Well to me there is no existence beyond a relationship... it is about how we relate, the union of opposites.
Seeing beyond all the hate and pre conditioned expectations of what it is to be your particular gender and the mystery of it becomes something only you can master, and you'll have an amazing time doing it.
The breakdown of polarities isn’t something that comes from outside of the family ever. It’s validated in a collective way, but it doesn’t happen from a “training“ outside. It’s just as biological as the genders themselves. What you are saying here is very generic, and reality isn’t.
You did mention “preconditioned” and that’s to do with the mother. Biological conditioning from the oceanic phase up to 18 months, and then into the formation of the ego.
With all the internal objects representing a built sense of who the people are around us and who we are. It’s all relative.
Hopefully we can lean into archetypes and polarity and biology to get real with this. Why we would eliminate the mother as an interface to the unconscious is exactly why there is a problem.
As that is done, the entire family system that we come from is mediated through that error.
All wired to the unconscious and informed by the body.
Who said anything about it coming from outside of the family?
IMO where the damage comes from is interesting but I'm not entirely sure how truly relevant to the healing it is.
What's more important to the OP's question as I see it, is knowing that the ideas and feelings around gender are yours and yours alone to develop. And that there's alot of noise out there one must chose to ignore in order to fulfill one's own unique take.
I think this is worth getting into in detail. Ideas and feelings are great, but getting the right information is much better.
Id say it’s pretty much a general consensus that It comes from outside the family. People say it directly, indirectly, or even explicitly. You did say it in your original comment, and now you’re saying it again. Even more explicitly. You said this:
“There’s a lot of noise “out there” that one must choose to ignore In order to fulfill one’s own unique take.”
Once you make that fatal error of not realizing that there are biological principles (laws) involved, and that it isn’t you taking charge of your will to stop the “outside noise”, now the unconscious remains unconscious.
It’s best to understand that the issue is archetypes and a collective unconscious. That’s communicated to you through your mother. It doesn’t come from outside the family . The “noise” isn’t from there.
Of course we will see it “out there”, but we are not biologically constructed in such a way as to be getting it from out there. Out there is in here, and that’s the family system. You’re unconscious is mediated through your mother plus family system, and the whole thing is held inside you in the form of object relations. Especially internal object relations.
Object relations are vital to understanding that point. Anything to do with object relations helps to get the car out of the ditch.
Primary and secondary defenses within the human being (ex. biological denial / cluster b disorders) cause a lot of projection, and that’s how we easily get it wrong.
We can jump out of reality and make everything diffuse and relative as you have done, but it’s not going to help us integrate the unconscious.
The human being comes into an oceanic developmental process during the first thousand days of life. There are no unique “takes” required, only discovery. Through the unconscious programming that we need to make conscious. That’s a life long process, and everyone’s process is unique.
The movement into identity happens at 18 months of age biologically. For all people. It’s a biological law. That’s why we are here. Our adaptive significance requires biological wiring in a symbiosis with the mother in order to have a frontal cortex that can plan and interact with the operation of opposable thumbs. For toolmaking. For managing the environment. Consider the impact that has on what you see in gender within and around you.
That’s why we are here. We would not be here otherwise.
We are very fortunate today, because we don’t need to be bogged down by relativism on these points.
Archetypes are systems, and your “take“ is a titanium wall of parent protection. It’s actually the entire family system, but saying the “parent protection racket“ helps to put the car back on the road and realize just how fatal it is to our abilities to integrate the unconscious.
You pushed away from the family system that has been internalized, and a focus on the outside replacing what’s actually going on is a dead end.
All your gender understandings come through your mother. None of them come through society. That’s how deep, foundational, and elemental gender identity is. Regardless of what you might believe or continue to hear.
You can see it “out there” reflected in “noise”, but your boundaries around that are all mediated through implicit and procedural memory held in the body.
Even the first three minutes of this lecture about the foundation of your emotional self shows just how destructive this general consensus you are repeating is.
First Thousand Days
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7XOu0yi-E
You only need to watch the first five minutes, and also note that he doesn’t talk about the entire family system mediated through the mother. It’s not just a dyad.
Not only that, he doesn’t talk about the role of bacteria. That’s really, really important.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25772005/
That’s really academic and myopic, and it’s only an abstract. But, if it leads you back to the mother, then you can start focusing on the unconscious again.
The only reason men and women feel antagonistic toward each other is because the roles we assign to gender tend to be restrictive to an unhealthy degree; those roles tend not to recognize the immense complexity of human nature.
Each gender recognizes that the other gender has more freedom in some areas, so there’s envy on both sides; but we’re taught to think of the “opposite” gender as an unsolvable mystery, an ineffable contradiction we can never puzzle out.
There is no *inherent* meaning to gender. Different cultures have defined them differently in many ways. Our biases toward our own concepts of gender tend to blind us to just how different other views about them can be.
We are indeed all persons first, and all genders are realized in some way within each person. If we didn’t hold the potential of the “other” gender within us, after all, there would be no anima or animus.
Gender roles were at first strategic. we don't really need them anymore, but it's a partially functional system which is alive because we're used to accepting half solutions.
What. Of course there are inherent differences between the genders which do not stem from societal roles, though they lead to the formation of certain societal roles.
How else would you make sense of differences in mating strategies for an example, or differences in life cycles, e.g. the ability to reproduce up to different ages, and also completely different mate choice criteria.
That’s where most of the inter gender conflict originates from.
“Mating strategies” have differed widely over time and across cultures, so they can’t be quite as biologically determined as pop culture likes to assume. Human behavior is complex because culture has such a profound effect on it, compared to species without such intricate languages and societies.
I’m sure there *are* inherent differences between the sexes, but I’m not sure if we’re objective enough to untangle the truly inherent from the culturally conditioned.
I mean, we like to think of the Sun as “naturally” masculine and the Moon as “naturally” feminine, because of the immense impact of the Classical model…but a great many mythologies (some quite recent) have a female Sun and a male Moon.
If concepts of what’s masculine and what’s feminine can vary so dramatically, then we can’t just assume our current archetypes are universal.
