darkness and fallacy, and life now, and life yet to come guided by reason and not the conditioning of an insentient mass of individual humans and their various relationships all feeding on each other's irrational delusions until death (society and culture).
I don't need to look into your eyes to know who wrote this attempted defense of irrational man. Am I projecting my faults onto the conditioned man in my post? Of course I am. I am an individual within society and I have been and allowed myself to be conditioned. The difference it that I do not accept this, nor am I content to remain with it, nor live my life by it. I am determined to live by my own values. Is the guilt related to my faults and sins the reason for my words? Am I projecting my faults as a defense mechanism? Ironic that I am making an observation of the world, the hopelessness of a conditioned "man" stumbling through life, only to have someone defend that conditioned man, and attempt to alleviate that man of any fault. Nature and instinct are words meant to alleviate man of the guilt of chosen courses of action. What is his guilt from perhaps? --blank out--
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes,"said Piglet, "Rabit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."
I have been casually reviewing the discussion about this topic and at last have decided to add my thoughts concerning this issue. I am not certain how best to organize this, but I will find some way, I am sure.
I must agree with Loxley that it is the nature of men to think about sex. Galt, I think you misunderstand that just because it is natural for men to think about sex does not mean that it is natural for men to act unwillingly against those desires. I disagree, however, that it is because they feel a duty (or even an instinct) to “promulgate the species.” Sex provides intense pleasure for men. That is why they pursue it. However, just as the act of consumption, the act of labor, and the act of living are connected with the mind, so too is sex. So, what does my short comment about these men really mean about society?
A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundemental convictions. - Francisco d'Anconia, Atlas Shrugged - "The Sanction of the Victim"
Perhaps one of the selections of discussion that I agree with Ayn Rand most violently is Francisco's discussion of sexual choices of men and how that reflects their value of themselves. What disgusts me about these men who shamelessly pursue me. Their expression of sexual interest in me reflects their complete disconnection with reality, their disrespect for themselves, and their disrespect of me.
The first issue is reality. The way a human lives when they are 20 has values that are completely different than when they are 50. 20 year olds are experimenting with their adulthood. They are learning about how they want to pursue their career, carry on romantic relationships, and live their social and private lives. This is not experimentation in moral issues. They are trying to determine if they want to become a politician or a professor. Do they wish to marry someone who travels a lot, or remains founded in one area? Do they want to delve into a social scene that is active politically, or a social scene that is quietly intellectual? It’s a time of lots of fluctuation until they are able to come to a way of living that they are able to determine is objectively right.
50 year olds should be long past this point, living confidently in their objectively defined lives. By nature, a 20 year old would not be able to find common ground with someone who’s life has already been so founded. By nature, a 50 year old would not be able to find common ground with someone in such a fluctuated state. Sexual activity is a reflection of the mind, and where the minds are at different intellectual levels (though neither are superior), it should not work.
This is where the second and third issues come in. Any minds that think outside of this natural level are suffering from some form of mental deficiency. A 50 year old who desires a 20 year old does not desire her because he wants to praise his own intellect by find someone who he sees as a reflection of his esteem for himself. Instead, he hopes that her desire for him will create esteem for himself. He disregards the fact that any 20 year old who disregards the nature of the 20 year old’s mind in order to be interested in him has also lowered her esteem for herself. She does not make him a better man and therefore they are both disgusted with their own lives and well as the lives of the people they are pursing. He disrespects himself first because he believes that the only way to secure sexual happiness is by pursuing a woman who has to be mentally degraded in order to like him. Then he disrespects me by assuming that I am that sort of a woman. Not only that, but he takes what does not belong to him. It is not his right to take pleasure from my body, even if it is just excessive staring, when I have not given him that right. He is mooching sexual pleasure off of the body of a woman he does not deserve.
This is the problem with social conditioning with sex – society has created value in sex disconnected from the mind. The idea that men are conditioned not think of sex at all, Loxley, is ridiculous. Spend 10 minutes with any form of media and the evidence is strongly to the contrary. Men are taught not to find value in the woman who is a reflection of great values that he finds in himself, but rather the value of a woman is only in physical attraction. And you are right, Mr. Galt, that this “ideal” woman is supposed to remain unaware of how absolutely worthless he is. Loxley stated that the man from Galt’s post would not be looking for long nights, but rather the climax. No, the man would be looking to get the feeling of success with a woman over the entire night without actually putting any work into it. That is what these “creepy, weird, old guys” want from me. They attack waitresses because they know these young women will be polite in return, because are wages are dependent on their being happy. So they take advantage of this situation to create a fantasy that these waitresses are interested in them so they can get the feeling of being that James Bond character when they know perfectly well they are not. Ultimately, this form of sexual gratification will leave them feeling empty, because the figure that pursues them is not real, but a figment of their imagination. This concept disturbs me and that is why I shiver.
