At the women’s request we are carrying on with MEN’S MANIPULATIONS, now that we have worked through the female examples. Manipulation No. 2 — playing on SOCIAL ROLES. A reminder: we put the list together jointly, on the basis of what we discuss at our meetings and in the comments, because the best way to stop a manipulation is to expose it, and to BUILD A RELATIONSHIP means replacing manipulations with agreements.
More broadly, what we are discussing at the moment are GENDER manipulations, in which the pressure is aimed at the sexual characteristics and the SOCIAL ROLES of the players in the game. Social norms govern a large part of how men and women behave and at the same time create the conditions for manipulation between the sexes. Building a relationship between equals is made difficult from the very start. On the other hand, social roles also make open rivalry difficult. If men are held to be purposeful and straightforward, yet not to show their feelings... If women are held to be compliant, yet free to voice their emotions... there is hardly any room left for straight agreements!
A man can make use of a woman’s wish to live up to (or her fear of failing to live up to) the accepted ideas about how she should behave in society.
“Know your place, woman!”“As a woman, you ought to be looking after the home and the children”“Why would you work for such a miserable wage?”“All ladies do it”“Anyone who behaves like that can(not) be considered a woman”“A woman is a mother, the keeper of the hearth”
a man will say
In that last example especially, a woman who wants to fulfil herself professionally may run into the experience of her own unfulfilment and give up her career for the sake of keeping the peace in the family. A man will often tell a woman what to do and how to behave, appealing not only to his own notions of her gender role but to his own role as a man.
Is this manipulation a male prerogative? Far from it. Women use it even more often, in every phrase that contains the words “a real man”. It is nothing other than “A CHALLENGE TO A MAN’S HONOUR”, the principal female manipulation, the one sung about in epic poems. I have often come across a remark by the psychologist Sergey Shishkov that the label “a real man” was invented by women)). Which does not undo the consequences: any manipulation ends badly for the man and for the woman alike.
Who falls for a dig like “all ladies do it”? Most likely women under 35, before the Midlife Crisis, which we go through at the psychological age of 35 (physiological age may differ from psychological age). It is an examination in becoming aware of your own needs, as distinct from the needs of society. Before the Crisis we are guided by social norms, by demands and by the needs society points out to us. At 35 a person starts asking what HE OR SHE NEEDS, NOT WHAT SOCIETY NEEDS. And once a woman has answered that question, she begins to be guided by her own inner needs. So you can no longer get at her with the line about what is “normal for a woman”; she will shrug her shoulders and think, “and what is that to me?”
A woman over 35, on the other hand, can be manipulated through her age. But that is another story)
