Why Do We Accept Sexual Entitlement?
What’s the mental calculus behind sexual entitlement? Cheating is sexual entitlement. So is harassment, human trafficking, and assault. Even given the spectrum of terrible behavior, from creepy and deceptive to outright rapist, why do we tolerate any of it?
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Since yesterday’s column, news broke that Harvard professor Larry Summers is on leave from his job while the university “investigates” his association with Jeffrey Epstein. This is after he returned to class and told students he felt it was “very important that he fulfill his obligation” to teach. Yes. As if he were a moral person who believes very deeply in commitment. I’m sure Mrs. Summers would like a word.
The spokesman, Steven Goldberg, said in a statement that Mr. Summers would also leave his role as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. A Harvard spokesman confirmed that Mr. Summers had told the university of his decision, which was first reported by the Harvard Crimson.
His spokesman said that his co-teachers will finish instructing his classes this semester, and he was not scheduled to teach next semester. But Mr. Summers will keep his tenured status at Harvard while he pauses teaching during the investigation, and he is only on leave at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center.
What is there to think about?!
How is being BFFs with a sex trafficker not utterly career ending? (You could also wonder why positing that half your student body’s brains are inferior is not also career ending?) How can anyone respect this idiot as an object of authority on anything even again?
Well, he knows a lot about economics, Tracy.
HE ASKED A CHILD RAPIST FOR DATING ADVICE.
Can anyone square that in their brain? To do the mental gymnastics required for this giant feat of cognitive dissonance, you must accept grotesque sexual entitlement. Larry Summers has a God-given right to perv on students. To cheat on his wife. To continue to associate with a man who does far worse.
You must accept those victim’s lives as worthless. Destroying them is but a peccadillo. A little naughty stepping out. They were “underage prostitutes.” How many times have I read that reported? THEY WERE NOT PROSTITUTES.
As Julie K. Brown points out in her groundbreaking series Perversion of Justice :
Despite substantial physical evidence and multiple witnesses backing up the girls’ stories, the secret deal allowed Epstein to enter guilty pleas to two felony prostitution charges. Epstein admitted to committing only one offense against one underage girl, who was labeled a prostitute, even though she was 14, which is well under the age of consent — 18 in Florida.
“She was taken advantage of twice — first by Epstein, and then by the criminal justice system that labeled a 14-year-old girl as a prostitute,’’ said Spencer Kuvin, the lawyer who represented the girl.
“It’s just outrageous how they minimized his crimes and devalued his victims by calling them prostitutes,’’ said Yasmin Vafa, a human rights attorney and executive director of Rights4Girls, which is working to end the sexual exploitation of girls and young women.
“There is no such thing as a child prostitute. Under federal law, it’s called child sex trafficking — whether Epstein pimped them out to others or not. It’s still a commercial sex act — and he could have been jailed for the rest of his life under federal law,” she said.
But calling those trafficked girls “prostitutes” maintains the sexual entitlement of all men who buy sex. Abraca-DARVO! Now he’s the victim. He was lured by a wily seductress. She’s the bad girl.
Language matters.
That’s why I go a little bananas here writing about infidelity. You were chumped. They’re not “wayward,” they cheated. Who are the euphemisms protecting?
I get that in public most people have a big case of the icks talking about sex. That’s private. Let’s not look too carefully at what people do in their bedrooms. And that’s fine if we’re trying to avoid discrimination and shaming people for who they love. It’s an entirely different matter when someone is being USED and ABUSED.
Larry Summers overlooked, excused, and green-lighted further association with a man who surrounded himself with young girls and had gone to jail for buying one. From those emails it looks like Summers not only minimized Epstein’s crimes, he ADMIRED them. What a player! Gotta get some of that Epstein mojo with the ladies! He treated a sex trafficker like he was a guru, an authority.
Now Harvard University has to consider the optics of letting Larry Summers continue his privileges of authority. Gaslighting us all that there’s something to “consider” here. Look, you’re either okay with a professor perving on his female mentees or you’re not. People have been fired for far less.
But! But! That’s private! So he expressed a few impure thoughts. You know how men are!
In other words, ACCEPT HIS SEXUAL ENTITLEMENT.
Think of all the ways we are expected to accept sexual entitlement and minimize the harm it does to innocents. I can rattle off a hundred examples just from my blog. Your husband has a hooker habit? Go to a Christian counselor who calls you an “intimacy anorexic.” Don’t question his privilege, question your ability to love him properly.
Did your cheater destroy your life and try to move your kids out of state with their affair partner? Why aren’t you friends? I think you should really get over that bitterness.
Did he have a double life for decades and now you have an abnormal Pap smear? I’ve invited that guy to my barbecue. I don’t know why you’re so upset.
Isn’t it about time you got over it?
I don’t know. Let me have an investigation and consider this further. I’ll get back with you. But probably not.
Not exactly at the same level but my ex was horrified that we would no longer “be friends” and that he’d no longer have a key to my place when he was living with his barroom ho. One time he had to come to the house for something and asked if we could have sex!!!! I was stunned and told him to get lost. At that he said “I have rights you know”, to which I replied “and those rights stop where mine start”! He really was more than a bit thick to be so entitled!
Words fail me.
I’ve had several Exes who still feel they “deserve” sexual favors after a breakup. One (we were 17-18ish?) said it was cruel of me to cut him off and he wanted conciliatory blow jobs to wean him off as he didn’t think he’d get another girlfriend anytime soon. Younger me ghosted him and swapped dorm rooms so he wouldn’t know where I was, and felt guilty for being immature. Older me is glad I protected myself even if I didn’t feel strong enough to tell him off.
I did two years later when his friends got drunk and called me at 2am on a prank. Read them all the riot act and that was that. When I moved back to my home state and was newly single, his profile came up on a dating app and I nearly threw my phone across the room. Seems he’s not changed at all.
“I have rights you know!”
Not to anyone’s body he sure as hell does not. That’s an absolutely ridiculous thing to say when someone says no to sex. The fuck??
“Ridiculous” was his middle name!
Power…it’s easier to place blame on the weaker and try to shame and change them; it’s difficult to pressure and confront the stronger. Do these people change? No, it’s all image management for them; they think they have done nothing wrong, no one has told them no. Confrontation makes people uncomfortable, and it causes them to examine how they are thinking and feeling.
It is endemic in our world. Power over weak. Male over female, Boss over employees You otherwise may never get ahead or keep a job, husband, career. You must kiss up.
Does anyone, anywhere now dispel the myth of the billionaire pedophile world wide club? Methinks not. It’s real people, from Diddy on down. The male organ is front and centre, biologically, politically, and drives all things metaphorically in this wonderful world we live in. How you stop that train is another story. Let’s face it rich people have the ICK factor big time. Don’t worship at the trough of the Kardashians or any of that ilk, sick comes to mind. Anyone who worships money is suspect, just look and Jeff and the quality woman he picked? A real life blow up doll.