Fortunately, I will go home and find that the young man I am pursuing does so because he knows he deserves me and I deserve him based in the reality. True sexual satisfaction: Reality, self respect, and respect for your partner.
Nice post Ms. B&W.
I never said males "feel a duty" to continue the species. Just making an observation of ONE of the roles as males - not their only role. Also, as a female - given all of our natural role to continue the species - it is not out of line to expect to be "hit on" regardless of your looks or the aggressor’s age. As Pooh would say "Things are as they are."
This continuance of the species is a contributing factor why monkeys climb trees, bison roam the plains etc. Like it or not - humans are animals and will always maintain certain instincts i.e. reproduction, search for food, fight or flight etc.
I know ms. blackandwhite's age and position in life - assuming Galt is the same - you're giving these men way too much intellectual credit. Sorry to disappoint Galt, but most men don't walk around afraid of their female peers. It's entirely possible - they just don't like their female peers, or that msblackandwhite is stunningly beautiful, or that msblackandwhite looked sad that day and they were simply trying to cheer her up, it’s also just as possible they could be perverts. (Since I know msblackandwhite – who ever hits on her isn’t worthy – regardless of age.) One example will never be able to represent all the options. I wasn’t defending the man in Galt’s post. I was just simply pointing out that the man in Galt’s post is a small percentage of the male population and if Galt genuinely feels the average man is represented by these gentlemen that msblackandwhite spoke of - life will be long and hard. If this is the type of people you keep running into – change your social situation. People in general have addiction traits – including addiction to other people. Occasionally, you just have to clean house.
What I have noticed is that if it’s almost as if the behavior of males and females switch as they age. A young man in his 20’s is far more aggressive than when he’s 50. Women tend to be the opposite – they tend to become more aggressive at they age.
I’ve had to spend some time grappling with this very situation as my current significant other dated a person 15 years elder before we met. This person struggled with dating a younger person – as the younger person, I have different expectations than the elder person. It's been fairly complicated
Then it's a mutual understanding Ms.Black&White. The rational nature of man leads him to both an awareness of his own body, and to curiousity of his environment; especially aspects of his environment which are different from him. So man will naturally, as a result of this, contemplate sex.
I felt that when we were discussing the issue of man "thinking about sex" that we are not just considering the contemplation of sex itself, but contemplation of the pursuit of sex for sex's sake, and the active concentration on how to achieve it in the present and future.
Rational man is curious of everything that concerns him. He is also aware of those things that he values. Sex itself, is not an instinct of man, and it specifically is not the one sacred thought that is involuntary and natural to him. (as opposed to thinking about cars, murder, or smoking) To say that it is natural for men to think about sex, and that its their role to promulgate the species, in the present context, is to imply also that sex is man's driving force in life. I disagree.
On the issue of the man in Galt's...that man is the irrational man who lives his days moment by moment without an integrated value system or philosophy. He lives attempting to seek momentary pleasure without recognizing the nature of his life, within recognizing reality, and thus he never obtains it. He appears to be happy, but is a shell of man. His irrational and unconsistant decisions lead him to one complication after another with life for the most part not a matter of living, but avoiding and bypassing previous mistakes. The state of his life will not be entirely apparent to those loosely around him, because he will put up a barrier or pretense and deception that others might not know his own half-recognized failure. Generally this man builds his mask with bling and talk of the latest sexual pursuit. He retires from his facade only to work a job that he doesn't enjoy, hoping only that he might get through this day; though he really has nothing to look forward to except drowning what rationality exists in his mind with beer and Jack, and watching tv on into the night. He will surround himself with people that reflect his own emptiness, and give credibility to his facade. They will feed off of each other's boasts, as well as each other's failures; seeing each other fail gives them each momentary comfort in the fact that they are not alone in failure, and rejoice that in some small way that each is not as great a failure as the other. This man dies unhappy, having not lived, only existing.
The man in Galt's post? This archetypal man exists in all irrational societies, with only the semantics varying. How many men fall under this generalization? Look at the economy of a nation and I tell you that the degree of a nation's prosperity corresponds to how many of these men exist. These men do not produce, they do not innovate, they do not create. Furthermore these men will not protect what is necesary to allow others to produce. (freedom)Mixed economys create these men in moderate numbers, and they in turn further compromise that economy. Socialist economies breed these men like rabbits.
Is this the average man? I would say that the average man in this country is this archetype to a lesser degree; a compromise between rationality and irrationality. (which will always win out?)
The man in Ms.BlackandWhites post is an example of this archetype, but there is different psychological work at play, which she presented very well.
This man in Galt's post is an archetype though I refuse to spend the time necesary to truly give this philosophical term it's dues. As such you will know that it is not all inclusive, it is not without exception, and semantics of each man's situation will differ.
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