One of the most dangerous aspects of our work is the swarm of moral, political and legal authorities…who treat us like children and victims and, when we won’t behave like children and victims, criminalize us in a manner that sometimes leads to fatal exchanges. – Fleur de Lit
Data stolen by hackers from AshleyMadison.com, the online cheating site that claims 37 million users, has been posted online…The breach was confirmed in a statement from Avid Life Media Inc…the company said it would offer all users the ability to fully delete their personal information from the site — an option that was previously only available for a fee…the hackers, who identify as “The Impact Team,” got a hold of “sensitive internal data” not only for AshleyMadison, but also for other hookup sites owned by the company, Cougar Life…and Established Men… which promises to connect “young, beautiful women with successful men”…The Impact Team is threatening to expose all customer records unless Avid Life Media takes AshleyMadison and Established Men offline “permanently in all forms”…
The hackers described Ashley Madison as “a “prostitution/human trafficking website for rich men to pay for sex” and added, “too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion“.
A 23-year-old woman’s pregnancy has blown the lid off a prostitution racket allegedly being run in an Ulhasnagar rehabilitation centre, which is supposed to be a safe home for women rescued from prostitution…no men, except for those who may be working at the centre, are allowed in…Senior police inspector Dhananjay Dhopavkar of Hill Line police station said, “What can we do? This centre has no security. The women living there have been freely moving in and out of the place”…Dhopavkar added that the centre has been allowing sex workers to continue engaging in prostitution while living there…
A man aged 91 has confessed to the murder of a prostitute outside a Soho nightclub nearly 70 years ago. The British expat walked into a police station near his home in Canada to admit to the killing in 1946 after he had been diagnosed with cancer. He said he had shot the woman…after she had cheated him out of money…detectives scoured through old files of the unsolved murders…and the…man picked out a picture of…Margaret Cook…It is thought to be the longest gap between a crime and a confession in British criminal history.
…Gay culture has a long history of sex work, from 1950s “hustle” bars where “straight” guys paid a commission to the bartender in order to hook up with gay johns, to 1990s go-go bars where queer dancers were often there to display their wares to potential clients…Gay literature celebrated sex work in the ’80s and ’90s…Plenty of gay men have written memoirs of their sex work…A disproportionate number of trans and queer youth…have done sex work for survival…[yet] at a time when we should be decriminalizing sex work, there’s a movement in the LGBT world to pretend sex work doesn’t exist, isn’t a queer and trans issue, isn’t something we’ve historically embraced…It’s time the LGBT community get behind legalization of sex work and embrace rather than distance ourselves from the unique role LGBT people have historically played in the sex industry. Legalization actually makes a safer world for the women and men who do sex work, and it destigmatizes something as old as time. Yes, especially now, in this new age of marriage equality and post-gay parenting and our happy white-picket-fence lives, there’s a need for us to stand up for the least-protected class of people, LGBT sex workers, and demand their rights now, too.
