Wuzzums

You could agree wholeheartedly for going out with them then add something like: "...but do we really need to do the piercing?" They'll most likely inquire why and you could then say: "...because I've been through it countless times and it was never a pleasant experience for the child nor the parents so I'd rather skip that part if possible." State it like a personal preference so they won't feel like you're preaching to them in any way. As if they wanted to go out and go to a scary movie except you don't like scary movies but you're totally for the going out bit. They already invited you so going to the piercing also would seem to them like they're forcing you to do something you really don't want to do. Puts the social burden on them, so maybe they'll think it's impolite to ask someone out and also force them something they dislike, so maybe they'll think that skipping the piercing part would take away some of the awkwardness of having to change the invitation. Maybe. But because other people were invited too I don't think there's a change of her changing her plans. And flat out saying "it's wrong, don't do it" without them asking for your opinion will immediately put them on the defensive so no chance of planting the seed of doubt in dubious cultural practices.

They're kinda late to the game because the zombie apocalypse began way before any of us were born. It's hard to tell because the zombies don't bother eating brains, although I kinda wish they did.

1) It could be they go for the most expensive object when they start a new activity as a way to get buyer's guilt. They'll invest more so they will feel the need to use that object because the loss would be too great not to. 2) Or it could be out of ignorance. A person starting something new, like photography let's say, has no idea what they're getting into. So they'll end up spending money on expensive equipment because they run the "an expensive object is a good object" logic. 3) Snobbery. It's not about the activity per se, it's about the fact that other people are watching. So in photography, in many ways the activity is not about taking pictures it's about having better stuff than another guy that takes pictures. I reckon most of Adobe Photoshop's revenue come from these people. They sell the same product over and over again, and sometimes they even bother to change the background and release it as a "feature". 4) Or it's the product itself. It might be more expensive not because of brand but because of worth. There are people out there that are so keen on getting their hands on every single feature they're willing to pay a disproportionate amount of money for it. It's like snobbery except the object itself seemingly makes them happy, it has to be the best regardless of what other people have or don't have. 5) More money than sense. People decide to get some actual intrinsic value out of the amount they accumulated and they start getting into activities that hopefully will make them happy. And/or the activity of spending is in itself pleasurable (the whole shopping shebang). I've heard of people that had money yet no clue how to spend it, so they started buying useless things like a golden door frame.

I brought up the whole "generally speaking women like flowers" thing because in my experience people confuse it with "the rule is women like flowers". The first one deals with statistics and cannot be applied to describe only one individual, and the second is a rule which ought to be applied to anyone. For me the concept of rule is akin to a law or theory in science. It only requires one exception in order for the rule not to be correct unless not specified. But when you start specifying exception over exception the rule becomes too vague to even call it such.

