Personal Empowerment
Personal empowerment has driven my life’s work. Nobody likes being in one-down positions. We all want to be recognized. And we want to be respected. We envision a level playing field. But that’s not the way disturbed characters like it. They always want to be one-up on you. And they sometimes seek advantage in very sneaky ways. They carefully cloak their self-serving, aggressive agendas. That’s how they exploit you. And when that happens you can feel pretty confused, even a little crazy. Your gut may tell you they’re out to get you. But if it’s hard to objectively validate your hunch, you fall prey to the gaslighting effect.
Folks in manipulative and abusive relationships often feel powerless. They try to understand, but find no answers. They try reasoning but find it pointless. And many times, they go the extra mile to make things better, but nothing changes. They end up feeling helpless. And that can lead to feeling hopeless. (See also: Helplessness Need Not Become Hopelessness.)
As I’ve written about before, empowerment is largely about recognizing where you truly do and don’t have power. Sadly, time and again I’ve seen folks invest their time, attention, and energy where they can’t possibly have power. This only leads to frustration, anger, and eventually depression.
Resolve to Be Empowered
New Years is famous for resolutions. But as we know, most resolutions are hard to keep. We promise ourselves we’ll eat less and healthier. But then someone tempts us with that piece of pie. We promise we’ll exercise more and get fit. But then our hectic schedules leave us exhausted, and craving nothing more than a stint on the couch watching something mindless on TV. We mean to do ourselves well. But then we don’t. It just seems too hard.
We only have so much energy. So how’s this for a new year’s resolution: Direct your energy where it can actually do some good. This is not just good for you, but others too. Actually, you have far more power than you think. You just have to direct it in the right place. You have infinite power over your actions. And, interestingly, you even have power over how you think about things. And therein lies the secret to personal empowerment and joy! Stop trying to change what you can’t possibly change anyway. (Usually, that means someone else’s attitudes or behavior.) Focus instead on alternatives for yourself. Alternative perspectives. Alternative actions. Do something different, especially if you’re looking for a new outcome.
Looking Forward
I’m going to be taking my own advice here. And I’ll be updating the readers regularly and the different ways I’ll be putting my message out there. (Of course my books will still be there – with more to come!) It’s going to be an exciting new year. We’re in the middle of a major move right now. And a new studio is still under construction. But big things are coming, and pretty soon. It’s all about empowerment. And that necessarily translates into growth – emotional growth, character growth, spiritual growth. Be it resolved!
A safe, joyful, and prosperous New Year, everyone!
You are such an inspiration Dr. Simon! Thank you.
I like what you wrote about depression Dr. Simon – fighting a battle we can never win does take a beating on the self esteem, among other things. As a mom of adult children I have fought this battle and failed over and over. My daughter is narcisstic, my son is an addict. My son will lie and manipulate but one of the differences between the two is that my son doesn’t seek to dominate by narcissistic aggression as my daughter does. What was hard for me to deal with is that I wanted a good relationship with my adult children, a loving relationship – but I have to accept it for what it is instead. That I don’t and may never have the relationships with my children I desire, but I don’t lose hope because I believe God can intervene. God may or may not – I don’t know that but I am in the process of accepting reality and going forward.
Kat,
I find that anytime I feel like I need a psychological beating, consider calling my NM.
I think depression is a natural response to battering and abuse. I don’t know anyone with such an unshakable self-esteem that they are immune to abuse, battering, captivity, and domestic terrorism. Perhaps another cluster-B would be immune but that’s about it.
It’s not disempowering to acknowledge the piss-poor reality for so many women in this misogynistic world. Many women will live degraded, demoralized, traumatized lives centered around bare minimum animal level survival. Many battered women are done. They are broken. They are ruined. They don’t make it out. Even if they do make it out, against all odds, their shattered minds are still in it.
I think it’s hard for a highly educated man to get women’s plight. Agentic men are afforded all sorts of choices, opportunities, and things most women never get.
At any rate, happy new year to all the ladies of the world who have suffered the horror of having a batterer, a psychopath, or a narcissist prey on them.
But yes, I hope women of the world focus on shaking off that training and indoctrination they’ve received, to cater to the whims of men, caretake, caregiving, etc., and refocus ourselves as the priority in our lives. Let us women serve ourselves and other women, because if we as a class started operating in different ways, we might have better lives. Probably not, as men will escalate their oppression, aggression, and violence, in response, but so be it. We women need to fight for ourselves, serve ourselves, and take care of other women, helping lift other women up.