Another paint-by-numbers “sex trafficking” tall tale:
…the Twin Cities metro area is among the nations’ 13 largest centers for child prostitution with Minneapolis as the home base of a large domestic prostitution ring…More than 50 percent of all domestic prostitution victims are classified as runaway youth...living on the street…in almost all cases, youth are not choosing this life. Traffickers/pimps recruit youth who may…be struggling…One…group of concerned citizens has been meeting and praying about…A Christian-based, safe housing facility focused on girls ages 12-18 with equine therapy…ranch residents will get guidance to realize their deep value and potential through the love of Jesus Christ…as they heal and transition into permanent housing…“We’ve heard that Highway 2 is a corridor to Duluth for sex trafficking – from the reservations to the ports and to the oil fields,” said [a prohibitionist]. “We often don’t think it’s here in our own town but it is”…“If…men…would understand that if they stopped using [girls] the problem would go away. They need to realize the feeders into sex trafficking, like porn”…
Hey, Gay Inc: if prostitution weren’t criminalized, transwomen couldn’t be arrested for being profiled as prostitutes:
…Meagan Taylor was…visiting Des Moines with a friend who is also transgender, and they were staying at a hotel…where…police showed up at their hotel room….[after the staff called the cops on] “two males dressed as females…[because the] staff was worried about possible prostitution activity”…[the pig stole her hormone pills and] charged [her] with possession of prescription drugs without a prescription…Taylor could be there for months…There is…no good reason for a 22-year-old nonviolent person like Taylor to be locked up indefinitely…the real offense is a private business calling police on paying guests because they didn’t conform to gender stereotypes…
Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs (#318)
People are starting to recognize the “Trafficking in Persons” report as a political weapon:
…the State Department is preparing to certify that Malaysia has made significant strides in fighting human trafficking — upgrading it to a Tier 2 “watch list”. The timing couldn’t be better for the Malaysian government, which is eager to join the Obama administration’s landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade deal…that aims to unite nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP into one free-trade zone…[but] anti-trafficking campaigners say that no real progress has been made. “Human trafficking and forced labor are as bad as ever here,” [said] Charles Santiago, a member of the Malaysian parliament…But in order for Malaysia to join the trade deal, it is crucial that its status be upgraded…legislation…[prohibits negotiation] with countries that have been designated Tier 3…”If we get Tier 2, it will be a blatant display of American hypocrisy…they might as well throw the entire TIP in the trash”…
Of course, Malaysia’s problem isn’t SEX “trafficking”, so it’s all good.
Kudos to Margaret Corvid for being willing to eat crow with a good heart:
New sex worker writers often justify their sex work with respectability politics. I did it. I fucked up with my very first piece, in a big venue, the Guardian, contrasting my sex work to that of hypothetical trafficked workers, so-called “miserable slaves”. Even after taking feedback about that mistake, it took me a while to quit using my own favorable personal circumstances to make sex work more palatable to my readers. I think that I did it because I was intoxicated with the power of my writing, and I thought my experience was important. Guess what—sometimes it’s not…
German politicians are determined to wreck their fairly-decent sex work system:
A proposed law reform would require Germany’s sex workers to carry licenses at all times. It would mandate their clients wear condoms. And it would authorize police to check up on these things without notice…“News travel fast, especially in small towns and villages,” said Undine de Riviere, a sex worker and spokeswoman of the Professional Association of Erotic and Sexual Services…“Many sex workers only work part-time. It would be a big problem if their main employer would know about it. You can imagine what the parents of their children’s friends would think”…
In a trend bristling with public-health implications, Sacramento sex workers are forgoing condoms because they fear they can be arrested for possessing them, say activists and clinic workers. “We have a huge epidemic of sex workers who are not using protection because of the police activity,” said Kristen DiAngelo, who heads up a local branch of the Sex Workers Outreach Project…multiple street workers relayed similar tales of intimidation: cops emptying their purses and photographing condoms as evidence, and even poking holes in their rubbers before handing them back while laughing…
Funny, but I started sex work at 30 because “I wanted my body to belong to me again”. Still, it’s good to see basically-positive articles on sex workers appearing in Cosmo.
First They Came for the Hookers… (#555)
Notice how bad laws often follow fads?
…if a controversial bill dubbed the “stripper registry,” is revived…all exotic dancers in Pennsylvania would be required to pay a $50 registration fee with the Department of State. Dancers would need to provide full name, aliases, place and date of birth, height, weight, hair color, eye color, home address, telephone number, place of employment, a copy of their photo identification and a separate passport-sized photograph of themselves. It also would require dancers to report whether they were victims of sex trafficking or had been convicted of a crime. Other provisions in the bill would limit alcohol sales and ban lap dances in clubs. Amid a flurry of public criticism, the legislation, originally intended as an anti-sex-trafficking bill, was…shelved — for now…
…I always know sex workers are in for a jolly good ride when an influential abolitionist invokes Pretty Woman…Tom Dart did just that when he persuaded Mastercard and Visa to stop allowing their credit cards to be used…for adult service ads on…Backpage…”We cannot turn a blind eye…and pretend this is some twisted Pretty Woman situation,” Dart told CNN…I am struggling to imagine what “a twisted Pretty Woman situation” looks like, so I’ll just say that the several dozen sex workers I know personally and professionally – and all those I’ve encountered in online forums and communities and at conferences – generally understand, because we do sex work and don’t just watch it on TV, that it isn’t like Pretty Woman. In fact, it isn’t like it’s depicted in most films, songs, photographs, paintings or any other media, including some documentaries…
Well, I don’t know she’s actually eating herself. But at least she’s learning to check her privilege.
