flamingsword | Entries tagged with social skills

Instead of being here in DW, I have been slowly closing down my Facebook account, downloading the pictures, messaging people with my contact info, deleting posts, unfriending my friends, putting the chairs on the tables and sweeping up the big internet cafe behind me as I go. I will have to maintain a tiny presence there to participate in a mandatory school thing, but I’m pulling as much of my selfhood off the least trustworthy parts of the internet as possible.

It pisses me off, you know?

Not just the enshittification, not just the selling our data to bad actors, not just, as Cat Valente says, the “stop talking to each other and start buying things” urging of the capitalists, but that thing that capitalism creates that gives rise to fascism - distrust. The less safe you can make people feel, the more they turn on each other. The more high-conflict you can make an argument, the less the people in it will trust each other, the more you can radicalize the people on both sides, the more easily manipulable you make the people who are arguing, and the less trustful you can make the arguers, the onlookers, everyone who has to hear about how vicious things are getting in social spaces. It eats away at social bonds by causing people to feel they have to mask who they are or risk having similar conflicts. People feel like they have to Gray Rock their whole lives, close up like a clam.

And then the less vulnerability and honesty people bring to the public square, the less people feel connected to each other, which reinforces the distrust. It’s a cycle of wackness, and I hate it.

So I’m going to be over here in my little corner of the internet, trying to protect others’ privacy while being honest and vulnerable with my own life. If bad stuff happens to me because of it, well. I guess bad stuff is going to happen. I will be tanking for the party, in my own limited way. I’m not going to take ridiculous risks, there’s not going to be a repeat of the White Rose’s scattering of pamphlets in a gymnasium (RIP Sophie Scholl). But I’m going to be here talking to people like they’re not incomprehensible murder monkeys, the way my traumatized hindbrain has been trained to think of people.

I love y’all. Be safe, and maybe meditate on trust once in a while?

a how-to guide

1. Small talk and vibe checks

I learned from my friend Jenn as a teenager that I can’t just trauma dump at strangers and have that go well, bc since they haven’t earned my story, trusting them before they show who they are means they might take advantage of vulnerability. And even if they don’t, they might think that it’s breaking the social contract in the form of demanding reciprocal disclosures which I hadn’t earned yet. And they’d be kinda right. That’s not ( buddies )

As I understand it, these are the basics building blocks of making friends as an adult. There are plenty more though, so leave your secrets in a comment, because I’d like to be a better friend to you.

My friend

genderjumper introduced me to a thing he/they/she use in their relationships and I think it is GENIUS, so I'mma tell you about it!

So: I grew up in a household where being In Trouble was the worst thing that could happen to you, because you were no longer treated with respect or consideration until you earned your way back out of "Trouble". A lot of us around here have similar experiences with doing or saying a perfectly innocent thing, that other people then perceived as disrespectful because of their own social lenses and then BAM! In Trouble. So we learned to walk on eggshells, to never say anything that we didn't know other people's boundaries about, or to never say anything until it went through 5 different layers of masking and double-checking for anything that could possibly be taken as offensive.

Which was fucking exhausting, right? So now, we are adults, and we have maybe learned some tricks and found some people who don't judge us for communication differences, and that is SO GREAT for us. Go us!

But!

We still have all of these trained reactions keeping us from saying things in a timely manner. We still have all of this expectation of being judged lurking in our unconscious reactions and we need to figure out ways to bring up problems while they're still small. We need to talk about stuff in the moment, sometimes, without the 5 layers of masking that 90% of our words never make it through. So we need a way to set up a tool to ask for and receive and trade spaces of non-judgment over and above the usual levels of non-judgment that our friends and loves already give us. We need to ask for space to Say The Wrong Thing. It works like so:

Me: *is confused but needs to talk out a thing that I am afraid of getting In Trouble for*
Me: "I have Big Feelings about this thing that just happened, but I'm afraid that it won't come out right if I just talk about it. Can we try it anyway?"
You: "It's cool. Say the wrong thing, and we can talk around the problem until we figure out what you are trying to say."
Me: "And you won't judge me or get angry before we figure it out?"
You: "Nope, I'll try to hold some space for non-judgment, as long as you do the same when I need it from you."
Me: *talks out a problem with you as a sounding board*
Our Relationship: *no longer has that problem & flourishes*

It requires an understanding being in place between two people before saying the thing, but if you have someone who you trust with this kind of agreement, then I recommend putting it in place as soon as possible. It won't hurt to have the agreement in place before you are brave enough to test it out. And it worked for me, last night, so I am hoping it works for you, too.