Every time I see Bezo’s wife, I wonder how she can go out in public and flaunt such a bizarre, surgically created face and body. They both look ridiculous, but his money keeps people silent.
Cheater ex went to a hook-up site and was catfished by a someone using photos of a similar but far younger blow up babe, with inflated breasts and butt, and an artificial face. He bragged that he’d walk around town with her, and everyone would wonder what he had to get such a hot babe on his arm. No they wouldn’t. Obviously it was the money, honey, and in his case it was a scam.
I don’t think it was a coincidence that the busty babe he picked from her on-line photo looked a lot like the second wife of his former protege, a younger man who surpassed him and became his boss before moving still higher professionally.
He said that based on his online honey’s emails and texts, he thought she was stupid, and he liked that because she’d look up to him and accept his decisions without question.
Feeling powerful over someone presumed powerless is uncomfortably akin to sex trafficking young girls. Other men do it by buying “foreign brides,” or hiring undocumented immigrants as in-home “help.”
It seems that it’s OK or overlooked if the man has even a little bit of power. How disappointing that Harvard doesn’t know better.
Men project like this a lot. I’ve noticed I can tell, pretty reliably, how smart a man is by how dumb he thinks I am.
He bragged he was walking around town with her making other people jealous??
How he walk around anywhere with a fake scammer using a stolen photo? 😆 that’s how you know he’s full of shit.
Sorry I wasn’t clear. That’s what he wrote in an email to the scammer. He said he couldn’t wait until she moved in with him, and he could parade her around town. They never met in person, and after the sole time they spoke on the phone, he emailed that during the two minute call, he couldn’t understand a word, and that “she” sounded like a man. Still didn’t stop him from sending tens of thousands of dollars.
I searched the photos, and they were of an Instagram hooker for hire, who seemed to live a pretty luxurious lifestyle. Based on comments in the emails, it was obvious that the hooker wasn’t the scammer, who’d casually mention things like having to ride a bike to get gas for cooking.
!!!
God doesn’t he watch Dr. Phil, it would be a man with a Nigerian accent, are there that many suckers out there? Goes to show you which end of the body he is thinking with.
Charmee, EXACTLY. This makes me batshit fearful for my young adult daughter living in today’s world. I’m older, crabby, and have a gun. But she needs one…
“I’m older, crabby, and have a gun.”
I have a friend who always says it’s a good thing she doesn’t have a gun, and that she is the best argument for gun control.
This. This is the underpinning of all sociopathic narcissistic cheaters, liars, elites, many politicians, billionaires, zillionaires. And according to what I’ve read and heard from Dr. Peter Salerno, this is a hard-wired, born-this-way trait that cannot be changed or therapized. In fact, it helps serve their purposes. It starts with cheating and can end with plotted murders and bone saw dismemberments. And I’m not fucking kidding. This is dangerous stuff.
Oops, don’t get me started. Oops too late. 😛
The following isn’t directed at your comment so much as the general idea since I think it’s a really important theme to wrestle with in any forum that discusses criminal abuse.
So, while I also lean to arguments that certain personality disorders are essentially baked in and “incurable,” I think it’s dangerous to assume that it’s because of bum genes.
When I was asked to research institutional use of deadly disciplinary methods against the disabled for a group of advocacy attorneys, I ended up going down the “crime gene/psychopathy gene” rabbit hole and, after eight months, concluded that all these theories are based on junk science and very often blatantly racist junk science.
I found one problem with genetic criminality theories is that, despite a century of frantic scientific pursuit and periodic headlining claims of the discovery of this or that “violence gene” or “dictator gene,” etc., these have never been proven or replicated. Even Hare’s “psychopathic” brain scans can easily be chalked up to environmental causes which his research did not control for.
Then another problem with the crime gene theory is that it artificially lets everyone else off the hook in the sense of having to keep their own “shadow selves” in check because they supposedly don’t carry these violence prone or “empathy impaired” genes. But if the bible, Darwin and Freud agree on one thing, it’s that primal nature, original sin and “Thanatos” are exactly the same and no one on earth is exempt. Maybe women are generally less violent in expressing personal darkness which could be chalked up to evolution and genetics but, nevertheless, everyone has the capacity to be dark in some way.
That’s also the biggest irony of the genetic criminality concept: the worst people believe they are inherently transcendent (either genetically superior or favored by God– i.e., free of stain– which is arguably at the root of narcissism). In other words, they think they’re exempt from having to inspect their own methods and motives which is exactly why they’re the worst people. The psychological roots of this can be boiled down the “externalization of evil” which is arguably part of the “neutralization” process by which people rationalize aggression and atrocity and everything bad like sexism, racism, ableism, etc.
In fact, the sexual entitlement behind “rape myth acceptance” has been strongly correlated to racism and support for authoritarianism. What it suggests is that a learned ideological “Manicheaism” — seeing the world in black or white/good or evil– is the foundation of “narcissism.” Also studies in “neutralization” or the mental tricks by which various serial offenders (from exam cheats to serial killers) manage to snuff any sense of guilt or stigma for their offenses is learned and “teachable,”making genetic theories of “impaired empathy” unnecessary as an explanation for how people get this way.
Another huge problem with genetic crime theories is what humorist and eugenics critic GK Chesterton argued more than 100 years ago– that, though all eugenic campaigns initially pretend woke and groovy motives (for instance, the claim that rich white male CEOs are genetic psychopaths), in the end they’re invariably aimed against the usual targets– racial minorities, the poor and disabled and basically any culture (usually brown or black, often non-Christian) that tries to resist having their natural resources or labor raped by countries with military power.
That latter is where the genetic “bad seed” theory really comes in handy and why scientific shills like Simon Baron-Cohen who peddle these theories (and typically package them– Trojan horse style– as groovy and woke) make the big bucks and get lofty uni posts and TED Talks. It’s because genetic crime or “low empathy” theories are essential to manufacture public consent to kill the children of foreign “insurgencies” or exploit and destroy generations of domestic underclasses on the idea that they’re “born terrorists/killers” and therefore disposable.
For one example of “genetic hegemony,” it appears the entire 20 year+ longitudinal study on the Maori undertaken by the world’s most elite academic institutions arguing that the Maori are afflicted with the “warrior gene” was curiously preceded by the discovery of oil and gas on Maori blood lands and curiously followed by aggressive attempts to take back these lands. Casting the Maori as intractably and genetically prone to depression, addiction and violence– aside from absurdly ignoring years of segregation, repression, displacement and the destruction of their culture by colonists– helps to undercut public sympathy for Maori culture inasmuch as that sympathy stands in the way of raping the culture yet again and dooming subsequent generations.