Infantilism is the velvet-gloved tool for authoritarianism. We all easily assent because ” it’s empty insipid and safe” and oh so familiar. It takes the form of maternalism and paternalism in the work place especially as practiced by female managers and former military enlisted in the workplace. Beyond insulting, it’s downright dangerous to health and career to be exposed to such nonsense since most observers, so conditioned by their parent’s treatment in childhood or from their exposure to master chiefs in the Navy, then react reflexively and identify with the authoritarian abuser against their victim. If society didn’t have such such authoritarians, master Chiefs and similarly styled parents all hell would break loose, citizens would be running amok, and insolent children/miscreants wouldn’t receive the punishment they deserve.
You’re right on the money there Rich.
The most disturbing part is that so many people are not merely complicit in their own infantilisation. They demand it.
As Thomas Szasz was fond of pointing out, much of the abusive power of psychiatry is only possible because so many patients are so keen to hand over their adult responsibility – even their social identity – to the ‘experts’ that they are prepared to accept stigma, loss of agency and harmful treatments to do it.
And as Erich Fromm notes in Escape from Freedom, people have a long history of resisting adulthood and surrendering themselves to institutions, ideologies and individuals who will act as substitute parental authorities.
The concept of freedom as an individual and social good is relatively recent. Its full implications are still being explored. Though it receives almost universal lip service these days I suspect few – if any – of us are ready to fully embrace it.
Amen.
The science behind this is now well established, if not widely known. The ones wanting to follow are known as “right-wing authoritarian followers” and they indeed desire very much to have a figure of authority (the “authoritarian leader”) to tell them what to think, how to behave and whom to hate and fight. These people are a force of destruction. Unfortunately, in morally-restrictive societies like the US one, a large part of the population is suffering from this issue.
Reference:
Bob Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians”,
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
“The ones wanting to follow are known as “right-wing authoritarian followers””
Why ‘right-wing’ authoritarian followers? It seems to me that in modern America a great deal of the infantilization is actually coming from groups which are nominally ‘on the left,’ particularly when you look at college safe spaces and ridiculous campus sex policies.
The right is largely at fault for some of the worst policies regarding sex-work, but this seems to exist across the whole political spectrum, just in different forms.
And Jesus God, that link you gave is actually horribly offensive:
“If you check the “hit counter” on this page, you’ll see that this site has been visited nearly 300,000 times so far. The feedback I’ve gotten from those who have read The Authoritarians enables me to give you the major reason why you might want to do so too. “It ties things together for me,” people have said, “You can see how so many things all fit together.” “It explains the things about conservatives that didn’t make any sense to me,” others have commented. And the one that always brings a smile to my face, “Now at last I understand my brother-in-law” (or grandmother, uncle, woman in my car pool, Congressman, etc.).”
This reads like a massive conspiracy theory – everyone I don’t like is a vile authoritarian monster and they’re all conservatives because we on the left are morally and intellectually superior to those mouth breathing neanderthals in all conceivable ways.
Like I said, authoritarianism and a desire to be infantilized and led around by noble ubermensch is a feeling that exists all across the political spectrum. If someone tells you it exists only on one side, they’re just proving their biases rather than actually trying to provide evidence for a reasonable position.
And the part about “now I understand my brother-in-law” is particularly offensive. Why don’t you just talk to people you know like human beings rather than assuming they’re somehow pathological and need to be diagnosed by some random academic nobody at the University of Manitoba?
Nice non-rational reaction. Makes me think you are unable to deal with the findings described. The science is sound. (Yes, I am an scientist…) Just because you do not like the results, does not invalidate them one bit. Incidentally, your “nobody at University of Manitoba” is a typical authoritarian follower reaction, as it completely ignores scientific merit of the results and only focuses on the perceived “authority” of the source.
