Recognizing "passive aggression" and narcissistic abuse

There’s a longer piece to be done on this topic, but such a good example happened today that I figured I’d seed the pot here.

You who read here know that I talk a lot about narcissism and emotional manipulation, with a heavy emphasis on the feminine character of our culture and the “abuse tools” that people choose in an era of feminization. You’ve also doubtless noticed that I react aggressively and quickly to instances of what I perceive to be feminine manipulation. There’s a lot of it, and yes, it looks and sounds like my Cluster B mother because it is the same behavior.

The trouble is, feminine narcissistic abuse tactics have been normalized. The kind of behavior people like my mother engaged in with her children is now treated as normal. It’s deployed by politicians, academics, news anchors, your child’s teacher and principal. You cannot escape it; it’s infected every layer of our culture from top to bottom.

Because it’s been so normalized, many people:

—Get a queasy feeling when they encounter this, but worry that they’re “crazy,” that they’re “overreacting,” and even, in some cases, “being misogynistic.” Shouldn’t I just accept this comment at face value? Isn’t it just kindly and concerned for me the way it claims it is?

—Fear, correctly, that if they object, no one will back them up. Because this abusive behavior is normalized, the targets of it who have legitimate complaints cannot be heard. So people just take it.

It makes me fucking furious. There is nothing that I find more despicable, contemptible, and evil than covert aggression. That’s the feminine way. You think of it as “passive aggression,” but I want to convince you to join me in adopting psychologist and author George K. Simon’s better term: covert aggression.

There is nothing “passive” about indirect, implied, plausible deniability feminine fuckery. It’s aggressive as hell, and it’s active. But it’s covert. It hides under a skirt or a touch of lipstick. Girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, right? So if it sounds feminine, it can’t actually be mean or abusive, right?

Heh.

While this approach is feminine, and the majority of people who deploy it are women, men are picking it up in droves, as we’ve all noticed. This is a tactic that is useful for malcontents in the Internet age, as female-style indirect verbal and implicative aggression work online in the written form. Male style combat, physical combat, doesn’t, obviously. This is part of why so many more men are doing it today than ever before.

Here’s the example from today. A comment popped up on an old article here that gave on overview of what I call our “Cluster B culture.”

This is an example of narcissistic abuse masquerading as caring.

Never engage with people like this. Do not respond to them. I share them publicly to help people identify manipulative and narcissistic behavior, especially the female-typical kind, which this is (whether the writer is male or female).

People like this know what they’re doing. They try to lure one in with apparent sympathy and “nice” words. Most such people who use this tactic pathologize anger (and often exaggerate it in someone else, or characterize it as “inappropriate” when it’s not).

They imply that they’ve, sadly, detected mental illness in you. Then they disingenously pretend that they wish you “health and happiness.”

“I hope you get better! Take care!”

Uh-huh. This is low character bitch behavior, not kindness, not concern, not solidarity.

Reminds me of my mother.