Sorry, Dr. Simon, I was in man-hating mode at the time. Sorry for my above comment, 3rd paragraph, if it gave offense, it’s just that women have it so much worse then men and I feel for all the suffering women and girls experience in this woman-hating, sexist, male-dominated world. Men and boys ruin women and girls every day. Some never get the chance to heal or recover. Some do, but can’t because their injuries are too severe. They are too broken. Too ruined.
No apology necessary. There are 2 equally sad truths: The first is that the aggressive variant of narcissism is still more common in men for a variety of reasons, only some of which have some biological underpinnings, and because this has been true for eons, and only had some evolutionary value in prehistoric times, women have long suffered oppression, even in the most “civilized” societies. The second is that for various socio-cultural reasons, more and more women are showing some of the same troubling predispositions. Character dysfunction respects no gender boundaries. And it’s an ugly reality no matter what face it wears.
I just found out my adopted son has been abusing his wife of one year. Because of his personality disorders, he comes across as very believable to the judge and attorneys. He can manipulate with the best of them.
But all men are not like that. There are good, strong men in this world that respect women. Men who are good and honest and compassionate. My son had that example in his father and grandfathers and many uncles. But due to mental health issues he just didn’t emulate them.
Yes women have been mistreated and we need to support them and work to educate men and women. But don’t give up hope, because there are many good men out there.
I don’t believe men need education. They know they are doing wrong. If they didn’t, they’d not smear their victims, hide the abuse, force the victim to always make him look good, manipulate and deceive others into believing the victim is at fault. Men know what they are doing. They know they are doing wrong. They know.
It’s a trap to think men need education to make them understand they are misgynists and abusers. They know they are monsters and they know it’s wrong and criminal and that is why they go to great lengths to cover it up, keep the victim either silent or discredited/smeared, and their manipulation and impression management skills are top notch.
You must know how lucky and abnormal your experience is, Shenandoah. Non-abusive husband, brothers (or brothers-in-law), and father. That’s lucky. It gives you the impression that there are many good men out there. My experiences and statistics say otherwise.
Glad to know that you see your son is an abuser. And please don’t fall for the ‘mental health’ diversion trap, with your son blaming it all on ‘anger management problems’ or whatever. Because abusers who can function in other aspects of their lives are not victims of some mental health issues that force them to abuse. My guess is that’s his copout, but if it were genuine mental health issues, you’d see troubles across the board. Same with trauma related being adopted — it’d show up across the board.
Thankfully you acknowledge your son is an abuser. So many moms of abusers refuse to acknowledge such and instead rally for their sons, villianizing the victimized wife. Since his manipulation skills and impression management skills are high enough to come across as very believable to the judge and attorneys, I’d suggest he isn’t victim to any mental health issues, but rather an evil abuser. Dr. Simon would say character-disordered, but it’s evil. Abusers are evil. They never stop being abusers, either.
Finally, I think it’s naive, at best, to believe there are many good men. Nope. Most men are pigs. Most men are perverts. Most men are predatory. Most men are misogynists. Most men are violent (be it physical, verbal, or emotional – violence is violence). Most men are abusers. Most men are rampant porn users (commercial rape, abuse, degradation, and concentrated woman-hating is what porn is – depravity, pure depravity and men get off on it, something like 80-95% of men are regular consumers of porn, which is violence against women).
Life is so bad for women and girls. And in so many other countries it is even worse for girls and women.
I, too, had the impression that men were okay, due to having good men in my immediate family, and then I found out just how abnormal my experience was and how unrepresentative was of the general male population as a whole.
I’d estimate the percentage of decent men to be around 5% of men. The other 95% are found on a continuum of varying degrees of misogyny, sociopathy, sadism, violence, perversions and deviancy. That’s been my experience out in the world, and what I hear from other women and what I read and what various statistics say.
But thanks for the attempt at encouraging me and also for sharing your experience, Shenandoah. Hopefully you do whatever you can to support your son’s victim (his abused wife). If you play ‘neutral’, please know there is no such thing as neutrality in cases of abuse, as ‘neutrality’ aids the abuser and harms the victim.
I am blown away by the clarity of your words, name isn’t needed. I read thirstily. My best friend has long felt this way and I have come around to it too. Happy new year to you too.. Yes I am one who got treated to the works from men but I’m alive and significantly less shattered now. It is empowering to acknowledge reality, even if it is piss poor.
