DARVO, coercive control etc

There seems to be a lot of attention being paid to some very tedious anti feminist posters at the moment. I really can't be bothered - they're never going to change their views and are merely using the board as an opportunity to display their own particular anti-women misogyny.
(Having said that, I do enjoy the nightly reaction to our office based visitor who also likes to lecture us on how we are doing feminism wrong )

reluctant

I agree

Trouble is i can sometimes see it happening...but i doubt my instincts

Dumb thing to do really...instincts are cool

It's incredible you can spot these tactics so easily and make accurate predictions about how they will behave.

Failing to stick the flounce is a red flag for sure.
Some people just leave, while others announce their departure, but a flounce is a performance.

you're all so mean, I'm leaving

If someone does that once and then comes back, it might be because they have been badly treated.

If they do it over and over again - particularly if the challenge they don't like is one that redirects discussion away from them and back to the conversation topic - you can be pretty sure you've got a narc on your hands.

The only real purpose in pointing it out is so that others in the conversation can recognise what's going on. But be careful because the narc sees it as encouragement. Any attention is good.

Yes the crying wolf and playing the victim - "it's just a disagreement" - you're being mean telling me I'm derailing - when they are deliberately blocking and countering all the F888ing time

yes, thanks to some tutoring by other kind posters here I spotted narcissistic behaviour on a thread and left the poster to it.

Useful indicators are

you're all so mean, I'm leaving
I'm back temporarily and may stay if enough people say how nice I am
my feelings are so hurt that I just have to leave now

and so on. Honestly I will never again accuse my family of being socially maladjusted. All of this is new to me....

Bump

And closely related to the person who wants narcissistic supply rather than to make productive contributions to discussions. Such people will constantly nudge conversations so that they are still technically on topic but with a subtly shifted focus onto them as individuals. Drives me mad - and once you notice the pattern you can't un-notice it.

Yep I agree - that's my issue - that by entertaining their subtle shifts, step by step they erode our boundaries whilst they get their feed. What came to mind was to feed them chips heavily laden with wasabi ;)

Drives me mad - and once you notice the pattern you can't un-notice it.

Agreed. That's why you occasionally see a post now referring to seagulls.

I was making the point that, if you feed a seagull the odd chip, pretty soon you have an emboldened seagull that turns up and hassles you every time you want to eat your chips in peace (ie: have a sensible FWR chat) because its getting what it wants/needs.

This is so true. And closely related to the person who wants narcissistic supply rather than to make productive contributions to discussions. Such people will constantly nudge conversations so that they are still technically on topic but with a subtly shifted focus onto them as individuals. Drives me mad - and once you notice the pattern you can't un-notice it.

@boatyardblues

I love your analogy to seagulls and chips - spot on. That's my fear - we end up getting harassed off the beach by the flock of seagulls/sealions… Because the one thing I know about trolls is they flock together - like all pests - there's never just one.

How did you signal the sealioning?

It was me that made the seagull comparison on a thread a week or so ago on a thread where we had a particularly disruptive, persistent troll. It wasn’t about flying in and shitting on things - that’s a plopper. I was making the point that, if you feed a seagull the odd chip, pretty soon you have an emboldened seagull that turns up and hassles you every time you want to eat your chips in peace (ie: have a sensible FWR chat) because its getting what it wants/needs. You also run the risk of attracting more seagulls by feeding the first one, even though you didn’t intend for your initial kind deed to open you up to persistent chip raiding.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine Thx for the background. Yes media are very complicit as they verbally abuse women all the time by their phrasing that dismisses, belittles or plain lies about women (e.g. she contributed to her rape etc)

@Cwenthryth Great - you're onto it!!

I've just put up a post re verbal abuse that you might fine useful- titled Online trolling/ harassment - it details the different forms of verbal abuse used by trolls as well as abusers irl. Also this website details the different types of trolls - I note they use "she" in some examples. Whilst not downplaying the female trolls, most are male.

I’m very proud of myself, just identified sealioning on Twitter

Woman tweets about women leaving Labour due to sexism/misogyny. Brocialist replies all about Tory enabling, ignores anything about misogyny within the party and ends with “You have responded to reasonable statements with aggression and disrespect.”

Textbook! I feel like I’ve graduated some kind of feminist comprehension test lol

ItsAllGoingToBeFine

I guess knowing more about your starting point would help me to understand exactly what you looking for and if you have received it from the wise commentators who have already spoken on this thread.

This is what we experience on a class level every time rape is discussed and men change the subject to false claims of rape destroying men's lives.

^ YES

Another variation of the sealion is JAQing off. Just Asking Questions.

Example
A person[sic] is accused of rape. When confronted with this, they deny that rape occurred, explaining it as consensual and acting in an outraged, affronted way, painting themselves as a hapless victim, whereas the actual victim with whom they had sex is described as a vindictive person who the accused later rightly spurned after discovering their malicious personality.''

This is what we experience on a class level every time rape is discussed and men change the subject to false claims of rape destroying men's lives.

The way sealioning does work though is by fastening onto a point often irrelevant to the actual OP or discussion direction, and because they're "good" at hooking people in, they can actually ruin a good discussion.

So you could start a thread with "why should I get bras from M&S" and end up with
"Why do all feminists hate men" over and over and over. Until everyone gets pissed off.

MRAs and TRAs use DARVO a LOT but not just to derail threads, it's more to do with their inherent emotional position. So it shows up on Twitter and on here but also overall movements when they get together and talk amongst themselves.

We hate you. We justify it and blame you. We lie to make you look bad. We attack you and say you've attacked us first. We threaten to hurt ourselves if you don't capitulate to what we want. We make you tread with caution and ultimately work to control what you say.

I like the sealion cartoon, because its a lot easier to recognise the behaviour from an example than a plain description.
I'm looking for examples of DARVO and the Karpman Drama Triangle (Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer).

This description makes DARVO clear;
changingminds.org/explanations/behaviors/coping/darvo.htm

''Two common types of denial are 'It didn't happen' and (if it cannot be denied) then 'It wasn't harmful'.
Attacks can be violent and effectively abusive towards the accuser, with threats of legal action, attacks on credibility and so on.

Example
A person[sic] is accused of rape. When confronted with this, they deny that rape occurred, explaining it as consensual and acting in an outraged, affronted way, painting themselves as a hapless victim, whereas the actual victim with whom they had sex is described as a vindictive person who the accused later rightly spurned after discovering their malicious personality.''

Why Does He DO That is an excellent book for understanding the tactics of abusers.
Some abuse is generational, passed down through the years, like lying to children and the corporal punishment of children. I was shocked when I read Alice Miller that corporal punishment of children was widely popularized in the 1800s through a child raising guide.

sealion.png

Sealioning sounds like a bit of an own goal around here, as surely it will just leave threads full of well reasoned, very clearly explained, most likely referenced arguments for other people to read, and the sealion just looks like an idiot.

It does, and however frustrating it is for the person being sealioned it's frequently useful for lurkers. Obviously they prefer to bait you into telling them to fuck off