Last but not least is how genetic theories for crime or violence or low empathy let societies off the hook for protecting women and children from the type of domestic abuse and trauma that can act as an assembly line for future offenders or protecting marginalized groups from the kind of adverse childhood experiences related to poverty and racism that can increase risk for future incarceration (though, side note, this does not appear to increase risk of actual criminality since crime doesn’t have a color, especially in light of the fact that white collar crime committed by rich people kills gadzillions more than street crime committed by poor people).
Anyway, just because a genetic theory is misused for cultural irresponsibility or to commit atrocity wouldn’t necessarily make it “wrong”. But again there’s just the fact that none of these claims hold up to scrutiny. It was actually in the process of combing through Simon Baron-Cohen’s citations in his infamous “genetic zero empathy” screed, The Science of Evil, that I discovered the warrior gene/MAOA theory is basically propped up by embarrassingly racist and long debunked eugenic science from the last century. Also no surprise that I also discovered some weird evidence in the book that Baron-Cohen is a clinical misogynist and abuse apologist.
Also, theories like those can easily be used to re-victimize children of parents who showed clear signs of personality disorders. I had parents like this, and some people are probably convinced somebody like me could never be a force for good in the world because of genes (although it is not even clear whether my creepy father was my actual biological father, but that is another story).
We’re in a really f*cked up era where everything is being declared “genetic” even when there’s no proof of it and even when there’s strong evidence that something is environmental. Bottom line is that there are no profits in simply ceasing an exposure that’s causing illness. Also there’s the fact that drugs and other treatments that carry more than moderate risks for serious side effects can only be justified on the grounds that there are no other treatment available. This is why, just for one example, scores of lead-toxic kids ended up on Ritalin instead of being medically detoxed.
Or sometimes there’s nothing inherently wrong at all. A second cousin went through something similar to what you did. His mother struggled with depression because of adverse events in childhood and then developed bipolarity from antidepressants. Which led to more drugs to treat the side effects of the drugs that came before and on and on (called “polypharmacy” by psychiatric reformers).
Based on his mother’s increasingly dire dx, it was assumed my cousin was a genetic “carrier” and his typical bright-kid-in-dull-school behavior interpreted through that lens. He was put on meds which caused hallucinations which prompted speculations that he might be schizophrenic.
Thank God his dad (via his grandfather) figured out the connection. The meds were discontinued and now my second cousin is some high powered political something in DC and not even one of the psycho ones. Now everyone on that side of the family is wary of certain medications because of suspected genetic intolerance.
This is something a lot of people don’t understand– that bipolarity and other serious mental disorders can be acquired. In any case, there’s no such thing as a genetic epidemic and previously non-existent (or vanishingly rare) “pediatric bipolar disorder” rose more than 20-fold over a few decades, which is curiously proportionate to the rate of children being medicated with drugs like Ritalin, Adderall the then-new SSRIs over the same period.
From what I understand, these may be very rare drug reactions (cannabis can also trigger this in a small number of people). But, when one in six kids is taking multiple mental health medications, the effects on the population can become measurable. Interestingly, I’ve also read that the susceptibility to side effects may be “genetic” even if the side effects themselves are not. But apparently the susceptibility isn’t necessarily due to some genetic “weakness” or flaw but may stem from an actual strength.
But that doesn’t stop the genetic industry from trying to profit by proposing to “turn off” the benign or beneficial gene so the individual can tolerate exposure to… the thing they didn’t really need anyway? An example of this I read about is “Asian flushing syndrome” which is caused by the interaction between alcohol and a particular immune polymorphism which is common in many Asian cultures and which has mild anti-cancer properties. If not exposed to alcohol, people with this susceptibility would never show the syndrome, plus they would benefit from the natural genetic resistance to some cancers. But if they drink, it’s like cutting Samson’s hair: a genetic strength is then doubled back as a liability and, aside from either turning red or fainting when they drink, their risk of addiction doubles and risk of cancer increases.
The simplest measure in this case is to avoid alcohol, not take the “Procrustean bed” solution of genetically mutating people so they can binge on booze. Strange days, huh?
One of my friends is caring for a relative with dementia who molested his daughter 50 years ago. When I tried to describe how I am NO CONTACT with my abuser cheater and do my utmost to avoid crossing paths..I was told that if I didn’t forgive I could lose out on heaven and that my hard heart needed to soften. I struggle with the community effort to forgive without protection, to go on and hug abusers and assume they are safe to be friends with, to remarry, to work with to have more children with..The problem is, these abusers have flooded our world with their darkness, where can you hide from them and all the people who support them? I feel very alone like a voice crying in the wilderness and who hears. We need a new dialog on true forgiveness and what that looks like in healthy coping with endemic entitlement and abuse.
That is why I love CL and you all. We must keep going and stand our ground for the benefit of all victims..and continue to model mighty acts of courage and escape from bondage
“I was told that if I didn’t forgive I could lose out on heaven and that my hard heart needed to soften. ”
I sometimes struggle with this concept. By “struggle” I mean that I logically know it is absolute BS that we need to soften our hearts to the FWs that abused us, but there are SO many messages out there about how being bitter is wrong and we need to forgive, that sometimes I have to debate the topic internally over and over, to remember that NO, I don’t have to forgive him.
But also? What exactly do they mean by forgive? I have been through therapy, I am very low contact with the exFW, and I have been through the worst of the rage. Most days I look back on the offenses he made against me and while maybe it is not full “meh”, it is more a mundane “ewww”.
I don’t walk around rage-filled. I don’t walk around reciting curses on him, wishing him dead. I truthfully just want him to leave me alone. I look forward to the day when our youngest turns 18 and I never have to speak to him again. But I leave him alone. I don’t try to harm him. And that is DESPITE him still trying to harm me.
HE continues to try to engage ME in his BS. HE can’t accept that he no longer has any control over me and he tries to assert it in whatever impotent ways he thinks he has left.
Frequenly it is a threat to take me to court. I can not tell you how many times he has trotted out this threat. Yet, I am pretty sure he has not so much as google “lawyers near me”, let alone contacted one. (We used a mediator for our divorce)
This moron thinks that because our divorce decree was written when I was still playing “happy family” with him, and now I am almost no contact. that means he can have it changed. He actually thinks he can go to a judge with a finalized decree and say “if I knew she wasn’t going to remain my friend and continue to be image management for me, and to continue to facilitate my relationship with my children despite my treating them horribly, I would have never agreed to this.” (ie. ” I would have tried to screw her over.” )
Note: I didn’t get any magical deal. And he didn’t get a crappy one. The decree is very “equitable”. I definitely left some money on the table in an effort to get it done before he started getting more vindictive. All to say, it’s not even like this decree is in my favor. But regardless, you are warned at least 10 times before signing that this is final, we signed documents that stated we KNOW it is final, and that we weren’t pressured to make the deal etc. He is just an utter moron. Not to mention, my oldest won’t see or speak to him. So the 50/50 support he pays me? If we actually went to court? The split of assets can’t be changed, but child support can. His payment could go up. So while he slings “court” at me as a threat, he would quite possibly be the one to be hurt by that outcome.