Mmarg,
Thanks for your comment. Good to know I’m not alone in my comments. “I read thirstily.” Wow!
Radical feminist writers, like Andrea Dworkin, make for excellent reading. If you websearch her works, you’ll find a website that has them available as free downloads. One of her books is titled, “Woman-Hating”.
A good radical feminist website is FeministCurrent.com and at least weekly, if not every few days, there is a round-up of the current news. The comments section below it is the best. Just reading other women’s experiences with misogyny, sexism, violence against women, and so forth is the best. Every now and then some arrogant man comes along and starts spouting nonsense and the women roast him. A person learns so much from the articles and from the collection of women who regularly comment.
Shake off the toxic, soul-maiming liberal feminism. Get rid of any makeup (slave paint, adult face paint, clown paint), high heels (rape shoes), uncomfortable ‘feminine’ clothing, stop dying your hair, shaving those legs and performing ‘feminity’ (which is ritualized subordination/ritualized subjugation), and start making sober judgments about the piss-poor, woman-hating world around us. I think seperatism looks more and more appealing everyday because 85-95 of men are toxic, woman-hating, sexist, pervert, predatory ogres and if woman acted as a class and seperated in masse, they might shake things up, but society is too far gone for that, especially in our pornified world.
Shake off your manacles. Stop catering to men, stop performing feminity (sex roles are total BS, there is no such thing as masculinity and feminity, but rather it’s made-up, indoctrinated BS, that serves men’s interests at women’s (and girls’) perpetual expense), stop being ‘nice’ ‘polite’ and performing all sorts of emotional labor for men. Stop with the beauty culture BS. It’s a corset. Take all of it and chuck it into the garbage bin.
But those are a few thoughts of mine. Your life is your own but if we women stopped being divided and conquered and stopped serving and bowing down to men, and acted in solidarity with one another, as a class, we might actually get somewhere in our struggles against male oppression, male supremacy, and male domination.
Happy New Year. I hope more women are listening and become radical feminists (the only true kind of feminisim, as so-called liberal feminism, ‘fun feminism’ which is totally catering to the perversions and interests of men, under the banner of supposedly being ‘feminism’). I suspect most women shy away from such truths because it’s extremely hard, extremely painful to look at the wretched world and how evil men are and how almost half of the world’s population sees the other half as sub-human, undeserving of respect, dignity, security, safety, freedom, and a whole host of other basics and rights.
As for the women who sell out other women in serving men, I loathe those women as they enact the same violence the men do and thus get points with men for doing such. Think about the woman who helped groom and recruit other girls and women into becoming Jeffrey Epstein’s latest victims. There are tons of women ever so willing to sell out and prey on other women in service to men.
Ultimately, it’s like fish learning what is water. We live in such a toxic, misogynistic, sexist world that we are used to it and then incorrectly assume this or that practice/habit is normal/natural/the way things should be.
For everything, ask yourself, “do men do this?” If they don’t, then skip it. Do men get up an hour early to curl (or straighten) their hair and smear on a coat of paint on their faces? No. So, knock that off women. Turning yourselves into living dolls is unhealthy and stupid. You’re human beings, not sex objects and pretified dolls.
Question everything. Question it all. Ask yourself, “who or what does this serve?” Ask, “who benefits?” Examine it all.
Women get used up and spit out and run down and put through a grinder and just made into pulverized nothings. Men are going to do it anyhow, but we women can choose to resist whenever possible, we can chose to throw out the various manacles and beauty and feminity corsets and straightjackets wherever we find them. We can refuse to participate in anything that doesn’t serve us, empower us, and further our interests.
Also, the liberal feminist BS about ‘owning their sexuality’ embracing their sexual selves, etc. It’s such crap. Be a prude. Be proud to be a prude. Refuse to be drawn into the BS pornification guised as ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’. No. Reject those lies.
And whenever possible, wherever you are, stick up for other women and girls. Advocate for other women and girls. Safeguard other women and girls. If you see a girl or woman in some kind of distress due to some pervy or violent or abusive male, enter yourself into the equation, step in, speak up for her. Be a witness. Spread the word. Talk to all the women in your life and advocate for them to re-examine their lives, their supposed ‘choices’ and truly radicalize themselves out of this indoctrinated feminity, socialized subjugation nonsense.
Yes, there will be consequences. And if some makeup is required to keep your job, then for those awful work hours, wear the toxic stuff, but then wipe that crap off at 5pm and keep it off on the weekends.