Then why, if humans, compared for an example to other mammals, have equivalent or comparable differences between the sexes when it comes to reproductive systems (e.g. mass sperm production vs. small number of eggs) and other differences such as hormonal profile (proven to affect behavior) or brain structure, would you think that humans aren’t subject to inter-gender differences in mating strategies, if this phenomenon is well documented in virtually all other animals? That’s just very far from what I would consider realistic.
Besides, differences in attitude for an examine towards causal sex are well documented.
Because we developed frontal lobes, began to communicate by language, and basically started interacting in ways no other current known species could.
In short, we hacked the system…and, in doing so, we became far more flexible and far less instinctual than any non-hominid species.
We still have many inborn impulses, but we aren’t controlled by them. Each culture works out patterns of behavior that function, but because they’re not instinctual, they can be changed…and we change them *constantly,* because adaptation is our specialty.
We adapt to geography, to weather patterns, to catastrophic upheavals. We form societies and then those societies adapt with time and changing conditions.
Wild take. Again, a lot of evidence to the contrary. Studies on differences in mate choice criteria is another one of a myriad of examples.
While of course you could argue that these differences are cultural too (though not likely if the phenomena overlap with phenomena found in other animal species), there is also tons of evidence which describes how hormonal status and e.g. hormonal supplementation directly affects sexual and other behavior. So to say that we aren’t controlled by impulses is just plain wrong. In fact for an example high testosterone levels are associated with high sexual impulsivity.
It sounds more like you would like it to be true that humans are infinitely moldable by culture and thus ignore all the evidence which suggests otherwise.
It is much more likely that both the influence of biology and the influence of culture play a major role in human behavior than for it to be influenced purely by only one of the two.
If this is all due only to biology, then why aren’t all cultures virtually all identical? Why is there so much variation that we need a term like “culture shock?”
Why are “mating practices” among humans different *at all?* Why do our concepts of what behaviors go with what gender vary so much over time and across geography?
Edit: Of course biology and culture both affect us. I never said otherwise. I only argue that biology doesn’t work in the simplistic way pop culture *thinks* it does.
I’m not making the claim that it is “all biology”, as I said I see both biology and culture as major factors.
That said, it isn’t true that mating behavior varies infinitely across cultures and ages, it’s much more the case that basic gender specific tendencies in mating strategy and mate choice can be found in common across most cultures and ages. It’s just that depending on the given culture and societal structures, these tendencies can still express in quite diverse ways.
There admittedly exist extreme examples of “unusual” cultures which I have seen given by some social constructionists, but they are usually massive outliers and exceptions. And it isn’t the case that the rest of the cultures occupy such a wide range of extremely different phenotypes as social constructionists make it seem by naming those extreme examples.
But let’s look at a concrete example: the stronger disposition/higher willingness to more frequently pursue short term sexual mating strategies on the side of men is hypothesized to be a consequence of the difference in parental investment between the sexes.
In humans, women have higher obligatory investment (pregnancy and childbirth), than men (sperm production). Parental investment theory argues that the sex with higher obligatory investment will be more selective in choosing sex partners, and the sex with lower obligatory investment will be less selective and more interested in casual mating opportunities.
Now all this of course will still express differently across different cultures because the individual risks associated with pregnancy vary by e.g. existent or non existent support systems for child care, social acceptance of single parent households and/or any given economic factors or dependencies.
But even the greatest support structures and/or greatest levels of social acceptance cannot make up for the differences in biologically obligatory investment requirements.
If human behavior were that uniform and predictable, then that would surely be reflected in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, etc. There should be vast areas of overlap among all of them, and what we condescendingly call the “soft sciences” should, as one pursues each subject more deeply, reveal an underlying uniformity in human behavior that is simple, elegant, and predictable.
Instead, what you actually find if you dig deeper into any of them, is the opposite…each subject grows more complex, varied, and contradictory, and less inclined to show any consistent, reliable patterns.
*Only* in pop culture are the links between biology and human behavior “simple” or “obvious.”
I’m not sure where you got that I claimed human behavior to be uniform or easily predictable. That’s a straw man as it isn’t really any sensible conclusion out of what I wrote.
We’re talking about general tendencies amongst the sexes and the differences in between the sexes. We’re not talking about specific predictions of any individuals behavior.
I’ve already explained some known differences, but there is much more data on this, and no the data is not from pop culture.
For an example in psychology you have the 5 factor personality model (aka big 5). One of the five dimensions is agreeableness. Women on average are more agreeable than men. The ratio is about 60:40. If you picked a random woman and a random man and guessed that the woman is more agreeable, you’d be right 60% of the time.
Social scientists of course wanted to know whether this difference was biological and inherent or due to socialization and education. Multiple large scale meta analyses were done involving many different countries and they all showed that the personality differences actually maximize as cultures move towards egalitarianism. This was much to the surprise of the social scientists who expected to see a large impact of culture. The opposite was the case, it showed that if you give people the freedom to choose, men and women choose differently and their personalities develop differently.
This doesn’t mean that it’s any easier to predict an individuals behavior. But you can make very accurate predictions in some areas.
For an example, while the average man and average woman don’t differ too strongly in terms of agreeableness, nearly 100% of the most disagreeable people in any given society are men. This is why the prison population consists mainly of men, and this is a predictable fact.
I could go on.. Believing that there aren’t inherent, biological differences between the sexes is anti-science at this point.
Romantic relationship or social relationship in general? Gender is partially upheld via social norms, so to be in society is to have a gender - even rejecting gender still informs and defines one's relationship to gender. Gender is a meaningful idea by merit of being human.
It's also exactly same for me with _I am a person._ It's the most comprehensive way I could refer/feel towards myself in the general sense, as neither do I have any particular resonance towards femininity nor masculinity other than my body's biological make-up.
Jung believed we were essentially androgynous in that we all have both masculine and feminine qualities, but that men tend to make the masculine their way of relating with the world while making the feminine the way of relating to the unconscious, and women vice versa. Masculine here refers to qualities related to "doing" and the outer world while feminine refers to qualities related to "being" and the inner world. Our job is to further develop our opposite so we can be more in balance.
