I have developed two primary responses to disingenuous or manipulative social media comments. The first was one I observed and the second I developed myself.
1) what is your intention with this comment?
2) (this comes up because I am a professional homeopath and that triggers to cosmic f*** out of certain types of people who consider themselves intellectually superior “skeptics,” and also because there are a lot of paid trolls on the internet who search for the word “homeopathy” in order to start fights):
I will get some apparently-innocuous questioning comment, and I can tell it’s not a sincere effort to engage. So I say:
I would love to engage with you on this topic if you are sincere. As my time (and presumably yours) is valuable, I have some initial criteria before discussing this further.
What is your intention with this question?
What is your position on the issue at hand?
Make a case for your intention to engage in earnest and honest debate.
Of course, if I don’t feel something is off, I won’t do this.
Great responses to assess intent and sincerity. The science-based medicine types are especially sanctimonious and ready to go to battle to prove that their paradigm of life is superior.
I love this. I’ve gotten such unexpected pushback here on my couples therapy blog (It’s bullshit! It’s gay!) that I’ve had to develop a spidey sense of where people are coming from as I try to respond authentically to all kinds of comments. The next time I get an ambiguous one I’m using your model — seems like a real time and energy saver!!
Thanks so much for naming this. I get very similar "commands" in the comments on my YouTube channel. I was just about to make a short about this -- the use of the word "please" to preface a command to NOT DO whatever it is -- use of a word ("please don't say 'freedom'"), assertion of an opinion ("please stop stigmatizing sex workers by saying there's a high correlation with history of sexual abuse"), or characterization of a problem "please admit that capitalism is the real problem...").
It's so much more than offering one's opinion. There seems literally to be an expectation that I shall be controlled, and 100% of the time it's based on their belief that they must save the audience from me. And yes it's insane. And yes it's smug. And yes, it's always by women (destructive men do their own style of harm).
When I've pushed back they retreat into "I'm just trying to help vulnerable people" OR they collapse into a full on attack with epithets that get a person cancelled. Sometimes I push back hard just so anyone reading the comments can see where I stand and to role model a good strong "Go F Yourself" in not so many words.
I spent an hour yesterday fighting back against such a person -- a therapist claiming I say things I don't, and calling me dangerous for it, and alerting all my viewers that I'm bad -- and her response was MORE false and dishonest attacks, cloaked in "I'm just trying to help" and "Please don't take this as criticism" I regret every minute I bothered with her. Fighting risks provoking destructive people to take real-world action against you. So I did what I should have done in the first place and hid her from the channel, so the rest of us could carry on with the kind of thoughtful discussion and kind encouragement appropriate for community of strangers working hard to get out of a trauma-driven life problems.
The hazards of having a large following: envious therapists who want to try to take you down. It's difficult at times to deal with such people when you want to model actions rooted in the principles you value while resisting the covert aggression and potential reputation damaging threats they pose. One has to navigate the tension between holding your ground and not stooping to their level, all while ensuring their covert tactics don’t gain traction. It’s a constant balancing act of choosing when to address the aggression directly, when to let your work speak for itself, and when to strategically disengage to protect your energy and reputation.
I didn’t see this til today (have been deep in another project). Thanks, Nathalie for hearing and describing the issue so well (I’m detecting this is one of your superpowers). Many of us handle this aggression in the isolation of our digital worlds, and I for one am more vulnerable to self suppression while isolated. Hope we get to chat on this side sometime.
Words are "violence". They are so wrapped up in their "beliefs as identity" ideology that when you say something that challenges their worldview, the emotional response is "I have been attacked". Pure pathology from the most pathologized group of people in history.
I know I'm leaving a belated response, but I appreciate what you said here. The example you gave, “please don't say 'freedom” is a command, but it is embedded or linked to the word please. It’s basic NLP — neurolinguistic programming. Once you start recognizing when people are attempting to use NLP (pick up artists are notorious for using against women) as a form of persuasion, you're less likely to fall for this form of manipulation. “Please” is not always a bad word. If someone says, “please pass the butter” at the table, I'm not offended by their directive. Context is everything.
Anna, the Devouring Mother posture of "all adults that disagree are children unable to see the real truth, were harmed with bad-think and so we must control what they see, read, hear and think, .. for the children" is a FemNazi Sickness that has poisoned the western world and everywhere else mothers hire Witches to torture to death, silently screaming our daughters and sons and brothers, and sisters, and raise generations to accept evil and insane as 'acceptable' or even praiseworthy.
Consider Ann those many that will read such a comment you would remove from access to all us children for protection, those many that can and do see them for what they are and what slimy people they are. A good example of vile lying manipulating modern Western professional womanhood and fatherless delusional psychotic dog-males, crawling on their bellys calling "Hail Vagina Supremacy, kick me in my gonads again please, like mom use to do!"
Dr. Natalie, I can’t thank you enough for creating these posts. With a single bullet point you helped me shift my entire perspective and reframe a very painful situation.
We (the non-narcissists) need to get better at the step you laid out, as the world has been taught and then steeped in this festering, mental frap for decades.
This, if people understand your teaching here and start widening their gaze, will be like spotting blue VW beetles everywhere, after being ask "what happened to all the blue VW beetles?"
Thanks for giving us the tools to claw back some of the sanity and normalcy!!
I'm not suggesting that I haven't done this behaviour before. I'm sure I have been covertly menacing and demanding. But becoming aware of the impact of dishonesty has had on my psyche and the damage it can do to functional relationships has helped me adjust my approach to engagement. Just because something isn't done intentionally or with malicious intent doesn't make it any less annoying or hurtful.
I'm glad we're getting better at spotting these domination attempts - not to demonise those who use them but to give us options for responding that aims at leveling power, models to others limits of tolerance/disrespect, and hopefully deters others from piling on.
It’s like you’re reading my mind. I’ve got a piece half written on how feminism is a system of social control of the self and others, invisible. And naming it begets ostracism and even more attempts at control. I think we overlap quite a bit as usual. Feminism can’t deal with critique by design because it’s a continuation and justification for the social control mechanisms women have evolved to assert, even though it’s framed as the opposite of traditional gender norms. To the contrary, it reinforces the very behavior it claims to transcend. I have been on the receiving end of the type of policing you dissected but I hadn’t before been able to name it as an assertion of control. Now I get why I’m always so disturbed when I encounter women like that. Where I’m now struggling is with my reaction to these kids of women; I am triggered, quite literally, by women like that and I need to now be.
