The original thread was closed to further comments, but I'm pissed enough that I'm going to continue it. Here's the original thread: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1369565

Dear Dr. Love,
You know what is worse than someone claiming all women are gold diggers? It's you telling wonderful stories about you and your friends who are ordinary, average joes getting the HOTTEST women, the BEAUTIFUL women, the most ATTRACTIVE women. It reminds me of the PH leaders that told my sons that they would get the hottest wives if they served a mission. What about all of us NOT SO HOT women? What? We don't deserve a decent guy, a hard-working, honest, funny man? Just because we're not HOT? I am generally a very easy going person, but I'm just so steamed right now. You are making women out to be prizes to be won.
Munchkin

THANK YOU, Munchkin!

You put into words SO adroitly what I've been thinking all through that thread. I am an unattractive woman too. I used to be called Butterface. You know, as in, "She has a great personality, but her face..." and the rest of me got its share of potshots too. And yeah, I get tired of all the Hot-Wimmin-As-Prizes garbage, because I'm nobody's prize.

I'm not aware of butterface being used this way. I've only heard butterface describing a woman with an amazing body but-her-face ...

Oh, hey, there. Please don't call yourselves unattractive or "not hot". Beauty is in the eye of the beholder indeed. It's personalities that ultimately make someone attractive. Depending what a prospective partner is looking for, that is. If every woman had to be "hot" to find a partner, how come so many are married, with kids, and make very happy homes for their fortunate and satisfied husbands?

My thought on reading the thread in question is that I wondered where those guys lived that there were so many "hot" women to go around! I kind of laughed. It didn't anger me. As always, I guess we see things differently. To me, Tal's emphasis was on the men and what they can bring to the relationship. Various readers will have different takes on it I guess. I was thinking too that maybe Tal & friends found women with the personal qualities they desire to be "hot", apart from physical beauty. Maybe I injected a lot of my personal overlay onto Tal's posts? I didn't think he meant they wouldn't date a woman without a certain physical appearance but I could be wrong.

Oh well. We can't all look like the latest glamour queens (who all look alike to me, no individuality). Still, there seem to be plenty of great guys to go around. Lucky for us!

I'll just echo Nightingale from a male standpoint. Everyone has their own viewpoint, though.

*shrugs*

You are so right, Munchkin!

There seems to be a class of men for which the physical beauty of women is all that matters. They usually refer to hot women as "girls" and often prefer they act like girls, not as smart, capable women. The so called "hot girls", typically in their 20s, are treated as a prize to win with no thought really for anything else she could bring to the relationship other than her physical body. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, and this type of man can't ever see beyond a physical body. I, for one, am sick of these kinds of guys. Thank Gawd all men are not like them!

Nightingale, as a casual observer, yes, you do seem to give Tal Bachman a pass on this type of drivel. Given what was stated in the original post, it is extremely doubtful that Tal Bachman would consider dating a woman "without a certain physical appearance" or over the age of 30.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 08:21PM by anonhottie.

To "anonhottie": I just said how I read Tal's post. I allowed room for others to read it a different way. I didn't do a lot of analysis of his approach or motives or history, I just simply read that one post and was more focused on other elements of it, I guess.

This isn't, to me, "giving Tal a pass" on whatever he so happens to want to express, especially any attitudes that other female posters see as misogynistic "drivel". I said I didn't see it that way, not that it *wasn't* that way. Therefore, no "pass" was given.

To me, it's just that we read posts differently, for whatever reasons, like focusing on different points, reading them in a rush (I am guilty of that many times due to pressure of time), having various attitudes that play into how we interpret another's words and other obvious things like that.

I did want to edit my first response on this thread to say that I wasn't trying to make light of the other posters' feelings or experiences or their reaction on reading that post/thread. I accept that our individual perceptions certainly differ and are valid to each of us.

It remains, perhaps, for Tal to explain his words or intent, if he so wishes.

I realize some have thin skins because of a lifetime of misogynistic treatment. Any abrading treatment is going to thin some skin! While I don't know that this is the case with the obviously angry posters, it does seem so to me. If so, I can understand the vitriol in their posts, to an extent.

Nightingale is the voice of calm in this storm, and it is appreciated.

Tal can certainly, as Nightingale said, clarify if he wishes.

By the way, and in no way accusatory, I just wonder about the screen name "anonhottie", especially in light of these postings? I could "read" much into this or none at all. Others may do just that, read much into it or none at all or something in between. Maybe "anonhottie" can also clarify, along with Tal?

