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If you are going to choose ONE person to represent a gender why not pick a good role model instead of a bad one?
I think you know intellectually that one person cannot and does not represent an entire gender (race, religion, etc.) but you are having trouble translating that fact to yourself emotionally.
Without that, I do not think you have a very good chance at a healthy relationship.
Read the source. It will help you to stay on topic. Dissenter was not talking about measuring a gender. He was talking about vulnerability.
To go all in, you have to believe in yourself as a fundamentally "real" person, surrender your fears of the results if you lose and be perceptive enough to know that the odds are greater than 50% that the person in front of you will not harm you. All of these are related.
I think this is a really worthwhile discussion. As it happens, unrelated to this thread I was up til 3 the morning it started trying to figure out what was so hard about dating stuff when I was young. Young was a long time ago for me, but those struggles influenced some choices that shaped my life. What I concluded, and what let me finally get some sleep once concluded, was that I had given away my power. Not the capital P type of power, but the everyday power well adjusted people exercise when they say "no" to a request, or an informed "yes" for that matter. When they set a boundary, or even more so when they enforce one. When they ask for something they want or need. When they hear "no". When they hear "yes".
I'm sure it's telling that I described those acts as "powerful". Of course they are in a sense, but they're also vulnerable acts, but that word, that thought, never entered my mind. If I'm honest though, so much of what made it so tough for me to connect with anyone when I was young was the fear of being vulnerable and the lengths I went to to hide my fear, and myself in the process.
Like so many of the young people here who bristle at the suggestion that they "be themselves" I wanted to kill people who suggested that to my younger self. Being "me" was getting me nowhere, but then I had myself fooled that the distorted, repressed caricature of myself I showed people was the real me. The caricature wasn't much worthy of people's time and attention, but I was. I am. I'm 59 years old and that's still hard to write.
So reading and thinking about this thread has been kind of cathartic for me. It's helped me make more sense out of the start I made early the other morning. I'm glad I saw it.
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