This woman obviously had both a self-esteem issue and a boundaries issue. I have been there. It’s really hard to snap out of this mindset and activate one’s rational faculties. I was trained in childhood to disregard my own needs and to crave love wherever I found it, even if the person professing love was actually incapable of feeling it or acting on it. But women have to be taught to actively fight this. I think female psychology makes us vulnerable to guys like this toxic jerk. Psychology is not destiny any more than biology is; but they need to be actively opposed sometimes. I briefly had a reasonably healthy relationship in my early twenties. Then I went right back to the toxic jerks who treated me the way my mother treated me. I didn’t meet my wonderful husband until I was 50. It’s almost like it’s a matter of luck- if you find a good man you are ok and you can heal. My sister had it worse than me as a child but she met her amazing husband in her 20s and has never suffered from toxic romantic relationships.
All we can hope for, I think, is that enough women will read wonderful, insightful articles like this and recognize both their own dysfunction and their own trauma and then perhaps kick these sorry excuses for men to the curb. I think it’s a matter of self-awareness, always a challenge for human primates.
Thanks for your incredibly insightful comments, Stephanie. We have a lot in our own psychology we have to actively fight - this seems to be why women's abuse stories have grown quite tedious for me - it's always the same damn story, nothing learned. We're caught on what Dina McMillan ("But He Says He Loves Me!") calls the 'hamster wheel', of one dysfunctional relationship after another. It doesn't help that feminism self-destructively tells women not to 'blame' themselves, not to examine themselves, that it's all *their* fault, men's, and that the focus should be on getting men to be better men rather than teaching women how not to be abused. It harkens back to what my mother taught me (and didn't always follow her own advice), "Never try to change a man. You can't change another person. You can only change *yourself*." Men can't rape/abuse/assault a woman who isn't there.
What do you think we, as women, can do differently? What are we missing? What am *I* missing? I'm actively exploring women's psychology and how it can be turned against us by clever manipulators, but maybe I'm missing some gaps? Not having been abused myself, I don't have that experience. Where would you like me to explore next, if you have any thoughts?
I think we should definitely question feminist dogma the way you do. And we should learn to accept responsibility for our choices. And get good therapy for our issues. Just like I couldn’t find a good husband until I was 50, I didn’t find a good therapist until I was almost 60. Good partners and good therapy are so hard to find! But I think that’s changing. Mental health care is becoming mainstream. People are embracing their issues and being diagnosed with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder, which can complicate psychological issues. Trauma is the psychological issue du jour. People are waking up. Women like the one you wrote about are publishing their own stories. Pedophiles and and rapists are being called out 30 years after the fact. These things used to be shrouded in secrecy and shame, allowing abusers free reign. Narcissism and sociopathy are being recognized in position of power. Parenting and teaching now recognize children’s emotional needs.
There is hope. But women still need to take more responsibility. Keep telling them that!
BTW Stephanie, I have been thinking more about what you said about 'boundaries' this morning and how we as women don't do that very well - I've thought beyond that to my feelings about gender-neutral bathrooms, and why I'm against them, apart from my primary concern about women's safety - which might explain why so many women who are otherwise highly sensitive to sexual trauma, including other women's, are so inclined to throw them under the bus in deference to what female-identified men want. We just suck at drawing boundaries, but some are better at it than others.
I know, right? Like you have said before, women need explicit training in these kinds of things. They need to be trained not to freeze during a sexual assault (like my daughter did and like E. Jean Carrol did with Trump), and they need to be explicitly taught in the ways that male human nature is different from female human nature, ie. their tendency to develop empathy with more difficulty than women do, their greater propensity for enjoying casual sexual encounters, their relatively lower levels of emotional intelligence in general. But of course that would mean overthrowing the feminist curriculum that teaches that people are all 100% socially constructed and that the patriarchy is responsible for all of these problems.
Studies have shown that women have more of a tendency to be open and agreeable than men. We need to learn to check this when we are dealing with predatory males. And some of them, as you have demonstrated in your other articles, are aggressive trans women demanding access to female spaces. It should not be considered transphobic to be aware of this.