*shrugs once more*

Moose, the point of the name "anonhottie" is because my view is virtually the same as the women who were upset due to looking average - except from the opposite perspective. I'm one of those women that would be considered by many men as "hot". Sometimes looking "hot" is a curse. "Hot" women do not get treated well by men who place a lot of emphasis on a woman's looks. These men do not place importance or value on a woman's intelligence, capabilities, creativity, or character just as long as she doesn't turn "crazy" - yet another stereotype for beautiful women. To top it off, this type of man is always looking for someone even hotter - "and I'm talking, hottest of the hot." As a woman, there can be no lasting trust in a man that, on many levels, is basically untrustworthy.

I have a great respect for women that are often passed over by men because they do not have "a certain physical appearance". I find that a great many of these woman are truly beautiful humans with incredible talents! These women have to work hard to be taken seriously because they don't have "a certain physical appearance". Hot women have to work hard to be taken seriously because some men consider them a prize to be won based solely on their appearance, everything else about their character doesn't seem to really matter and is dismissed.

Nightingale's voice is not a "calm in the storm". She is supporting the people who post these stereotypes by overlooking the underlying basis. The purpose of Tal Bachman's post was to convince "Paul the Apostle" that if he could only exhibit certain manly traits then numerous "beautiful women" would come flocking to him. (Of course, he has to watch out for the beautiful woman that is a "soulless ditz".)

Tal Bachman knows "many (beautiful) women like this" but how many average women does he know like this? How many average women would he consider seriously dating or consider even giving the time of day to? His comments are just as misogynistic as "Paul the Apostle's" comments. Women are only worthy of them if they are "hot" ("gold digger" and "soulless ditz" tendencies aside).



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 08:36PM by anonhottie.

anonhottie: "Nightingale's voice is not a "calm in the storm". She is supporting the people who post these stereotypes by overlooking the underlying basis. The purpose of Tal Bachman's post was to convince "Paul the Apostle" that if he could only exhibit certain manly traits then numerous "beautiful women" would come flocking to him. Of course, he has to watch out for the beautiful woman that is a "soulless ditz".

Oh good heavens. Shoot me because I read the damn post without analyzing it to death or psychoanalyzing the author, with a starting bias to boot.

I am SO NOT supporting misogyny or other anti-female behaviour. In fact, nearly my entire life goes into exactly precisely and definitely the polar opposite.

To YOU "the purpose of Tal Bachman's post" was such and so. I don't happen to read minds or hearts or posts while gazing into a crystal ball that tells me what people REALLY mean by the words they write and what they REALLY think and do in real life away from this board.

Maybe to Tal, the word 'beautiful' applied to a person he's dating encompasses the woman's appearance AND personality. WHO KNOWS? To some readers, they see it as appearance-based only. Maybe so for Tal too, maybe not.

If you want to take issue with what a male poster has written, maybe you could try to do it without flinging accusations like "misogyny" around. He may then be more likely to want to actually listen to your point of view.

Please leave me out of it. I no more support misogyny than you do. My only "crime" in this particular fight is that I didn't happen to see it (or recognize it, if there) in a post I read one early morning, written by a person I've met and enjoyed spending time with. I've never graced the cover of a glossy magazine myself yet Tal managed to spend the evening (in a group) with me. I found him to be interesting, charming, good company and yes, self-effacing, a character trait I value. I'll say too that the (female) bartender swooned when someone mentioned his name. She was what you could call "hot", I guess, yet Tal was able to curb any baser instincts and spend the evening with "the ones who brung" him.

I'm sorry if being "hot" has caused a problem in your life. There may be plenty of reasons to beware of males and that is one I haven't heard much of before but if it applies, well OK then.

As I said above, we all read our own perceptions into the written words we see, maybe especially here. I have had some very negative experiences with some men, yes, but also many positive ones. Maybe that is why I am in the middle on the scale in how I perceive most things. Also, of course, another factor in how perceptions differ, in this case certainly, is that I have met Tal and enjoyed the evening very much and don't think he means any harm. So that is the way I read his posts. I regret it if they don't come across that way to some other readers but I acknowledge that their perceptions differ and that they have valid reasons for that.

Meanwhile, please leave me out of the group of women you feel are anti-women. You could not be further from the truth.

But you did read it with your own "starting bias". That's the point.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 08:44PM by anonhottie.

But that's the 'point' - that I made.

And so did *you* have a starting bias.

See how that goes?

So please quit calling me out as being in league with misogynists.

And maybe ask Tal about what he wrote instead of calling him names.

Who knows? You could have a better conversation that way.

I've not met Tal Bachman, nor have had any interaction with him. The only "starting bias" it could be said that I have is reading his posts here, which show a consistent track record of misogynistic comments.

You, however, do have a starting bias.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 09:45PM by anonhottie.

Everyone has a starting bias. At the very least, it has to do with your own life experiences. Those alone feed into how you perceive all other incoming data. There are also many other factors that cause bias, as I mentioned above.