( boring personal stuff: )

And yes, please share this around if you think it will help someone you know.

Meow.

So, I left the post about Ghost and I possibly getting a divorce on public so that people who are in communities with me but not friends could look and see why I’m maybe not responding as fast as normal, and what’s up with me. Someone who does not follow my posts and is not a friend commented a useless thing (because again, this person does not know me and doesn’t know what’s going on) that also had some really unfortunate implications in the language use, and got told not to say that stuff and then blocked, so she decided to comment anonymously to get around the block, so I had to turn off anonymous commenting also.

So the fallout from that:
• I am going through an emotional time, and am crying more this week than in the last two years put together. Maybe take that into consideration if you’re going to poke me or say less-than-sensitive stuff.

• Nobody much uses the anon commenting feature here except me posting anon by accident, but you have access to my DMs if you want to say a thing to me that nobody else knows that you said. I don’t know that I will be reinstating anonymous commenting. Certainly not any time soon. You may feel free to talk to me about it in … let’s tentatively say July, if you have strong opinions about it.

• If anyone anytime soon wants to rec me any poems or fics written by

ysabetwordsmith, maybe rec it to someone else who is not moithered to death with her right now. Also, tell her from me that when someone says that fatphobia is not welcome here, the proper response is “I am sorry, I did not know my comment could be taken that way, I’ll try to do better in the future”. Not, “that’s not what I said” - if you implied it, then you need to work on those implications. I have had to be on the receiving end of the “you implied a really unfortunate thing” conversation many a time. It’s embarrassing and it sucks, and you still have to apologize.

Sorry for the penny-ante street theater, folks.

stim with my feet instead of my hands (squish my toes around in my shoes, alternate bouncing left and right heels, bounce my feet quietly, turn feet side to side)

Look at left eye 2 seconds, look at right eye for 2 seconds, look at mouth 3 seconds, repeat this triangle until the body shifts, and then scan for new body language. (because I have a "confrontational stare" unless I do this) If there is noise or a movement nearby, scan surroundings before re-establishing eye contact.

mirror body language, especially the body language of the person in the room with the most social power, unless they are in the grip of strong emotion that I don't want to amplify.

mirror vocal tones of feelings I want to encourage in conversation partners, but not tones I want to comfort, fix, or rebuke.

Hang an expression on my face/put a tone in my voice, even when I don't feel things very intensely. NT folx don't hide their feelings unless they are doing something they need to hide, so they consider it untrustworthy to not display anything.

When anxious and can't do regular stims or listen to music, count to 10 and check the clock/my watch. It communicates that I am anxious without having to say anything.

I'm never going to catch microexpressions, I'm not fast enough. But if something is confusing or too stereotypical, give it some thought to see if I'm being lied to.

Watch where strangers/new people's eyes are looking, and maintain enough situational awareness to see what they are avoiding looking at. This helps me know what they want and who/what intimidates them.

People like certainty, and they like people who are certain. Pretend to be certain about things but also give up my illusions lightly when they turn out to be untrue.

watch people's hands when they are doing something interesting, not their faces, bc they find it creepifying

Do not place my body between someone and the exit to a room. It is considered a dominance/threat display behaviour that most people do not appreciate.

Respond to a debated point with close to the same level of emotion and engagement as the person whose opinions are being disputed.

Respect personal space by inviting others into mine instead of invading theirs (Offer hugs, handshakes, fistbumps, etc.)

Get used to the speech pacing of my conversational partners so that I understand what they sound like when they are done talking. This keeps me from interrupting frequently enough to be considered rude.

figure out what gender norms I am ignoring or not complying with and call them out specifically, before I get friction.