Same thing with everything else. If you decide to fight back, you may see the abuse and violence in your life escalate, but you’re going to be pummelled anyway, as that’s how the system works.
If you are young, then there is no time like now, because if you don’t do it when young, you’ll almost never do it. Your most radical years are when you are young. Most grow more and more conservative as they age, and become more cautious and careful.
Be bold, women of the world. Enough is enough. Do at least one ‘outrageous’ thing every single day. Those manacles have to be taken off everyday and fought with everyday, such is the totality of male systems and male supremacy and male dominance.
Leah Tverly, and Terri Strange both have YouTube channels. Some pretty good videos.
What about you and your friend, Mmarg? Anything I should read or watch?
Also, in case any of you men are about to say ‘not all men’, that’s obvious, but it is almost all men.
How many of you use porn? If you want to know how disgusting and depraved men are, just research the most popular porn, and see how vile and wicked men actually are. And most men, something like 90 percent consume porn.
These guys are getting not just erections to women being raped, beaten, spit on, choked, degraded, defecated and urinated on, gagged, etc., but they are orgasming to such filth, violence, and misogyny. And it changes their brains, incrementally making them even more calloused, even more predatory, even more rapist-like. Porn is basically rape culture. Men who purchase women are rapists. And they know they are, don’t buy their lies. They know they are rapists and they love ‘buying’ women so they are rendered unable to refuse/resist/etc.
90 percent or so of men are regularly using porn which is concentrated violence against women. And boys are accessing it at a very young age so that by the time they are wanting to date and have their first girlfriend, they’ve masturabated to horrific things, any number of times.
If men didn’t own practically 99 percent of the world’s wealth and resources, then women wouldn’t be forced into their dependendcy state. Women could separate and tell men to ‘f’ off, if they had the means to support themselves. It’s not accidental or coincidental that men hoarde power and money and cling to such with a death grip. They don’t want women to have choices. They want to keep women dependent, subjugated, and owned.
Save your pennies, women. Spend it on other women. Support women-owned businesses. Donate to battered women’s shelters.
And if men want to be decent, regularly donate your cold hard cash to battered women’s shelters and women advocates who spend their lives helping women escape men’s control and violence. Seriously, men have way more money than women do. So, quit the porn, donate to women’s shelters, and cut the sexism, the misgogyny, and call out other men who engage in such.
Thank you for your great response. I love how the internet is good for community building so we can talk to each other. I am going in a more radical direction as I age and am reading Dworkin and making changes. I like your suggestions. My tiny phone keyboard makes it hard to give you the response I wish to. Ienjoyed the wild west days of 90’s blogs before many feminists were hounded off the internet, like Biting Beaver. I Blame the Patriarchy quit, and so did Tiger Beatdown. I miss View From Abroad too. I do believe men know what they are doing and any education we offer them is just laughed at because it means we’ve beensuccessfly gaslighted that they’dcare if only we explain it right. It would be so nice to talk more! Can’t right now.
Yes, Mmarg, this indeed! You wrote, “I do believe men know what they are doing and any education we offer them is just laughed at because it means we’ve been successfly gaslighted that they’d care if only we explain it right.”
It’s their mindf***ery being proven effective. And so many women, myself included, have been duped and deceived into believing that this “if we only explain it right”, then they’ll care and CHANGE for the better. No chance whatsoever. And the reality is that they laugh, be it openly, or inwardly laugh, as they are ‘superior men’ who don’t give a darn about women other than to use, abuse, degrade, harm, exploit, beat, and murder them at will.
And society as a whole is responsible, too, for perpetuating the status quo where another generation of women and girls are brought up believing the lies that if they only were polite enough, nice enough, pretty enough, pleasing enough, accommodating enough, aggreeable enough, … and so forth, then they’ll be protected from men’s violence and abuse. Not so. Same with going the other route, the hardened route, as those warrior women get attacked even more. But at least they are battling. And in said battle, there is great honor and respect owed to them.
People should be teaching girls from the time they can talk about what horrors men are and how dangerous, predatory, perverted, abusive, and deeply misogynistic 95 percent or so of them are.
I don’t know. This world is terrible. Men are horrors. And women are served up on a platter every day to be devoured without thought, much less any negative consequence.
And I’m so glad you exist, Mmarg. Because it’s very rare that another woman has such beliefs and understandings. So much brainwashing, indoctrination, deception, mindf***ery, and gaslighting keeps most women in the fog, in the perpetually subjugated state, not knowing how or why they are in such pain.