As to why “right wing”, it turns out that there are too few “left wing” authoritarian followers to allow to study them in meaningful ways. There are a lot of them on the “right wing” side though. Empiric science has to be able to identify the object of study and has to have enough of them in order to work. Note that this is “left” and “right” in the European sense, the US does only have two large right wing parties.
Amen to that. We’ve got the same problem here in Australia. Though to be fair we’ve got a bit of variation. We also have some small right wing parties. One of them is the avowedly Libertarian ‘Australian Liberal Democrat Party’ which is funded largely by Big Tobacco and whose sole representative is concerned primarily with supporting legislation that will increase the power and wealth of multinational corporations and promoting contra-scientific nonsense with a racist, pro-mining company agenda.
But still, I find it a heck of a stretch to call Altemeyer’s sociological and psychological arguments any more ‘scientific’ than is ‘scientific’ socialism. Or to think that the fact you happen to be a scientist gives you any particular insight into evaluating them. At least Erich Fromm knew he was doing philosophy and didn’t think that aping certain scientific methodologies is all it takes to make his views scientific.
Has it occurred to you that invoking the mantle of science to lend bogus credibility to what are really political opinions may just be an appeal to authority? Or worse. An example of the same sort of group narcissism that gives authoritarian organisations their power.
Sorry, but you really have not understood the science here. It is far less black and white as you make it out to be, but that probably takes real scientific experience to understand the nuances (and yes, they are important). You have also completely failed to see that this book has two parts, namely a scientific one and personal subjective comment. This oversight on you part is even more revealing as Altemeyer clearly explains that he will be doing that.
On the scientific side, what Altemeyer does is sound and I have the scientific experience to judge that. I have reviewed far too much bad science as to not be able to spot it.
People like you, that just see the surface and then bend the meaning to what they want to see, not to what there is, are, incidentally, the reason he did not publish this before retiring. It just collides too much with the faulty preconceptions of too many people.
Also, recommending _not_ to read some piece of scientific writing? Seriously? Are you afraid people will see how far off your evaluation of it is?
It is both nonsensical to claim that being a scientist in one specialty qualifies you to review science in another or that being a scientist at all (as opposed to a philosopher of science) gives you any special insight into the epistemological validity of a particular field or method. However your claims are very consistent with someone who identifies strongly with the identity ‘scientist’ and suffers from group narcissism. Just because someone with a science degree does it doesn’t make it science.
Yes, Altemeyer, admits he makes personal comments but fails to flag them as distinct from what he presumably believes to be science. In fact he relates anecdotes in a ‘sciency’ way that will inevitably lead many readers to believe they are science.
For example, he tells us of an ‘experiment’ in which two groups, one ‘high RWA’ the other ‘low RWA’, are invited to play a simulation in which they take the part of elites in various world power blocs (e.g. North America, the Soviets, Saudi Arabia, China …). Needless to say the high RWA group end up in a simulated nuclear war, so the game is restarted whereupon it leads to a simulated world ruined by famine, poverty, corruption and very high death rates. The low RWA group do much better in terms of the pretend population of the simulated world.
I’m sure even you can spot numerous problems with the design of this experiment – especially regarding controls – but the most important one is that it was only run once and never reproduced. It is not a test of a scientific hypothesis. It is not even data. It is an isolated anecdote. But by presenting it as he does Altemeyer is inviting his readers to conclude otherwise. And though he does include riders about its applicability to the real world it’s hard to avoid the conclusion he chose a simulation of real world problems to create the impression his test could warn us of the implications of putting high RWA people in positions of power.
But what undermines Altmeyers ‘research’ at its very root is that it is all based upon the categories he has created with the personality questionnaire near the start of his book (I scored a 28 BTW. What was your score?)
He makes a big deal of the reliability of his quiz, which was refined over many years of trial and error, but makes no mention of its validity.
Being the universal scientist you keep assuring us you are I’m sure you know the difference between reliability and validity but for the non-ubermenschen among us I will explain it with the following illustration – also from Altemeyer’s field of psychology.