And a few things that can't be broken down into bullet points:
Active Listening for Autistics
On "NO DRAMA" as a social fallacy
Pavlov For Dummies

And that's the big stuff that I've got. I trained myself to stim with my feet instead of drumming my fingers and hands on things in Junior year of High School, and everything else since then has been building off of that unqualified success in learning to be less annoying to neurotypical people who don't realize how ableist they are.

Thing that I wrote that I found that should go here:

I have been doing some thinking and I feel that, for my demisexual self, the smidge of difference between “romantic” and “platonic” feelings is mostly a context difference of my sexual attraction to each person plus my understanding and projections of our relationship compatibility.

So, question: do you/other people you know get the relationship compatibility expectations mixed up in your romantic feelings? Is this part of the difference between allosexual and demisexual and asexual? Or is this just a me thing?

And I just don’t have any answers for the insides of other people’s heads. I’m going to start going back through my writings and emails and gathering up questions and thinky thoughts, and see what I can make of my social skill collection, including the masking techniques like mirroring, not staring directly at people’s eyes for more than 2 seconds straight, and slow rhythmic motions like counting to ten and checking the clock.

I will be doing a lot of blogging this winter I guess.

In addition to Relationship Skills and General Emotional Skill Building, I’m going to start blogging more therapy questions and do locked posts of their answers.

I ordered myself a couple bars of sugar free mint chocolate when I ordered a friend some chocolate for her birthyday. So I can reward myself for finally getting these typed out.

( 26 Therapy Questions to Journal About: )
Now that I have prompts to blog about weekly for the next 6 months, I’m going to feed myself some lovely minty chocolate! w00t!

It occurred to me today that I have built up a skill, and that not everyone has that skillset who can also break it down into steps and explain them. Not that I'm an expert. But this is me: blogging about it.

0. Pay attention.
Does friend A have trouble saying they need help? Or have no trouble letting you know about their irritation and getting help with little things - but can't ask for the big stuff everyone needs help with? Does friend B have bad history with anybody? How embarrassed/anxious/ashamed is friend C about not keeping up appearances? Get to know people, listen to their stories, ask considerate questions, think about what their stories might say about their habits and values. You can't be a good friend to people you don't know, right?
( More behind the cut. )

The ease of finding people and content on social media platforms is also one of its downfalls. Tumblr and Twitter in particular are easy to get what’s called an amygdala hijack, which is like being triggered but can be for social aggression/ostracizing behaviors as well as fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. Those are states that most people can't sustain for 20 minutes of reflection, so if something takes 20 minutes of thinking about to post, the poster is likely to get calmed down and more rational during the process of crafting the post. Things that reward stuff that happens more quickly than that ~20 minute limit are going to therefore incentivize those triggered-adjacent responses.

And people forget pretty easily that disgust is one of our primary emotions, so the public shunning of people who messed up even a little, even in purely subjective ways, is one result. Your brain takes less time to access those 8 primary emotions than it does to have secondary emotions or meta-cognition about those emotions. So since we're rewarding the hottest, fastest takes, they are likely to be much less nuanced than those from platforms that reward slower reactions and social responsibility. And due to emotional contagion in social species, if it disgusts one person, even a little, then one person's "It Is Bad" becomes a group's "You Are Bad" becomes a community's “We don’t take kindly to your sort around here.”

Here on DW, we have more of a Walled Garden effect, where we can limit the availability of our content to be less accessible to the entire internet. Since it is relatively harder to find people and the spaces are more insular, we tend to get a social cache system of vouching for the reputation of others in our spaces. That also leads to more social pruning and social hegemony, which are mixed blessings, but it is less like the Wild West over here because of it. I am old enough to find the atmosphere restful and reflective, where to those used to tumblr it seems stultifying.

The Small World effect is also stronger on platforms where it is easy to see the social network of posters. If you are within a few degrees in the six degrees of separation, you are likely to be more reflective and careful of those around you when you recognize members of your community as connected to the poster who caused the trigger/disgust/amygdala hijack. That being said, larger networks give feelings of anonymity and with it, feelings of greater freedom to express unpopular opinions and weirder takes and OTPs that nobody else ships.