And it’s the messengers that are shot. People hate truths. Women especially don’t want to know. It’s too painful.
Growing more radical as you age is fantastic. There are some who do, and those women are such gems if they continue radicalizing and growing into warriors for women.
Penny White has a video on YouTube somewhere and she talks about how it’s unfair to expect young women to be radical feminists, as they still have hope and they want a relationship, etc. She only has a few videos but they are good.
Bitchute looks to be the coming place for videos by radical feminists. Many, if not most, are being banned from Youtube and Twitter for daring to say that men are men and women are women and trans-identified men are really men, are misogynistic bullies, and that women’s sex-based rights and protections shouldn’t be abolished because some AGP in a dress is demanding otherwise. And when trans-identifed men do commit crimes, they get recorded as women, so a woman raped by a man in a dress, cannot refer to her rapist as ‘he’ in the courtroom, but rather must refer to her rapist as ‘she’.
There’s a whole host of things wrong. But basically, on average, three women a day are murdered by men, mostly their husbands, boyfriends, or exes, and in Russia, the average is 40 women a day. Lots of dead. Every year. Think about how much coverage is given to those lives lost in the 9/11 attack. Think about how much coverage, honor, and respect is also given to the soldiers who have been killed in the post 9/11 warring. Let’s ballpark it at about 7,000. We’re coming up on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 20 years at roughly 1100 women killed each year, at the hands of men (3 x 365 = 1095).
Does anyone care? See how grave the numbers are?
Not many care about women, much less the horrors of lives of battered and abused women. And when a thousand women a year are being murdered, nobody seems to care. No great outpouring of care, concern, or calls to action. Nothing but crickets and blaming the dead women. And if you don’t think such happens, think again. A woman is butchered by some man and people (women included) cluck and cluck on and on about how and why she was with someone like him. Newsflash: predators don’t show themselves to be predators until it’s too late.
I hope you really exist, Mmarg. So many trolls pretend. But perhaps other women are reading and the word is getting out and yes things seem very strange at first, as such ideas are new, but there is no time like today and now to be radically altering one’s participation in this world, refusing to perform feminity, etc., shaking off one subjugating restriction at a time.
If anyone else knows of great radical feminist writers, bloggers, and YouTubers (or bitchuters), by all means, share away, please.
Community is so needed. Especially as the numbers of radical feminists (or even those women who are tired of the massive misogyny, sexism, perversions, and violence of men BS exerted on them on any given day and are open-minded to change) are very low. So many women are too willing to sellout for certain levels of comfort in their gilded cages. So many women are too willing to trample and prey on other women to establish themselves higher up on the hierarchy. Then there are the psychopaths and other cluster B women, who although are rare, are sadistically deadly – not raw physical violence, but rather more sadistic spirtual, soul, psyche murder and torture.
Hope there are other women reading and agreeing and thinking about these things, if not commenting, at least actively reading.
As a Christian, I don’t necessarily believe that there is any hope for things changing for the better. The world will become worse and worse. And men aren’t the end all, do all culprit. Sin, evil, wickedness, depravity. Such things are the ultimate cause.
But women and girls are raised to be (and kept as) prey and if we can do anything to even things up or better the odds for other women and girls, than it’s a worthy cause, as women are slaves and prey, the world over.
Men’s oppression of women is like oxygen. It’s everywhere, pretty much always present.
Dead Wild Roses, a Canadian blog, and Pamela Cross has a blog. The Liz Library is amazing for women, law, custody. Phyllis Chesler’s book Women, Money and Power. Marilyn Waring film If Women Counted (or similar title). United Nations Report on the Status of Women 1980 (nothing has changed). Don’t know if the National Anti Poverty Organization is still around. I was resident in a women’s shelter with my children after fleeing My STBX, then was subject to stalking interspersed with regular violent attacks and no police protection. This was in Canada. Next SO was a non-violent gaslighter who subjected me to last-minute changes of plans. Damage was done. I’m free, living in another country, and recovering well.
Thank for the links. I’ll be checking them out. I would give Dr. Simon permission to give you my email address.
I’m most of the way through Last Days at Hot Slit, Andrea Dworkin, and before I forget, God’s Word to Women by Katharine Bushnell was an eye opener especially re mistranslations in the bible concerning women. I no longer have the book but one thing she pointed out was where a word translated as ‘power’ where it referred to men and ‘virtue’ for women.