Early versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) were plagued with poor reliability (less than 0.20), which meant that different psychologists administering DSM criteria to the same subject often produced conflicting diagnoses. From DSM-III onwards major efforts were made to fix that and by the final version of DSM-IV reliability was over 0.50. Most psychologists will now agree as to whether a particular subject fits the DSM criteria for, say, major depression.
However all versions of DSM have very poor validity. The diagnoses they produce can’t be confirmed with independent tests (biomarkers, predictions of behaviour, predictions of ‘disease’ progress, indications for therapies that will have results on those who test ‘positive’ that are distinct from those who test ‘negative’). There has been no improvement in validity since DSM-I despite decades and billions of dollars in research attempting to do so.
Like DSM, Altemeyers test for RWA is only a test of how people will answer questions closely related to those he has included in his test (actually it’s not even a good measure of that but it would take too long to explain that here). It is not capable of being independently verified or falsified. It is not capable of making predictions about people’s behaviour beyond their likelihood of answering similar questions to those he has already asked in a similar way. It is as self-referential as a dog chasing its own tail. It is not science.
No, I am recommending that people not bother to waste their time on a self-serving screed purporting to be scientific. Unless they are searching for examples of pseudo-science.
There is really no need for me to answer that. You have preconceptions, yes, nice. They are not an accurate reflection of reality in _my_ opinion, and that is that. I don’t think there is any way for me to get through to you, so I will now quit trying.
I do have noticed that you basically attack almost anything I say and often with less than valid arguments and quite a bit of ad Hominem, sometimes thinly veiled. I will just conclude that this is a problem on your side and ignore most of your comments on mine henceforward. It saves much of my time. If you want to do the same, then just ignore the things I write that you do not like.
True without doubt. And fortunate for you as you clearly lack the capacity to do so.
I merely respond in kind to the large proportion of your comments that are basically ad homs directed at the vast majority of people you seem to feel are inferior to you because they think differently. I’ll probably continue to do so.
As to what me being a scientist gives me here: I have reviewed a _lot_ bad science. From outright fraud to political opinions to people that just did not understand what they are doing and that were using the wrong tools for a job. I can spot bad science at a glance now. There is nothing in Altemeyer’s work that sets off my very finely tuned scientific bullshit detector. What he does is sound empirics.
I also note that you have not once tried a scientific argument against Altemeyr, which leads me to believe you have none. Come to think of it, maybe you just do not like me (I know that) and hence will reflexively argue against any work I recommend? Because other than that you have absolutely nothing in any way significant so far. I should also point out that you are hurting your cause and your credibility along the way.
Really?
What other superhuman powers do you have?
Unless it’s transparent poppycock most of us have to carefully read the research, check the analysis of the data, check references and, if it is somewhat isolated as with Altemeyer’s work, wait for other research that corroborates or contradicts the findings.
Mind-reading too?
Can we expect an upcoming Marvel comic about you?
I don’t know you Celos. I have no opinion as to whether I would like you or not. However I know I object strongly to the way you invoke bogus appeals to science to support your own opinions. It is no different to the fundamentalist preacher claiming his politics are endorsed by God.
I like science, Celos. I don’t like seeing it brought into disrepute by abusing it for a personal agenda. That’s one of the reasons so many people still think global warming is dubious or that vaccines cause autism. Because there are so many people passing nonsense off as science it becomes easy to assume all scientific claims are self-serving rubbish.
If you go back through the comments you’ll find we’re on the same page regarding the claims of many AI researchers and those who believe they can anchor consciousness in physiology. I can agree with your skepticism Celos, but not with your dogmatic appeals to the authority of ‘science’.
I’m not usually one to rush to the defence of rightwingers (unless I’m in a room full of lefties) but I think Jon’s got a point.
Seems to me Altemeyer’s talking about something specific to contemporary US politics. As anyone from the eastern part of your country could tell you, authoritarianism is hardly the exclusive province of the right.
Authoritarian intellectuals strike me as a pretty pragmatic bunch. They’ll hitch their wagons to whatever faction seems to be ascendant. Hence all the 60s socialists who became 90s neocons. Even Rupert Murdoch comes over all Maoist when he’s doing business in China (well, maybe more Dengist than Maoist).