So, weirdly, we kind of need tumblr and places like Discord that keep the younger and faster-moving parts of the fandom happy? But it’s good to have guidance from DW users and crossover fans who use multiple platforms, to help keep things civilized.

When I was with Xenoix, I didn't notice most of the toxic ways that he treated me because it was all stuff I did to myself, too. I think a lot of abusive behavior falls under that umbrella. We live in a society that teaches us to devalue ourselves and each other, and people don't realize how high the background radiation of toxicity is until they get enough self-knowledge and introspection to do any real good.

I am in a relationship theory Discord and it is dredging up some ways that I feel, some ways that I am, and some confusion that I have. Like this: I cannot tell the difference between nonsexual romance and friendship. At all. I don't know where the line is. There may not even be a line there. Like this: I can't define romance. According to how other people define it I am either dating most of my close friends, or I am not romantically involved with anyone, including Ghost and Merlin. IDEK.

So I am going to be intermittently studying relationship theory this winter and seeing where that takes me.

(And if you could define romance for me or the difference between romantic and sexual interest, I would be super interested in hearing your thoughts on this, since y'all are a pretty bright bunch.)

Depression, noun: a state of mental health characterised by guilt, sensitivity, sadness, irritability, and despair.
Anxiety, noun: the feeling that something terrible is going to happen.
Shame, noun: the feeling of being bad or wrong inside
Self-hate, verb: the act of treating oneself poorly, the act of encouraging hate for oneself.

Terrible things happen to almost everyone, statistically. But if you believe the Just World Fallacy, it will convince you that you deserve the terrible things that happen to you if you have even a smidge of self-hatred. Thus:

Step 1: dismantle your belief that people get what they deserve. It rains on the just and the unjust alike. People do not "victimize themselves". The rich do not deserve their wealth any more than the poor deserve poverty. The healthy and the unhealthy are decided by circumstances and genetics. Life is unfair unless we make it fair.

Step 2: treat yourself well. If you do not, you will continue feeling like you deserve terrible things/abuse. You have to treat yourself well in order to be able to think well of yourself. Start by treating yourself neutrally, as one would treat a polite stranger, if you must. But gradually begin to talk to yourself as though you are not the loathsome creature your shame, anxiety, and depression tell you you must be. Refuse to do the capitalists work for them in grinding yourself down.

Step 3: stop comparing people. Not just yourself, but all people- no two persons or sets of circumstances are exactly alike, and it is largely useless to compare their personalities, accomplishments, or progress. It is a tool of shame, and a stumbling block propping open the door to self hate and hatred of others.

Step 4: forgive yourself. To work on the roots of your shame feelings, it is needful that you forgive yourself for all the times you were not perfect. Guilt, the feeling of having done something bad, motivates you to grow and do better. Shame, the feeling of being something bad, is paralyzing and not useful. So forgive yourself and work on the beliefs supporting the structure of your shame until it is a dried husk of itself.

Step 5: be free.

Who owes an apology for what and when/how is it best to do so?

Whose reponsibility is it to communicate decisions/feelings to social circles and how?

How and when do I communicate about visitors coming over, or social functions that I will be attending?

How do you calm yourself best, and how do I help you with that?

How do I help out at work events, or do I stay away?

How and what do we communicate to our families?

How do I communicate that I need space without upsetting you, or alternately, am I going to have to do work to calm you down when I am upset about something?

When do you need to hear verbal appreciation? About what areas of your life do you want validation?

How do we deal with gossip about us or our relationship?

What social occasions are welcome in our home, and which should be hosted elsewhere?

Do we get veto power over the people in our home?

What social boundaries do we each observe, and does anything about that bother us?

How much of our time will realistically be spent socializing?

When is it okay to ask for me to mediate? When is it okay for me to volunteer help in social situations?

How do we communicate with each other about feelings related to tge above topics?

How much alone time do I need, and how do I communicate that?

How does any of the above change when one of us is anxious or depressed?

the oh shit list:
What do we do in the event of a breakup? Who gets which friends in the divorce?