And of course when he starts messaging me his latest BS, I do get fired up, but I share the rage with my best friends who make me laugh about it, then I move on and he gets NO REACTION at all.
I don’t think this is forgiveness. But I see nothing wrong with my stance. I am not wasting beautiful afternoons thinking angry thoughts about him, or raising my blood pressure etc. I am doing just fine. Mostly very chill, other than when he is coming at me. And to the chumps here who maybe ARE still raging? That’s ok, you have the right to be angry, and it probably will burn off eventually and allow you to feel more peace- but that doesn’t mean you ever have to extend any of that peace to the FWs.
I think we are the sane ones.
A man taking care of someone that molested his child because they think that is how they will go to heaven? THAT is not sane.
Sort of over it! You are so well spoken and eloquent in your prose and descriptions. It comforts me to hear Your voice as you speak to many of us sweet chumps. Forgiveness to me now is MEH, yes even in the Christian context because I am letting him go from the prison of my mind..sadly my body will lag in that arena but maybe that ” Body keeps the score” will also soften into meh…but NO CONTACT helps me forgive myself and puts lotion on all of me, body, mind and spirit. I have to let myself go for the harsh abuse i sustained and also allowed within my childrens home,, now adults, and my grandchildren who also feel in their little bodies, the pain of abuse passed down via generations and through my spirit and actions. Meh to me is undoing the barbed wire of resentment but I will keep the anger needed to be safe from a world of preditory users and entitled evilness. I must not forget, never. Forgiveness is letting go of self harm and returning to love ❤️ myself after years of buried horrors. I can let go but never never never forgetting the lessons of staying too long, self harm, self blame and self abuse. I am switching the hate off and comforting myself the rest of my life.
Thank you for your kind words. If anything I went through can help another chump, thta makes me so happy. Especially as the chumps befpre me became MY lifeline.
And I agree, forgiving OURSELVES is a lot more importamt than forgiving abusive FWs.
I am a single woman 71 and don’t have one girlfriend that has not been victimized by a narcissist, which takes years to get over, I know of what I speak. What has happened to men over 65. I blame it all on the little blue pill………they can now really be dirty old men and victimize until they are put in the ground. Mother Nature used to take care of all of that, now if they can get it up they are leaving their wives in record numbers and chasing the young stuff ad nauseam, they’ve got the bank account these young chicks are looking for and bye bye to the grey haired woman they are waking up with for 40 years. Divorces have tripled in the last few years over 65.
Although some of those over 65 divorces are initiated by women who decide they’re just not going to put up with their loser husbands for the rest of their lives. And good for them, I say!
Charmee,I really had not thought about the little blue pill until you mentioned it. My #2 cheater started talking about all the chances he missed out on with women because he was married too long. That he was losing his manhood and needed to use his power tool while it was still functional! It was with so much urgency that he wanted.ME to leave him so he could swing. It just took so long for the abuse to sink in that he was serious. Both cheaters tried to get rid of me and I just couldn’t understand. So between birth control pills and viagra, we have this grey divorce flood and younger woman taking our place. A recipe for freedom?
I’d have told him “Fine, go have fun!” and kept as much of your community property as possible! Hope you got a good settlement.
You can remind your friend that you can forgive people and still be NC. It’s foolish not to avoid contact with someone who harmed you or someone you love and it’s deeply wrong to give them the message that’s okay to keep doing those things because they will always be forgiven. I wonder how the daughter who was abused feels about this. I would imagine it hurts her deeply.
Tbh I wouldn’t give this friend the time of day knowing how he has betrayed his daughter. Not only that, he’s hectoring you to forgive and enable monsters like he has. Why even suffer fools like this?
When you speak of the community forgiveness thing, I assume you mean your church. Maybe it’s time for a new community? Don’t let the sunk costs and all the so-called friends you’d lose stand in your way. Getting away from the crazy should give you a new sense of peace. In my humble agnostic opinion any church that asks you to forgive and embrace abusers, particularly abusers of children, is a cult and a scam. You don’t get a spot in heaven by enabling evil to continue with no consequences. We all know abusers don’t stop abusing when they “get religion.” There is nowhere we can go to hide from them because they are everywhere, but we can at least keep them and their enablers out of our personal lives.
OHFFS- yes I have changed communities but there are creeps in every location. You are completely correct on every count. My favorite quote from a Chinese proverb(?) You can’t keep the birds ftom flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair! Amen to that!! There are many many chumps sitting in faith communities especially. I’m there to retrain and heal with them. I’m so angry but calmer now, so I’m thrilled to be an example of WHAT NOT TO DO!!
Reminds me of my ex husband’s grandfather. He molested my ex’s aunt. Everyone acted like nothing happened. When he died the whole family acted like he was this great guy and how they missed and loved him.
Never mind his aunt spent some time in a fucking mental institution because of how much he destroyed her. She was messed up for years because of this pos. The family treated her like she had “(whisper) issues…” and “wasn’t right.” And my ex said “She had trouble for a while but she’s better now. But she’s shaky sometimes so we shouldn’t say anything to upset her.”
Well I’m sure she did have trouble with HER OWN FATHER RAPING HER. But whatttoooIknowww…
We are getting the word out there!!
“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
– Mark Twain
One of the best quotes ever.
Brilliant 👏
My ex said that I would suffer the judgment of God because I refused to reconcile, and that He just might strike me dead after the divorce my ex initiated.
Thankfully, he broke up with me over the phone because I had to mute it to launch. Clearly, the dude was in denial about all of his own misdeeds, so bad that his own attorney later started calling him “my morally reprehensible client” in emails to my attorney.
“so bad that his own attorney later started calling him “my morally reprehensible client” in emails to my attorney.”
Your ex was so gross that the lawyer hired to work FOR him wanted to make sure everyone knew he didn’t condone his behavior. That’s so really nice valildation for you riight there. There are lawyers that defend serial kuillers that don’t feel the need to make it that clear that they don’t like them.
Yes, I really hated his attorney at first because of all of the accusations and threats, but mine assured me that it was that attorney’s pattern. Mine believed in steady pressure, not lobbing things that weren’t based in actual evidence. He said that the attorney would eventually get bored and push to settle if we just held our position. And he sincerely doubted that my STBX had confessed much at all to his attorney, at least at the beginning, so we’d just stay quiet about what we knew and wait. They had nothing on me.