The personal comments are references to contemporary politics, used as examples. The actual science is the result of about 30 years of empiric studies. This work requires more than a 5 Minute once-over. And the empiric results are sound.
Incidentally, the name “right wing authoritarian followers” results from the empiric observation that there are not enough “left wing authoritarian followers” to allow meaningful empiric study.
As to authoritarian leaders, Altemeyer found that they will do whatever it takes to keep and increase the numbers of their followers. They seem to have no guiding principles or personal morals beyond that.
Just for the people who haven’t bothered to read Altemeyer’s book (which is probably a wise decision) I should point out that he invokes a technically correct but obscure and archaic definition of ‘right-wing’ whereby anyone who mostly supports the views of dominant authorities – be they socialist, capitalist, religious or fascist – is a right-winger. So it can be seen that his fundamental category of ‘Right Wing Authoritarian’ (RWA) is tautological at best and circular at worst.
He also claims that RWAs will usually agree with their leaders unless they are leaders they usually disagree with, in which case they won’t (the example he gives is RWA hostility to Clinton both for his policies and for the Lewinsky scandal).
Basically his arguments are full of this sort of self-justifying circularity which ensures they can rarely be falsified (though I spotted a couple of examples he apparently overlooked). According to Karl Popper, if a theory ain’t falsifiable it ain’t scientific.
In mitigation, Altemeyer is an academic psychologist, a class of people who are trained to be ignorant of what constitutes science. Otherwise they’d notice their discipline is a long way short of being scientific.
I think that mentality was a survival trait. In a hostile and unpredictable universe, being organized was the only way to survive. I agree with Cabrogal on this, individual freedom is a new social concept. Our brains evolve much more slowly than our society. For most people, humanity is still a ship on an unknown sea of danger. They want a captain and a disciplined crew.
I’m not sure I’d resort to evolutionary psychology for an explanation. Contrary to Hollywood caveman stereotypes contemporary hunter-gatherer communities tend to have flat power structures.
But after 10,000 years of settled agricultural societies enabling both large disparity of wealth and the authoritarian hierarchies needed to protect it there’s some well entrenched cultural memes to overcome.
Ashley Madison:
For me, the most remarkable thing here was the hackers assertion that the people registered on the site somehow deserve to be exposed. Usually, hackers either do not care, or they make it about fighting “the establishment”. Here, they make it about enforcing conservative values. That is pretty repulsive.
Hackers being intentionally and publicly evil (as these are) is pretty rare. In fact, I do not remember a single instance. Even LulzSec was primarily anarchistic, and any evil they did was mostly coincidental.
Maybe the site’s security was so laughably bad that some right-wing religious screwups managed to hack it.
I think it might be self-defeating for the moralists to use that tactic. When it becomes obvious that cheaters are so prevalent, it stops being shameful. Outing all these cheaters is certainly not going to convince them of becoming faithful husbands. Marriage is pretty much becoming a mug’s game for many men and if they can’t even have an affair quietly more of them will just forget about traditional commitment.
Well, yeah, but a lot of hackers seem to substitute enthusiasm and outrage for analysis. I’ve sure seen Anonymous take on some pretty dubious causes in the name of censorship-busting.
I don’t think there’s too many people anywhere being intentionally evil. Just a fair bit of dumb and a whole lot of scared. A dash of arrogance helps too.
I did not claim Hackers were smart (most are not), but ones wanting to enforce morality on groups of private citizens are a new thing.
As to dumb and scared, I can observe the effects of that, but I really do not understand it. Dumb you overcome by evolving a realistic self-image, scared you overcome by getting a handle on your emotions. Both are requirements for qualifying as an adult. Yet many, many people seem to fail at these things, basic and obvious as they are.
Sometimes it is like the whole human race was mixed together from two different sources: A minority that grows up to be adults and has a handle on themselves and actual understanding of what is going on one side, and a majority where the cave-person is hidden below a thin veneer of fake civilized behavior on the other.
Actually I think a good example of ‘dumb’ is noticing you have been raised in a society that seems geared to producing dumb people and automatically thinking you are immune to it.