What do we do in the event that one of us has done something toxic or abusive? Who do we tell to help us work through this?

What is a reasonable time frame to work on each of our issues (bearing in mind that the answers are additive and not in parallel)?

In the country they have barn-raisings, in the suburbs they have church socials. In the city, with people who don't have barns and churches, how do you build community? How do you build community with people who maybe don't fit the neurotypical standard model? You do it by repeatedly and purposefully sharing space regularly. ( I've got some ideas for you. )

My personal favorite:
Have a weekly brunch, lunch, or dinner. It can be potluck, you can have a sign-up sheet to bring ingredients while one person cooks to distribute costs, it can be at a restaurant, or it can be a rotating duty to cook and host the meal. There are a lot of options, so ask around and see what your community might like to do. Make sure that everyone knows who has what allergies and food preferences, especially since vegetarianism and lactose intolerance are fairly common.

Leave your suggestions in the comments!

I was talking with

we_are_spc a couple weeks ago about neglect, and it got me thinking (like you do) about how academics need to publish in nonacademic newspapers and magazines synopses of recent work in their field written in plain language so that there is not a huge divide between public and privately held knowledge. Especially knowledge that affect everyone.

The popular understanding of neglect is that it happens when parents leave their kids alone for long periods of time, or don't feed them, or don't get them medical attention, or don't let them play or go to school. It's big, obvious stuff. You can tell when a kid is neglected.

Well, sort of.

Neglect is also when parents fail to respond appropriately to their child's emotional needs. A child is "crying it out" while the parent leaves the room and "doesn't reward their being manipulated for attention"? That's neglect. That child does not have words for how they need to be supported, so instead of letting them ask for support nonverbally, by crying, parents often just expect children to "be a grownup about it". I have seen this done with children who were ridiculously young. I have heard of this being done with babies and not had other people in the forum say a word against the parents.

"Trauma early in childhood can result from a range of things such as living in domestically violent situations, or being raised in situations where the parent’s needs – such as drug use or alcohol abuse – influence their ability to provide for their child’s needs.

Complex trauma may come in the form of neglect. Not responding to a baby or not having the skills to do so, for instance, means the baby’s developmental needs may not be met."

You know that thing that parents do where they watch their kid fall down and then they try to distract the kid to keep them from realizing that they are hurt because then the kid will then cry to seek reassurance? That is neglect. It's a subtle form of gaslighting to treat people like their pain doesn't matter if they can be distracted from it. Children are tiny people, and this is a foundational experience of their pain not mattering to the most important person in their lives. And it will happen in a hundred ways throughout childhood. Most of us are raised this way. Most of us are set up to assume our pain is not important to others, or to assume that other people aren't going to care about our feelings even if they tell us that they love us. Because when we were little, the people that we trusted the most didn't want to hear it.

And now we have grown up, numb, hiding from our feelings because we can't put into words "I think something vague and insidious happened to me when I was a kid, but I can't put my finger on what because our culture treats it like that's normal." So we assume that our parents were correct, and we treat other people the way we were taught to: casual about their pain if we can distract them from it. Refusing to respond to nonverbal requests for reassurance. Thinking that being distracted and emotionally unavailable for long periods of time still counts as an appropriate relationship. Gaslighting people about their feelings in subtle ways because we don't see what the big deal is, because we are so out of touch with our own feelings.

Lots of introverted people believe in the existence of "idle chit chat" or "pointless small talk" because they don't realize that it serves a purpose. If you are sensitive to body language, vocal tone, and a person's choices in prosody and grammar, then how they are saying things can relay a lot of information that they are not directly saying.

If you see me listening without making eye contact and not engaging in much conversation? Something is up. Building a baseline for the standard conversational behaviors of your social circle is part of relational information and social policing. Knowing when something is wrong and what you can probably do to fix it is important knowledge, and there is a reason why most introverts are socially awkward: because they aren't paying attention. Without that extra information being conveyed, they are lost in a sea of potential responses with no lifeline.