I don't believe that meeting Tal once would cause me to overlook any obvious raging character flaws and/or defend them. I don't "read into" a person's post anything other than what I think they are trying to say. That is, I don't assign words and motives to someone that come from *me* and not them. Hopefully, most of us can see our own tendency towards certain biases and at least give other people the benefit of the doubt.

Tal may be a misogynist, although I don't think so. But I wouldn't know it from the post in question. I agree with his comment below that his remarks have been misinterpreted. And if he says that, I accept it, just as I hope others would do for me.

I'm out!

"Dr.Love" was indeed a whole heap of misogyny and mansplaining.
But very par for the course considering the author.

I don't mind a post like that once in a while because it draws out the others who think like that and believe they found a "safe" thread to commiserate in.
It's good to know who they are so you don't waste your breathe on other threads.

Don't abuse anonymity.

There is NOTHING in my response to "Paul the Apostle" that implies that physically unattractive women (or men, for that matter) do not deserve love. In fact, that is a complete misreading of my post. I am shocked that anyone could misunderstand what I think is a clear response to a very specific claim.

That "very specific claim" was that "all beautiful women are gold diggers". My response was that that claim is stupid, pathetic, and untrue. And it is. To help bolster my refutation, I mentioned that I know many beautiful women who have married, or gone out with, men of modest means. That is simply a fact which proves Paul's claim false.

I started my thread because I felt that Paul the Apostle's (misogynistic) slur deserved refutation. I will leave it to others to explain the mystery of how me *denying* a misognynist claim itself constitutes "misogyny".

By the way, beauty comes in many different shapes and sizes and ages and personalities. It doesn't only have to do with one's physical features. I've never said otherwise, and never would. And it is simply not true that I would not spend time socializing with women who don't meet conventional standards of physical beauty.

It is not fair or rational to claim that my words mean the opposite of what they say, or to launch an accusation about my personal inclinations based on pure, projected imagination. As a foe of misogyny, I also loathe that this word has been misapplied, and therefore, cheapened here. It should have been applied to the dolt claiming that "all beautiful women are gold diggers" - not to the man who argued against him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 10:04PM by Tal Bachman.

Paul the Apostle stated that he would not date someone who did not meet his definition of beauty, and all beautiful women are gold diggers. A no win proposition for him.

You state that not all beautiful women are gold diggers, socializing is one thing, but would you consider *seriously dating* one of those different shaped, sized, and aged beautiful women?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 10:12PM by anonhottie.

No man has conscious control over his erections and yet all men innately know which women will pass "the boner test." So you can try to shame men into *seriously dating* your less attractive friends but once the clothes come off it'll all be for naught.

Why are you fighting nature? Might as well try to stop the tides.

...then my beautiful wife has been digging in vain for 36 years. :-)

The term "gold digger" seems rather outdated to me. Most women I know just go out and earn their own money now. I know of one woman who has been accused of being a gold digger. The thing is, she is probably worth several million dollars that she has earned through her own labor. And people call her a gold digger? It defies common sense.

Most men above a certain age (30s or 40s) can easily get a date. Older single men are a hot commodity. If you're not getting a date, then I'd have to wonder why.

Looks-wise, most people tend to pair up with mates who have about the same level of attractiveness. Yes, there are some disparities here and there, but it's not the norm. If you keep striking out, you may need to set your sights a bit lower.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 10:33PM by summer.

Let me get this straight, anonhottie:

You accuse me of misogyny - despite the fact the only reason we're having this conversation is because *I* (not you, or anyone else) started a thread to *call out some dipshit named Paul the Apostle on *his* misogynist, untrue claims* - and *then*, in effect, you ask me to prove myself innocent to you of a charge which had no basis to begin with?

That seems quite bully-like and unfair to me, and I don't like playing those games.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 10:36PM by Tal Bachman.

Summer - I agree that some guy complaining about female gold-diggers is fairly bizarre these days. More than ever before, women are getting together with men they outearn. That is the *opposite* of "gold-digging" (which is just another reason to object to Paul the Apostle's remarks).

Since Susan I/S has stated so in this thread, the guy posting as "Paul the apostle" is a long-time troll who has been booted out several times. He writes the same type things over the years about Mormon women etc., so he's easy to spot.

He has some sort of deep-seated mental or emotional issues with women, and he constantly complains that Mormon women wouldn't date him when he was at BYU 30 years ago blah blah blah, and that it's their fault, when the real problem is that he's disturbingly creepy.

I'd suggest that you and the other people who have read and responded to his posts not worry about what he's written.

The guy is a real whanker with a long history of SERIOUS mental issues.

Ah, got it. Thanks for the heads-up.

Yep, didn't think so.

And a very obvious, yet weak, attempt at dodging the question.