I tried to point out that there are differences between males and females that might comes from having a Y-chromosome as opposed to not having one. In the book "The Female Brain" the author talks a lot about behavior that stems from hormonal changes, like how hormones directly affect your way of thinking and from behavior that comes from certain aspects of physiology such as a far shorter reproduction period (which is in itself also hormone based). Given this you could say that women are more relationship oriented isn't because of innate mental differences but because of physiological constraints. A guy has from puberty till about his 50's time to make healthy offspring, a woman from her puberty till about her early 40's (after 40 there's something like 1/100 chance of having a child with Down syndrome, the risk increasing with added years). 10 years doesn't seem like much difference but if you factor in her reproductive cycle and the fact that she has to compete with other younger women it takes her "off the market" quite earlier still. With age, women's reproductive value decreases, and the men's increases. These differences have nothing to do with mental capacity/behavior but it greatly affects it by prioritizing events. Women will become more mature faster, will try to seek out a partner earlier on, will put personal interests aside over financial stability, will try to get a more stable footing in society and so on. It's as if there are 2 guys, twins let's say, one's rich because he inherited a large fortune, the other has nothing and has to take care of a family of 4. The two will have vastly different behaviors due to their constraints, one might seek a career in art or some kind of intellectual pursuit like mathematics (and become introverted), the other will be more interested in business to make money, to make connections, etc (and become extroverted). There's nothing innate that differentiates them, yet they act entirely different. Or, to be a lot more vague about it: it's nurture because nature fullstop. I don't think that's the case. Men and women do compliment each other but that may just be due to effectiveness in child rearing or surviving rather than biology. Like how the woman is more loving and nurturing, the man more assertive and whatnot. I heard that in lesbian and gay couples when raising children especially they start to form the same roles, one takes the what is generally described as the male path and the other the female complementary path. I'm not entirely sure about this because I have never known such a couple, but the stereotypes are most certainly there from what's shown in the media. The TL;DR version would go something like: Y-chromosome apart, being masculine/feminine is like being a christian or not. In order to be a christian there's this book full of rules which you must follow but those rules don't necessarily exist in nature, they're just words on paper. You can follow the rules or not but if you do really wanna be a christian then you must follow those rules because that's what christians do. It's fine if you wanna define christian as something else but the first ones that called themselves christians might take offense because they spent so much on building up a reputation. I don't know whether women do or do not know what it's like to be a male but they most certainly do know that men would mostly do anything if you start your request with the phrase "be a man, and (...)" Males do that too to other males except they like to use the phrasing "stop acting like a woman, and (...)". It's a sales pitch, like "do you want this boring, crappy, stupid product or this awesome, magnificent, magical other product?" I remember this story about this little kid that went home to his mother and said: "Mom, be a man and don't get upset, but I got a bad mark at school today". As for the book it just helped get a female's perspective. I found it quite telling how awesome she made menopause look because women don't have to deal with that "omg I have to start a family!" thing and finally can focus on their careers and write books, and find hobbies, and so on. However I thought the title wasn't exactly accurate because she talks about the male brain too. However let's assume I'm wrong on all accounts, that masculinity is solely defined by what's innate, what's inside your genes. And let's assume that aggressiveness is a male trait, that aggressiveness has a specific gene linked to it. From a genetic standpoint males are just mutant females, the Y chromosome's role is just to transform the default female body in a male body. You can live without a Y chromosome, you cannot live without an X chromosome. If masculinity is innate, and Y-chr creates masculinity, and aggressiveness is a masculine trait then the gene for aggressiveness must be found on the Y chromosome. And if it's not then the gene for aggressiveness is in females too hence it's innate in females too hence it's a toss of a coin which gender gets linked with aggressiveness and which not. I'm over-simplifying of course. Yeah, I understand. To me "generally" sounds more like a rule that disregards exceptions. To take your example, we can say that on average women like flowers better than men and thus you can say "generally women like flowers". So whenever I guy likes flowers and someone remarks that "generally speaking women like flowers" it sounds more a bad critique. As if he's saying "because there are more women that like flowers than men that like flowers then liking flowers is a female trait, and not liking flowers is a masculine trait". It makes no sense Well... it's safe to say I failed miserably on the succinct part.

I think it's more about a question of who is doing the judging. From a female's perspective men have value only as the far as the benefits she can get from them. Taking only in account the biological imperative. Men have this drive within them to achieve, create, invent, excel, to make something out of themselves (things that are attractive) that sometimes goes to an extreme. It's like the peacock's tail, it's there to attract females yet more tail (more attractiveness) isn't advantageous for the species as a whole because it lowers the male's chances for survival against predators (bigger tails would make them slower, more noticeable, etc). Simon Baron-Cohen argued that autism might be a hyper-masculinization of the brain thus you could theorize that the autistic traits are indicative of male specific traits (don't quote me on this). I think autistic savants in particular are such an example of preferable male traits in humans. Savants are incredibly good at doing one task and they're unable to do any other task, nor do they want to do any other task. These traits seem to be somewhat correlated to activities people find alluring, like music, and we all know what effect rockstars have on the female kind. Men may have most of the world's greatest inventions under their belts but women did invent the greatest invention ever, the man. Whenever men go on a path that's not useful for women they'll either get ignored, i.e. have unattractive behavior or they get attacked and here the whole "shaming" phenomenon comes in (the once derogatory term "nerds" applies to these males). It's unmanly to collect pokemon cards, not drive a car, still live with your parents, be physically weaker than a female, etc. Looking into the past where one can argue that maleness from a female perspective was the typical "knight in shinning armor". Being a knight implied strength and wealth, so they were able to offer both protection and support for women. Now both of these things can be given by the state and your typical woman want a lot more from a man than we can offer. This great sketch comes to mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbJOLq5wXwk From a male perspective maleness can be easily defined by the main character in most cheesy action movies: the only one that can get things done and his only real obstacle, it seems, is the multitude of women that keep throwing themselves at him. This is all fantasy of course, yet we all heard about similar characters that walk amongst us. But again those people only exist in the eyes of the beholder, I have heard many times guys referring to other guys as being a real-life action movies heroes. It's just bad association and a simplistic view of human beings. They see someone with a nice car and an attractive girlfriend and go "boy, if I have a nice car I'll have an attractive girlfriend too!", or a guy with muscles, or a guy that's funny, and so on. They fail to see the actual truth which is that he doesn't have an attractive girlfriend just because he has a car, he has an attractive girlfriend because she chose him based on her own motives. So if you wanna trouble yourself what a male is or ought to be (genitals aside) I think it's essential to empathize with the opposite sex. Here's a great read that I found useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Brain_(book) Furthermore I find this generalizing or defining to be quite worrisome, it makes maleness and implicitly femaleness specific traits that allow for no variation. Like if long hair is considered female-ish and short hair male-ish, what is medium sized hair supposed to be?