Apparently, what you describe is known as 'empowerment', ironic given it comes about through disempowerment. Can't wait to read your piece on feminism!
I think you will continue to feel annoyed by this behaviour but perhaps now that it has a name, description and psychological explanation, it might become easier to 1) become less/not disturbed by it 2) have neutral, assertive responses ready to go that name the real issue they're having, the deflecting approach they are attempting, and your disinterest in engaging with disingenuous remarks.
Or, one of my favourites is to play dumb and ask 'I don't know what you mean by 'x'. Can you explain so that I understand you better.' They can waste their energy the way they tried to waste yours.
The playing dumb thing can really work IRL, but there can be blowback if the group is female dominated (I was a web server administrator in a marketing department), depending on how many of your co-workers are bamboozled by the bullshit.
Sadly, I think this kind of pushback tends to work better online than it does in person. When it's done in person, it's pretty likely to backfire. (However, there may be some cases where the stakes are high enough that it's worth taking that risk...I can't tell someone else whether it's worth it or not.)
I'm a man, and for years, my sister's MO has been to try to provoke me into fighting with her at family gatherings so she can claim that I attacked her for no reason and that she's a helpless victim. She also polices, nitpicks, and one-ups almost every single word that comes out of my mouth. Nothing I say is ever "innocent" or "just making conversation," according to her...it's always motivated by some nefarious ulterior motive. And she frequently says hostile things to me while playing it off as if it's just a joke.
I truly feel like I'm in a situation where I can't win. If I call her out on her behavior, it will start a fight, and it will make me look toxic, aggressive, and abusive. I'll be the one who gets blamed for starting the fight, I'll be the one who "ruined" the family gathering for everybody, and my other family members will side with her. (I know, because this has happened more than once in the past.) If I don't push back, her behavior will go unchallenged and it will escalate. My only other option is to get up and leave the family gathering immediately whenever I'm provoked (and I have done this before). Just get in my car and drive away without warning and without a word. This is better than the other two options, but it still sucks, because I will still get blamed for overreacting and being "unreasonable" (although the blame will be less severe than it would have been if I had gotten into a fight with her). There are no "good" options here. I'm seriously considering going no contact with my sister for good and refusing to come to any family events where she will be present. But if I do that, I will receive even more blame from other family members for overreacting and being unreasonable and tearing the family apart over something seemingly "petty." I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to say, "Fuck it...I don't care about the consequences. Whatever happens happens"
You really have to be on your toes when countering in-person attacks because they're always more practiced at it and it's much easier to escalate in person, thereby gaining compliance more rapidly, than online where one has time to gather thoughts and articulate a response.
But it CAN be done if you can withstand the emotional leveraging.
Kyle, sounds like she has your number and since you & her could not have had a decent father that by example showed you both what is acceptable and how to managed such lying slimy testicle-kicking psycho like her by him being a good husband and lovingly correcting your mother when she started to become a delusional screeching horror like your sister now is.
But don't blame him - no mother what you Witch-directed mother lied about him to you and her, if your sister's that much of a F-ing horror, well, the bad Fruit falls close to they baby-murdering male-hating family-fatherhood destroying Joy-Love-Hope mutilating Devouring Mother. Maybe you would not hate her and believe most women better left in middle of ocean - because why should sharks be poisoned like you were, and .. um .. unable to have normal relationship(s) and children.
I suggest you wait until she disrespects you at the family gathering and then pull your sack-out in the breeze, and call her a lying slimy manipulating man-hating walking bag of feted poisonous vomit, "Like Mom." And put you sack back, sit down and eat. And anyone pushes back - call um a castrated mind-raped Strap-on sucker belly-crawling soul-mutilated hunk of feces like she is, F-off and stop vomiting your BS.
Perhaps that will be a gathering to remember, and with a show like that - expect them to invite their friends next year.
Your instincts are pretty accurate...my sister IS a lot like my mom, and both of them are man-haters. My dad is a good man, but he didn't do a good job of standing up to my mom when the two of them were still married. I've definitely had a lot of those fantasies about what I would LIKE to have said to my sister when she got out of line, but I realize that if I did that, I'd be giving her exactly what she wants, and the negative consequences would harm me more than they would harm her. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to be a pushover and not stand up for myself, but I think there's more than one way of standing up for myself.
Dude! Same! It’s only during family gatherings, but my kid sister will subtly provoke an argument, then accuse me of losing my temper when I confront the argument. When she was an infant, our mom had hepatitis, so my sister spent some time with our aunt’s family. She has come to realize that this abandonment by our mom has had a psychological impact on her. Only recently have I learned that one of the typical behaviors of an abandonment victim is attempting to divide the family. It’s exactly what she does.
I call her on her bullshit, tell her it’s “gaslighting.” Outside of family gatherings we are very close friends. She has recently married a fantastic guy who is devoted to her and when he’s around, she doesn’t pull her BS nearly as much. She has more confidence in herself when he’s there.
Yes, I think my sister is constantly "competing" with me, which is one of the reasons why she does what she does. (I have absolutely zero desire to compete with her. But she won't stop trying to prove she's "better" than me.) With your sister, there's probably some kind of jealousy there which is not your fault. It doesn't excuse her behavior in any way, though.
My sister is also younger than me, like yours is. I wonder if there's a pattern there or if it's just coincidence.
When I was a young man working summers between HS on farming crews and other laboring with mostly men but a few unpoisoned by gender-studies and psycho-delusions of 'man-bad, women-victim', and the sane years before mid-1970s people worked to be respectful and fair in arguments and most everything face-to-face because the threat of punching some disrespecting man or slapping some lying back-stabbing women was ever present.
Does anyone remember those days before FemNazi started sucking-off the State and vice versa so murdering babies anytime and false rape accusations and 911 because bad-VagFeelie words?
When a mid-aged boy I remember seeing a man slap a woman - girl friend or wife - in public and heard one woman say to the other woman she was with 'I wonder what she did?'
