Remix! and nonfiction

[rivkat]

For remix I wrote Taxus brevifolia (the serpentine fibres intertwined remix), Sam/Dean with sex pollen. And I can now report that the amazing remix I got, Vagabondage (the trust fall remix), was by Trojie, and yay, I found a new author to enjoy out of it too!

Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men: Abuse is about entitlement, not anger. It results from misogynistic attitudes, not emotions. As a result, conventional therapy directed at understanding emotions won’t work and may be counterproductive. Abusers sssentially always engage in calculation: they can always answer questions like, you hit her, but why didn’t you break her bones? Why didn’t you kill her? So they don’t lose control entirely, but that explanation is very useful to them. Instead, they abuse because they think they're justified. Abusers believe they're entitled to all a partner's attention and efforts. As a result, any attempt to get him to consider her is an attack and an injury, to which he may justly respond with punishment.

I was incredibly struck by the similarities to other assertions of male privilege. It goes way beyond men thinking that women are dominating a conversation when they reach 30% participation (Bancroft points out that abusers think this because they think that zero participation is the appropriate level for women). Consider this Mother Jones story, where a gun advocate bullies deliberately while accusing his peaceful interlocutors of harming him:

Jones and his camera crew began cornering members of [Moms Demand Action]. The women told him they weren't interested in talking on camera, but he kept at it.

An older couple walked over to intervene, the man telling Jones, "A gun grab is something that nobody in this country wants." Jones got in the man's face, hands gesticulating, chest puffed out. "Well sir, all I can say is you're really gettin' in my space!"

"Well, why don't you back up?" the man said.

"No, I'm not gonna back up." Jones retorted, inching in closer. "You're the one got in my space." He glanced over to his camera crew. "Look at this, look at this guy."

The woman tried to pull her husband away. "All right, go ahead," Jones continued. "Listen, I don't want to beat an old guy up," he added, poking the man's chest. "So don't touch me."

I don’t doubt that Jones really believed that he was not the aggressor. That’s part of what makes him and people like him so dangerous: to him, everyone else—especially women—is asking for it.

Comments

[arliss]

That's enlightening, and frightening to contemplate. It's as though there's absolutely no empathy there, no human compassion to appeal to. I suspect they view other males simply as competitors to measure against and dominate. And once dominated, those "lesser" men can be dismissed as irrelevant, just as women are, only there for ego-boosting dominance displays.

I wonder, is this attitude wholly a product of upbringing? Or is there some trait present at birth to predispose these men to this behavior?

[rivkat]

Bancroft suggests that, for many abusers at least, it requires a lot of careful maintenance to suppress what should be ordinary empathy for the victim, although the need for this degrades over time as he becomes used to it. The book doesn't get too much into causes, though upbringing is clearly a part.

[rachelmanija]

I think it's a learned behavior, but the learning doesn't come entirely from childhood. Unlike many other types of antisocial behavior, there is very little social or legal discouragement of men being abusive and violent to women. (The exception would be a non-sexual assault of a woman he's not in a relationship with - society comes down like a ton of bricks if you beat up a stranger, a co-worker, etc.)

So if a man abuses his female partner once, there are either no or good (to him) consequences - he gets what he wanted. Then he tries it again. Same result. Now he's learning that this is an acceptable behavior without negative consequences.

(I work at a rape crisis/domestic violence center. If you want to commit a crime and have virtual certainty of getting away with it, be a man who rapes any woman or beats a woman he's sexually involved with.)

[citrusjava.livejournal.com]

Fic: I'm in the middle of your Vagabondage, and och, I love it. I love reading Dean and Sam in that interaction, love that Dean knows what he's into and why, love that Sam wants him to have that and be safe, them taking the time and space to make it work in their lives.... also - just - hot :)

Book: I'm always worried, and perhaps I'm wrong, that connecting abuse with such specific characteristics leaves out quite a few abusers (one comes to mind, whom I've had the misfortune of knowing personally). Still, it's really good to talk about these issues, I guess, that book probably helped many people.

[rivkat]

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I like Dean knowing what he wants and getting it.

The book focuses on different behaviors the author defines as abusive, including verbal abuse, and tactics different abusers use; I'm not sure which specifics you're worried about, but the author did not suggest that someone who looked/behaved a particular way on the outside wasn't abusive.