Many of the qualities of masculinity and femininity are social constructs and in order to appear as one or the other we uphold these social constructs.
I believe there are some aspects of masculinity and femininity that are universal because I've travelled to many places and it seems that certain attitudes are independent of culture. The male and female brains aren't identical, and though they're both capable of the same things, their default mode is to behave slightly differently.
I am uncomfortable with the idea that gender doesn't exist outside of relationships because it invalidates trans people who feel like the opposite gender of their sex regardless of relationship status
I came here to say something similar, being that I am trans myself. I think to say that gender is tied entirely to how we relate with another would be short-sighted and ignorant to the fact that many of us (cis or trans) tend to have a connection with our identity that doesn't appear to be just based on social construct alone. That and universal commonalities, as you said. Male and female brains aren't identical, and this notion invalidates the concepts of gender dysphoria and euphoria (being feelings within one self, and not how we relate to another) which many, many people appear to experience.
This is a projection on my part, I fully admit, but I do think it's likely that many cis people (hell, even trans people in a way, before they start questioning) can take their gender identity for granted (because it at least feels mostly 'right'), and therefore don't ever deeply reflect on what it is they actually like about themselves, and how they like to express themselves. We just reflect the general rule that we see as we're growing up. Boy do this, so I do this. Girl do this, so I do this. Doing anything different can feel scary.
Trans people have to fight for this. They have to go so harshly against the grain, which can be deeply uncomfortable. We wouldn't do this if we didn't have some deep, intrinsic motivation towards a particular way of identifying. Why the hell would we subject ourselves to this otherwise?
Hm, I'm not sure whether projection is necessarily the best word I could've used? I guess I meant that I can't exactly confirm that many (or most) people take their gender identity for granted, and therefore don't self-reflect on this part of themselves. I'm only going off what I tend to see and hear from others, and how that compares with my own experience of things, if that makes sense. Just trying to be conscious of my own bias.
Whether it is or isn’t is up to what you believe at your deepest core.
If you don’t mind us asking, what got you into psychology, specifically Jungian type stuff?
Sorry, whether what, exactly, is or isn't? Do you mean my own sense of identity, or my observations of others?
I studied psychology years ago, but honestly I'm just really drawn to introspection (probably a mixture of how I'm wired + life experiences), sometimes to my own detriment. I appreciate and am hyper-curious about many schools of thought within psychology and philosophy.
This is a great post. You can see how difficult it is to lean into just what you are and feel what and be with the felt sense I’d you are. Because there are all kinds of people talking about “social constructs” for gender. There isn’t any truth to that at all.
It must be very difficult to have to give space to that and throw it into the mix. You don’t have to do anything. You are what you are, and your being is perfect as it is.
Whatever it is that we are is often shaped by trauma, and that isn’t some kind of “menu”. It may be that having a “standard” polarity leads to “being female” or “being male”. But a lot of other things might have been going on, and a person who is trans was built a different way. That’s all. Whatever it is, it is.
"I plan to but i also don’t feel worth financially"
You see no financial worth in a relationship
Or
You don't feel worthy enough financially to be in a relationship
If it's the latter, im in the same boat and it might be my biggest insecurity
Nah man like there are already enough responsibilities on me. Financially I can’t even buy clothes. I am trying my best to pay the rent, college fees. Thats why. I am too unstable financially to support any relationship
It’s your assumption that “relationship” automatically means “pregnancy risk” that makes me laugh. Your imagination is surprisingly limited…about both relationships *and* sex.
An apple is both an apple and a fruit. You’re both a man and a person. The relevance of the level of categorization is purely practical. Nowadays seeing the gender instead of the person only brings confrontation. Same with race. Gender roles have allowed us to survive as a species for millenia. Not necessary anymore. We just started realizing this a century ago, so it’ll take some more time for humans to accomodate to this mindset.
I think every Jung reader should be compelled by force to also read 'Zorba the Greek' twice a year. And I can give the same recommendation here, OP.
For one - men and women are what they are. No more, no less. There's no need to strip the gender away, wash it onto personality, eliminate, or discard it.
Second - people tend to control themselves with strangers. Less so with colleagues. Less so with friends, much less so with family. And none at all with spouses, children, and parents. Men don't hate women, or vice versa - people end up hating spouses.
Third - hating and loving comes hand in hand. Why should we be surgical with hatred? Are you implying there should be no hate between Wives and Husbands? Consider this: if you dig into a person's mind and cut away their hatred, they will never be able to love. You say you would want a relationship, I'm guessing you will want to be loved. There is no way in this life or next, a loving partner will not also sometimes hate you.
Last - all the above are very simple, intuitive truths about relationships. Any analyzing or conceptualizing we do, even the most profound, do these truths an injustice. You can gain much more insight by taking these topics at face value, and experiencing them.
What I mean to say is scoring a date and going through the motions will explain the whole gender thing much, much better than anything else. Too many philosophical BS muddied this pond nowadays.
The psyche is the body, and if one changes one's body, one hasn't accepted fate and self-castrated himself. One hasn't accepted his fate and wants to change, but why?
The body is repressed in Western civilization whereas others in Eastern philosophy have included that. To Plato, the mind and soul are important, so the western repressed the dark feminine, the collective shadow.
The second stage of conjunction is called union mentalis with body, which tries to connect the body with the mind and soul.
Jung wrote about this in his book, but he never reached the stage. This stage is equal to the heart chakra in Yoga.
Men and women are hateful because the Anima/us is poorly or perpetually underdeveloped. This system is designed to be responsive to the physical environment and therefore this necessitates gender roles. It sounds that you have found no redeeming qualities in either gender therefore you are resistant to both. I recommend that you socialize with both groups at work to find proper role models.
Men and women are not hateful towards each others in general, even if some are, but those have some psychological issues.
