The Absence of Empathy: Understanding the Psychology of Sociopathic Feminism
Posted on | March 26, 2016 | 45 Comments
Not every narcissist is a sociopath, but all sociopaths are narcissists. Like every other manifestation of identity politics, feminism is ultimately about narcissism, a celebration of selfishness masquerading as “social justice” in which identifying yourself as suffering from oppression serves not only as a rationalization of one’s personal failures, but also as a justification for antisocial attitudes and behaviors.
My encounter with the notorious “Speedway Bomber” Brett Kimberlin was an extraordinary educational experience in this regard. Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser both exhibited sociopathic personality traits and, as my friend Ladd Ehlinger noted, the key to understanding the sociopath’s behavior is his lack of empathy for others. Selfish, dishonest and cruel, the sociopath is unable to feel remorse for his wrongdoing because his extreme narcissism stems from an inability to imagine others as fully equal to himself. He exploits and manipulates others and, when apprehended, the sociopath lashes out at those who would hold him accountable for his wrongdoing, while imagining himself to be (and trying to persuade others to see him as) a sympathetic victim. Psychologists have labeled this deceptive method “DARVO” (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) or, as I have called it, “Accuse the Accusers.”
DARVO tactics are quite maddening to anyone who has ever been in such an encounter, and this is a problem highly relevant to dealing with feminists, whose ideology is all about portraying themselves as victims while accusing others of various forms of wrongdoing. Disagreeing with a feminist will inevitably result in accusations that you are a “sexist,” a “rape apologist,” etc. Feminists routinely make false claims (e.g., the bogus “1-in-5” statistic) and then use smear tactics and name-calling in an effort to discredit anyone who tries to expose their lies. The shocking dishonesty of feminists and other “social justice warriors” during the #GamerGate controversy prompted Vox Day to write SJWs Always Lie, the title of which concisely summarizes the problem. Warped personalities like Brianna Wu and Sarah Nyberg, devoid of moral principle, love nothing better than to jump aboard a “progressive” bandwagon, which provides such monsters an opportunity to cloak themselves in the mantle of Crusader for the Righteous Cause.
All of that is preamble to the case study in feminist psychology I wish to bring to your attention today. Feminist Tumblr is full of angry weirdos trying to one-up each other in The Great Man-Hater Sweepstakes. Where do these kooks come from? How do they get so crazy? Let us examine one Tumblrina’s tale, “My Feminist Journey”:
I’ve personally fought against gender norms since I learned to dress myself. I have always thought that femininity was something that limited my potential, abilities, personality, and interests. I have always thought that it essentially hurts women, or hurts me, in any case. At a very young age I considered myself to be more like the boys, ‘one of the guys’ and wanted their approval and respect.
Later in life, middle school and high school, when I learned what feminism was, what mainstream feminism was, I learned that calling myself ‘one of the guys’ and putting down women that conformed to femininity was my own internalized misogyny. I was also told that not wearing dresses, skirts, and not liking anything pink or ‘girly’ was my internalized misogyny. . . .
(You see how the Internet helps disseminate feminist ideology and rhetoric, so that, by the time she finished high school, this tomboy had learned to call her aversion to femininity “internalized misogyny.”)
I actively worked on unlearning my internalized misogyny. I made more female friends, I learned to listen to them, and I learned to think critically about what my male friends said. I began learning how to prioritize women. I am not done unlearning the sexist socialization I have, but I like to think I’ve made a lot of progress. In high school I also learned to be feminine, for real. I learned to sew, I wore skirts (that I had sewn!) and eventually dresses, for really the first time since my parents dressed me. I wore makeup once in a while, but I hated it. I am currently trying to re-unlearn femininity. It’s going ok.
End of high school, beginning of college I sought out more feminist literature. Mostly through social media, I learned about reproductive rights (particularly when I started on birth control) the wage gap, I learned about rape culture. At 17 I had to ask a counselor how I could best help and support one of my best friends, a survivor of rape. I confronted the rape culture I internalized. I am still learning about all of these things, but I have come a long enough way to wish I had known then what I know now.
College- I began learning about feminist issues I never was exposed to before. I learned about the different tools of oppression that the patriarchy uses to oppress women (including but not limited to): religion, capitalism, socialization, (the act of) sex, race, gender.
This is like reading the diary of a German boy from the 1930s, describing how he joined the Hitlerjugend, marched in the torchlight parade, tuned into Der Führer‘s speech on the radio, and so forth. Any sensible adult understands that a jargon phrase like “gender norms” is just a rhetorical trick, a way of making normal life seem oppressive, so that the maladjusted misfit’s unhappiness is converted from a personal problem to a political cause. (“The personal is political.”) By convincing her to see herself as a victim of collective oppression, feminist ideology invites the misfit to turn her self-pity into a rage against the ubiquitous power of “patriarchy,” which uses so many “different tools . . . to oppress women.”
This paranoid conspiracy theory exacerbates the underlying narcissistic tendencies of the disgruntled misfit. It is an appeal to self-pity, expressing “the worldview of every worthless punk who ever lived”:
Duke: The lights are growing dim, Otto. I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am.
Otto: That’s bulls–t. You’re a white suburban punk just like me.
Duke: Yeah, but it still hurts.
Ah, but these kids never watched Repo Man, and nobody ever bothered to teach them this great lesson: Don’t be a punk. Nobody likes a punk, and blaming “society” for your sorry fate is a punk’s game.
