Judgmentalism is the fundamental psychological trait that results from the mental quality of sensitivity to contrasts.  When we see something that is in contrast, such as a sharp change in color within an image, this acts to draw our attention by inducing excitement in us.  On the other hand, a gradual shading of such color may, if it is gradual enough, escape our notice.  So, the need of the brain to draw attention to contrasts and the fact that attention is the quality of being excited towards something, results in our becoming excited towards anything that contrasts with the world as we know it, that is out of place.  Now, excitement can result in pleasure if it is focused on something beautiful.  When an appealing woman dresses in a way that would generally be seen as sexy, what she is, in fact, doing is dressing in a way that makes her stick out in a crowd.  It is the excitement created by her contrast with her environment combined with her beauty that draws the desires of men.  However, excitement in the absence of beauty has the opposite effect.  Excitement makes a person’s mind sensitive to pleasure, but it also makes them need that pleasure.  In the absence of such pleasurable stimuli, they experience displeasure.  Therefore, if an individual contrasts with their environment, but they have a bland appearance, people will see them as undesirable and unpleasant.  (I discuss this phenomenon by which excitement induces both increased sensitivity to, and need for stimuli in substantial detail within the document “Neurobiology”.)

For example, in the early days of women’s liberation when a woman tried to vote she would be the only women in a crowd of male voters.  This would act to make her stand out; everyone noticing her since she would be the sharpest contrast in the room, a lone woman in a crowd of men.  Now, if she were bland looking then she would cause the men, and any other women present as well, to experience displeasure, which could then be misinterpreted as her not belonging.  This is the mistake of confusing something that causes us displeasure with something that is wrong.  Sometimes good hurts and sometimes wrong is pleasant; a wise person must be able to determine right from wrong independently of their personal experience (pleasant or displeasant) of the situation.  If, on the other hand, the woman who went to vote was beautiful then her contrast with the male voters would cause them to desire her.  This desire on the part of these men would either induce sexual moral conflicts or, if not, a drive to express their sexual desires which, in either case, would induce them to see her as sexually immoral, coming to the conclusion that she is a slut, either for the purpose of having someone to blame for their internal conflicts or in order to justify their disrespectfully treatment of her, their treating her as a sexual object.  As a result of this, when women voters were rare they would either be ridiculed or mistreated by people, both men and women, not because they were doing anything wrong but because those people were mistaking their experiences of pleasure and displeasure for right and wrong.  When her voting made her look disgusting to such people, or induced internal pain do to internal conflicts they would conclude that since this caused them displeasure, it had to be the result of her having done something immoral.  The disrespectful men, on the other hand, wouldn’t care whether she was doing right or wrong, only that they desire her and that the social misinterpretation of her as immoral would generally make people tolerant of such men’s sexual misconduct towards her. 

Now, although the specific example of the vote was used, this basic concept applies to any situation in which woman enter an environment in which people are unaccustomed to the presence of women.  So, the same responses and treatments occurred when women entered the work force, enlisted in institutions of higher education and when they entered government offices.  It is only when women in these positions become commonplace, become the norm, that the problem of judgmentalism ceases.  This phenomenon also applies to the problems blacks have had with integration into white society, and for that matter the problems any easily identifiable ethnic group has with integration.  In general, anyone who contrasts with the environment they are in will be subject to judgmentalism, regardless of the individual or the nature of the environment.  However, these problems also appear with differences between people that are not apparent at a glance.  Religious judgmentalism, in which an individual is maltreated because they contrast with the religious beliefs of the people around them, is also a problem.  However, people cannot maltreat an individual based on religion unless they know what the individual’s religion is.  This means that they would have to have learned about this difference, and so the question arises, how can awareness of a difference alone, a case where there is no constant reminder, be sufficient to induce serious judgmentalism.  The answer is that many people have strongly emotional feelings with respect to religion, and so, even just an awareness of another’s religious differences could act to induce great excitement.  So, the more significant a difference, in the sense that people care about it, the less apparent it has to be to induce the same amount of judgmental response from others.  Of course, differences in sexual desire and behaviour are some of the most emotionally significant differences that exist, capable of drawing intense interest and attention.  As such, sexual variations, the prime example, but far from the only one, being homosexuality, induce intense judgmental reactions even if they are only based on rumour.  Moreover, unlike religion where the individual is capable of keeping their beliefs secret, for an individual to find a mate they would have to eventually convey the nature of their sexuality and hence risk social ridicule or punishment. 

Now, there are a couple of additional problems that come out of judgmentalism that produce unethical behaviours and beliefs.  The first is a response to judgmentalism, with a prime example of this occurring within the feminist movement.  About a third of people have non-stereotypical personalities, caused by their having one or more of a few traits that are stereotypical of males or females flipped to that of the opposite sex (see the document “Sexually biased personality traits” (not yet available as of this release)).  A single flipped trait produces an individual who still fits well within normal relationship and social structures, but when more than one trait is flipped this results in an individual who’s interests and behaviours are more like that of the opposite sex.  Those women who were, psychologically speaking, more masculine than feminine had the strongest needs to enter the areas where men dominated.  As such, they were the ones who were predominantly involved in starting the women’s liberation movement, but not with the interests of the average woman at heart.  What such women desire is to be treated as men.  Now, although such women managed to change the world in such a way that they can now lead their lives the way men do, this still doesn’t make them normal.  When they express their masculine personality traits they stand out, and as such take the effects of judgmentalism from others.  However, if every woman in the world were to behave as they do then they wouldn’t stick out.  It is this awareness, that they would be normal if everyone was like them, which induces such women to blame other women for behaving like women.  Rather than accepting women for who they are these feminist are devoted to trying to making women into their own image, however the ideal of women’s liberation was that women should be allowed to be who they are, that society should not be allowed to force them into a mould.  As such, many modern feminists have actually become a threat to women’s liberation, fighting to force women into a new mould, one of their own creation, a practice that is as immoral as that which women’s liberation originally fought against.

The other problem of judgmentalism is created by people becoming accustomed to unethical behaviours.  For example, if an individual were to know a number of people who cheat on their spouses, this act of misconduct would become normal to them, and as a result they would experience little excitement and hence little displeasure.  Since cheating induces little emotional response within them they would pay little attention to such people, and hence those people would feel that they could behave in such a way and be tolerated.  However, this in no way makes breaking their vows ethical.  By braking their vows, and worse, hiding it from their mate, they are acting without consideration for their spouses’ interests, which is an act of evil.  Now, this applies to any crime.  As a crime becomes more common and the people who commit them become more common society becomes more tolerant of those people.  As society become more tolerant the criminal finds that there is less of a detriment to their crime, that people will associate with them despite their misbehaviours and that law enforcers pay less attention to their actions so that the chance of being caught reduces.  So, in order to prevent this problem, judges must resist tolerating common acts of injustice in the same way they must resist punishing people for being different.  They have to base their judgments on right and wrong, not judgmental response, which means they must learn to tolerate people who are different, who trigger strong judgmental responses, and to not necessarily tolerate people simply because they don’t induce a significant judgmental response within them.  But more than this, as unethical behaviours are removed from society by the practices of competent and diligent judges these behaviours will become rare, and as such a judgmental response to them would return.  So, as unethical behaviours are removed from society, society becomes less and less tolerant of those behaviours, and thereby, through people’s intolerance, suppresses those behaviours further. 

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