Thread by @slimepriestess

i'm gonna explain this a bit. there is a "secret language" spoken by children and animals that uses the whole body as a way to send signals, this language is nonverbal and vibes-based, it's emotional, felt, and intuitive. our society is very dedicated to ignoring that signal.

https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1804590024622502297

one claim of the "pre-contact consciousness" model is that humans used to communicate very deeply like this, and then the norms broke down somewhere and people lost the ability to perform this felt dialog. They learned to distrust the channel and ignore what it said to them.

So here's the thing though, that channel still exists, it didn't go anywhere, and it still contains a ton of information being transmitted creature to creature, below the level of actual dialogue, often in a state of intense contradiction with what someone says with words.

An example is someone saying "I'm fine" in a way that is obviously not fine. Or insisting they're okay with something their body is obviously not okay with. The social reality expectation is that you take people on their literal words, even when you observe this contradiction.

And people will take advantage of that, ignoring obvious things on that emotional channel, "well she didn't SAY she didn't want it", that's only true if you ignore the sublinguistic channel and only look at the literal words, but isn't doing that awfully convenient?

And then once something IS made legible in english, it can be argued about and it's fair game for 'convincing' them that they're wrong, that they're confused about their felt sense, or that it's irrational and should be ignored. guys do this ALL THE TIME.

Some of it is actually emotional illiteracy or dissociation from one's felt senses, but not all of it is, and people do use that claim of unseeing as a way to intentionally ignore those signals when you can plausibly say you just didn't notice them.

this is like someone breaking stuff on purpose but hiding it behind "i'm clumsy, sorry", some people are clumsy, but when the clumsiness takes the shape of an optimization process designed to get them what they want at your expense? it's no accident, it's malicious compliance.

i think in general, women have a harder time ignoring this channel, because not ignoring it is important to understanding what's really going on and keeping yourself safe. Being around people who can interact with this channel feels really nice and safe, it lets you feel seen.

converse, being around someone who is unable to see this channel, or who is actively ignoring it, feels like they're ignoring you, or that you're invisible to them and the only thing they can see is words from a disembodied ghost, and it doesn't feel safe or secure.

the reason so many women want men to be able to 'magically just intuit the right thing' is that it's not magical, it just requires paying attention to the nonverbal information being transmitted. Not ignoring the signal is a green flag, actively ignoring it is a red flag.

if you can't trust someone to understand your nonverbal communications and emotional signals in a low stakes circumstance, how can you trust them to do so when the stakes are actually high?