We are not 12 and we are not stupid
So having read that interview with Rae Story I followed the link to her blog and fell deeply in love with the first thing I saw, 4 reasons she dislikes Everyday Feminism.
Number 1 is the lazy writing, such as having numbers one through four or seven or ten for everything instead of just doing joined-up writing like a grown up.
Second is the ridiculous content, always sniffing for novelty and never about anything that matters.
Third is the pig-ignorance.
4. And worst of all, the comic strips. Often about things such as “5 Things You Got Wrong About Narcissistic Personality Disorder”. Just stop it. We are not 12 and we are not stupid. Clearly we have understood perfectly the Narcissistic Personality. In any case, rendering an argument into comic form does not give it an objective stamp of approval. If you are talking bollocks, no amount of nifty little coloured boxes containing character strips with curiously undetailed and gormless faces, will change that. I loathe the fact that one of the most popular feminist resources out there seems to want to engage in this serious political movement in the manner of Beavis and Butthead.
You can see why I’m smitten.
I avoid EF like the plague. The standard of writing is appalling. I can’t figure out of they’re just really bad or they actually do think they are that much cleverer than everyone else and that’s why they have to write in a condescending and patronising manner. Like most women whose feminism came out of the Second Wave I’m used to rather more nuanced and complex analysis than the third/fourth wave tend to use.
Excellent piece. I also am deeply in love with her writing.
So given what the ‘toon says about narcissism, I guess all that speculation about DJ Grothe being a psychopath, and any number of character appraisals of Michael Shermer, are totes problematic now? I’d like to see how folks intend to make social spaces safer without criticizing narcissistic behaviour.
(I imagine this would make a nice, “sex-positive” environment for Richard Carrier to socialize in though).
Bruce,
I curse the day that the DSM was made available online. Suddenly everyone turned into an armchair psychiatrist, diagnosing various personality disorders over the internet. (Or diagnosing themselves with Asperger’s.)
And now, in turn, they’ve inspired the counter-reactionaries who insist that any use of ordinary English words like “narcissist” are equivalent to a diagnosis of NPD, which equals mental illness, which means you can’t say “Donald Trump is a narcissist” without someone accusing you of hate speech against the mentally ill.
That NPD cartoon–good god!
Says it all, doesn’t it? The mental disorder deserves respect.
(Of course it does. Identitarians identify so closely with whatever personal characteristics they nurture, cherish, and advertise, they cease to distinguish between these and their fundamental humanity.)
Lady M – I know, right?!
Such a good point.
Lordy. We all have some personal characteristics that can make us flaming assholes. We all need to be aware of that and act accordingly, not treat it as some sacred Essence.
Screechy Monkey @4
Good grief yes. And of course, there’s the “you must tolerate borderline behaviours, or you’re a bigot” line as well.
But meanwhile everyone is allowed to walk around calling themselves OCD when they are simply creatures of habit (like most human beings at some point or other in their life) and their so-called OCD doesn’t have any functional impairment on their life at all. It’s just a joke.
As someone raised by a narcissist, I wish I hadn’t read that cartoon. Narcissists do enormous damage, especially to the vulnerable under their care, and calling it ableism to say so is fucking twisted. My narcissistic parent is pitiable and pathetic in some ways, but that doesn’t erase the decades it took to un-fuck my life after spending the first 2.5 decades as nothing more than an extension of their own ego.
A Masked Avenger – that can be the case with a number of disorders. My mother was bipolar, and maybe she wasn’t responsible for all the horror she inflicted on her children, but that doesn’t change the reality of the life we all led, and the way it continues reverberating in my life even into middle age.
Finally got around to Story’s essay. Here’s where I fell in love: