Rest in peace Amanda. Bullied Teen Commits Suicide After Posting Last-Ditch Cry for Help on YouTube

[johnlucas]

30. I don't mind having this discussion. I welcome it.

Other posters on here are mad at me because I'm more focused on understanding how to prevent future incidents like this instead of looking on the right person to blame.

My view is that gender roles ARE cultural roles but that these gender roles cannot form without biological origins.
Every culture assigns different standards & roles to all the diverse expressions of humanity.
There are people of all types of shapes & sizes, all types of moods & temperaments, all types of strengths & weaknesses.

Fat people, thin people, muscular people, curvy people, short people, tall people, happy people, angry people, sad people, indifferent people, strong people, weak people, far-sighted people, near-sighted people, athletic people, scholarly people, extroverted people, introverted people, heterosexual people, homosexual people, bisexual people, try-sexual people...on & on forever.

With so many variations of the human design & human expression each culture picks favorites out of the types & promotes these types to be aspired to by all members of that society. The ones who don't fit the favored profiles get lesser regard for not fitting in.

In our culture, an amalgamation, descendant, & evolution of past cultures, if a man is not physically strong they are looked at as not manly.
If a man gets emotional easily, he will not be seen as manly.
If a woman tries to take charge & become the boss, she will not be seen as womanly.
If a woman forgoes having children, she will not be seen as womanly.

ALL members of any society goes through double standards.
All men are not physically strong & will never be strong. But they are still men.
All men do not suppress their emotions & can tear up at a sad movie. But they are still men.
All women don't take a backseat & take command of situations without any higher ups. But they are still women.
All women don't want to have kids. But they are still women.

Can men wear flowers in their hair without catching a bunch of grief for it?
Can a woman purposely shave off all of her hair without catching a bunch of grief for it?

That Sikh woman that was in the news a few days ago with the facial hair. Balpreet Kaur.
She was a woman who dared to go in public with facial hair. A light moustache & beard.
Women grow face hair. Men are KNOWN for having face hair more than women but women grow face hair too.
She just as much a woman as any other woman. She's not a lesbian or butch or none of that.
She's just a woman with a little scraggly on her face.

Now as much as women applaud her for standing her ground on her appearance how many of them will stop plucking & tweezing their OWN hairs?
Do they think they can be a woman with a little fuzz on their face or do they think it's "unhygenic"?
Will they go out on dates with fuzz on their face & not expect others to question them?
Will they expect to get many dates with fuzz on their face without challenge?
That everybody should just see them as a woman & that womanhood is not defined by the hair on their face.

And that statement is absolutely TRUE. Woman grow face hair too.
Women also go bald somewhat like men do. It's a little more evenly distributed & not as dramatic but women have baldness patterns like men.
What woman do you know feels good about going bald?
Just because you're bald doesn't make you unfeminine.
But will others come to that conclusion or is their a double standard on baldness in women & baldness in men?
Patrick Stewart can go bald & be considered the Sexiest Man Alive.
What woman can go bald & be considered the Sexiest Woman Alive?

I also believe that there should be gray-haired women anchors on TV.
I don't see anything wrong with that.
I don't think women should have to dye their hair & fake being 25 forever when they get older just to be on TV.
Gray hair doesn't make you unfeminine.

But speaking of that also think about the double standards about how someone says older people should dress.
Young women can wear flirty skin-bearing clothes.
When a woman is 45 should she be able to wear the same clothes that she did when she was 25?
Why not? Clothes are clothes, right?
So what if a woman who is 45 wants to wear provocative shorts that bare the thigh?
So what if a woman wears a tight T-shirt that accentuates her chest & torso?

A bunch of women will talk nasty about her & say "She knows she's too old to be wearing that! She should dress her age. She's a mother for goodness sake!"
What does that mean to "dress your age"?
How does wearing clothes like that inhibit your ability to be a mother?
Why is she "too old" to be wearing that?

Double standards are everywhere & are reinforced by men AND women ON men AND women.
If a woman stays a virgin until she's 35, it's acceptable. If a man stays a virgin, until he's 35 something's wrong with him.
That's why they made that movie The 40 Year Old Virgin & mocked guys like these.

Short men catch a lot of grief from women because many women look disparagingly on short-heighted men.
He could be responsible, thoughtful, respectful, financially successful but he's shorter than the woman.
He is discarded solely for that reason.
If he brings up the inequity they call it Short Man's Syndrome & mock him.
Reminds me when Black people talk about racism & they call it the Race Card.

No one owns the pain of double standards.
The man—better yet the ADULT who exploited & blackmailed this girl is the problem.
Lamenting the fact that she was pulled in by compliments on her beauty is futile.

This is biological programming.
If it wasn't there would be no Beauty Industry today.
WOMEN supply the beauty industry billions & billions of dollars every year & men don't even care about all of this stuff.
Women may THINK they're putting on makeup "for themselves" but the biological reason is so that they can attract males.
This is why women wear heels which make them walk in a certain way to make their legs attractive & push their butts out.
That's why women wear perfumes to give off unique odors that have an effect on the opposite sex.
That's why women's clothes are designed the way they are to show off a woman's figure.
This is why women are always changing their hair colors & hairstyles.

This is why men are always trying to get money & status & might.
Why men always seek high-paying jobs.
Why men have high ambition & try to be the leader of the pack.
Why men work out their muscles & show off their strength.
Why men go into the military & other uniformed services.

The Masculine is PROGRAMMED to attract the Feminine.
The Feminine is PROGRAMMED to attract the Masculine.

In Intersexed people like the Gays that dynamic still remains.
Even if the bodies are two males or two females there is a masculine component attracting a feminine component in both partners.

Masculine & Feminine is within us all. But we assigned certain traits & expression of humanity as Masculine & Feminine.
Then we tried to promote certain profiles of these traits that may have been expressed in one man or one woman of the time.
Would Michelle Robinson be attracted to Barack Obama if he strayed too far from the promoted gender roles?
She called him "a nerd" when she talked about first encountering him.
It was not until Obama showed off his basketballing skills with her brother that she warmed to him.
He showed his ability to weather competition & this is promoted as a favored masculine trait.

Genetic man & Genetic woman is biological reality but Social man & Social Woman is assigned by the culture.
Yet that Social role came from certain biological components expressed largely by one sex or another.

My little cousins who show off their dresses, makeup-filled faces & cutesy looks on Facebook trying to show off their attractiveness lets me know that you're barking up the wrong tree trying to stop girls from expressing themselves that way.
Girls like to show off their looks & boys like to show off their prowess.

The only thing you can do is direct it. Amanda Todd took a natural inclination of females that age & directed it at the wrong person.
The technology of our era is what we ultimately need to address because there will be many more Amanda Todds showing off for strangers on the internet I don't care how many girls you educate otherwise.
A few girls will be scared & make better choices. Others will be warned & risk it anyway.
The creeps are gonna be out there. We can make laws to make it more difficult for them to creep, sure.
But you better teach your girls how to deal with that dark side of that technology.

Girls want to show off their prettiness. They have done it from the beginning of time & will do it to the end of time.
Recognize biological reality & teach them how to express this more responsibly so that the creeps can't take advantage of their naïveté.
John Lucas