BillHamp wrote:paddybrown wrote:DownThunder wrote:Shhh. Believe the victim. Miri is victim of apologizing too much, and a victim of being apologized TO, too much.
Don't tell women not to apologize or be apologized to too much, tell men not to apologize too much and not be apologized to. Except when they need to apologize to women.
Problem?
Yep. Teach men to just
know exactly what will please the particular women he's interecting with, by telepathy, and do that
without having to be told.
I remember a time when I apologised to a particular woman more than once. I did that to give her the opportunity to apologise for her part in the fucked up situation we had both contributed to. She didn't.
Yes, I've been in that situtation where an argument is going to hell in a handbasket and then I decide that I should apologize for my error, clear the air, and give everyone a chance to calm down only to find that the othe party (a woman) sees it as an opportunity to grandstand and claim victory. It shows a real lack of introspection when a person does that. The idea is to foster good will by admitting that mistakes were made. Everyone is human, seems to be what a normal person would say, before apologizing herself. In my case, she continued to attack me, verbally, belittling my intelligence and my personality. I asked her to stop calling me names three or four times, but she persisted. Mumbling under her breath things like "why don't you just stop being yourself, you asshole." Eventually I lost it and smashed the dish I was washing on the kitchen floor. That just gave her something else to chastize me about, until I explained to her that her verbal and emotional abuse were a bit more than I could handle and all I wanted was for her to stop.When she didn't respond to my verbal requests that she stop, I felt cornered. She still did care and she still wasn't willing to admit that verbal attacks could be just as damaging as phyiscal attacks. What's my point?
Women tend to be verbally abusive. They can't be physically abusive (not that a few haven't tried with me) to the extent that men can be, so they turn instead to what they can be effective at. Verbal abuse often isn't recognized as "as serious" as physical violence. It is. Without a doubt it is. The longer it goes on, the more effective it is. The scars of emotional abuse may never heal.
Absolutely. I'm still
damaged in some ways, in my forties, by non-physical bullying I endured in primary school. Clarence posted
this brilliant blog post on the subject yesterday. If I'd been taught to stand up for myself, rather than ignore them and tell a grown up, I'd have had a much healthier early adulthood.
One thing I struggle with is that, in my experience, many women who are perfectly decent, friendly and considerate when you're platonic friends, turn nasty, competitive and manipulative when you're in a relationship with them. I remember a number of years ago I encountered online a list of signs of an abusive partner, all expressed as "he", most of which were occupational hazards of dating women in my experience. I know very few men who try to control what their partner wears, for example, and I know very few women who don't. Trying to cut you off from your friends and family, putting you down in public, making everything about "his" feelings, flying off the handle over minor things until you're scared to challenge "him" over anything - these are pretty routine occurrences, again in my experience, when going out with women, and are rarely called out as "abusive", as they are when men do them.
I've noticed a trend among my younger acquaintances of girlfriends falling out with their boyfriends over something she dreamed he did. I do not believe any adult could possibly believe it's justifiable to punish someone else for something that only happened in your own dream, so I conclude it must be deliberate, a game or a test of some sort.
The point being, just to be clear, not that women are any more evil than men, but that they seem to get a free pass on it when they are. Behaviour that is rightly considered heinous when a man does it to a woman, is pretty much normal when a woman does it to a man - and even the man's fault. Ever be told "maybe you're hanging out with the wrong women?"
Anyway, I eventually learned to recognise the red flags. And I learned that trying to make a woman who's hurt you feel guilty about it is about a sane as responding to being slighted by Mike Tyson by challenging him to a boxing match. It's her weapon, and she's spent years learning how to use it. I haven't. I'm going to take another beating.
Having said that, women are perfectly capable of being physically abusive, especially once they determine you won't hit back. I see the current campaign over abusive comments on the internet, alongside #killallmen, male tears etc, as an ettempt to extend the "never hit a girl" double standard to to verbal as well as physical abuse. It's so much easier to bully people when they're not allowed to fight back.
On other subjects, it's hard to imagine how much lower P-Ziddy could conceivably stoop, and All Fogg, as I've said before, is an unusually subtle troll.