And ultimately, my ex apparently confessed more and more to his attorney, so bad that the attorney shared some of it with mine. Not ethical, but there it was. Yes, I only knew the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, we settled in a wild flourish, so no ugly trial to sit through. My closure was in that.
I actually determined that once the closeout was over, I’d write a card to his attorney. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d say, but I was moved that he recognized the moral evil he was dealing with. His attorney died of COVID after we were waiting for certain items to be processed. My ex went pro se, causing quite a bit more havoc until he finally dropped it because of a longer-term relationship.
But I think of his attorney every time I drive by the building that housed his firm. They completely stopped practicing family law and downsized to just one attorney who does business and estate law, so the name on the building is entirely different.
Wow. I just…wow. Interesting that he thought he could speak for the Almighty.
That was him though. He viewed himself as spiritually entitled our entire marriage.
Every professional along the way that I shared that with reacted strongly. Yes, it was a spiritualized death threat. My attorney noted that it wasn’t uncommon for people to kill their spouses “in the name of God.” Got it.
The best answer to the “losing out on heaven” is to say, “Assuming what you say is true, and that is a prerequisite for entering your heaven, then I choose the other place.” [It is the line I usually use with prostyletizers, but applicable here too.]
Personally I always think the Book of Job is an effective foil to people who misuse religion to abuse others or defend abusers. Basically God offers to condemn to hell Job’s victim-blaming friends for presuming that Job’s bad fortune was “God’s will.” According to scripture, God apparently says that if those friends can’t guess the origin of the wind or God’s place of birth, etc. they should never dare to say they understand “God’s will.”
The beauty of this exchange was that I no longer believe this way and have been set free from this fear. I was one of those who was self-righteous and had these same answers for others who were stuck in anger. Now I see much better and can comfort others in a much kinder way. I’ve learned from my abusers what helps others and my words have changed drastically. I allow the grief and safety that is needed. Missing out on heaven will not happen to those of us who defend ourselves…it is the abuser, who sees no need to stop or change that is in soul danger. My faith has been made even stronger. I told my friend that if my abuser was in heaven, then biblically speaking there is no marriage or sex..haaaa so he can go his way and I mine! Not a worry IF he makes it. I am not the judge. Nope.
The ex was entitled in every area of his life. He is the pampered third son of a woman who worshipped at the altar of men. She expressed her disappointment when her eldest son’s then wife had daughters. My mother worships at the same shrine, and my brother is also a cheater. I’m a, frankly, angry 65 year old woman who despairs at the absence of common, decent human behaviour. Based in the UK, I cannot express how shocked I am by the behaviour of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and his enabling ex-wife. Words cannot express how I feel about a US President saying ‘quiet, piggy’ to a female journalist, a comment offensive on so many different levels and incapable of any justification. The UK statistics for the number of young women who have been subjected to ‘choking’ during sex are horrifying but many women now see this as a requirement in a relationship with a partner. Due to one of my roles, I am aware of the nature of the pornography that many men now watch as routine. It often involves teens, girls and boys. And surprise is expressed that anyone objects to the content. Why do we accept this behaviour? In part because we get shouted, down, threatened, told we are crazy, told we don’t understand, cancelled, disciplined, punished in the home and our careers for standing up for ourselves. I could go on. And these consequences apply to anyone who stands up for the fair treatment of others, whoever those others may be. There is something very rotten at the heart of the world. And those of us who do our best to do right, who fail, and try again, and get up for yet another round, are getting very tired. Self-interest reigns.
If you haven’t already seen them, you might want to check out Andrew Gold’s interviews on Youtube with former detective Jon Wedger, an extremely brave former police officer who spoke out about what he was discovering about paedophile rings near London and was told to “drop it” because there were famous faces in the mix!!!
Attie, there are good people out there doing their best. Self-interest trumps (deliberate use of word) the efforts of those good people. I’m full of admiration for those who get told ‘don’t go there’ but who find the determination to keep trying.
And there’s also the grooming gangs scandal…
Adelante, a good example of how those who had power to do something to prosecute the men found an excuse not to do so by blaming the victims: they were ‘difficult girls’, from ‘bad families’ and were ‘running wild’. They have found the strength to speak truth to power, and at long last we have given them a forum in which to do so. Having said that, there are so many examples here in the UK of schools, young offenders’ institutes, children’s homes, where boys and male teenagers have been horribly abused by males in positions of power. It is deeply depressing.
The idea of withdrawing from public life and devote oneself to doing charitable work to atone for one’s wrongs and to achieve absolution clearly does not compute with this demographic.
“Fulfilling his obligation to teach” my ar*e.
LFTT
I bought “The Road to Character” when it was published. I didn’t pay attention to the dedication, but threw the book away when I learned (thanks to a CL post) that David Brooks had been gushing about his young female assistant – who he ended up marrying after divorcing his wife. One of those shiver me timbers and color me stupid moments.
*”Devoting” not “devote.”
The Psychology research (Lundy et al) says that men accept sexual entitlement amongst one another because they teach each other this as a mindset and a culture. But I’m still trying to understand why (some) women accept men’s sexual entitlement. Why the mindset and culture among women is to accept. I guess it is taught, transferred and “passed down” socially and culturally as well. Reflecting on the culture of my mother’s generation (Silent Gen) they were taught to be afraid of men. Fawning (and accepting men’s sexual entitlement) was part of survival? How are young, modern women now standing up against this, without risking their lives?
Women are taught, quite pragmatically, that the only way to survive and thrive in a patriarchy is by lining up behind a strong male and making themselves useful to them. Like in ape culture.
I am very aware of this, and I don’t have any desire to date, or have new men around my kids. Yet I STILL sometimes have moments where I think what I need is a big scary man to make the FW go away once and for all.
This usually comes up when the FW is in one of his rage modes and sending me walls of rude or demanding texts. I often get scared, and then the idea of some huge terrifying man by my side sounds good.
It is so ingrained that even knowing it is in grained, and knowing it is not conducive to what I actually want in my life right now, I STILL sometimes fall back into that thought process. It’s crazy.
Part of why I think I was attracted to the second FW husband is because the first FW husband had me in litigation abuse for a solid decade. He wasn’t physically scary, he was crazy. And vindictive and controlling. FW#2 was a lawyer. He made me get my child support enforced (because he wanted access to more of my money, as it turned out.) He had guns. He grew up poor and working class. He was my 300 lb gorilla. And no surprise, the patriarchy storyline did not work out well for me. FW#2 was even more abusive and a cheater, as I later discovered.