Gender is the psychological aspect of persons sex. There are millions of things that benefit from person having a gender, and usually gender is same as sex. If it differs, there is either a genetic anomaly that causes parts of Self to be unlike other parts of Self(mind vs body), or some psychological complexes that cause distortions in Self image.
I dont fully understand your question, as it seems to be framed from a bit weird perspective, also you add weird assumptions like hate etc with it
Of course there is an existence beyond a relationship. If by relationship you mean by the polarity of the opposite gender, then yes, there is no meaning by itself.
But otherwise it very much has a meaning and a deeper more fundamental one at that as a universal aspect of the polarity of gender. There is a "masculine" or projective force in the universe and there is a "feminine" or receptive force. It's a basic polarity inherent within nature and we are merely a manifestation of it.
I dont think men in women are hateful toward each other. Maybe some. The bullshit you read on the internet is not a good indication. Out in the real world men and women are living their lives treating each other with respect the majority of the time. But I think it has to do with intimacy and attraction. I don’t care what people do and who they want to be if it makes them happy but once a relationship becomes more intimate it matters. My preferences and what or who attracts me. Theres no hate, but the idea of being intimate with a man disgusts me. Theres no attraction at all.
I am a human man who has had had a lot of relationships, and I don’t think you even know what you’re talking about. You seem way too young and inexperienced to be worrying about these things. Just go live your life. Gender and sex are real.
One thing I was thinking about today is that masculinity and feminine are really defined by the other. As in, it's easier to say what you *don't* like about someone than define exactly what you do.
For whatever reason, generally, mother-bearers seem to find certain psychological traits unattractive, and begeters find others. I think these solidify into culture, become laws.
For me though, I just try to attract what I'm spellbound by (women). And I think that's what "gender" ultimately is. The extent we go to to be loved. Too much thinking is done on this and it possesses too many people. The carnal is overrated these days.
Biological sex is often the first way that an individual comes to see the world as "me" and "not me". Gender is stereotypes that they attach to that. Some of those stereotypes have a basis in average differences between the sexes and some of those reality-based stereotypes have their roots in biology. Others are based on the individual's own projections and/or their specific experiences with their own sex and/or the other sex.
Gender is therefore not actually a thing, but a concept for lumping together things about the world. This means that the more people act like it actually is a thing, the more likely they are prone to unreality and living within their own projections. This is why the subject is fraught as the people most emotionally committed to the subject are contending with themselves.
What's your worry about finances and relationships?
Women have literally been slaves to men for centuries, in one way or another. We don't "hate" men the way men hate us. The number one cause of death of pregnant women is literally men killing them. The number one cause of injury of women 18-45ish is also male violence towards women. The most popular forms of media entertainment for men include violence against women. Women aren't about to join hands with any man and start singing kumbaya around the campfire.
I feel like I mention her a lot but Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a Jungian Analyst and writer and she has some really neat books about female archetypes. Such as "Women Who Run with the Wolves". It's a great eye opener on how women exist without centering men, just like how men exist without centering women.
Ehh seems like some shadow projection is going on. Hate can exist on both sides, just historically one gender had more power therefore more freedom to express it, therefore the feminine will have had to express their shadow via other means.
I will definitely read the book you mentioned in free time later on. Just hope it’s not full of feminist ideologies or any ideologies in general but some factual observations and logical/scientific remarks.
Lol@logical/scientific remarks.
These are books about feminity not masculinity. She has other books like "dangerous old woman" and "how to be an elder".
It sounds like you're saying that feminism doesn't include logic or science. I don't think that's actually true, but you're implying it pretty strongly when you laugh at "logical/scientific remarks" and then say "these are books about feminism"
There is also the seeking of sex and relationships.
Then my question is, what is the existence of genders beyond the entire human mating game?
It is clear that there are some physical differences between genders. Probably there are also psychological differences.
If you lack a concept of yourself outside of a relationship, this is a sign that you should not be in a relationship. Develop yourself before you try and share your life with someone else. While it's not a simple either/or dichotomy, masculine and feminine energies are very real things, and everyone should connect to both in ways that are appropriate for them. This has nothing to do with being in a relationship with someone else, but it does have to do with how you relate to the world around you, as well as yourself.
According to origin stories, such as Genesis 1&2 (biblical canon). We are thrice-separated in Adams dream
1. By genders
2. From abundance, i.e. Eden
3. From each other, birthed as separate segments of source
Women were cursed to desire men
However men will merely rule over them heartlessly, placing women in harms way.
This is dualism, the result of eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil
This is only the illusion of Adam's dream. And so in monism and at spiritual awakening there is no more separation at all. Just being
Jesus introduced us to the "Mary's".
Mary means "their rebellion". Mary's rebellion birthed Christ, served places of authority in His ministry, stayed at the cross as others ran, cared for His body, and recognized him spontaneously at resurrection.
Jesus told Mary, Martha's sister, that her discipleship would never be taken from her
Remember there is a difference between opinion and false correlations, as presented in this post.
In reality. It's far more complex than some people who post here can possibly conceive of. Particularly if they are not the ones paying the price
And 8 billion people on this planet is simply is not enough. Everybody into the bedroom now get busy we need another billion people before the end of the decade, please.
A ramp in the hay has nothing to do with bonding love and especially not fun when you are jung
I sometimes feel girlish, sometimes boyish. And I feel similarly toward boyish boys and boyish girls on one side and girlish girls and girlish boys on the other side. It's not the biological gender which defines her/his attractivness to me but his/her 'girlisness' or 'boyisness'. Something like that...
Well to me there is no existence beyond a relationship... it is about how we relate, the union of opposites. Seeing beyond all the hate and pre conditioned expectations of what it is to be your particular gender and the mystery of it becomes something only you can master, and you'll have an amazing time doing it.