As for ‘scared’, most guys (in particular, though I’m not trying to exempt girls) are conditioned to hide their fears from others and themselves. ‘Getting a handle on your emotions’ is a good example of the kind of repression we use to do that. If you think it’s really a method for overcoming fear, see ‘dumb’.
Now you are just rambling in a futile attempt to establish your intellectual superiority and to discredit anything I say in not so subtle ways. This is really quite pathetic. I recommend a cold, hard look at yourself. What you will see is not pretty.
If you want to go to the ‘science’ of your claim Celos, I’d suggest you look into the decades of research into the best ways to overcome phobias and PTSD.
‘Controlling your emotions’ has never been shown to reduce fear. In fact it’s correlated with worse outcomes for PTSD.
The only therapy with a solid evidence base is controlled, graduated exposure to the feared object or situation. In other words you have to embrace and acknowledge your fears if you wish to overcome them.
Read again what I wrote. And then tell me where I said anything about suppression of emotions. Suppression is not control, and that is not limited to the subject of emotions. Suppression of emotions gives you that “thin veneer of fake civilized behavior” I mentioned above. Do you think it was _accidental_ that I mentioned that?
Seriously, you whole criticism is about your misconceptions here. That you revert to insults and ridicule does not make your case any stronger.
Umm, did my comment you were responding to say “suppression of emotions” or “controlling your emotions”?
Who is the one who isn’t reading what’s written?
“….conditioned to hide their fears from others and themselves…” = “conditioned to suppress their fears”. I dare you to disagree.
You do not even have simple semantics on your side here. You are just frothing at the mouth because somebody dares to disagree with you on things you think you are the master of.
The way to control a thing is to understand it and its characteristics and to learn to work with it and sometimes around it.
I dare.
By going back two comments from your response you’ve managed to take what I said out of context, though even there repression and suppression are completely different psychological mechanisms. Surely you’re familiar with the difference between trying to deal with, say, stage-fright, by trying to force it down, trying to pretend it doesn’t exist or simply acknowledging it to yourself and continuing on.
What I was elucidating in the earlier comment was the social pressure that causes people not to try to either control or suppress their emotions but to hide them, both from themselves and others.
In the case of the actual comment you were replying to I was talking about the tendency of PTSD and phobia sufferers to avoid ‘triggers’ that will bring about a fear response. They are neither suppressing nor repressing their emotion. They’re controlling it by refusing to ‘feed’ it triggering stimuli. If they’re successful the emotion will not arise. However the evidence suggests the longer they do so the harder it will be to maintain control and the more likely they will be overwhelmed.
If you’re undergoing exposure based desensitisation there is no need to ‘understand’ your fear. Trying to do so often keeps sufferers hung up indefinitely in psychoanalysis, which has never been shown to help. Yes, over the course of treatment you will probably be working with it and as you cope in your day to day life you will probably work around it. But ultimately the best answer (so far) seems to be to let it run its course and disperse. You try to control the environment in which it might be ‘safely’ expressed, not the emotion itself.
BTW, if we’re going to trawl through earlier comments to find support for recent ones, I consider “A minority that grows up to be adults and has a handle on themselves and actual understanding of what is going on one side, and a majority where the cave-person is hidden below a thin veneer of fake civilized behavior on the other.” to be a pretty good example of your tendency to ad hom the bulk of the human race in an attempt to assert your superiority.
As you seem to see yourself as a multidisciplinary super-scientist I can see why you’d think anyone who points out your errors must consider himself a master.
But I don’t.
Nor do I consider myself a master surfer. But I know enough about it to spot when a hubristic amateur has over-extended himself and wiped out.
So do you think a German who constantly tries to classify some people as subhuman is a good look?
It didn’t seem to work so well last time.
“In a trend bristling with public-health implications, Sacramento sex workers are forgoing condoms because they fear they can be arrested for possessing them, say activists and clinic workers.”
So California got sex workers to have unsafe sex by arresting them when they use condoms and they got the porn industry to leave LA because they forced them to use condoms when they didn’t want to.
It’s almost like legislating what people do with their own genitals has unintended consequences or something.