Your forms of misogyny are different than Paul's, but apparent nonetheless.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2014 10:58PM by anonhottie.

Paul was a troll and is now gone.

Maybe it would help if we had some working definitions of "beautiful," "hot" (not always the same as beautiful), and "of a certain appearance." We can't assume we all mean the same thing when we use those words, even though they're commonly tossed around in our culture.

American media, does, I think, tend to focus on youth, thinness, and particular features such as large eyes and white teeth as common denominators of cultural "hotness"(although the wide range of individual preferences shows that it is not the only working ideal of beauty extant). Also, men seem to prefer women with neotenous features as more "beautiful" and more desirable. Here's an interesting discussion on the role of neoteny as an ideal of beauty in mate selection: http://triplehelixblog.com/2011/09/what-makes-a-pretty-face-the-biological-basis-of-beauty/

Women also prefer certain markers of physical appearance they prefer in men, although the issue may be genderized to an extent because male preferences seem to be stronger than female ones.

Although I'm not defending Dr. Love's response, I think his emphasis on "beautiful" women mirrored that of Paul the Apostle, whose original post concerned beautiful women as "gold-diggers" (another term that gets thrown around a lot). While reading the manly banter about how best to attract hot women was interesting, to say the least, it was also disconcerting; both sides of the discussion rested on an implicit assumption that beautiful is best, most desirable, and perhaps the only state worthy of sustained male attention and effort. Socializing with someone is very different from dating them or pursuing a relationship with them.

Women, in contrast, are generally encouraged by our culture to "give a man a chance," to overlook physical appearance in favor of character/money/status/etc, to go out with men who may not be exactly (or even close to) what they want, and in general to be less selective than men (who, some researchers say, decide within 7 seconds of seeing a woman if they will ever be interested in her). This seems to be especially true of Mormon women, as many posters have observed in other threads.

In a culture obsessed with physical appearance, it's not surprising that "beauty" becomes the focus of dating and relationship effort. What continues to amaze me is that we keep doing it -- sometimes over and over and over. I know a few people (male and female) who've been divorced multiple times and still haven't learned that hotness doesn't equal happiness.

Shall I just say I'm not going to come back and see what response I get.

Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder. I never thought I was pretty. In fact, I thought I was UGLY. Very much so. I never dated until I was 19 years old. Not one date. The guy I first went out with was not good looking. I waited for him on a mission. I went to work while he was gone and I worked with a bunch of men, chemists and scientists. They TREATED ME like I was pretty. I didn't even wear makeup. As I worked with these guys, I grew to have more and more confidence. Then the guy I'm dating now (at 57--I was 20 then) asked me out. He did make me feel attractive and desirable. I did start to wear makeup then, but I've never worn much makeup. But these men made me feel beautiful.

All these years later when he came back into my life, I was quite overweight because of my gay/straight marriage/divorce. I started gaining weight when I found out he was cheating on me. I started losing weight when this old boyfriend came back into my life. I'm definitely not the girl he dated at age 20 in looks, nor is he the guy I dated in looks. He is 61 and I am 57. It is how he treated me then and how he treats me now. When I'm with I feel pretty. He makes me feel that way. And I'm certainly NOT that 20 year old.

I wasn't offended by Tal's comments at all and I agree with Nightingale. Again, I won't be back to read comments.

Mormon guys were NOT interested in me, but I chalk it up to either I was intimadating because I was and am very independent and I refuse to worship a man or they didn't find me attractive. Oh well. I found one who does find me attractive and he is the ONLY one who counts.

1.) My "emphasis" was on "beautiful women" *because that is what the *original claim was about*, and I was *responding to that specific claim*. I have no idea why that should be difficult to understand;

2.) With regards to the comment that I'm "dodging" a question: there is probably no poster in the history of this board who has been more open about his or her personal life, posting under their own name, than I've been - and that's been going on for over a decade now. As many thousands of people would attest, I have ZERO problem in divulging pretty much anything about my life to anyone, including on here, and I would happily have discussed the details of my dating life with anyone who would have asked - providing they did so without announcing I was guilty of something, on no grounds whatsoever, then expecting that I prove to them I'm innocent only exactly as they prescribe, and then accusing me of "dodging" when I won't play their little bully's game;

3.) Lastly, I'd like to point out that in "anonhottie"'s view, two mutually exclusive propositions - two opposites - are equivalent.

For her,

(A) "All beautiful women are gold diggers" is misogynist;

AND

(B) "All beautiful women are NOT gold diggers" is ALSO "misogynist".

I want to suggest that this is completely absurd - so much so, that I am actually embarrassed that I should have to point it out.

I hope that future threads dealing with this serious topic will be free from the absurdity of this one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2014 02:11AM by Tal Bachman.