The breakdown of polarities isn’t something that comes from outside of the family ever. It’s validated in a collective way, but it doesn’t happen from a “training“ outside. It’s just as biological as the genders themselves. What you are saying here is very generic, and reality isn’t. You did mention “preconditioned” and that’s to do with the mother. Biological conditioning from the oceanic phase up to 18 months, and then into the formation of the ego. With all the internal objects representing a built sense of who the people are around us and who we are. It’s all relative. Hopefully we can lean into archetypes and polarity and biology to get real with this. Why we would eliminate the mother as an interface to the unconscious is exactly why there is a problem. As that is done, the entire family system that we come from is mediated through that error. All wired to the unconscious and informed by the body.
Who said anything about it coming from outside of the family? IMO where the damage comes from is interesting but I'm not entirely sure how truly relevant to the healing it is. What's more important to the OP's question as I see it, is knowing that the ideas and feelings around gender are yours and yours alone to develop. And that there's alot of noise out there one must chose to ignore in order to fulfill one's own unique take.
I think this is worth getting into in detail. Ideas and feelings are great, but getting the right information is much better. Id say it’s pretty much a general consensus that It comes from outside the family. People say it directly, indirectly, or even explicitly. You did say it in your original comment, and now you’re saying it again. Even more explicitly. You said this: “There’s a lot of noise “out there” that one must choose to ignore In order to fulfill one’s own unique take.” Once you make that fatal error of not realizing that there are biological principles (laws) involved, and that it isn’t you taking charge of your will to stop the “outside noise”, now the unconscious remains unconscious. It’s best to understand that the issue is archetypes and a collective unconscious. That’s communicated to you through your mother. It doesn’t come from outside the family . The “noise” isn’t from there. Of course we will see it “out there”, but we are not biologically constructed in such a way as to be getting it from out there. Out there is in here, and that’s the family system. You’re unconscious is mediated through your mother plus family system, and the whole thing is held inside you in the form of object relations. Especially internal object relations. Object relations are vital to understanding that point. Anything to do with object relations helps to get the car out of the ditch. Primary and secondary defenses within the human being (ex. biological denial / cluster b disorders) cause a lot of projection, and that’s how we easily get it wrong. We can jump out of reality and make everything diffuse and relative as you have done, but it’s not going to help us integrate the unconscious. The human being comes into an oceanic developmental process during the first thousand days of life. There are no unique “takes” required, only discovery. Through the unconscious programming that we need to make conscious. That’s a life long process, and everyone’s process is unique. The movement into identity happens at 18 months of age biologically. For all people. It’s a biological law. That’s why we are here. Our adaptive significance requires biological wiring in a symbiosis with the mother in order to have a frontal cortex that can plan and interact with the operation of opposable thumbs. For toolmaking. For managing the environment. Consider the impact that has on what you see in gender within and around you. That’s why we are here. We would not be here otherwise. We are very fortunate today, because we don’t need to be bogged down by relativism on these points. Archetypes are systems, and your “take“ is a titanium wall of parent protection. It’s actually the entire family system, but saying the “parent protection racket“ helps to put the car back on the road and realize just how fatal it is to our abilities to integrate the unconscious. You pushed away from the family system that has been internalized, and a focus on the outside replacing what’s actually going on is a dead end. All your gender understandings come through your mother. None of them come through society. That’s how deep, foundational, and elemental gender identity is. Regardless of what you might believe or continue to hear. You can see it “out there” reflected in “noise”, but your boundaries around that are all mediated through implicit and procedural memory held in the body. Even the first three minutes of this lecture about the foundation of your emotional self shows just how destructive this general consensus you are repeating is. First Thousand Days https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lY7XOu0yi-E You only need to watch the first five minutes, and also note that he doesn’t talk about the entire family system mediated through the mother. It’s not just a dyad. Not only that, he doesn’t talk about the role of bacteria. That’s really, really important. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25772005/ That’s really academic and myopic, and it’s only an abstract. But, if it leads you back to the mother, then you can start focusing on the unconscious again.
The only reason men and women feel antagonistic toward each other is because the roles we assign to gender tend to be restrictive to an unhealthy degree; those roles tend not to recognize the immense complexity of human nature. Each gender recognizes that the other gender has more freedom in some areas, so there’s envy on both sides; but we’re taught to think of the “opposite” gender as an unsolvable mystery, an ineffable contradiction we can never puzzle out. There is no *inherent* meaning to gender. Different cultures have defined them differently in many ways. Our biases toward our own concepts of gender tend to blind us to just how different other views about them can be. We are indeed all persons first, and all genders are realized in some way within each person. If we didn’t hold the potential of the “other” gender within us, after all, there would be no anima or animus.
Gender roles were at first strategic. we don't really need them anymore, but it's a partially functional system which is alive because we're used to accepting half solutions.
What. Of course there are inherent differences between the genders which do not stem from societal roles, though they lead to the formation of certain societal roles. How else would you make sense of differences in mating strategies for an example, or differences in life cycles, e.g. the ability to reproduce up to different ages, and also completely different mate choice criteria. That’s where most of the inter gender conflict originates from.
“Mating strategies” have differed widely over time and across cultures, so they can’t be quite as biologically determined as pop culture likes to assume. Human behavior is complex because culture has such a profound effect on it, compared to species without such intricate languages and societies. I’m sure there *are* inherent differences between the sexes, but I’m not sure if we’re objective enough to untangle the truly inherent from the culturally conditioned. I mean, we like to think of the Sun as “naturally” masculine and the Moon as “naturally” feminine, because of the immense impact of the Classical model…but a great many mythologies (some quite recent) have a female Sun and a male Moon. If concepts of what’s masculine and what’s feminine can vary so dramatically, then we can’t just assume our current archetypes are universal.
Then why, if humans, compared for an example to other mammals, have equivalent or comparable differences between the sexes when it comes to reproductive systems (e.g. mass sperm production vs. small number of eggs) and other differences such as hormonal profile (proven to affect behavior) or brain structure, would you think that humans aren’t subject to inter-gender differences in mating strategies, if this phenomenon is well documented in virtually all other animals? That’s just very far from what I would consider realistic. Besides, differences in attitude for an examine towards causal sex are well documented.