That is what I think about when these “oh I should get a big scary guy” thoughts pass through my head. The last thing I need is ANOTHER “scary” guy in my life. I am just going to stick to my current plan, stay as low contact as possible with the FW, wait out the clock until none of us have to be in ANY contact, continue to heal. And if by some chance later on down the line after all that, I DO want to date? I will take my time and find a nice guy, who has no desire nor need to BE scary.
I am not sure I will ever want to date, but if I do, it’s going to move at a glacial pace and I am going to have my eyes wide open.
Everyone wants a big scary guy who will come in and take care of everything! That is why fascism, which is patriarchy fully expressed, is seductive.
And that is why God made big-girl panties.
It is as if we have all made a secret pact that everything sexual is allowed, is acceptable. And this ideology has infected the entire world. The President of France is married to a person who entered into a sexual relationship with him as an adult, when he was a minor. Many people excused President Clinton’s affair with an intern and subsequent lying by insisting that everyone lies about sex. Clothing designer Balenciaga uses hints and accessories of child torture porn in their clothing ads.
One of the first places I noticed changes was in the language, which began downplaying sexual deviancy: the language became warmer and fuzzier. Perversion became “kink”, child sexual abuse became “sex with underage girls,” transvestitism became “cross-dressing,” sex became “gender” became “gender identity.”
I’m the last person who would advocate for some grim government beaurecrat with a clipboard standing at the foot of my bed, checking for bad behavior. Nor do I know the solution. But it seems to me that somehow we must change the culture from accepting anything to accepting consensual behavior between adults, and taking strong and decisive action against all else.
We chumps are here because what happened to us was not consensual. One person in our relationship decided to behave unilaterally and expose us, and our children, to risks we would never have agreed to had we known, and to exploit and extract from us resources we would never have willingly given had we known the truth. This breach of the marital and familial contract is not taken seriously, and that is wrong. Why doesn’t family court do an automatic 60/40 split of assets as a starting point where infidelity and other abuse is involved? If we as a society were serious about protecting the family and the innocent, that would be a good starting point.
I am in the process of getting a divorce in one of the two states in which it is a right for any of the parties to request a jury trial, which I have done. And I am pursuing an intentional infliction of emotional distress charge as well. It is horribly expensive and painful. But my husband’s abuse of me was wrong, his using me as a beard to pursue his secret sexual world caused great harm to me and my life and I am going to fight it in the court as long as I can afford to do so.
It seems that having exhausted all other possibilities, that we as a country are going to tear the Epstein files wide open. Yay, us. Will it be imperfect? Probably. But all those secret hyporcrites who took his money and sucked up to him being revealed is a beautiful thing. The many victims deserve to have their story told and the perps deserve their day of reckoning. Less sexual entitlement should be the result, and if the needle moves one inch further towards justice that is a win.
Reading your post, I wanted to cheer! I know we only interacted briefly before, but it’s amazingly good new to see all these steps you’re taking to freedom. Wishing you all the best in court.
Millennia of patriarchy.
Readily available birth control, education and financial credit for women are barely 50 years old.
Women in most cultures still are the primary caretakers for young and old.
Wealthy men benefit from the arrangement. Infidelity and sexual exploitation exist along side assaults on society and the planet.
We have to understand this👆and we are overpowered physically as men do have greater upper body strength. Many, like myself, were afraid of firearms also,or pay backs like being fired or divorce or abandoned..very real fears.. It’s a sad fact that woman are left with young children, no finances and going to work for men who remain entitied and exploited. Is there no escaping?
My Father was a rural Doctor in a small town. He stitched up split lips, set broken wrists, and did it over and over until he zipped the body bag shut in the morgue. He then saw the cycle repeat with their sons.
When I was 9, his only Daughter, he taught me to shoot in the woods. He said “Do no harm is my oath, but it cannot be yours. Do whatever you have to do to survive. Be smarter, be quieter, be faster, be meaner. Always have a cache of your own money. If a man comes for you or your child, make damn sure the right person goes in the ground. I’ve buried too many loving pacifists who turned the other check, and who forgave.”
Until the world is ready to lock up even the most powerful men, we have to teach our daughters to be survivors.
Your father taught you well. I’m of a similar mindset and too often idiots tell chumps to take the high road, forgive, be friends with the FW.
I’m focused instead on keeping my home peaceful, earning a better living, and above all teaching my children to recognize and not tolerate abuse!
As sure as the sun will rise, FW narcopath will seek to use and abuse our kids further when he’s old and alone or in between hook*r hohos. It’s what FW’s own father did and continues to do. I’m breaking the cycle here and now.
Such a wise man.
Very very POWERFUL👆
I was so fortunate to have been raised by him. He’s done a lot of work in the community even when it’s been an uphill slog.
He’d also say: “Forgiveness isn’t possible while the harm is still happening. Anyone who tells you otherwise benefits from taking the teeth out of your anger. You don’t owe anyone comforts at your own expense.”
And “Love is a wonderful and powerful feeling. But Love is like a dog that runs into traffic. You need to have both eyes open, because all people can love someone who hurts them. Love is not enough for a good life or a good partner. Their actions, their choices, how they treat you, and if you are aligned are far more important than how your heart feels. Love, but keep a firm hand on the leash.”
““Forgiveness isn’t possible while the harm is still happening. Anyone who tells you otherwise benefits from taking the teeth out of your anger. You don’t owe anyone comforts at your own expense.”
I wrote a 20 paragraph comment to TRY to say exactly this. Thank you for sharing your dad’s wisdom.
Braken, there are good men in the world 🌎 your dad! That dog story and keeping a leash on love…wow! Each of my cheaters had several good younger years before porn and OW took over their minds. What I didn’t know was how to leave. I’m sure your dad had something to say about that too. Your writing gave me hope
What a wise man—lucky you to have him for a father. Mine was a serial cheater and I wonder if his behaviour doesnt explain some of my own bad choices of men.
The ongoing minimizing and even enabling of institutions (and so-called friends in one’s circle) of such harmful, entitled behavior by powerful men is awful to witness.
In my case, my cheater was a senior leader in a large Christian organization. When his bosses learned we were separated and why, here was their “discipline”: my now ex reduced his work time to 40% so he could focus on therapy, reading, etc. Meanwhile, HR did an “investigation” into his affair with a subordinate from a different country. (All kinds of troubling power dynamics there!) The investigation was a big fail in my book, a sham.
After many months went by, his unlicensed pastoral counselor (who I am sure was totally hoodwinked by my ex) wrote a letter to the organization recommending that my ex be restored completely to full-time ministry. I never got to see the letter, but sure enough, he is back at his old post in leadership since then. Now he’s married to a younger international bride from that same country, whom he started dating before the ink was even dry on our divorce.
There are a whole lot of people who have been duped, not just me, so that his misdeeds were spackled over and overt scandal for the organization averted. Maddening!
I hope Harvard comes to its senses.
