Brilliant post on The Walking Dead
HIV vaccine approved for human trials!
Hooray for this Nevada judge!
From Casey:
From Shakesville, Gabe and Tycho are riling up rape survivors and those triggered by rape jokes AGAIN with a character called “Fruit Fucker” who is force-feeding a bound and gagged Humpty Dumpty (conflating BDSM with rape) with the phrase “NON-CONSENSUAL BREAKFAST!” in big bold letters labeled on it.
Diagram of the pro-life debate
This was going to be WAY longer, but like half the post disappeared. I’d love it if people could talk about their favorite links of the week in the comments section. 😀
From Casey:
At least it is according to Minnesota’s Rosemount High School, where
a whole bunch of kids were blindfolded and forced to unwittingly make
out with their own parents (and the parents got REALLY into it).
Apparently the victims of this prank were supposed to be sexually
humiliated even though their parents were molesting them. Ha-ha?
On screening Yellow Earth
From Casey:
Here’s a stupid DA journal from one of the head creators of the “sexy
monster girl” fighting game SkullGirls explaining why they’re TOTES
NOT SEXIST! (I like the game so far but he invokes a lot of logical
fallacies that bugged me).
This story breaks my heart.
On being bi in a gay world
An open letter to Oprah Winfrey
A moment of silence, please.
On the iPhone and job creation in the US
Anemone,
The 70s feminists were pulling theory out of their asses with no actual science, though. Psychology, moving slowly and cautiously as always, only officially created the NPD diagnosis in 1980. And then we had the big revolution when criminal profiling began to be widely accepted in the 90s because it worked time after time. And FBI profilers were among the early voices pushing the idea that when you’re looking for a rapist, you are looking for a narcissist profile (which is hard to recognize because they can mimic generosity and empathy and all that stuff so well – but there are tell-tale signs that well-trained investigators recognize).
The compartmentalized “empathy” you describe is classic NPD, except it’s not actually empathy at all – they just MIMIC empathy quite excellently toward people who have something to offer them, or the power to crush them. They only show their true, empathy-free self to vulnerable people who are easy targets for them.
So, given how fake empathy is such a classic sign of NPD, I’m wondering if we have remotely the same understanding of the disorder. In a sense, the whole point of the NPD diagnosis was to clinically isolate (for better understanding and treatment) a group of people who are so lacking in empathy and so desperately in need of ego boosts that they remorselessly harm others to get their way.
I tried to address every point you made, but I deleted all I typed. I think I’ll just leave it there, because I don’t know what understanding of NPD you’re working from. Mine comes from psychiatric literature, clinicians, and my life experience with diagnosed NPDs.
Anemone,
Jennifer Kesler,
Jenn, I think part of what you’ve also been saying is that NPD is not an extraordinary diagnosis, and that we might live in a culture that encourages NPD and its symptoms, particularly in men, yes? So I’m not sure if “ordinary men rape” necessarily contradicts “men with NPD rape.”
Maria,
Right, that’s a very big part of what I’m getting at.