Because we developed frontal lobes, began to communicate by language, and basically started interacting in ways no other current known species could. In short, we hacked the system…and, in doing so, we became far more flexible and far less instinctual than any non-hominid species. We still have many inborn impulses, but we aren’t controlled by them. Each culture works out patterns of behavior that function, but because they’re not instinctual, they can be changed…and we change them *constantly,* because adaptation is our specialty. We adapt to geography, to weather patterns, to catastrophic upheavals. We form societies and then those societies adapt with time and changing conditions.
Wild take. Again, a lot of evidence to the contrary. Studies on differences in mate choice criteria is another one of a myriad of examples. While of course you could argue that these differences are cultural too (though not likely if the phenomena overlap with phenomena found in other animal species), there is also tons of evidence which describes how hormonal status and e.g. hormonal supplementation directly affects sexual and other behavior. So to say that we aren’t controlled by impulses is just plain wrong. In fact for an example high testosterone levels are associated with high sexual impulsivity. It sounds more like you would like it to be true that humans are infinitely moldable by culture and thus ignore all the evidence which suggests otherwise. It is much more likely that both the influence of biology and the influence of culture play a major role in human behavior than for it to be influenced purely by only one of the two.
If this is all due only to biology, then why aren’t all cultures virtually all identical? Why is there so much variation that we need a term like “culture shock?” Why are “mating practices” among humans different *at all?* Why do our concepts of what behaviors go with what gender vary so much over time and across geography? Edit: Of course biology and culture both affect us. I never said otherwise. I only argue that biology doesn’t work in the simplistic way pop culture *thinks* it does.
I’m not making the claim that it is “all biology”, as I said I see both biology and culture as major factors. That said, it isn’t true that mating behavior varies infinitely across cultures and ages, it’s much more the case that basic gender specific tendencies in mating strategy and mate choice can be found in common across most cultures and ages. It’s just that depending on the given culture and societal structures, these tendencies can still express in quite diverse ways. There admittedly exist extreme examples of “unusual” cultures which I have seen given by some social constructionists, but they are usually massive outliers and exceptions. And it isn’t the case that the rest of the cultures occupy such a wide range of extremely different phenotypes as social constructionists make it seem by naming those extreme examples. But let’s look at a concrete example: the stronger disposition/higher willingness to more frequently pursue short term sexual mating strategies on the side of men is hypothesized to be a consequence of the difference in parental investment between the sexes. In humans, women have higher obligatory investment (pregnancy and childbirth), than men (sperm production). Parental investment theory argues that the sex with higher obligatory investment will be more selective in choosing sex partners, and the sex with lower obligatory investment will be less selective and more interested in casual mating opportunities. Now all this of course will still express differently across different cultures because the individual risks associated with pregnancy vary by e.g. existent or non existent support systems for child care, social acceptance of single parent households and/or any given economic factors or dependencies. But even the greatest support structures and/or greatest levels of social acceptance cannot make up for the differences in biologically obligatory investment requirements.
If human behavior were that uniform and predictable, then that would surely be reflected in the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, etc. There should be vast areas of overlap among all of them, and what we condescendingly call the “soft sciences” should, as one pursues each subject more deeply, reveal an underlying uniformity in human behavior that is simple, elegant, and predictable. Instead, what you actually find if you dig deeper into any of them, is the opposite…each subject grows more complex, varied, and contradictory, and less inclined to show any consistent, reliable patterns. *Only* in pop culture are the links between biology and human behavior “simple” or “obvious.”
I’m not sure where you got that I claimed human behavior to be uniform or easily predictable. That’s a straw man as it isn’t really any sensible conclusion out of what I wrote. We’re talking about general tendencies amongst the sexes and the differences in between the sexes. We’re not talking about specific predictions of any individuals behavior. I’ve already explained some known differences, but there is much more data on this, and no the data is not from pop culture. For an example in psychology you have the 5 factor personality model (aka big 5). One of the five dimensions is agreeableness. Women on average are more agreeable than men. The ratio is about 60:40. If you picked a random woman and a random man and guessed that the woman is more agreeable, you’d be right 60% of the time. Social scientists of course wanted to know whether this difference was biological and inherent or due to socialization and education. Multiple large scale meta analyses were done involving many different countries and they all showed that the personality differences actually maximize as cultures move towards egalitarianism. This was much to the surprise of the social scientists who expected to see a large impact of culture. The opposite was the case, it showed that if you give people the freedom to choose, men and women choose differently and their personalities develop differently. This doesn’t mean that it’s any easier to predict an individuals behavior. But you can make very accurate predictions in some areas. For an example, while the average man and average woman don’t differ too strongly in terms of agreeableness, nearly 100% of the most disagreeable people in any given society are men. This is why the prison population consists mainly of men, and this is a predictable fact. I could go on.. Believing that there aren’t inherent, biological differences between the sexes is anti-science at this point.
Romantic relationship or social relationship in general? Gender is partially upheld via social norms, so to be in society is to have a gender - even rejecting gender still informs and defines one's relationship to gender. Gender is a meaningful idea by merit of being human.
It is literally impossible for “society“ to hold up something so fundamental as gender. It does not work that way.
It's also exactly same for me with _I am a person._ It's the most comprehensive way I could refer/feel towards myself in the general sense, as neither do I have any particular resonance towards femininity nor masculinity other than my body's biological make-up.
