To think the 'narcissist diagnosis' on MN is sexist?

[Farandole]

Not a TAAT, but a general musing.

There have been a huge number of threads lately (although not a new phenomenon) where posters complain that their mother, MIL, SIL etc are narcs.

There are nowhere as many threads complaining of narcissistic fathers, BILs etc.

Considering that studies show that men show more narcissistic traits than women, and are almost twice as likely to have narcissistic personality disorder, I am curious as to why mumsnetters identify narc traits in so many women around them.

My hypothesis is that this is the result of unconscious bias. We don't begrudge men's self-entitlement as much as we do women's. Therefore we are less likely to recognise narcissistic behaviour in men.

One other possibility is that narc mothers are more likely than narc fathers to use their children to fulfill their narcissistic needs, whereas narc fathers tend to see their children as an annoyance, and therefore tend to be neglectful rather than other, perhaps more obvious, narc behaviours. So their narcissism flies under the radar of 'bad parenting', whereas women are branded as narcs.

Am I the only one who thinks this?

For full disclosure - long time poster, no personal interest in this, no narc in immediate family. I'm just puzzled by the over abundance of female narcs in mumsnetters' lives.

Donkey :)

Lucky, this isn't about MILs actually, it's about women labelling a lot of other women as narcs, but failing to recognise that narcissistic personality is much more prevalent in men.

I often wonder about this as well. I don’t know that i have ever met anyone that i would say was narcissistic. Met plenty of twats though. I assume posters are self diagnosing these people based on some traits which fit into the narc category but they might not actually have a full blown narcissistic personality disorder?

Sugar, you may well be right. I still think it's odd that there should be so many MNers identifying narcissists in their immediate family and friends, and complaining about it, but that so few of them are men.

I would have thought being the victim of narcissistic behaviour would also suck if it came from a male boss, brother or father. Not so on MN, apparently.

There's an ongoing thread for support for women with narc ex husbands/partners which (I'm sure someone could clarify) is on its second or third outing now, and regularly makes trending. It's current.

There are nowhere as many threads complaining of narcissistic fathers, BILs etc.

I don't agree at all. I think there are more threads about narcissistic men, but because the behaviour from men is often much more extreme than the mothers, MILs, SILs, it's called abuse - emotional or violent (and rightly so), to give OP reassurance or a wake up call that she is being abused and it's not her fault.

It's just semantics.

Regardless of sex bias, it's a frankly dopey armchair psychologist non-diagnosis, which, as encountered on Mn, means something like 'someone I don't like, but want to label in a way that means they are objectively in the wrong'.

I used to have a boss who was a nightmare but I couldn't put my finger on what was wrong. I came across the term covert narcissism whilst googling bullying by bosses and a light flicked on in my brain. He was one of those people that had his staff crying or getting wound up constantly. He was never to blame and everyone had it in for him. When finally picked up on by HR he gathered little groups around him and told tales of how horribly bullied he was as a child, how he was "shaking" at his recent treatment at work. How he couldn't understand after all he had done for his team.

I would describe him as narcisitic but not because I think he would get diagnosed with a full on personality disorder. It's simply that he has enough traits for it to be a useful way of thinking about him.

I also wouldn't bother to post about him on aibu as I had other non mumsnet places to discuss the situation. It was also a situation with a limited life span , he was my boss but I left and now he has nothing to do with me any more.

I could imagine an aibu from one of my sil's but they will get told off for going away for a weekend and leaving her son with his own children. My father doesnt particpate in anything caring so yeah the aibu wouldnt be about him. It would be perfectly reasonable for them to post in aibu in frustration wondering what was going on and is this all normal.

As Chloe said if it's your husband then you're more likely to be in one of the long running threads on relationships. Same if it's your own mother, father or sibling.

You're more likely to see the men with npd just called sociopaths, or at least the strong implication there's something deeply sinister and dangerous about them. Whereas women get called narcs even when their behavior is much more in line with asp.

It's also partly a generational thing. Narcs are at their worst when they think their comfort zone is threatened. For many female narcs old enough to be mothers and mothers-in-law to adults, their focus is family. For many male narcs of the same age, it's work. You'll find a lot more male narcs being discussed when people talk about their bosses and co-workers.

75% of all real life NPD sufferers are men

Actually I think the recorded stats are probably wildly inaccurate. By definition the number of abusive / possible NPD people goign to the doctor is low ... Because they are fine as they are and don't need help. Actually, they know much better than the doctor.

