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I've been asked by a mod to repost this here, so here goes!
What Is The Problem With Women?
We've often discussed, and it seems we will continue to discuss, what is going on in the Battle of the Sexes. I have to hold my hands up and admit that very often in such dispatches, I am the one defending women and criticising the behaviour and the attitudes of men.
But it is also undeniable that some women are fudging stupid. Or at the very least, so it appears. We've argued over "women prefer the Bad Boys to the Nice Guys" but there comes a point where it seems to be sheer self-destruction at work, because how could anyone stick with a guy like the one in this story?
So, to do justice to the gentlemen here with whom I have argued, here is the sorry story of a woman who apparently had not a brain in her head. Her family warned her off, her friends warned her off, even on a first date she knew this was a bad idea - and she still ended up marrying him and having two children with him while he was irresponsible, controlling, and abusive.
Why? I can't explain it to you in any way that makes sense. Even she doesn't know why, looking back. There are some hints that, in line with theories of such behaviour, she was drawn (for whatever reason) to abusive men, like a typical victim who keeps going back to the same kind of relationship after getting out of the last one. But as to what was at work here, who knows? I can't imagine any evo-psych explanation for this that makes any sense at all, not even the "women evolved to tolerate rape because women who resisted rape got murdered when the barbarian horde over-ran the village and killed all the men and took all the women" kind of thing.
An Irish divorce story.
It gets worse from there, until finally she won't put up with it anymore and leaves. Why she didn't run a mile after the first date, I have no explanation. This is a stupid (and indeed, dangerous) choice she made of her own free (so it seems) will. Nobody was urging or forcing her to take up with this guy, indeed it was the opposite. She had plenty of chances, and plenty of warning signs. She got pregnant, of her own accord again, (I strongly suspect the first pregnancy was the usual hope around 'a baby will fix this' and the second time, what, she had no access to contraception? highly unlikely) and brought two kids into an unstable situation where the father had no interest in contributing to the family. It was only when things finally became intolerable that she left.
And I genuinely, honestly can't blame men or The Patriarchy or anything else for this. The guy in question was a shithead but she knew that from the immediate start. There's nothing in her story, as told, about her family pressuring her to get married or settle down with anyone, much less this guy. She did it all herself.
Each of these has an interesting linguistic feature; a double first personalism (non-technical term that I just invented).
"I" and "my" x 2
"I" and "I" x 1
My theory is that this is a way to create a kind of double wall against personal responsibility. It's not that this woman failed to use good judgement. No, her "gut" knew at one point. Then again, at another point, her "head" was elsewhere (suggesting that in her hear of heart (or gut of guts?) she know what was going on.
Even in the slightly different "I suppose I must have been desperate" she didn't phrase it as "I was desperate" but that this other "I" in the past was the one doing the desperate-ing.
People sometimes say things like "I was a much different person back then." Mostly it's a term of art that simply means "I've changed a lot." That's fine. But there are some people out there who literally think in terms of full personality / character / existence do-overs and alterations.
I don't think this woman sees herself, today, as having willingly gone out with a guy who slapped her and was a fall down drunk. I think, in her mind's eye, she sees that as having happened to someone else and that she - the today she- now, somehow, has to face the consequences for that poor other woman.
Which should scare you even more because it means she has internalized, perhaps, zero of these lessons.
@2rafa has excellent comment here that, I believe, makes a very similar point. A woman who flaunted her ability to get the attention of much older men, several years later, attests that she was more or less human trafficked against her will. How could such cognitive dissonance occur? Well, when you no longer see you then as continuous to you now and create a whole other character in the story, it gets much easier.
The Last Psychiatrist made this point before. If you get into the mental habit of blaming your mistakes on outside circumstances, of saying that "somebody else" had too much to drink and made a fool of themselves – eventually it becomes impossible for you to feel responsible for your positive achievements as well.
Really? But we all know, or know of, losers who manage to shake off responsibility for bad stuff but embrace responsibility for good stuff.
True, some people are better at compartmentalization than others. But I'm not talking about the more general case of a boss who takes credit for his subordinates' hard work while blaming them when his projects don't go according to plan. I'm talking specifically about people who develop the defense mechanism of referring to nasty things they did as if they were committed by a third party.
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