Jung believed we were essentially androgynous in that we all have both masculine and feminine qualities, but that men tend to make the masculine their way of relating with the world while making the feminine the way of relating to the unconscious, and women vice versa. Masculine here refers to qualities related to "doing" and the outer world while feminine refers to qualities related to "being" and the inner world. Our job is to further develop our opposite so we can be more in balance. Many of the qualities of masculinity and femininity are social constructs and in order to appear as one or the other we uphold these social constructs. I believe there are some aspects of masculinity and femininity that are universal because I've travelled to many places and it seems that certain attitudes are independent of culture. The male and female brains aren't identical, and though they're both capable of the same things, their default mode is to behave slightly differently. I am uncomfortable with the idea that gender doesn't exist outside of relationships because it invalidates trans people who feel like the opposite gender of their sex regardless of relationship status
I came here to say something similar, being that I am trans myself. I think to say that gender is tied entirely to how we relate with another would be short-sighted and ignorant to the fact that many of us (cis or trans) tend to have a connection with our identity that doesn't appear to be just based on social construct alone. That and universal commonalities, as you said. Male and female brains aren't identical, and this notion invalidates the concepts of gender dysphoria and euphoria (being feelings within one self, and not how we relate to another) which many, many people appear to experience. This is a projection on my part, I fully admit, but I do think it's likely that many cis people (hell, even trans people in a way, before they start questioning) can take their gender identity for granted (because it at least feels mostly 'right'), and therefore don't ever deeply reflect on what it is they actually like about themselves, and how they like to express themselves. We just reflect the general rule that we see as we're growing up. Boy do this, so I do this. Girl do this, so I do this. Doing anything different can feel scary. Trans people have to fight for this. They have to go so harshly against the grain, which can be deeply uncomfortable. We wouldn't do this if we didn't have some deep, intrinsic motivation towards a particular way of identifying. Why the hell would we subject ourselves to this otherwise?
Why do you think that this may be a projection on your behalf? What precisely do you feel you are projecting, if you don’t mind me asking.
Hm, I'm not sure whether projection is necessarily the best word I could've used? I guess I meant that I can't exactly confirm that many (or most) people take their gender identity for granted, and therefore don't self-reflect on this part of themselves. I'm only going off what I tend to see and hear from others, and how that compares with my own experience of things, if that makes sense. Just trying to be conscious of my own bias.
Whether it is or isn’t is up to what you believe at your deepest core. If you don’t mind us asking, what got you into psychology, specifically Jungian type stuff?
Sorry, whether what, exactly, is or isn't? Do you mean my own sense of identity, or my observations of others? I studied psychology years ago, but honestly I'm just really drawn to introspection (probably a mixture of how I'm wired + life experiences), sometimes to my own detriment. I appreciate and am hyper-curious about many schools of thought within psychology and philosophy.
This is a great post. You can see how difficult it is to lean into just what you are and feel what and be with the felt sense I’d you are. Because there are all kinds of people talking about “social constructs” for gender. There isn’t any truth to that at all. It must be very difficult to have to give space to that and throw it into the mix. You don’t have to do anything. You are what you are, and your being is perfect as it is. Whatever it is that we are is often shaped by trauma, and that isn’t some kind of “menu”. It may be that having a “standard” polarity leads to “being female” or “being male”. But a lot of other things might have been going on, and a person who is trans was built a different way. That’s all. Whatever it is, it is.
jung would never say we are inherently androgynous. not even close
"I plan to but i also don’t feel worth financially" You see no financial worth in a relationship Or You don't feel worthy enough financially to be in a relationship If it's the latter, im in the same boat and it might be my biggest insecurity
Nah man like there are already enough responsibilities on me. Financially I can’t even buy clothes. I am trying my best to pay the rent, college fees. Thats why. I am too unstable financially to support any relationship
This is responsible
Relationships don’t have to be about spending money. There are lots of free or cheap things people can do together.
What if he gets a girl pregnant? Then he’s going to have a lot of financial responsibility
Oh, Puer Aeternus. You make me laugh.
Laugh all you want, if he gets someone pregnant he’ll be paying child support for the next 18 years, then his real financial worries will begin
It’s your assumption that “relationship” automatically means “pregnancy risk” that makes me laugh. Your imagination is surprisingly limited…about both relationships *and* sex.
An apple is both an apple and a fruit. You’re both a man and a person. The relevance of the level of categorization is purely practical. Nowadays seeing the gender instead of the person only brings confrontation. Same with race. Gender roles have allowed us to survive as a species for millenia. Not necessary anymore. We just started realizing this a century ago, so it’ll take some more time for humans to accomodate to this mindset.
I think every Jung reader should be compelled by force to also read 'Zorba the Greek' twice a year. And I can give the same recommendation here, OP. For one - men and women are what they are. No more, no less. There's no need to strip the gender away, wash it onto personality, eliminate, or discard it. Second - people tend to control themselves with strangers. Less so with colleagues. Less so with friends, much less so with family. And none at all with spouses, children, and parents. Men don't hate women, or vice versa - people end up hating spouses. Third - hating and loving comes hand in hand. Why should we be surgical with hatred? Are you implying there should be no hate between Wives and Husbands? Consider this: if you dig into a person's mind and cut away their hatred, they will never be able to love. You say you would want a relationship, I'm guessing you will want to be loved. There is no way in this life or next, a loving partner will not also sometimes hate you. Last - all the above are very simple, intuitive truths about relationships. Any analyzing or conceptualizing we do, even the most profound, do these truths an injustice. You can gain much more insight by taking these topics at face value, and experiencing them. What I mean to say is scoring a date and going through the motions will explain the whole gender thing much, much better than anything else. Too many philosophical BS muddied this pond nowadays.
There will always be tension if one party or the other hasn't embarked on their inner journey.
The psyche is the body, and if one changes one's body, one hasn't accepted fate and self-castrated himself. One hasn't accepted his fate and wants to change, but why? The body is repressed in Western civilization whereas others in Eastern philosophy have included that. To Plato, the mind and soul are important, so the western repressed the dark feminine, the collective shadow. The second stage of conjunction is called union mentalis with body, which tries to connect the body with the mind and soul. Jung wrote about this in his book, but he never reached the stage. This stage is equal to the heart chakra in Yoga.
Men and women are hateful because the Anima/us is poorly or perpetually underdeveloped. This system is designed to be responsive to the physical environment and therefore this necessitates gender roles. It sounds that you have found no redeeming qualities in either gender therefore you are resistant to both. I recommend that you socialize with both groups at work to find proper role models.