"Abusers are intensely criticism-avoidant, so they don't teach their children healthy ways to handle criticism, and their authoritarian punishments fill their children with such a sense of shame and powerlessness that some children grow up unable to admit to any wrongdoing without being flooded with shame and powerlessness all over again. At the heart, #abuse is #authoritarianism is criticism avoidance.

From Down the Rabbit Hole - The world of estranged parents' forums.

Watching Won't You Be My Neighbor was kind of a revelatory experience about how kindness can shape our paths in the world. And it occurs to me that so much of what Fred Rogers did was reflected in his language, the care he took to speak clearly and calmly and to choose words carefully. I should apply that lesson to my own language. And I will be thinking about this and making notes on it here for a while.

Per the pamphlet, there were nine steps for translating into Freddish:

1. “State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand.” Example: It is dangerous to play in the street.
2. “Rephrase in a positive manner,” as in It is good to play where it is safe.

3. “Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust.” As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”

4. “Rephrase your idea to eliminate all elements that could be considered prescriptive, directive, or instructive.” In the example, that’d mean getting rid of “ask”: Your parents will tell you where it is safe to play.

5. “Rephrase any element that suggests certainty.” That’d be “will”: Your parents can tell you where it is safe to play.

6. “Rephrase your idea to eliminate any element that may not apply to all children.” Not all children know their parents, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play.

7. “Add a simple motivational idea that gives preschoolers a reason to follow your advice.” Perhaps: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is good to listen to them.

8. “Rephrase your new statement, repeating the first step.” “Good” represents a value judgment, so: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them.

9. “Rephrase your idea a ﬁnal time, relating it to some phase of development a preschooler can understand.” Maybe: Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing.

Neurotypical people run a lot of programs in the background that they are not aware they are running, like monitoring tone and volume or watching facial and hand movement. Some people, though, are ignoring what you are actually saying to focus on what they are going to say in response. It is a bad habit that causes misunderstandings and will make the people they are talking to feel unheard and misunderstood. Don't be that person. Be the person who values your conversational partner over your own brain noise.

As long as your brain noise is going to happen, you might as well direct the noise to the task at hand. Think about what your conversation partner is communicating. Direct your attention toward their gestures, expressions and tone. That is their communication interface, the tools they are using to convey both feeling and intensity. Someone can say, "My day at work was okay." But their expression and body language may say "... And I am disappointed about that." If their gestures are fast or their tone stressed, that can indicate an intensity of feeling that is at odds with their words. NTs use tone and body language as a substitute for naming emotions out loud quite often, and it is typical of their behavior.

Because they are more sensitive to small changes in expression and posture than most neurodiverse people, they read these cues more accurately, but don't let that stop you from asking if you seem to be getting conflicting signals. Some NTs feel like they need permission before they can talk about deep, revealing or personal subjects. Name the emotions to make sure you have understood them.

"You seem kinda upset and conflicted about that."

"Are you happy about the situation?"

"Your tone is annoyed and your gestures seem agitated. Do you want to talk about what's bothering you?"

If you want to show someone you are talking to that they are important to you, then engage with the discussion. When someone pauses or raises their vocal pitch at the end of a sentence, nod if you are sure you understand. If they narrow their eyes or raise their eyebrows with the pause, respond verbally with yeah, uh huh, gotcha or other short affirmative statement. If you are not sure you understand, bring your eyebrows together and tilt your head to the side, or ask about what was unclear. That shows that you were listening to the speaker, since you would not know what to ask about if you were not listening.

Always say when you are confused. Don't assume you will be able to catch up. Neurotypical people talk fast and emote faster, and if you do not show them that they need to slow down or clarify you may have a misunderstanding and cause both yourself and someone else to feel misunderstood and left out. If you think you have it but are not sure, summarize what they just said back to them, and raise your pitch at the end to indicate that it is a question instead of a statement. If they nod and start talking then nod back to them to show that you both agree on that.

To make someone feel comfortable expressing intense feeling, respond to their enthusiasm with your own enthusiasm signals. Mirror their smile with one of your own, frown when they frown, change pitch if they change pitch, mimic the speed with which they are moving. Speed, not size of gesture, indicates intensity for most people. If they are upset, however, don't mirror their upset back at them. Instead try to modify your tone to something softer, slightly lower in pitch, and make you gestures slower and more soothing.