I had seen a review of Last Days at Hot Slit but I have yet to get it. Thanks for the recommendations of other books and blogs. Haven’t read them or didn’t know about them.
Womens Inhumanity to Women is a Phyllis Chesler book. Something like that.
There is also a YouTuber ‘Black Obsidian’. Some stuff is pretty good.
Megan Murphy is Canadian and she is a radical feminist and runs FeministCurrent.com and has a YouTube channel with a few videos.
I’m glad you’re doing well, MMarg. I’m so happy you escaped not once, but twice. Good for you. I’d email with you but I’m without the security to do so.
I’ve found that abusers are bad enough, but the flying monkeys, the other abusers they recruit, society’s belief in DV myths, and victim-blaming myths regarding battered women, magnify the abuser’s power that much more. It’s like an army quickly forms against the battered woman and she has been beaten down, nearly driven entirely insane, is dead from exhaustion, extreme, unrelenting stress, traumatized, isolated, and reeling from overwhelm and all the threats, violence, and criminal victimization.
Batterers are but cowards. They don’t go after anyone on their own. They gang up and group target their victim. They run in packs. They recruit everyone possible so that the victim has nobody and nothing. They are disgusting and I take great comfort in knowing God will toss them into the fiery pit someday, where they will burn for eternity. Such is the greatness of their evil.
I’m so glad you got out with your kids. I have such great respect for any moms who manage to escape with their kids. I could barely function and I had nobody else to look after, so I don’t know how women with kids get out, but perhaps they get out long, long before the point of no return, which I was thrown across.
Happy Year to you MMarg, and your children, too.
A lot of Radical Feminists are really taking issue with the trans-cult mob (TRAs) and are being booted off social media, as well as blogs are being shut down, because they talk about the trans-cult as being a mob of AGPs and misogynist bullies. One blog was an aggregate of news stories of trans-identified men doing the very things they claim not to be wanting (‘we only want to pee’ – yeah right) and assaulting, being pervs, creeps, and dangerous criminals attacking, harassing, assaulting women in women’s spaces.
Seems to be same old, same old — men silencing women.
I feel like the trans-cult is so problematic that is demands a lot of attention because of the implications of allowing men to up and claim they are women at any given moment and thus be afforded access to shelters, bathrooms, changing rooms, women’s prisons, etc. But it seems to be a big distraction and time suck as well, since all the rest of men’s misogyny, violence, abuse, harassment, etc. drops down in priority since the gender identity laws must be fought in order to protect what little sex-based rights and protections we women do have.
And in case others are reading and saying, ‘what’s the big deal? let them be, let them pee where they want to be’ just think about the real world implications of allowing any men, at any time, to up and claim they are women (without any performative ‘feminity’ required, such as throwing on a dress, or lipstick or sporting a purse). To illustrate the absurdity, a few women in Britain, I believe, created Man Fridays, where they’d go and claim to be men on a particular Friday and go to a men’s space, such as claiming to be men and going swimming in a men’s only swimming hour. And there was great uproar. The men weren’t having it. And yet that is what is expected of women, with bearded, balls and dick intact, men going about claiming to be women and accessing very private spaces.
The Vancouver Rape Shelter lost funding because they refused to bow down to the Trans Rights Activists and allow men (trans-identified men) into their shelter and space, keeping it women only. Then, the TRAs went and nailed a dead rat to the building, with all sorts of ‘TERFS’ and other scrawlings.
The world is a horrible place. We live in war zones, whether we admit it or not. And if any woman’s life is going well, then I ask her to help other women whose lives are more circumscribed by men’s violence and inhumanity against women. Help girls around the world. Help women around the world. No matter where we are, by statistics alone, there are victims all around us.
Spread the word. Make sure to educate the women around you as to their rights, choices, and what BS the performative femininity truly is. Make sure to support and empower every woman and girl one encounters in life, to the best of your ability. And I’ve been victimized by so many other women, so I don’t subscribe to the ‘all women are good’ fallacy, but I’d rather assist women because if we women don’t act as a class and organize on the basis of class, we’ll continue to be divided and conquered.
Just think about what would happen if all the women in the world, all at once, acted in solidarity to combat men’s violence and abuse of women. They’d probably start executing, but we’d die or be beaten unconscious resisting, defending, and protesting the piss-poor reality we otherwise are forced to live these days. We’d go down fighting. It’d be the first time we actually stood a chance. Acting as a class. It’s the only way. There is power in numbers. Men know this and that is why men back other men and continue doing so.