My #2:cheater married someone from another country and 20 years younger. One must feel powerful
B-b-b-but Tracey, he’s an Important Man! Former President of Harvard! And Jeffrey Epstein was Wealthy and Connected!
One thing I learned in thirty-five years in higher education, including as a PhD student at an Ivy League university, is that many, many men consider the access to and acquiesence–voluntary or forced–of young women to be one of the rewards for their success. Undergraduate women are flattering playtoys, while young women grad students are not junior scholars but resources to be used–economic, intellectual, and yes, sexual.
As a grad school I sat in a graduate seminar and listened to one of my supervising faculty pass off to the class my experience researching in the India Office Library and Records in London as his own. That morning I had been to his office to discuss with him the results of my research time there, and, in the course of our conversation, he had revealed to me he himself had never been there. To hear him blatantly claim my experience as his own in front of a class of my fellow grad students was both shocking and paralyzing. Did I speak up in front of the class? No. Not only was my breath taken away by the audacity of his act, I knew, and he knew, and I knew he knew, that as the supervisor of my dissertation he held the power to make or break my academic career. I suppose I should be grateful that he wasn’t also pressuring me, a la Larry Summers, for a sexual relationship.
Nor is Larry Summers alone in his opinion that women are simply less intelligent and capable than men, and don’t belong in academia, and like Larry Summers, they go out of their way to let you know it. As a grad student I once taught in a classroom in the Econ building directly after a professor who informed me that he expected me to erase the whiteboard after his class and before my own. He did this purely to exercise his power over me. As a junior faculty member I sat in the faculty dining room at a long communal lunch table alongside and across from several male senior faculty members, any of whom might be on the tenure committee the year I came up for review, pointedly denounce working women. (And this was in the 1990s!) Hell, I listened to my own professor father-in-law deride the intellectual capability of one of his own MA students. When I asked him why he encouraged her, he said the department needed the tuition revenue. That he would string her along while privately denigrating her intellect infuriated me.
I watched, amazed and horrified, how my own husband, when a fellow grad student, preened in the attention of a bevy of undergraduate women who surrounded him after class, and, decades later, watched two of my fellow professors verbally compete to top each other in the presence of a young woman undergraduate. My father-in-law left his wife and children for one of his grad students (the first in a series of much younger women). One of my fellow grad students married one of our professors. The man who was university president when I was hired into my academic job was married to a former student. I interviewed job candidates together with a colleague in the department who had once said that a sexual spark between (presumably male) professor and (presumably female) student was a crucial pedagogical tool, and who I could see during our interviews judged and ranked the female candidates by whether he found them sexually alluring. The colleague whose office was next door to mine married a young woman more than twenty-five years his junior, who had been one of his undergrad students, but claimed the high ground and swore nothing had happened until she was no longer in his class. Another professor, in the psych department, was a philanderer so notorious that even the Catholic priest his wife consulted after her husband impregnated one of his students told her to divorce him. My own ex would rhapsodize to me about the junior faculty members he was serially perving on, and he positively puff up while bragging to me about the Facebook fan club created by the student with whom he later “experimented with his gender.”
I don’t agree with those who claim there is too much focus on the Epstein files and those involved. The victims deserve justice, and to my mind one aspect of that justice is that those who so cavalierly assumed (and assume) that young women are theirs to pass around and abuse should be exposed as the entitled predators they are.
I had near identical experiences as a phd student ten or so years ago.
So on the domestic front, I was battling child alienation, cheating and extreme narcissistic emotional abuse from FW1.
In the professional sphere, my phd supervisor took the genesis of my thesis idea and created a whole international conference and book around it (without a jot of attribution).
He also lifted, word for word, a concluding paragraph of my words (to the letter) and put them in his published book.
I cannot begin to tell you the disassociated shock I felt reading my unattributed words in a published work like that.
CL is absolutely spot on, it’s all based on a spectrum of entitlement and acquisition. It relies on power imbalance to succeed.
You have beauty and youth, yeah I’ll have me some of that. Allow me to love bomb you and squeeze the life force out of you.
Ideas, quickness? A way with words, yeah, I’ll have me some of that. I dare you to dare me not to take it.
It makes me sick to my stomach. The entitlement and all the taking.
I look back over my life now and see so many examples of this..
Our society has to guard against it and speak truth to power wherever we see it being abused.
This is by no.means exclusive to Academia…The rich, white male privilege syndrome extends its tentacles deep into Medicine too.My wife was one of four RN’s, all.under age 25, working on the three to eleven PM shift in the ER of a large teaching hospital on the West Coast where just about every Intern, resident or staff doctor whether married or single deemed it a justifiable perk of the profession to engage in affairs or enjoy comfort sex with any and every younger nurse they could convince to join them in the on call accommodations. All four RNs including my now ex were involved and felt that it made them somehow special and privileged to receive sexual attention from married doctors.There was also an insidious competitive element to the infidelity among the four RN’s, three of whom were married, and this was definitely encouraged by the doctors, all white, all male, all privileged.
Yes I worked in the ER at night and watched my director who was married carry on with the night ER doc. I was young and ignorant …thinking the director of nurses needed to know about these 3am visits in the back room as I worked the front. Well they both got their hands slapped but the doctor threw my director under the bus saying he didn’t go to HER she came in to him! I had to transfer out of the ER and learned the lesson most whistle blowers learn, that it doesn’t pay to repot affairs, you will be gaslighted and told what you saw was your imagination.
Yes, it’s rampant throughout every profession. I wrote about my experience in academia because that’s what I know and that’s Summers’ profession. I know others here have similar stories from the military, the police, lawyers, etc, etc, etc.
No offense to the guys here, but it’s a part of the misogeny culture. I have male friends who are utterly horrified by that type of thing, so I know the difference.
But the entitlement was very much a part of my marriage. If I were up all night with a sick baby, he felt entitled to his “due” before going to work. If I complained that I couldn’t even begin to enjoy that because I was so tired, he emphasized that it was his “due.” And he always also got his Sunday nap after preaching, again, even if I had been up with a kid most of the night alone.
One time near the end, I told him that I was withering emotionally because the only thing he ever praised was sex and my cooking. “Well, I don’t believe in flattery, and that’s all you’re good at.”
Then he was shocked that I refused to reconcile with him after we had been apart for a year.
One day while breast feeding our colicky first child, my #1 cheater said to me..WELL WHAT ABOUT MY BREAKFAST?
The first clang of the death bell.
!!! Wow. These FWs never listen to themselves, do they? Their inner censor just doesn’t work.
It’s come out that some of the people I hated without being 100% sure why I hated them were friends with Epstein. Two examples; Deepak Chopra and Noam Chomsky. It must be pervdar because while they are both crashing bores who have written reams of books all saying the same thing, that isn’t reason enough to hate them. They just skeeved me out.