I looked into the training to fight against 'freezing' during an attack...wasn't much worried for myself, but there was a really good Medium article about a woman who'd trained in like, I don't know, tae kwon do, kickboxing, something. She got raped twice both times...because she froze. I reached out to a friend's son, I lived with him and his mom & sister in the '80s and early '90s, since he was a cop and had served in both Afghanistan & Iraq...I thought he might offer some help in how women can avoid the freeze impulse.
He was helpful, but not in the way I hoped. He stressed the importance of training, of practicing, of learning how to just *react* and not ask questions, which is what he had to do in battle. he said he sucked in his first one, was no use to anyone. But he got better, he learned to just *react*, trust his body, not his brain.
Not exactly practical for most of us civvies! ;) I gave up the idea of writing what I'd hoped would be a helpful article for Medium's fragile feminist flowers. But, I dragged that convo out of mothballs a few weeks ago about the Tampa woman who fought off her rapist. She didn't freeze...she wasn't *trained*, I don't think, not to, but her parents taught her to *fight back* and she did. That's the part we need to learn.
It kinda impelled me to be a bit armed when i go out...with my trust hair spray and my mighty Keychain O' Pain :) I don't know what will happen if I have to use either, but I'd like to think I won't get stabbed, sexually assaulted or set fire to without a fight!
As always with your comments, more to think about - like that sexual predators operated 30 years ago, knowing most likely the victim wouldn't tell. They didn't expect that 30 years later - the victim told, and in a setting where unforeseen consequences reverberated back.
More attention to mental health is good, but we need to avoid making it another excuse to remain a victim. If you get psychologically healthier, you should by extension become a stronger person. If "but I have X malady/disorder/syndrome" etc. therapy isn't of much use.
The '70s turned attention inward toward themselves, but I don't think with enough real emotional intelligence (not even a concept back then). The '80s, '90s, and '00s directed it outward at others, which was also valuable, but now I think we, as a collective group of humans, need to work on our *emotional intelligence* more. Look inward, but not narcissistically - if any finger-pointing happens, it's to one's self. If any challenges happen, it's to one's self. Not, "What can *this group* of people do better to make me happy?" but "What can *I* do to be genuinely happy, lead a more meaningful life, regardless of what others think of me?"
This woman obviously had both a self-esteem issue and a boundaries issue. I have been there. It’s really hard to snap out of this mindset and activate one’s rational faculties. I was trained in childhood to disregard my own needs and to crave love wherever I found it, even if the person professing love was actually incapable of feeling it or acting on it. But women have to be taught to actively fight this. I think female psychology makes us vulnerable to guys like this toxic jerk. Psychology is not destiny any more than biology is; but they need to be actively opposed sometimes. I briefly had a reasonably healthy relationship in my early twenties. Then I went right back to the toxic jerks who treated me the way my mother treated me. I didn’t meet my wonderful husband until I was 50. It’s almost like it’s a matter of luck- if you find a good man you are ok and you can heal. My sister had it worse than me as a child but she met her amazing husband in her 20s and has never suffered from toxic romantic relationships.
All we can hope for, I think, is that enough women will read wonderful, insightful articles like this and recognize both their own dysfunction and their own trauma and then perhaps kick these sorry excuses for men to the curb. I think it’s a matter of self-awareness, always a challenge for human primates.
Thanks for your incredibly insightful comments, Stephanie. We have a lot in our own psychology we have to actively fight - this seems to be why women's abuse stories have grown quite tedious for me - it's always the same damn story, nothing learned. We're caught on what Dina McMillan ("But He Says He Loves Me!") calls the 'hamster wheel', of one dysfunctional relationship after another. It doesn't help that feminism self-destructively tells women not to 'blame' themselves, not to examine themselves, that it's all *their* fault, men's, and that the focus should be on getting men to be better men rather than teaching women how not to be abused. It harkens back to what my mother taught me (and didn't always follow her own advice), "Never try to change a man. You can't change another person. You can only change *yourself*." Men can't rape/abuse/assault a woman who isn't there.
What do you think we, as women, can do differently? What are we missing? What am *I* missing? I'm actively exploring women's psychology and how it can be turned against us by clever manipulators, but maybe I'm missing some gaps? Not having been abused myself, I don't have that experience. Where would you like me to explore next, if you have any thoughts?
I think we should definitely question feminist dogma the way you do. And we should learn to accept responsibility for our choices. And get good therapy for our issues. Just like I couldn’t find a good husband until I was 50, I didn’t find a good therapist until I was almost 60. Good partners and good therapy are so hard to find! But I think that’s changing. Mental health care is becoming mainstream. People are embracing their issues and being diagnosed with ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder, which can complicate psychological issues. Trauma is the psychological issue du jour. People are waking up. Women like the one you wrote about are publishing their own stories. Pedophiles and and rapists are being called out 30 years after the fact. These things used to be shrouded in secrecy and shame, allowing abusers free reign. Narcissism and sociopathy are being recognized in position of power. Parenting and teaching now recognize children’s emotional needs.
There is hope. But women still need to take more responsibility. Keep telling them that!
BTW Stephanie, I have been thinking more about what you said about 'boundaries' this morning and how we as women don't do that very well - I've thought beyond that to my feelings about gender-neutral bathrooms, and why I'm against them, apart from my primary concern about women's safety - which might explain why so many women who are otherwise highly sensitive to sexual trauma, including other women's, are so inclined to throw them under the bus in deference to what female-identified men want. We just suck at drawing boundaries, but some are better at it than others.
I know, right? Like you have said before, women need explicit training in these kinds of things. They need to be trained not to freeze during a sexual assault (like my daughter did and like E. Jean Carrol did with Trump), and they need to be explicitly taught in the ways that male human nature is different from female human nature, ie. their tendency to develop empathy with more difficulty than women do, their greater propensity for enjoying casual sexual encounters, their relatively lower levels of emotional intelligence in general. But of course that would mean overthrowing the feminist curriculum that teaches that people are all 100% socially constructed and that the patriarchy is responsible for all of these problems.
Studies have shown that women have more of a tendency to be open and agreeable than men. We need to learn to check this when we are dealing with predatory males. And some of them, as you have demonstrated in your other articles, are aggressive trans women demanding access to female spaces. It should not be considered transphobic to be aware of this.
I looked into the training to fight against 'freezing' during an attack...wasn't much worried for myself, but there was a really good Medium article about a woman who'd trained in like, I don't know, tae kwon do, kickboxing, something. She got raped twice both times...because she froze. I reached out to a friend's son, I lived with him and his mom & sister in the '80s and early '90s, since he was a cop and had served in both Afghanistan & Iraq...I thought he might offer some help in how women can avoid the freeze impulse.
He was helpful, but not in the way I hoped. He stressed the importance of training, of practicing, of learning how to just *react* and not ask questions, which is what he had to do in battle. he said he sucked in his first one, was no use to anyone. But he got better, he learned to just *react*, trust his body, not his brain.
Not exactly practical for most of us civvies! ;) I gave up the idea of writing what I'd hoped would be a helpful article for Medium's fragile feminist flowers. But, I dragged that convo out of mothballs a few weeks ago about the Tampa woman who fought off her rapist. She didn't freeze...she wasn't *trained*, I don't think, not to, but her parents taught her to *fight back* and she did. That's the part we need to learn.
It kinda impelled me to be a bit armed when i go out...with my trust hair spray and my mighty Keychain O' Pain :) I don't know what will happen if I have to use either, but I'd like to think I won't get stabbed, sexually assaulted or set fire to without a fight!
As always with your comments, more to think about - like that sexual predators operated 30 years ago, knowing most likely the victim wouldn't tell. They didn't expect that 30 years later - the victim told, and in a setting where unforeseen consequences reverberated back.
More attention to mental health is good, but we need to avoid making it another excuse to remain a victim. If you get psychologically healthier, you should by extension become a stronger person. If "but I have X malady/disorder/syndrome" etc. therapy isn't of much use.
The '70s turned attention inward toward themselves, but I don't think with enough real emotional intelligence (not even a concept back then). The '80s, '90s, and '00s directed it outward at others, which was also valuable, but now I think we, as a collective group of humans, need to work on our *emotional intelligence* more. Look inward, but not narcissistically - if any finger-pointing happens, it's to one's self. If any challenges happen, it's to one's self. Not, "What can *this group* of people do better to make me happy?" but "What can *I* do to be genuinely happy, lead a more meaningful life, regardless of what others think of me?"