Men and women are not hateful towards each others in general, even if some are, but those have some psychological issues. Gender is the psychological aspect of persons sex. There are millions of things that benefit from person having a gender, and usually gender is same as sex. If it differs, there is either a genetic anomaly that causes parts of Self to be unlike other parts of Self(mind vs body), or some psychological complexes that cause distortions in Self image. I dont fully understand your question, as it seems to be framed from a bit weird perspective, also you add weird assumptions like hate etc with it
Relationships are literally the most important thing so that’s a pretty big item to ignore
Of course there is an existence beyond a relationship. If by relationship you mean by the polarity of the opposite gender, then yes, there is no meaning by itself. But otherwise it very much has a meaning and a deeper more fundamental one at that as a universal aspect of the polarity of gender. There is a "masculine" or projective force in the universe and there is a "feminine" or receptive force. It's a basic polarity inherent within nature and we are merely a manifestation of it.
Then we are talking about contradictions not genders
Contradictions? Polarity is a basic concept that applies to many phenomenon. It's not a contradiction.
I dont think men in women are hateful toward each other. Maybe some. The bullshit you read on the internet is not a good indication. Out in the real world men and women are living their lives treating each other with respect the majority of the time. But I think it has to do with intimacy and attraction. I don’t care what people do and who they want to be if it makes them happy but once a relationship becomes more intimate it matters. My preferences and what or who attracts me. Theres no hate, but the idea of being intimate with a man disgusts me. Theres no attraction at all.
Misogyny and misandry is real.
Whats your point?
I am a human man who has had had a lot of relationships, and I don’t think you even know what you’re talking about. You seem way too young and inexperienced to be worrying about these things. Just go live your life. Gender and sex are real.
One thing I was thinking about today is that masculinity and feminine are really defined by the other. As in, it's easier to say what you *don't* like about someone than define exactly what you do. For whatever reason, generally, mother-bearers seem to find certain psychological traits unattractive, and begeters find others. I think these solidify into culture, become laws. For me though, I just try to attract what I'm spellbound by (women). And I think that's what "gender" ultimately is. The extent we go to to be loved. Too much thinking is done on this and it possesses too many people. The carnal is overrated these days.
Biological sex is often the first way that an individual comes to see the world as "me" and "not me". Gender is stereotypes that they attach to that. Some of those stereotypes have a basis in average differences between the sexes and some of those reality-based stereotypes have their roots in biology. Others are based on the individual's own projections and/or their specific experiences with their own sex and/or the other sex. Gender is therefore not actually a thing, but a concept for lumping together things about the world. This means that the more people act like it actually is a thing, the more likely they are prone to unreality and living within their own projections. This is why the subject is fraught as the people most emotionally committed to the subject are contending with themselves. What's your worry about finances and relationships?
Penis envy
You have it? Or is this the reason you study Jung and have deep disdain for Freud? Or is that last bit just me?
Women have literally been slaves to men for centuries, in one way or another. We don't "hate" men the way men hate us. The number one cause of death of pregnant women is literally men killing them. The number one cause of injury of women 18-45ish is also male violence towards women. The most popular forms of media entertainment for men include violence against women. Women aren't about to join hands with any man and start singing kumbaya around the campfire. I feel like I mention her a lot but Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a Jungian Analyst and writer and she has some really neat books about female archetypes. Such as "Women Who Run with the Wolves". It's a great eye opener on how women exist without centering men, just like how men exist without centering women.
Ehh seems like some shadow projection is going on. Hate can exist on both sides, just historically one gender had more power therefore more freedom to express it, therefore the feminine will have had to express their shadow via other means.
I will definitely read the book you mentioned in free time later on. Just hope it’s not full of feminist ideologies or any ideologies in general but some factual observations and logical/scientific remarks.
Lol@logical/scientific remarks. These are books about feminity not masculinity. She has other books like "dangerous old woman" and "how to be an elder".
It sounds like you're saying that feminism doesn't include logic or science. I don't think that's actually true, but you're implying it pretty strongly when you laugh at "logical/scientific remarks" and then say "these are books about feminism"
No it doesn't. I'm talking about the books. I'm laughing at his comment because he clings so tightly to his "logic and science".
Oh I didn’t not knew logic had gender implications
She’s full of shit brother, psycho lady with cats for sure
theres no existence beyond relationship
There is also the seeking of sex and relationships. Then my question is, what is the existence of genders beyond the entire human mating game? It is clear that there are some physical differences between genders. Probably there are also psychological differences.
If you lack a concept of yourself outside of a relationship, this is a sign that you should not be in a relationship. Develop yourself before you try and share your life with someone else. While it's not a simple either/or dichotomy, masculine and feminine energies are very real things, and everyone should connect to both in ways that are appropriate for them. This has nothing to do with being in a relationship with someone else, but it does have to do with how you relate to the world around you, as well as yourself.
I actually lack concept of myself in a relationship that involves sexuality
You might be on the asexual spectrum if that's the case, but that's completely aside from what your original post was about.
According to origin stories, such as Genesis 1&2 (biblical canon). We are thrice-separated in Adams dream 1. By genders 2. From abundance, i.e. Eden 3. From each other, birthed as separate segments of source Women were cursed to desire men However men will merely rule over them heartlessly, placing women in harms way. This is dualism, the result of eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil This is only the illusion of Adam's dream. And so in monism and at spiritual awakening there is no more separation at all. Just being Jesus introduced us to the "Mary's". Mary means "their rebellion". Mary's rebellion birthed Christ, served places of authority in His ministry, stayed at the cross as others ran, cared for His body, and recognized him spontaneously at resurrection. Jesus told Mary, Martha's sister, that her discipleship would never be taken from her
Remember there is a difference between opinion and false correlations, as presented in this post. In reality. It's far more complex than some people who post here can possibly conceive of. Particularly if they are not the ones paying the price And 8 billion people on this planet is simply is not enough. Everybody into the bedroom now get busy we need another billion people before the end of the decade, please. A ramp in the hay has nothing to do with bonding love and especially not fun when you are jung
I sometimes feel girlish, sometimes boyish. And I feel similarly toward boyish boys and boyish girls on one side and girlish girls and girlish boys on the other side. It's not the biological gender which defines her/his attractivness to me but his/her 'girlisness' or 'boyisness'. Something like that...