But I’m sure you know all these things and are way better read than I, way more current on things, etc.
I’m so glad you exist and that you commented, MMarg. It’s so isolating otherwise and as you said, (i think it was you) community is so very important.
Also, has anyone actually seen anything in education addressing these things?
Why in the world are we spending massive amounts of time in K-12 education teaching kids (especially girls) needless and worthless things?
How many adults’ lives have been enriched on a daily basis for having taken trig, for example? How many people use what they learned in trig class on a regular basis? Almost none. And yet how many women and girls would be saved massive amounts of harm, damage, grief, and trauma if they were drilled with the facts of misogyny, abuse, sexual harassment, wife-beating (interesting how men’s violence against women is given sanitized, gender-neutral terms like ‘domestic violence’) and so forth?
Every girl, from K-12 should be receiving age-appropriate knowledge about how to protect themselves, what boys and men will do to them, what abuse looks and feels like, role play out boundaries, being an advocate/witness/active bystander for other girls/women, self-defense tactics, and so forth, on a regular, weekly, (I’d say daily, but that might be too depressing for small children to handle) basis.
From my own experiences, what I hear and read, I’ve come to the conclusion that most women are abused. If they aren’t beaten at home, then they are abused in the workplace. If not at the workplace, then just out and about in the world, perhaps a neighborhood stalker, a pervert neighbor.
So, if pretty much every single last woman has been victimized at some point by men/boys, then why in the world is our educational system not doing anything about it? (Let me count the reasons….)
I think women must educate women and girls. Hold neighborhood get-togethers and educate girls once a week, switching off from one home to another, with one mom leading one session, switching to another mom. Moms can’t do it all but if women teamed up and pooled their resources (time, attention, energy, knowledge/expertise/life experiences), there’d be more impact.
Perhaps nobody wants to perform the crushing job of explaining the piss-poor woman-hating world we live in to young girls, but it’s better for them to know it, than to assume it’s somehow happening because of something they did or didn’t do and personallizing it, rather than being educated to correctly identify it as symptomatic of worldwide misogyny.
Perhaps if girls knew from early on that men and boys didn’t see them as actual human beings, but rather f***toys, or slaves, or punching bags (emotional, physical, doesn’t matter, violence is violence), they’d be better equipped in life.
Same thing with Dr. Simon’s teachings. If I had kids, girls especially, I’d be ensuring they’d be well-equipped in the ways of narcs, psychopaths, etc. and able to identify such prior to dating. I’d disabuse them of the ideas of our culture, like the junk taught in all the disney movies, romantic comedies, etc. They’d also be carrying weapons at all times, even if only pepper spray (as obviously gun laws prohibit a child carrying a handgun to school) and assure them that I’d back them up if they needed to defend themselves from some creep boy, harassing, assaulting them.
Mmarg,
I Blame the Patriarchy is fabulous! Thank you so much for sharing that. In reading it, a person feels their brain cells activating again.
It’s most unfortunate that she stopped blogging.
I am envisioning a year of loving myself-not in a narcissistic way but as the opposite of hating myself. I know how to love others and I will apply that same nurturing, supportive and loving acceptance of myself as I do to others. In this way I believe I will empower myself to live a better life. I know I had PTSD from living with the ex-narc husband and had no idea what even went on for a long time, and now I want to take my life back.
Thank you, Dr. Simon, your work has helped me tremendously. Particularly the way you explain manipulation and character disorders with such clarity, pin-pointing precisely what the distinctions are, so that people can understand and the fog of confusion is lifted!
The word ’empowerment’ is wide open to interpretation. As easy as it is to view the problems of the world, and the long list of decline; complaining doesn’t really empower anyone. Compare our world today to the atrocities of World War II. You might say the world has grown quite a bit.
There will always be a balance between the positive and negative traits in life. But empowerment starts with you. Only you can empower yourself to make your life better, which, in turn, makes life around you a little better as well.
I view 2020 as the year of love. Blessings to all of you.
Apples and oranges, Truth Seeker. Comparing today to wartime and the atrocities of WWII. Compare and contrast wartime with another wartime. How many Jewish people were murdered over how many years? Look at Africa where in Rwanda in about 100 days, 800,000 or so people were slaughtered. The world is not getting better.
