Pattern detection
Dr Em at Wings Over Scotland last year on Why woke blokes abuse women:
The woke bloke contempt for women is clear, and abusive behaviours are on full display. Reading through Lundy Bancroft’s pivotal work “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men”, the full cast of characters is present on Twitter, in the news and in our political parties and institutions.
…
Bancroft’s work, sometimes criticised for being too inclusive and easily applied to any man, is corroborated by what women know personally from relationships with abusive men, the patterns we recognise and which are analysed by domestic violence charities such as Refuge and charities attempting to end violence against women such as Nia. We are currently watching the microcosm of male abuse go macro.
Bancroft convincingly argues that it is values which cause abuse not personality, or mental disorders, or a childhood history of abuse, or alcohol or drugs. Those factors only exacerbate an existing problem – the value system of the man – and can make him more dangerous. [2]
We’re trained early to think that values don’t make anything happen – that it’s all class or libido or The Unconscious. It’s widely considered naive to think superstructure-type items like beliefs and ideas and values can drive behavior. It’s encouraging to see a professional in the field saying yes they can.
He also noted that ‘Their value system is unhealthy, not their psychology. Abuse tactics work well for the abuser, they get what they want most of the time’. [3]
Dr Em makes the connection:
The crossover between ‘trans rights activists’, incels and men’s rights activists has been frequently pointed out by feminists, but it is time to take a look at the supporting troupe. The bullying blue ticks, the fresh-faced student misogynists, the older self-serving politicians. Two things unite them all, and it is not a desire for social justice or a committed belief that clothes are magical and change one’s sex.
Forced teaming can only explain so much in the face of evidence, women’s concerns and the behaviour they exhibit. [4] It is in fact misogynistic values and pornography use which drive the phenomenon.
Men who bully and abuse women have dehumanised them and cannot see them as equals. Bancroft details how ‘most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as bitch, whore, and cunt, often preceded by the word fat. These words assault her humanity, reducing her to… a non-living object, or a degraded sexual body part’.
“Terf” is the new “cunt.”
Who has been claiming that values don’t drive behaviour? That’s an absurd claim, isn’t it? We all know from experience that otherwise good people will refrain from intervening in bad situations, or even cause them, because of their prior beliefs. And people who are regarded as beyond the pale by such folk, who show them up by doing the right thing; for example, motorcycle gangs who protect funerals from the Westboro’ crowd.
What is ‘the end justifies the means’ if not a saying about beliefs and values?
Is this postmodernism warping things again?
tigger, there is a belief system out there that all abusers were abused themselves. This is not presented with rigorous evidence but as a trope or a meme. Then we are given the exhortation to “understand” them, because they are reacting in the most natural way to abuse.
I was an abused child; my abuser was not. I did not become an abuser; my experience with abuse drove me the opposite direction.
But there are people out there – a lot of them – who believe (1) all abused will become abusers; and/or (2) all abusers were once abused.
Therefore, we must be understanding to the abusers. They are in pain. (My abuser was not in anywhere near the pain I was in…I hurt all over…he had a laughing jag as I fell.)
I’m so sorry, iknklast. My father was, rightly I believe, of the opinion that those who were abused themselves would be far less likely to inflict that pain on others, knowing what it felt like, than those who weren’t; and that those abusers who claimed that they had been abused themselves were transparently trying to deflect blame for their actions onto someone else, and that their subterfuge ought not be indulged.
Em is one of my favourite people. One of those the world won’t see the like of again. Last seen being awesome when her friend was arrested for being a TERF, as reported here.
I’m fairly sure I once posted a link here to a lecture she did about porn. Can you find it, Ophelia? It’s harrowing but vital.
I don’t suppose you can remember a good search word? I had no luck.
She has a list of her essays here –
https://twitter.com/PankhurstEM/status/1263746652055187456
Tumblr, porn, & teenage girls:
https://uncommongroundmedia.com/tumblr-porn-and-teenage-girls-dr-em-banned-from-medium/
The old “they can’t help themselves.”
@3 I was listening to a feminist podcast the other day where scholars were talking about interviewing men who raped prostitutes. One man apparently told the interviewers that he’d ‘paid for sex’ once, and never did it again because he recognised the look in the prostitute’s eyes as the same look he had when he’d been abused as a child.