I meant to return to this thread because I actually thought it was a great idea, also made me LOL when I saw it pop up, especially since there had been some tension based on a couple of other threads. So anyway, kudos to you for easing the tension happymurtad.
I don't think there is much that needs to be understood about women or men, we are all so unique and require different things, and even those things change as we age.
She might want you to be macho when she is in her 'attraction to bad boys' phase, she might grow out of that and start wishing you were just a little bit softer and less macho. The reverse could happen, you just can't ever be sure since people change. She might never have liked the 'macho' thing and saw it as just too chauvinistic, might have preferred someone in touch with all the parts of himself, she might like them tall, short, athletic, cuddly, whatever, it's all changeable, it's not static.
We are all just humans, friends stay friends, or grow out of their friendships much like relationships do.
The core of this thread though, or at least what i would say about this forum, and of course for beginning to adopt that view in the real world, is to understand that. To understand that some girls will hate the leering, and some will like it, some won't care about misogynistic comments, because they themselves are products of their society, and some will be thinking out of that box and not appreciate it.
I guess its about what you want to be as a person. Are you becoming enlightened, are you thinking out of the box, have you begun to understand that commenting on every womans body might give the women around you a standard they can't fulfill and allow it to damage their own view of themselves? are you aware of how words can be used to continue to propound stereotypical myths about women, and aware that calling it a joke doesn't make it less so? Do you want to change that? do you want to see a world in which you know your daughter can grow up, and cross the road wearing what she wants without being told she was asking for it?
Compare your view on women to your view of muslims, in the sense that you have freed yourself from Islam, you would be angered to still be under the yoke of it You already understand that muslims are conditioned, you already understand that not every muslim is a specific way.
You get angry and understand that when muslim women say "it's my choice to wear the hijab", that they have no real choice. You 'get' that they are victims even when they scream they are not, because you have freed yourself from that mental slavery.
But this other prison, the one in which many women still have to dress a certain way, in which only their body and their youth is of appeal, or men view them in terms of their use for sex and dismiss them as anything above that (of course not saying all men, just like I'm not saying all women want jacob from twilight). How is it that you still help the wardens of that prison women find themselves in?
That you don't stop and think "should I get hung up on the weight of the female rapist in this story being fat, or can I be more than that"...or "this muslimah bikini model, is the only thing worthy about her, a thread about how bangable she is, and long she is worthy of being banged for".
Does this matter you? are you interested in working towards a world, in which not only muslims get freedom to leave Islam, but to know that the women in your life, mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, loved ones all, have the freedom to be themselves as much as the freedom you longed for when you left Islam.
Because if it does, then that's the only view you need to adopt. Not a list of what women want.
That's certainly all I'm asking for.
This applies in reverse I know. Men do have a masculine standard they must adhere too, there are penalties for stepping out of that.
But this is what makes it like leaving Islam, we all face a penalty for that, what makes that battle more worthy than this one?
Topic: The complete idiot ex-Muslim man's guide to understanding women