The sexual element

End of thread ?

Okay, let's see if we can rectify this situation.

For those of you who may have been offended by my choice of words and terseness, please accept my full and sincere apology. I indeed "know better" and made a common mistake by making an assumption (we all know what Ass-u-me often does) that the focus would fall on the words and not the manner of presentation. Shortcuts are always dangerous.

To quote some of what I've shared in some private conversations.

"Steering conversations. Yes, glad you picked up on that. But not in the beginning.

If you've ever had much experience in group work sessions etc., one of the things you learn real early on is that without some moderating element (usually a person), any topic can VERY easily drift, sometimes far. You often end up in a totally different place, on a totally different topic and often accomplish nothing :( At best, you have to back up and start all over again, unless you are willing to abandon the topic entirely in lieu of somewhere else you have ended up that seems more promising.

That's rarely the case in practice, but sometimes on really broad topics it's worth the risk to hang on for awhile and see where it goes. I won't go into here why I chose to try to rein it in early, but suffice to say that the "direction" Ceoli wanted to go was going to end us up FAR away from where we started, and the topic being pretty narrow, as opposed to broad, really didn't call for that.

I think if you go back and reread you see that I tried to say ALL of that in a sentence or two, leaving too much open to individual understanding and interpretation. My bad. I seldom get away with that (shortcuts).

In any case, once the "reactions" started, it was a lost cause at that point, and 2/3 (or more) of the postings were going to end up in all this personal sniping and point/counterpoint about "my" presentation and little or nothing to do with the topic at hand. This kind of stuff discourages readers and therefore devalues the forum in general.

A note here to one of the moderators, who weighed in on their feelings about any attempts of a thread poster (OP) to attempt to "moderate" a thread in any way. Point taken. We may have to agree to disagree on that one, but will respect the position you've been granted and refrain from trying to keep things running in a consistent direction. Let it go where it will. I do, however, stand firmly on my position (from extensive experience) that such discussions seldom reach their potential.

So, in short... (is this possible?)

The original thread was stated from the beginning as coming from personal observations, nothing more, nothing less. The question was raised that IF (notice the emphasis on IF) there was indeed any pattern starting to emerge here, what might that mean, and should we be concerned about it?

One poster obviously followed that well and commented about the possibility of "local bias," or something of that nature. I didn't disagree with that, to a degree, as my experiences in this area have largely been limited to the US and a minor amount of European friends/contacts.

In trying to explain questions that came up, I may have also been guilty of throwing out some overly-broad information that got interpreted as "statistical"! Those comments were drawn from a lot of years of study, personal experience and conversations. They were never intended to be interpreted as anything else. Do I recall exactly the sources that led to some of those "big picture" statements? Hell no!! But I'll stand by them as accurate, (as accurate as any broad, big picture statement ever is). And there's no doubt in my mind than anyone with similar background holds the same or similar conclusions and that the supporting data IS out there for those who would be inclined to be concerned enough to do the investigation. The "picture" was painted from reading thousands (maybe 10s of thousands?) of essays, books, research papers, internet articles etc., and equally as many, or more, personal conversations.

At least, that's how I always approach such issues. If I question some assumption someone has, and the ramifications are important to me, I'll do my own independent investigation. I don't just put my hands on my hips and scream "Prove it!" But that's just me. I had neither the time nor desire for turning what was supposed to be a general question of "What IF this were the case?" into some scientific study that would bore most and discourage others from following along.

Does this help explain anything? I sincerely hope so.

If a couple of people approach me and comment that they seem to be noticing a lot of the trees along a particular highway yellowing and dying during what should be their peak growing season, I'm going to go look for myself, or, at MINIMUM, mention to my circle of friends that someone else claimed to observe it, and is this something we should check out? Because the ramifications, if true, would concern me greatly!

And that, friends, was the spirit in which the original thread was begun.

So, for those feeling some need for an "apology," I hope this suffices. I do take full responsibility for my possible bad choice of wording in an attempt to be brief and stay focused, and as I mentioned before, shortcuts frequently come back to haunt you.

GS
 
Thanks for that, GroundedSpirit. :)

I wonder if your original post has anything to do with your personal life. I know you are not comfortable with talking about things of a personal nature on a public forum, but as you are completely anonymous, I wonder if you can find it in you to open up and talk about the topic of "women and their possible decline in sexual desire" in terms of your personal life. What is it about that course of study that interests you so much?

I think that you will find that others would be willing to be compassionate and respectful to the delicacy of the topic, if you were to "go there," so to speak.

Again, thanks for the attempt at rectifying the situation here.
 
I will say that this felt much more like a justification for your behavior, rather than an apology. But even though you missed the point, the attempt is appreciated.

The fact is that threads do wander. I'm a professional facilitator and work with groups in facilitating work sessions. There are some basic things you need to do that: a room full of people with the same basic goals, and people working from the same basic baselines in the conversation. This isn't a work group. This is a an open online forum. There's a big difference.

Also, in any good, facilitated groups, all concerns are raised and dealt with as part of the process, not treated as a distraction from the topic. Also, facilitators "take the temperature of the room," always. This means that if there are concerns raised (as were raised by many women in the thread) they are listened to and dealt with, not treated as going off topic. In order for the discussion to happen, you needed people to accept your premise, yet you refused to allow a discussion about your premise.

I stand by my former statement that if you want an honest open discussion, the issues around your premise need to be addressed. In your premise, there were stereotypes about women that were harmful and inaccurate. As a person who identifies as a woman, I would like to think that I would be able to raise such concerns in a community like this without being characterized as a "femi-nazi," or my concerns characterized as ranting. But then, I have pretty high standards for such things.
 
Thank you, GroundedSpirit, for acknowledging the problem and for your apology.

I know that can be very difficult to do sometimes, and that, just as many women have been enculturated to repress thier sexuality, many men are enculturated against admitting a weakness of any kind, and that an apology is an admission of weakness. Perhaps you are one of these men; I don't know. But I do know that being able to accept accountability for one's errors, rectify them and learn from them are hallmarks of the enlightened mind. The John Wayne code is just as screwed up as the Madonna/Whore, so thank you for trying to move past it, in this case.

As far as I am concerned, we can close the book on this unpleasantness and move forward, unless someone else needs to process it further. I look forward to many interesting and enlightening discussions with you here on the boards, and to the free exchange of ideas and information within this community of equals.
 
Thanks all

Thanks to you who've come back so far. Gonna wait another day or two to see if anyone else had comments and try to comment back to everyone at once if possible.
 
I appreciate you coming back to apologize for what was (intentionally or not) perceived as great disrespect to one of our dear and long-term posters.

I can't say I have an interest in your original topic at this point. I tend to agree with Ceoli's last post. But thank you for willingly accepting the requests of the majority and apologizing.
 
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