“Reproductive rights!” “Wage gap!” “Rape culture!”
Repeating slogans is no substitute for facts or logic. Whoever raped your friend, the perpetrator was not a “culture,” and accusing yourself of having previously internalized “rape culture” is just a way for you to brag about how much more enlightened you are now.
Feminism’s hegemonic control of higher education means that the Tumblrina never hears any articulate and well-informed criticism of the irrational beliefs of the feminist cult. There were probably followers of Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh who were not as completely brainwashed as the typical Tumblr feminist. Every cult requires an Enemy to fear and hate, and feminism’s enemy is that foul, loathsome and altogether contemptible creature, The Heterosexual Male.
Permit me here to play Rhetorical Tutor for any young men who may be reading this, because some of you guys really are hopelessly stupid.
NEVER ACCEPT THE PREMISE
OF YOUR ANTAGONIST’S ARGUMENT!
Carve that into your cerebral cortex, young men. One of the tricks by which liberals succeed is by smuggling into the argument some dubious premise that they don’t expect you to question. Take for example, “equality.” Exactly what do we mean by “equality”? Where in human history can we locate this “equality” of which the liberal speaks?
A couple of books worth reading — The Mirage of Social Justice by Friedrich Hayek and The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell — will do wonders for helping you see why liberal ideas about “equality” should always be viewed with skepticism. Most people, however, never think seriously about glittering generalities like “equality,” “progress,” “rights,” etc., and are therefore apt to let the liberal get away with smuggling an unexamined premise into the argument. The result is that the liberal easily forces his antagonist into a defensive “me, too” position where, having tacitly accepted the unexamined premise, the conservative cannot avoid certain logical conclusions based on this idea.
In regard to feminism, we find that men are too ready to cede the claim that “equality” between men and women is possible or desirable, without ever bothering to ask questions like, “What do you mean by equality?” Or, “Why is equality such a necessity that we must pass new laws or enact new policies in order to have more equality than currently exists?” Or, “Exactly how will the problem at hand be solved by more equality?”
There are all kinds of questions that could be asked along this line, but instead a young man will often simply accept the premise of “equality” without question, and then finds himself trying to win an unwinnable argument — and making a fool of himself in the process.
We return, then, to the same Tumblrina whose “Feminist Journey” we examined earlier. Her devotion to feminism (i.e., her sense of herself as a victim of patriarchal society) permits her to justify her sociopathic absence of empathy toward males. Now she lashes out:
seriously why people always wanna talk about how patriarchy affects men
like how do you hear something like “you throw like a girl!” and not realize that while one boy is being teased, literally the entire female sex is being told they suck at physical activity.
how can you look at that and just want to say “see! patriarchy hurts boys!!” No it doesn’t, not systemically. It tries to train them into actually being stronger than women, meaner to women. It teaches them that weak, and stupid are Girl things, and therefore all things girls do are stupid, inferior to things Boys do. How you want to look at that and say “yes, and look how that can hurt boys’ feelings!!” ???
Like no. i don’t wanna talk about boys. I don’t want to hear how their feelings got hurt when they got called a girl, as if their feelings getting hurt somehow overshadows the fact that being female is a shame, an insult, a curse. And I don’t understand why someone would want to make a boy’s feelings a priority in feminism. It’s a side effect, one that can be easily fixed if men wanted to fix it. They could start standing up for women, the women and girls in their life, they could teach their sons that women are not inferior, that the people who use ‘girl’ as an insult are in the wrong.
But for some reason it has become feminism’s job, women’s job, to take care of boys’ and men’s feelings and comfort them. Just like always. Color me shocked.
What has happened here? The Tumblrina has encountered someone trying to make a “me, too” argument that “patriarchy affects men.” Yet such a claim rests upon the idea that (a) “patriarchy” exists in the sense that feminist rhetoric implies; and (b) feminists care about men.
WAKE UP, GUYS! FEMINISTS HATE YOU!
As soon as a woman describes herself as a “feminist,” the only smart thing any man can do is to avoid her as much as possible. No feminist actually believes in equality, because the hidden premise of feminist ideology is that males are inherently inferior to women. If men and women were equal, after all, then men would not need all these “different tools of oppression that the patriarchy uses to oppress women,” would they?
The Secret Ingredient of Feminist Ideology is Daddy’s Money. One cannot help but notice that it is usually a quite privileged woman — college-educated, from an above-average socio-economic background — who seizes hold of feminist ideology as a weapon, lashing out at men who don’t treat her with the deference to which she feels entitled.
She is a punk, like Duke in Repo Man, rationalizing her unhappiness by blaming “society,” and she never would have bought into the cult mentality of feminism if she had been psychologically healthy. Self-pity and scapegoating are two sides of the same coin. People who feel sorry for themselves, worshiping at the Blessed Temple of Perpetual Victimhood, are always looking for someone to blame for their unhappiness. This is why you should avoid feminists, or anyone else with that kind of punk attitude. You don’t want to be available as their next scapegoat.
People who lack empathy are selfish, dishonest and cruel. Woe unto anyone who is so foolish as to associate with such people.
Pingback: Some very useful rhetorical advice | Law of Markets()
Pingback: From Around the Blogroll – The First Street Journal.()
Pingback: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup – Easter Edition » Pirate's Cove()
Pingback: Your Easter Links – If You're Left()
Pingback: The Radical Theology of Feminism : The Other McCain()