If you come to the end of the person talking and you are not sure what to say, here are some sample scripts:

"What does [person also involved] think of this?"

"I'm glad you are excited about this. It is good to see you happy."

"I'm sorry the situation is upsetting you. How can I help?"

If you are having trouble paying attention or the sensory environment is too full to concentrate, let your conversation partner know.

"Can we find somewhere else to talk? I'm having trouble hearing you."

"I'm having trouble processing right now, but I'm interested in what's going on. Call me tomorrow?"

"After how busy I've been lately, my brain is kinda fried. Can we set a coffee date to catch up for when my brain is not extra crispy?"

https://youtu.be/MHS-htjGgSY
Now bear with me because you're going to need to watch that video or already have a grasp of the basics of game theory for this post to make sense.

In heterosexual spaces, men come at approaching women and flirting as though the act is a cooperative game. They see the dynamic as establishing a consortium of two people dedicated to sharing a good time and they try to be entertaining to the woman in the dyad in order to promote fairness, but due to cultural biases are not generally very good at distributing attention fairly between themselves and women. Men believe that they are competing with other men for access to women, and treat other men as potential threats to themselves but not to women.

Women come at being approached by men and the subsequent flirting as a competitive, zero sum game. They generally see men as seeking their attention and competing for attention within the conversation. Women believe that they are competing with other women for highly selected for men, but also as cooperating with other women to maintain safety and help out of awkward and unwanted situations. Women tend to be defensive players of this game since men represent a threat to them.

This represents a fundamental and hard to communicate power imbalance.

Watch on YouTube

When talking to conservatives or anyone who does not believe as you do, it is necessary to reframe you arguments in terms of what is morally important to your audience. To further this goal, here are some of the arguments that will have a chance of swaying opinion toward meeting in the middle.

Russia interfered in our election. - Russia interfered with our freedom to choose (freedom) and violated the sanctity of the vote (sanctity). By allowing this to go unchallenged, Trump is betraying the freedom of the American people.

Trump's conflicts of interest - There are rules laid down by the founding fathers (respect for authority) about conflicts of interest to stave off tyranny. Trump is violating those rules for his own greed (moral corruption).

Universal Healthcare & Obamacare- "Conservatives were more likely to support universal health care when they read an argument said more uninsured people led to “more unclean, infected, and diseased Americans.”" (purity)

Immigration - Immigrants love America enough to leave their country and become Americans (patriotism). They break fewer laws and are model citizens. [If proof is needed, bring up the Wall Street Journal article that explains the lower crime rate. Immigrants are 40% as likely to commit a crime as a birthright citizen.]

Reproductive rights - Women are the authorities on their own bodies. We can either respect their authority or violate their trust. (respect for authority, sanctity)

Muslim database - Our country was founded (respect for authority) on religious freedom (freedom). Muslim Americans are no less patriotic than any other citizens (patriotism).

Criminal Justice Reform - Officers with clean records are in favor of reform. (Respect for authority, purity)

Climate Change - Pollution corrupts (purity) our environment. Pollution is a disease of our own making.

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Page generated Jun. 8th, 2025 01:50 am

hanging my tomorrows on the bones of yesterday

written on the subway walls and tenement halls

Entries tagged with social skills

Mostly caught up

Making friends as an adult:

"Say The Wrong Thing" - a communication tool

Disappointing busybody is disappointing.

How I pass as neurotypical, a breakdown

Random relationship skills post!

Therapy Questions to Journal About

community-building for the socially impaired

I'm turning a comment into a long form post. Sue me.

Relationship Theory and Toxicity Thinky-Thoughts

How To Not Hate Yourself

List of questions about social obligations in relationships

Nonstandard Community Building

neglect and what I'm figuring out about it.

Introvert social fallacy #1

(no subject)

Freddish and re-learning how to talk to people

Active Listening for Auties

Game Theory and Flirting

Debate Points To Use This Christmas Dinner