Thank God I knew a time when such understanding and sanity once existed. Don't despair, perhaps after WWIII the survivors will not have Satanic FemNazi insane ball-crushers in power, and decent men & women can slap sense and the Fear-of-God and a man's fist or a group's rope, that the slimy lying fatherless walking nightmare teachers, law-makers, judges, false-witnessers, baby-killers (Abortionists and murdering mothers), family destroyers, unJust reputation attackers, .. will repent or bleed, again.
I agree with you. You have to time to think and assess your response online vs in person. The way I have found that I could manage this in person is to anticipate the need and prepare to respond this way, because you would have experienced that person using soft control tactics on you before. It's very difficult otherwise because it's too subtle to notice in the moment and frozen by self-doubt/cognitive dissonance.
Great article. Just more proof that girls and women really do have their own brand of socio-emotional bullying, espcially with those pushing social justice religion and in Europe with what Gad Saad calls "suicidial empathy".
The fruits of dark feminism (or maybe just feminism). These women would rather police each other believing in their benevolence than consider how they're the tools of a more oppressive force.
This post really resonated with me. As a male psychologist, I’ve found that the most effective way to respond to covert dominance isn’t to escalate, but to stay grounded and redirect the energy.
In my work—and frankly, in life—I tend to practice what could loosely be called psychological aikido: take the initial move at face value, respond with calm clarity, and then let the next move reveal the true intent. When someone is trying to control the frame of a conversation through soft tactics, staying neutral but firm often prompts them to overplay their hand. That’s when their positioning becomes visible to others too.
Soft power, when used with integrity, can be a strength. But when it’s used to mask control or moral superiority, a quiet, steady stance often speaks louder than any performance of virtue. Thanks for modeling that here.
I really appreciate this perspective: your ‘psychological aikido’ approach is such a powerful way to navigate these dynamics without getting pulled into the performance.
I also like your distinction between soft power with integrity vs soft control for enforcing compliance.
Been there done that & unfortunately have the souvenirs to prove it, most of the corporate world is middle managed by women & these types of things happen all the time. There is not much help for dealing with them, but thank you for bringing it up. This is a narrative that needs to get attention. Entertainment & media are definitely a major hot bed for this kind of thing, it is very corporate despite how much they don't like to be capitalists they are, so they try to avoid this fact a lot. Again middle managed by a lot of women, but one of the bigger issues is that HR is also run by the same dynamics, so not much gets done hopefully this will change, as of now most men still see these problems as trivial, I guess they often are but they can end up being very expensive for businesses to deal with so I hope we all start to change how we look at this.
Great comment Gina! Yes, I've had this experience in hospital research admin roles. It's everywhere that there's female dominance. Some of the men attracted to healthcare (ie paediatrics) have also engaged in this form of covert aggression.
There are a lot of feminized men out there, most people don’t know what they are looking at when they are confronted with it. Breaking down this behavior is hard to explain to most men, they really don’t get it I have described situations like this to someone that I know & they just ask why? It isn’t a thing men do most of the time, they have other things they do so it is like explaining aliens or something to someone.
Sometimes, but the power dynamic is different because they've ostensibly hired us to do job. If they obstruct that work because of their illness, we have to find a way to navigate it so we don't elicit defensiveness and make the job even harder. In other words, it's on us to resolve it, not just avoid it. However, I'm also a man and I can only speculate if this happens more frequently or less frequently to female therapists. I have no idea.
Where I definitely do see it is in leadership within the organizations, either formal (agencies, schools) or informal (clubs, associations, boards). PTOs/PTAs, K-12 schools, colleges/departments, and of course hospitals and clinics are rife with this kind of catty, sanctimonious attitude. They're impervious to feedback unless it comes from within, and if you don't read their mind on what they want from you, it's almost like they're willfully looking to knife you while smiling. In non-healthcare and non-higher ed settings this usually occurs in HR domain, either public or private. Rare is the case of an HR director who shoots straight and whose existence isn't either a) self-promotion or b) authoritarian control.
It certainly prevalent among administrative and clinical leadership. Thanks for describing your own clinical experiences too- you have a job to do and you have to try to make the therapeutic relationship work.
I used to work in an almost all female environment. It was hell. The jealousy and back stabbing was unfathomable to me. As a very secure person, I have no idea how to relate to or understand their behavior.
You should do a study on why women today are so pathologically insecure. Or has it always been like this?
As a result, I have almost no women friends. Don't miss them at all. I had my fill.
I think female empowerment ideology (aka toxic feminism) is like a cult that grooms women into thinking they are empowered when they adopt certain beliefs and behaviours. Anyone who assimilates into a cult/groupthink will eventually feel Imposter Syndrome because disconnecting from one's essence, values, principles and culture in order to belong and 'do the right thing' is going to make someone more anxious and insecure. Intrasexual competition is rife in False Sisterhood communities, making it necessary to seek external validation and losing self-confidence in the process.
That's it. You nailed it. You just contextualized the reason why I was "out" in grade school and beyond. The smartest and at one point one of the prettiest girls in my class; yet I never wanted to be "the" popular girl, nor did I ever put any energy into competing. (I grew up in affluent Newport Beach, CA. I found out as a Jr. in high school that I was voted homecoming queen and "those" girls threw away all the votes for me; a small example of the petty things women have done to me all my life. I wonder if it drove them crazy that I did not care; in truth, I was relieved). I am, and was, just me. Talking to any of them was - wooden. Not a drop of sincerity to be found. I was a bookworm; a nerd; I never understood what was going on around me. It continued throughout my life as I just ignored the poison and succeeded in spite of them. I never engaged. You can probably imagine the sabotage and hatred I have been subjected to throughout my career. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! THANK YOU!!
I can only imagine the sabotage and hatred from unrestrained envy by other insecure women. I'm sorry that girls and women couldn't see you as a peer or couldn't see you as a whole person beyond the attributes they chose to envy/despise.
I had the opposite - I could not assimilate because I was too different. Immigrant parents, apartment building dwelling Jewish family in school with assimilated middle class to wealthy Jewish families or Orthodox Jewish families. I didn't fit into either box so the few of us like me were outcasts. I had to learn that inability to assimilate is an internally built in protective resistance - which I cherish now.
I'm so happy that I was able to help you make sense of your experience and that you are successful regardless! Congratulations!!!!
I didn't grow up around enough women to understand these games and when I tried to go out into the world, it hit me in the face as I was shunned from one female-dominated group after another, not for any infraction, but just because I somehow didn't fit in. I didn't bow to those games because I didn't notice the subtlety of it. Nowadays, I just refuse to comply. And that's why I don't have a lot of female friends, except for weird or outspoken ones who don't do cliques.
You're probably much happier than has you been in weird cliques. Better to have a select few outspoken besties than a toxic group enforcing compliance.
After doing all the mental gymnastics I could manage throughout the years to metabolize and respond, I finally settled on refusing to engage and journaling about what my gut reaction to their comment says about how I view myself and the world. Too much of my time and energy was spent on defending my intention, which stands on its own and doesn't need to be defended as long as I'm clear with myself.
Conversational exchanges don’t bother me so much as when it’s a manager in the workplace using it to control behavior.
They’ll question your commitment if you won’t skip lunch breaks… or question your work ethic if you won’t work hours outside of your agreed upon hours, “I guess you don’t care if we win or lose” or “you should find a job where your work ethic doesn’t impact the future of the country,” it’s covert labor abuse, and men have actually started to adopt it… because it’s psychological manipulation and can’t be traced. I’m not sure what can be done. It’s frustrating, for sure. Taking the moral high ground to be an ***hole is next level ***hole
“you should find a job where your work ethic doesn’t impact the future of the country,”
***
That's next level right there!
"The fate of the world is in your hands! Now I need you to work on Saturday..." - Loser boss
When people say stuff that's over the top like that, laugh at them! Seriously, they won't know what to do. They'll short circuit internally.
I've done that in all honesty. I've had people say stuff that's so over the top -- that I really thought they were joking! But they weren't, and they didn't know how to respond when I laughed at them. And I didn't back down either. I said, "That was a good one man!"
I wasn't about to surrender my ground to their mind tricks! 😆😄😂
After that I had zero respect for them. They showed that they didn't have legit authority. They felt the need to "trick" or "guilt" people into doing their job. That's not what a legit leader does.
"I wonder what workplace OH&S policy says about skipping breaks or working unpaid overtime?"
"If your daughter worked for a boss who implied she wouldn't get ahead/get penalized unless she sacrificed her breaks and down time, what would you advise her to say to her boss?"
Came here by way of John Carter of Postcards from Barsoom, and had some random thoughts that may or may not be of interest;
Speaking as a retiree who has had career/jobs in both male- and female-dominated sectors, I've noticed this among other differences:
A Bad Boss if it's a man, tends to be bad at what he does as well as being an obnoxious git, no matter if he's of the smarmy or bully sub-category. He will, if he cannot get his crew to deliver as per spec, be sacked, demoted or transferred, when he's eventually up for review.
A Bad Boss if it's a woman, tends to be bad at what she does, and being a boss, and will use her social skills to to avoid being taken to task for what she's doing, and will - especially in politicised public sector/civil service careers - fail upwards.
This is of course as generalised as can be; I can think of outliers not following the above pattern, but it's the pattern that's the point, not the outliers.
I've also had the benefit of seeing what happens to a well-functioning male-dominated field when it becomes female-dominated by women born after the 1970s. It fails, almost exponentially, and I'd dare say this is true of any sector where this happens. Corruption, incompetence, infighting, palace-politics, and manipulativeness become the currency rather than actual measurable results delivered being the trump-card. In my case, the sector is teaching, both at the 16-20 age level and above.
And, going by my wife's experiences in the field of Gender Studies back when it was still called Women's Studies, the root cause is not femininity or female-ness as such, but instead the gradual removal or lowering of bars for entry, from the 1960s/1970s to present day. By introducing the idea that being a woman somehow was a quality all of its own, and by not holding women to the same standards - formal or informal - that men used to be held to, the entire social fabric came unravelled.
It is her firm conclusion that had we, in all sectors, maintained the same standards we would have seen the very best and able women compete with the men and often succeeding, while the less able women who otherwise fall back on innate manipulativeness (oft bordering on clinical narcissism in the eyes of a layman) would have been shut out of positions and careers where they do immense harm to the entire system of society.
Even worse, this process that's been ongoing for over 50 years in the name of the rather badly defined (in this context) terms of equality and equity has also served to pave the way for the kind of men that would never had stood a chance to attain power or success due to the flaws or faults in their personalities. A man blaming his sub-standard performance on a diagnosis, or some psycho-trauma, or his "identity" or whatever, would have been laughed out into the street before the 2000s or 1990s.
And weak men behave like the worst kind of women, while strong women behave like the best kind of men.
Apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes. English isn't my real language.
This is an excellent analysis Rikard. I suspect you're right about the impact of lowering the bar for women on competence, performance and expressions of professionalism. Shifting work culture to become feminized has become really apparent, annoying, and destructive. I miss effective leadership from anyone after years of ineffective female leaders who are more interested in controlling than leading.
Thank you right back, but I owe most of it to my wife. She got into her former field wanting to do real science to it, so to speak.
Statistics, facts, data - measurable quantifiable stuff no matter if it was sociological or biological or whatever-logical. She discovered that Women's Studies had next to nothing to do with even attempting science; in her words, it's a cult for hating men, and it always was.
Effective leadership - yes. Meritocratic. Someone who's done their "dog-years" as we say in my language, and has proven themselves via objective metrics.
I have developed two primary responses to disingenuous or manipulative social media comments. The first was one I observed and the second I developed myself.
1) what is your intention with this comment?
2) (this comes up because I am a professional homeopath and that triggers to cosmic f*** out of certain types of people who consider themselves intellectually superior “skeptics,” and also because there are a lot of paid trolls on the internet who search for the word “homeopathy” in order to start fights):
I will get some apparently-innocuous questioning comment, and I can tell it’s not a sincere effort to engage. So I say:
I would love to engage with you on this topic if you are sincere. As my time (and presumably yours) is valuable, I have some initial criteria before discussing this further.
What is your intention with this question?
What is your position on the issue at hand?
Make a case for your intention to engage in earnest and honest debate.
Of course, if I don’t feel something is off, I won’t do this.
Great responses to assess intent and sincerity. The science-based medicine types are especially sanctimonious and ready to go to battle to prove that their paradigm of life is superior.
I love this. I’ve gotten such unexpected pushback here on my couples therapy blog (It’s bullshit! It’s gay!) that I’ve had to develop a spidey sense of where people are coming from as I try to respond authentically to all kinds of comments. The next time I get an ambiguous one I’m using your model — seems like a real time and energy saver!!
I love both responses! They are direct with very little wiggle room for word games. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks so much for naming this. I get very similar "commands" in the comments on my YouTube channel. I was just about to make a short about this -- the use of the word "please" to preface a command to NOT DO whatever it is -- use of a word ("please don't say 'freedom'"), assertion of an opinion ("please stop stigmatizing sex workers by saying there's a high correlation with history of sexual abuse"), or characterization of a problem "please admit that capitalism is the real problem...").
It's so much more than offering one's opinion. There seems literally to be an expectation that I shall be controlled, and 100% of the time it's based on their belief that they must save the audience from me. And yes it's insane. And yes it's smug. And yes, it's always by women (destructive men do their own style of harm).
When I've pushed back they retreat into "I'm just trying to help vulnerable people" OR they collapse into a full on attack with epithets that get a person cancelled. Sometimes I push back hard just so anyone reading the comments can see where I stand and to role model a good strong "Go F Yourself" in not so many words.
I spent an hour yesterday fighting back against such a person -- a therapist claiming I say things I don't, and calling me dangerous for it, and alerting all my viewers that I'm bad -- and her response was MORE false and dishonest attacks, cloaked in "I'm just trying to help" and "Please don't take this as criticism" I regret every minute I bothered with her. Fighting risks provoking destructive people to take real-world action against you. So I did what I should have done in the first place and hid her from the channel, so the rest of us could carry on with the kind of thoughtful discussion and kind encouragement appropriate for community of strangers working hard to get out of a trauma-driven life problems.
The hazards of having a large following: envious therapists who want to try to take you down. It's difficult at times to deal with such people when you want to model actions rooted in the principles you value while resisting the covert aggression and potential reputation damaging threats they pose. One has to navigate the tension between holding your ground and not stooping to their level, all while ensuring their covert tactics don’t gain traction. It’s a constant balancing act of choosing when to address the aggression directly, when to let your work speak for itself, and when to strategically disengage to protect your energy and reputation.
I didn’t see this til today (have been deep in another project). Thanks, Nathalie for hearing and describing the issue so well (I’m detecting this is one of your superpowers). Many of us handle this aggression in the isolation of our digital worlds, and I for one am more vulnerable to self suppression while isolated. Hope we get to chat on this side sometime.
Words are "violence". They are so wrapped up in their "beliefs as identity" ideology that when you say something that challenges their worldview, the emotional response is "I have been attacked". Pure pathology from the most pathologized group of people in history.
Cluster B behaviour is lucrative these days!
Oh yeah!
You're just saying that because it's true! 😆😄😂
I can’t stand the word “please!”
Really?
Could you *please* keep that to yourself? 😆😄😂
You're right though, often people use "please" to make others feel "compelled" to do something. That's why it's the "Magic Word."
I've heard it called the "olive branch in the eye" tactic.
I once had an *adult* insist that I say “please” to him after I asked him, politely, to do something. It was so obnoxious.
“Please” is short for “if you please” or “if it pleases you,” and yet it is NEVER used to frame something as a request, but always as an order.
Gross.
What a way to blemish an important word!
I know I'm leaving a belated response, but I appreciate what you said here. The example you gave, “please don't say 'freedom” is a command, but it is embedded or linked to the word please. It’s basic NLP — neurolinguistic programming. Once you start recognizing when people are attempting to use NLP (pick up artists are notorious for using against women) as a form of persuasion, you're less likely to fall for this form of manipulation. “Please” is not always a bad word. If someone says, “please pass the butter” at the table, I'm not offended by their directive. Context is everything.
Context is everything!
Anna, the Devouring Mother posture of "all adults that disagree are children unable to see the real truth, were harmed with bad-think and so we must control what they see, read, hear and think, .. for the children" is a FemNazi Sickness that has poisoned the western world and everywhere else mothers hire Witches to torture to death, silently screaming our daughters and sons and brothers, and sisters, and raise generations to accept evil and insane as 'acceptable' or even praiseworthy.
Consider Ann those many that will read such a comment you would remove from access to all us children for protection, those many that can and do see them for what they are and what slimy people they are. A good example of vile lying manipulating modern Western professional womanhood and fatherless delusional psychotic dog-males, crawling on their bellys calling "Hail Vagina Supremacy, kick me in my gonads again please, like mom use to do!"
Dr. Natalie, I can’t thank you enough for creating these posts. With a single bullet point you helped me shift my entire perspective and reframe a very painful situation.
This is music to my eyes! A win for all of us who are on a quest to resist controlling behaviour.
I feel exactly the same!
Excellent post and insight.
We (the non-narcissists) need to get better at the step you laid out, as the world has been taught and then steeped in this festering, mental frap for decades.
This, if people understand your teaching here and start widening their gaze, will be like spotting blue VW beetles everywhere, after being ask "what happened to all the blue VW beetles?"
Thanks for giving us the tools to claw back some of the sanity and normalcy!!
Thank you!
I'm not suggesting that I haven't done this behaviour before. I'm sure I have been covertly menacing and demanding. But becoming aware of the impact of dishonesty has had on my psyche and the damage it can do to functional relationships has helped me adjust my approach to engagement. Just because something isn't done intentionally or with malicious intent doesn't make it any less annoying or hurtful.
I'm glad we're getting better at spotting these domination attempts - not to demonise those who use them but to give us options for responding that aims at leveling power, models to others limits of tolerance/disrespect, and hopefully deters others from piling on.
It’s like you’re reading my mind. I’ve got a piece half written on how feminism is a system of social control of the self and others, invisible. And naming it begets ostracism and even more attempts at control. I think we overlap quite a bit as usual. Feminism can’t deal with critique by design because it’s a continuation and justification for the social control mechanisms women have evolved to assert, even though it’s framed as the opposite of traditional gender norms. To the contrary, it reinforces the very behavior it claims to transcend. I have been on the receiving end of the type of policing you dissected but I hadn’t before been able to name it as an assertion of control. Now I get why I’m always so disturbed when I encounter women like that. Where I’m now struggling is with my reaction to these kids of women; I am triggered, quite literally, by women like that and I need to now be.
Apparently, what you describe is known as 'empowerment', ironic given it comes about through disempowerment. Can't wait to read your piece on feminism!
I think you will continue to feel annoyed by this behaviour but perhaps now that it has a name, description and psychological explanation, it might become easier to 1) become less/not disturbed by it 2) have neutral, assertive responses ready to go that name the real issue they're having, the deflecting approach they are attempting, and your disinterest in engaging with disingenuous remarks.
Or, one of my favourites is to play dumb and ask 'I don't know what you mean by 'x'. Can you explain so that I understand you better.' They can waste their energy the way they tried to waste yours.
The playing dumb thing can really work IRL, but there can be blowback if the group is female dominated (I was a web server administrator in a marketing department), depending on how many of your co-workers are bamboozled by the bullshit.
Sadly, I think this kind of pushback tends to work better online than it does in person. When it's done in person, it's pretty likely to backfire. (However, there may be some cases where the stakes are high enough that it's worth taking that risk...I can't tell someone else whether it's worth it or not.)
I'm a man, and for years, my sister's MO has been to try to provoke me into fighting with her at family gatherings so she can claim that I attacked her for no reason and that she's a helpless victim. She also polices, nitpicks, and one-ups almost every single word that comes out of my mouth. Nothing I say is ever "innocent" or "just making conversation," according to her...it's always motivated by some nefarious ulterior motive. And she frequently says hostile things to me while playing it off as if it's just a joke.
I truly feel like I'm in a situation where I can't win. If I call her out on her behavior, it will start a fight, and it will make me look toxic, aggressive, and abusive. I'll be the one who gets blamed for starting the fight, I'll be the one who "ruined" the family gathering for everybody, and my other family members will side with her. (I know, because this has happened more than once in the past.) If I don't push back, her behavior will go unchallenged and it will escalate. My only other option is to get up and leave the family gathering immediately whenever I'm provoked (and I have done this before). Just get in my car and drive away without warning and without a word. This is better than the other two options, but it still sucks, because I will still get blamed for overreacting and being "unreasonable" (although the blame will be less severe than it would have been if I had gotten into a fight with her). There are no "good" options here. I'm seriously considering going no contact with my sister for good and refusing to come to any family events where she will be present. But if I do that, I will receive even more blame from other family members for overreacting and being unreasonable and tearing the family apart over something seemingly "petty." I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to say, "Fuck it...I don't care about the consequences. Whatever happens happens"
You really have to be on your toes when countering in-person attacks because they're always more practiced at it and it's much easier to escalate in person, thereby gaining compliance more rapidly, than online where one has time to gather thoughts and articulate a response.
But it CAN be done if you can withstand the emotional leveraging.
Absolutely. Be prepared by identifying the relational dynamic between you two.
Kyle, sounds like she has your number and since you & her could not have had a decent father that by example showed you both what is acceptable and how to managed such lying slimy testicle-kicking psycho like her by him being a good husband and lovingly correcting your mother when she started to become a delusional screeching horror like your sister now is.
But don't blame him - no mother what you Witch-directed mother lied about him to you and her, if your sister's that much of a F-ing horror, well, the bad Fruit falls close to they baby-murdering male-hating family-fatherhood destroying Joy-Love-Hope mutilating Devouring Mother. Maybe you would not hate her and believe most women better left in middle of ocean - because why should sharks be poisoned like you were, and .. um .. unable to have normal relationship(s) and children.
I suggest you wait until she disrespects you at the family gathering and then pull your sack-out in the breeze, and call her a lying slimy manipulating man-hating walking bag of feted poisonous vomit, "Like Mom." And put you sack back, sit down and eat. And anyone pushes back - call um a castrated mind-raped Strap-on sucker belly-crawling soul-mutilated hunk of feces like she is, F-off and stop vomiting your BS.
Perhaps that will be a gathering to remember, and with a show like that - expect them to invite their friends next year.
This is quite the revenge fantasy!
I would think many in Kyle's intractable position would fantasize about doing something like what you described when they feel voiceless and cornered.
Your instincts are pretty accurate...my sister IS a lot like my mom, and both of them are man-haters. My dad is a good man, but he didn't do a good job of standing up to my mom when the two of them were still married. I've definitely had a lot of those fantasies about what I would LIKE to have said to my sister when she got out of line, but I realize that if I did that, I'd be giving her exactly what she wants, and the negative consequences would harm me more than they would harm her. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to be a pushover and not stand up for myself, but I think there's more than one way of standing up for myself.
Your sister sounds much like someone I love. My communication is now infrequent, and by mail...
Dude! Same! It’s only during family gatherings, but my kid sister will subtly provoke an argument, then accuse me of losing my temper when I confront the argument. When she was an infant, our mom had hepatitis, so my sister spent some time with our aunt’s family. She has come to realize that this abandonment by our mom has had a psychological impact on her. Only recently have I learned that one of the typical behaviors of an abandonment victim is attempting to divide the family. It’s exactly what she does.
I call her on her bullshit, tell her it’s “gaslighting.” Outside of family gatherings we are very close friends. She has recently married a fantastic guy who is devoted to her and when he’s around, she doesn’t pull her BS nearly as much. She has more confidence in herself when he’s there.
Yes, I think my sister is constantly "competing" with me, which is one of the reasons why she does what she does. (I have absolutely zero desire to compete with her. But she won't stop trying to prove she's "better" than me.) With your sister, there's probably some kind of jealousy there which is not your fault. It doesn't excuse her behavior in any way, though.
My sister is also younger than me, like yours is. I wonder if there's a pattern there or if it's just coincidence.
When I was a young man working summers between HS on farming crews and other laboring with mostly men but a few unpoisoned by gender-studies and psycho-delusions of 'man-bad, women-victim', and the sane years before mid-1970s people worked to be respectful and fair in arguments and most everything face-to-face because the threat of punching some disrespecting man or slapping some lying back-stabbing women was ever present.
Does anyone remember those days before FemNazi started sucking-off the State and vice versa so murdering babies anytime and false rape accusations and 911 because bad-VagFeelie words?
When a mid-aged boy I remember seeing a man slap a woman - girl friend or wife - in public and heard one woman say to the other woman she was with 'I wonder what she did?'
Thank God I knew a time when such understanding and sanity once existed. Don't despair, perhaps after WWIII the survivors will not have Satanic FemNazi insane ball-crushers in power, and decent men & women can slap sense and the Fear-of-God and a man's fist or a group's rope, that the slimy lying fatherless walking nightmare teachers, law-makers, judges, false-witnessers, baby-killers (Abortionists and murdering mothers), family destroyers, unJust reputation attackers, .. will repent or bleed, again.
Can it happen soon enough for us all?
Are they 60 horrifying years late?
I agree with you. You have to time to think and assess your response online vs in person. The way I have found that I could manage this in person is to anticipate the need and prepare to respond this way, because you would have experienced that person using soft control tactics on you before. It's very difficult otherwise because it's too subtle to notice in the moment and frozen by self-doubt/cognitive dissonance.
Great article. Just more proof that girls and women really do have their own brand of socio-emotional bullying, espcially with those pushing social justice religion and in Europe with what Gad Saad calls "suicidial empathy".
The fruits of dark feminism (or maybe just feminism). These women would rather police each other believing in their benevolence than consider how they're the tools of a more oppressive force.
This post really resonated with me. As a male psychologist, I’ve found that the most effective way to respond to covert dominance isn’t to escalate, but to stay grounded and redirect the energy.
In my work—and frankly, in life—I tend to practice what could loosely be called psychological aikido: take the initial move at face value, respond with calm clarity, and then let the next move reveal the true intent. When someone is trying to control the frame of a conversation through soft tactics, staying neutral but firm often prompts them to overplay their hand. That’s when their positioning becomes visible to others too.
Soft power, when used with integrity, can be a strength. But when it’s used to mask control or moral superiority, a quiet, steady stance often speaks louder than any performance of virtue. Thanks for modeling that here.
I really appreciate this perspective: your ‘psychological aikido’ approach is such a powerful way to navigate these dynamics without getting pulled into the performance.
I also like your distinction between soft power with integrity vs soft control for enforcing compliance.
Been there done that & unfortunately have the souvenirs to prove it, most of the corporate world is middle managed by women & these types of things happen all the time. There is not much help for dealing with them, but thank you for bringing it up. This is a narrative that needs to get attention. Entertainment & media are definitely a major hot bed for this kind of thing, it is very corporate despite how much they don't like to be capitalists they are, so they try to avoid this fact a lot. Again middle managed by a lot of women, but one of the bigger issues is that HR is also run by the same dynamics, so not much gets done hopefully this will change, as of now most men still see these problems as trivial, I guess they often are but they can end up being very expensive for businesses to deal with so I hope we all start to change how we look at this.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1168182/Catfights-handbags-tears-toilets-When-producer-launched-women-TV-company-thought-shed-kissed-goodbye-conflict-.html
Great comment Gina! Yes, I've had this experience in hospital research admin roles. It's everywhere that there's female dominance. Some of the men attracted to healthcare (ie paediatrics) have also engaged in this form of covert aggression.
Thanks for the link - will have a look!
There are a lot of feminized men out there, most people don’t know what they are looking at when they are confronted with it. Breaking down this behavior is hard to explain to most men, they really don’t get it I have described situations like this to someone that I know & they just ask why? It isn’t a thing men do most of the time, they have other things they do so it is like explaining aliens or something to someone.
Brilliantly dissected. I have nothing to offer except kudos.
Thank you Jake! That's big kudos coming from you!
I wonder if this is something that comes up with therapists - polite aggression from clients.
Sometimes, but the power dynamic is different because they've ostensibly hired us to do job. If they obstruct that work because of their illness, we have to find a way to navigate it so we don't elicit defensiveness and make the job even harder. In other words, it's on us to resolve it, not just avoid it. However, I'm also a man and I can only speculate if this happens more frequently or less frequently to female therapists. I have no idea.
Where I definitely do see it is in leadership within the organizations, either formal (agencies, schools) or informal (clubs, associations, boards). PTOs/PTAs, K-12 schools, colleges/departments, and of course hospitals and clinics are rife with this kind of catty, sanctimonious attitude. They're impervious to feedback unless it comes from within, and if you don't read their mind on what they want from you, it's almost like they're willfully looking to knife you while smiling. In non-healthcare and non-higher ed settings this usually occurs in HR domain, either public or private. Rare is the case of an HR director who shoots straight and whose existence isn't either a) self-promotion or b) authoritarian control.
It certainly prevalent among administrative and clinical leadership. Thanks for describing your own clinical experiences too- you have a job to do and you have to try to make the therapeutic relationship work.
I used to work in an almost all female environment. It was hell. The jealousy and back stabbing was unfathomable to me. As a very secure person, I have no idea how to relate to or understand their behavior.
You should do a study on why women today are so pathologically insecure. Or has it always been like this?
As a result, I have almost no women friends. Don't miss them at all. I had my fill.
I think female empowerment ideology (aka toxic feminism) is like a cult that grooms women into thinking they are empowered when they adopt certain beliefs and behaviours. Anyone who assimilates into a cult/groupthink will eventually feel Imposter Syndrome because disconnecting from one's essence, values, principles and culture in order to belong and 'do the right thing' is going to make someone more anxious and insecure. Intrasexual competition is rife in False Sisterhood communities, making it necessary to seek external validation and losing self-confidence in the process.
That's it. You nailed it. You just contextualized the reason why I was "out" in grade school and beyond. The smartest and at one point one of the prettiest girls in my class; yet I never wanted to be "the" popular girl, nor did I ever put any energy into competing. (I grew up in affluent Newport Beach, CA. I found out as a Jr. in high school that I was voted homecoming queen and "those" girls threw away all the votes for me; a small example of the petty things women have done to me all my life. I wonder if it drove them crazy that I did not care; in truth, I was relieved). I am, and was, just me. Talking to any of them was - wooden. Not a drop of sincerity to be found. I was a bookworm; a nerd; I never understood what was going on around me. It continued throughout my life as I just ignored the poison and succeeded in spite of them. I never engaged. You can probably imagine the sabotage and hatred I have been subjected to throughout my career. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!! THANK YOU!!
I can only imagine the sabotage and hatred from unrestrained envy by other insecure women. I'm sorry that girls and women couldn't see you as a peer or couldn't see you as a whole person beyond the attributes they chose to envy/despise.
I had the opposite - I could not assimilate because I was too different. Immigrant parents, apartment building dwelling Jewish family in school with assimilated middle class to wealthy Jewish families or Orthodox Jewish families. I didn't fit into either box so the few of us like me were outcasts. I had to learn that inability to assimilate is an internally built in protective resistance - which I cherish now.
I'm so happy that I was able to help you make sense of your experience and that you are successful regardless! Congratulations!!!!
Humans - so much more in common than we have differences. Yet all we focus on is.... differences. 🙄💔
God bless Nathalie. Keep up the fight, and the good work. ❤️
I didn't grow up around enough women to understand these games and when I tried to go out into the world, it hit me in the face as I was shunned from one female-dominated group after another, not for any infraction, but just because I somehow didn't fit in. I didn't bow to those games because I didn't notice the subtlety of it. Nowadays, I just refuse to comply. And that's why I don't have a lot of female friends, except for weird or outspoken ones who don't do cliques.
You're probably much happier than has you been in weird cliques. Better to have a select few outspoken besties than a toxic group enforcing compliance.
Yes. It was just very miserable when I couldn't figure out why no one liked me when I was trying my best to be sociable.
After doing all the mental gymnastics I could manage throughout the years to metabolize and respond, I finally settled on refusing to engage and journaling about what my gut reaction to their comment says about how I view myself and the world. Too much of my time and energy was spent on defending my intention, which stands on its own and doesn't need to be defended as long as I'm clear with myself.
Conversational exchanges don’t bother me so much as when it’s a manager in the workplace using it to control behavior.
They’ll question your commitment if you won’t skip lunch breaks… or question your work ethic if you won’t work hours outside of your agreed upon hours, “I guess you don’t care if we win or lose” or “you should find a job where your work ethic doesn’t impact the future of the country,” it’s covert labor abuse, and men have actually started to adopt it… because it’s psychological manipulation and can’t be traced. I’m not sure what can be done. It’s frustrating, for sure. Taking the moral high ground to be an ***hole is next level ***hole
***
“you should find a job where your work ethic doesn’t impact the future of the country,”
***
That's next level right there!
"The fate of the world is in your hands! Now I need you to work on Saturday..." - Loser boss
When people say stuff that's over the top like that, laugh at them! Seriously, they won't know what to do. They'll short circuit internally.
I've done that in all honesty. I've had people say stuff that's so over the top -- that I really thought they were joking! But they weren't, and they didn't know how to respond when I laughed at them. And I didn't back down either. I said, "That was a good one man!"
I wasn't about to surrender my ground to their mind tricks! 😆😄😂
After that I had zero respect for them. They showed that they didn't have legit authority. They felt the need to "trick" or "guilt" people into doing their job. That's not what a legit leader does.
"I wonder what workplace OH&S policy says about skipping breaks or working unpaid overtime?"
"If your daughter worked for a boss who implied she wouldn't get ahead/get penalized unless she sacrificed her breaks and down time, what would you advise her to say to her boss?"
She was uncomfortable about the topic because she's one of those women who oppresses other women
#nailed it. People want to suppress the truth they don’t want to see. Self-deception and moral superiority are the shields of choice.
Came here by way of John Carter of Postcards from Barsoom, and had some random thoughts that may or may not be of interest;
Speaking as a retiree who has had career/jobs in both male- and female-dominated sectors, I've noticed this among other differences:
A Bad Boss if it's a man, tends to be bad at what he does as well as being an obnoxious git, no matter if he's of the smarmy or bully sub-category. He will, if he cannot get his crew to deliver as per spec, be sacked, demoted or transferred, when he's eventually up for review.
A Bad Boss if it's a woman, tends to be bad at what she does, and being a boss, and will use her social skills to to avoid being taken to task for what she's doing, and will - especially in politicised public sector/civil service careers - fail upwards.
This is of course as generalised as can be; I can think of outliers not following the above pattern, but it's the pattern that's the point, not the outliers.
I've also had the benefit of seeing what happens to a well-functioning male-dominated field when it becomes female-dominated by women born after the 1970s. It fails, almost exponentially, and I'd dare say this is true of any sector where this happens. Corruption, incompetence, infighting, palace-politics, and manipulativeness become the currency rather than actual measurable results delivered being the trump-card. In my case, the sector is teaching, both at the 16-20 age level and above.
And, going by my wife's experiences in the field of Gender Studies back when it was still called Women's Studies, the root cause is not femininity or female-ness as such, but instead the gradual removal or lowering of bars for entry, from the 1960s/1970s to present day. By introducing the idea that being a woman somehow was a quality all of its own, and by not holding women to the same standards - formal or informal - that men used to be held to, the entire social fabric came unravelled.
It is her firm conclusion that had we, in all sectors, maintained the same standards we would have seen the very best and able women compete with the men and often succeeding, while the less able women who otherwise fall back on innate manipulativeness (oft bordering on clinical narcissism in the eyes of a layman) would have been shut out of positions and careers where they do immense harm to the entire system of society.
Even worse, this process that's been ongoing for over 50 years in the name of the rather badly defined (in this context) terms of equality and equity has also served to pave the way for the kind of men that would never had stood a chance to attain power or success due to the flaws or faults in their personalities. A man blaming his sub-standard performance on a diagnosis, or some psycho-trauma, or his "identity" or whatever, would have been laughed out into the street before the 2000s or 1990s.
And weak men behave like the worst kind of women, while strong women behave like the best kind of men.
Apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes. English isn't my real language.
This is an excellent analysis Rikard. I suspect you're right about the impact of lowering the bar for women on competence, performance and expressions of professionalism. Shifting work culture to become feminized has become really apparent, annoying, and destructive. I miss effective leadership from anyone after years of ineffective female leaders who are more interested in controlling than leading.
Thank you right back, but I owe most of it to my wife. She got into her former field wanting to do real science to it, so to speak.
Statistics, facts, data - measurable quantifiable stuff no matter if it was sociological or biological or whatever-logical. She discovered that Women's Studies had next to nothing to do with even attempting science; in her words, it's a cult for hating men, and it always was.
Effective leadership - yes. Meritocratic. Someone who's done their "dog-years" as we say in my language, and has proven themselves via objective metrics.