There is no balance of positive and negative in life. That statement reveals privilege. If your life is privileged enough, such piss poor realities for so many people are but a thought exercise, a rhetorical argument, instead of lived reality – inescapable lived reality.
Revolutions are necessary. Broad, disruptive changes are needed, When world thought leaders convince the disempowered masses that it starts with them and that change is individualistic, then we have stagnation and a perpetuation of the piss poor status quo.
Case in point, let’s say you are convinced that if only people would recycle more, then our grave trajectory would be altered and climate change would be reversed before it gets to the point of no return. Perhaps you believe everyone should be vegan and practice zero-waste and so stop eating meat, stop using plastic, and even have all your family members change their habits. Then what? Have you radically altered the world? Have you affected the powers that be? Nope. What about all the commercial waste? Your decision to change lightbulbs does nothing in reality. Even if you ditch your car, start biking everywhere, and whatnot else – the Amazon is still burning. China and India are still polluting. Just the same as the U.S.
So what do these individualized changes really do? They make you feel good. They give you the illusion of empowerment. They give you warm fuzzies that at least you don’t eat meat, you don’t allow any single-use plastics in your home, and so on it goes.
The world is still burning. Masses are still enslaved. The powers that be are still unaffected; thus, the policies are still the same and governments are still catering to the ultra-rich. People are still starving to death the world over. Refugees are still being treated as nothings. The poor are still disempowered. The least powerful are still being disregarded as disposable trash or as burdens needing to be reprimanded, scolded, etc. to the masses and the most powerful.
Being empowered means having real power. Most will never have much of any power, and thus very few, if any, meaningful choices and true options.
But to expend any more effort, energy, time, etc. on any cluster B, narcissist, abuser, psychopath? Absolutely not. I hope all those targets in the world, being victimized with impunity, fast forward to the realization of cluster Bs and their ilk are but evil, wicked, degenerates, worthy of nothing. Shut them out of your life any way you can, or die trying. Starve the leeches of their blood supply. That is the hard truth. Most men are evil. I don’t really care if they are supposedly victims of socialization or not (i’d argue they are not), because the reality is after 20 or so years of said socialization, the cake is baked. There is no reworking of things, no education, no re-socialization. Nope. What a time suck and cruel play on naive (or ignorant, or misinformed) people’s hopes.
Embracing ‘love’ means truth and justice, too. Not just warm fuzzies and happy thoughts. Such is not love. Love involves hard truths. Love REQUIRES justice. Otherwise it’s some heady, feel good concept that only perpetuates the piss poor status quo. Wolves are everywhere and they must be fought, anything less and the sheep are eaten with impunity. Can’t cuddle wolves without it being at the expense of sheep. Can’t think good thoughts without your feel-good mental trip helping the wolves eat more sheep (as you are distracted with your good feelings/good thoughts meditations or whatever else). Real love involves beating back and exterminating the wolves of society.
Don’t be fooled. These feel-good, warm fuzzy headtrips are not real love. Wolves eat sheep whether or not you think good thoughts or not.
Real love involves and requires truth and justice. And real empowerment involves and requires the masses banding together and demanding and requiring immediate change with concrete results immediately shown.
If every woman in the world collectively did away with the men in their lives, on the street, in the workplace, in the community and was willing to enforce her boundaries and immediate separation with lethal violence (if need be), and demanded concrete change from men, there’d be a shift. Probably be a slaughterfest by the men’s doing, as they won’t allow women to have any real empowerment, real change. But if women, en masse, acted in solidarity and demanded all porn be burned, all johns be given death (johns are rapists, don’t you kid yourselves in thinking otherwise), carried out immediately, and surrougacy ends (renting out women’s wombs is horrific exploitation and makes me think about this village in India where most of the women have only one kidney as their husbands’ sold off their other kidney, and husbands are renting out their wives’ wombs nowadays in our so-called developed, 1st world nation), wife-beaters will be castrated (to prevent another generation from being bred and plaguing the next generation of women with more wife-beaters) and jailed.
‘Crazy’ ideas? Perhaps. But thinking out of the box and thinking in radical ways, really empowered ways, is way more beneficial than warm fuzzies while the rest of the world suffers.
I hope women are reading. I hope women are growing dramatically more radial each day. I hope they start brainstorming up creative, radical, possible solutions and ways to bring about immediate change. And I hope women are acting in greater solidarity with one another. It’s the only way. There is strength in numbers. Men already control and horde practically all power and resources in this world, so women must use numbers and solidarity and radical changes.