Both of them were still friends with Epstein after it came out what he was, so it’s not like they weren’t aware. Chopra, when he was told Epstein got away with one of his crimes, responded; “good.”
I’m going to go ahead and assume they’re both perverts and at the very least, abuser wannabes. I hope they lose their careers at a minimum.
Agreed…they both always struck me as narcissistic self-promoters. Chomsky is such a blow hard and Chopra a flake.
As far as Epstein et al. are concerned, I am reminded of Anne Hathaway’s line from Dark Knight Rises-something to the effect of “rich people even get poor differently.” Through the magic of technicalities, connections, and near unlimited legal resources, it is completely disgusting that people (and I do use that word loosely) like him get to plea things down to a lesser charge. If he had a PD like the people I deal with at work get…yeah.
I imagine the logic (if we can call it that) is that it is as illegal to be a prostitute as it is to be a murderer in most municipalities so it becomes very easy to label a child as a criminal if you squint hard enough. And people in power tend to squint pretty hard if it can benefit them. It’s sort of like how the insurance provider I am accountable to in my work does not construct homelessness as a mental health crisis (Abraham Maslow tends to disagree-but healthcare is an industry first and about helping people second, so here we stand.)
It’s spin. “hey, it was a hooker. Hookers are illegal. I did that part wrong! Pay no attention to the Age of Consent behind the curtain!” If you look at it from a certain angle, how is it NOT right?
I would expect this idiot to sit, still tenured until the smoke blows over and then quietly resume his duties. It’s what monsters in power do.
They don’t get poor the same way.
We hold them accountable by not forgetting.
I have been saying it for years-the criminal justice system in this country needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt. If punishable by fine means “legal for a price” we need more accountability for the Watchmen as it were.
Anyhow, off of that particular soapbox.
As a society I think we need to keep having the conversations about sex, about women, and about children and safety and improving the living conditions concerning all three. I am not seeing a greater path forward other than waiting for the current generation of policymakers die off (awful lot of old white men, huh?) and we can get a reset. Keeping it real-we have this problem because the solution is problematic for people in power. Hence why there is a greater tolerance for rape and human trafficking than there is for say, murder.
As I keep saying, none of these behaviors occur in a vacuum. I can (and have!) go on about other entitlements and thinking errors that my personal fuckwit had/probably continues to have. Looking at other ones more objectively…”my wife and I weren’t doing great and there was this other person that things WERE going great with…” It comes down to “I am special and WILL SETTLE FOR NOTHING LESS than special treatment.” It hits differently when we Chumps are pretty forced to come to any of life’s treasures with increased gratitude and humility.
Having worked with sex offenders, you see it threaded through (most of) their other cognitions and behaviors. It’s tons of entitlement and “spin” on their behaviors to justify what they are doing. The one that always gets me-“nobody got hurt, so what’s the problem?” It’s like, my dude, that person has to live the rest of their life knowing that happened and it’s going to mess up how they see themselves and any human bond that they have.”
When this is over and the full truth is finally out, I want to read Epstein’s biography, not because I admire him, but because I’m fascinated that a nobody with no apparent skill or talent managed to charm his way up into the world of the ultrawealthy, gain their confidence, learn their darkest secrets, entice them to commit unspeakable acts, and create a system of blackmail that ensured the complete silence of the US government while a shadowy group of fundies and technocrats tried to overthrow American democracy.
? I think that’s what’s happening? Who knows anymore.
Larry Sommers strikes me as a mark, an academic who is highly accomplished, deeply insecure, bright, but maybe not as bright as he thinks he is, and unable to stop running his mouth.
As for how they get away with it, a charming sociopath knows how to seem friendly, helpful, and non-judgemental, get your guard down, confess a few of their lesser crimes, make you feel safe unburdening yourself to them. If you heard a rumor that they had committed heinous acts, you might dismiss it and say, “Nah, I know that guy, he would never do THAT.” Or you might defend them because you knew they had video of you doing even worse things.
Yes, this is one of the things that bothers me about Epstein. He had no qualifications to be doing the work he did, as in, investing other people’s money, and supposedly did quite well with it. So how? Substantial native talent? Possible, but unlikely.
And yes, it’s certainly possible that he was engaging in blackmail. In fact, it seems extremely likely to me.
“Accepting sexual entitlement” feels related to “what someone does in their private life is nobody’s business”, as if a person’s character did not inform their conduct in all of their affairs.
Somehow I’ve never thought that.
I’ve endured a lot of criticism over the course of my life (62 years now) because I ended relationships with people who treated family members or anyone else like s**t even though they “were nice to meeeeee!”
Somehow I always figured if they sh*t on their nearest and dearest, I should expect the same, sooner or later.
It’s nobody’s business? IMHO, a wise person pays very close attention to how someone treats all other people when debating who to spend their very limited and precious time with.
Con artists and other criminals have an ancient tradition of using that currently trendy “love language” idea to secure targets. It’s the intention behind it, which is not visible, that matters.
Too many people consider only their own experience with a person, which may actually be insincere and superficially “positive”, and dismiss anything negative which contradicts their opinion, and thus excuse the inexcusable.
Entitlement thrives in environments where no one speaks up or sets limits. (See Helen Keller and the Battle of the Breakfast Table….)
The entitlement isn’t just sexual, it permeates the FW life in other spheres so I hate that “what they do in private isn’t our business BS.
The Saudi crown prince MBS – currently being feted by our nation’s Orange one – has a track record of beating his wife Sara bint Mashhour bin AbdulAziz AlSaud to the point of multiple hospitalizations.
Yes, that same MBS who ordered killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi. 1000% sure he’s a FW.
So today a conversation came up about Bill Gates.my h could not understabd why his wife divorced him since he did so much good for various communities.
I told him he was cheating on her. His response was, “well he was a rich important man and when you are in that situation everyone is “throwing p***y at you so how can you help it.”
I said that does not excuse what he did to her. He said well no maybe not.
H has now told me even though his dad was cheating on his mom with his young college students that she could be difficult to live with and dad was frustrated with her. So of course he’s entitled to get his needs met! He used to tell me he could not forgive his dad for doing that. Now he’s blaming his mom.
Oh yeah dad also stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her putting her into bankruptcy when they divorced.
Fuckwit thought just having a marriage license entitled him to sex. Apparently things like being nice, kind, showing affection to his wife didn’t factor into his view of marriage. The predatory OW may be crowing that he finally married her & with all her other attempts to rub it in to my chumpy face, but the ruse is up with me. FW just sees his wives as unpaid ho’s. No winning prize there. But now I think of the all the grooming done through movies, stories, generational acceptances that clouded my vision of FW’s entitlement when I should’ve dumped his sorry ass about 3 months into dating.