Source: Facebook

GENDER RELATIONS

In America, men are trained to eschew all violence against women, even the most minor, the threat of it, the verbal expression of it, and even the demonstration of their superior strength or speed.

We are taught that everything is always our fault, that women have the right to be irresponsible in word and action and to walk away at the first sign of danger.

My father had an abusive temper and was prone to violence. I both inherited this trait and almost completely suppressed it. The best technique I learned is to simply walk away. To vote with my feet. And to return when cooler heads prevail.

For some reason, which I suspect is connected to my minor autism, I inspire frustration in the women I am with. I must train every woman not to use minor violence against me. So this prohibition is asymmetric in America.

Dating here in Ukraine is interesting. And walking away is considered not gentlemanly, but weak. It is an enormous insult to the woman. Partly I suspect because it denies them their feeling if power. And oddly enough, the women seem to actually want you to be physically dominant with them when they ate emotionally raging.

Which is just programmed out of me entirely.

Furthermore, women do not see themselves as weak here like their american counterparts do – even while denying it at every opportunity. They see men as physically strong and dangerous. But not that they have any particular advantage. Women know that manipulating men is trivially easy. And they master their craft like no other women on earth. I have heard ” he is just a man” spoken about one man or another from a dozen women now.

Obviously I haven’t come to terms with this difference in cultural expectations. And I’m not sure I want to.

But I have to also observe that despite their relative poverty, and because of it, the limited alternatives for masculine signaling have made these men more masculine than their western counterparts.

And relationships here, once you see through Byzantine nihilism, are less like american marital business partnerships, and more like families.

It’s a beautiful thing.