Secondly if they do go to the GP, getting a formal assessment from a MH specialist is very hard. The MH net is more hole than net.

I suspect there are a lot of people walking around with some sort of PD who are not and never will be diagnosed.

I do think women with NPD tend to fly lower under the criminal radar.

So I don't think there is any true figure out there. The official ones can be used as a straw in the wind, but probably an inaccurate one.

But like lots of others, I think that people assess someone else as having NPD simply because they don't like them, or because they want to make them out to have 'something wrong with them. Occasionally you read a thread and think ... ok that really does sound like it fits the description of NPD ... but that's pretty rare.

Huldra and kmc, those are really interesting points. I'm going to think about this and come back later.

I think you're right to a degree, as there appears to be a lot of "vile" MIL's out there, so we read more about them on here.
I also think a lot of people are all too quick to badge things up with specific traits. A lot of people seem to think they are Jean Piaget, having maybe read one internet article.

Slight side-slant ... anything you read on a thread is very one sided anyway. You can tell a certain amount from actual reported incidents (if they are accurately reported, that is).

But all you can mostly do is go by what's been posted.

I think a shit dad is more likely to completely fuck off where as a shit mum tends to stay around and be shit (especially for people in our generation where the mum was definitely seen as the default parent).

Really interesting op. I think you've made some really valid points. I hear people in rl complain more about the women narcs in their life too. Mostly justified but fils tend to be painted as passive and therefore harmless but surely opting out of involvement in family life is a narc trait?

I was going to say the same about threads being very one sided. By definition they are, because none of us really know what the other person is thinking.

For example, whilst there are undoubtedly people who have suffered horribly at the hands of bullying families or groups of friends, there are also people in life who think that anything other than being given special treatment, better treatment than other people, is a sign that they are being victimised. Eg The sort of people who will turn down an invitation to a night out and expect the whole event to be cancelled because they won't be there. They will then tell everyone how horribly hurt they are by their so called friends having a night out without them. The problem with mumsnet, or any site, is that we never know if the person posting has genuinely been treated badly or if they are just so self centered that they see everything as being about them, and any deviation from them being the centre of attention automatically equals bullying.

My mum is a narc, as is my brother. She has made him that way. He's recently moved in with his girlfriend (well she's moved in with him) and there have been a couple of red flags for controlling behaviour which I've flagged up to my mum who brushed them off. Dad however agreed and is watching carefully because he knows what my brother is like.

I opened your thread thinking you'd be complaining about the amount of men said to be narcissistic

I think YABU. Plus it's often used as a shorthand for toxic or controlling, particularly with MILs, rather than actually being used to refer to the disorder.

But even so - it's not really a sexist label because it's not exclusively applied to women, even though, in your view, it's used more for women in the OP's own family and ILs.

It IS used a lot for abusive partners/ husbands/ exes - that therefore means it isn't really a sexist term.

It might be overused, I would agree with you on that - and it might be used more for women, because men tend to be labelled more as psychopaths or sociopaths - but it's still used for both sexes.

Unless your a psychiatrist you cannot diagnose your friends or family or anyone's else's over the Internet.

It's an actual personality disorder, I've had a few hospital stays and I've only ever known one person with a diagnosis in over 13 years.

Threads are astonishingly one-sided and there's a lot of mental illness about (I say this as someone who posted a lot about my MIL when I was clearly in retrospect suffering from depression).

Narcissist is a useful shorthand for 'this person affects my life, I can't - for whatever reason - stand up to them, and the frustration is more than I can bear'.

(And then there are the chilling people who clearly have something very wrong with them - but who of us is qualified to make a diagnosis based on a one-sided thread?)

What rough said, far too much armchair diagnosis on here for every personality disorder, not just narc.

(And then there are the chilling people who clearly have something very wrong with them - but who of us is qualified to make a diagnosis based on a one-sided thread?)

No one.

Having said that, certain incidents can (IF reported accurately) indicate that more is going on than the OP realises because they are too close and can't see the wood for the trees.

Sometimes that works both ways; an outside eye can see that either the OP is being walked all over, or that in fact they're nowhere near as reasonable as they think they are. Factual incidents can be quite telling, specially if they are part of a pattern.

The use of the term isn't sexist, just rubbish. Too many people appoint themselves as medical authorities to 'diagnose' behaviour they don't like.

Not sure you can equate number of threads with volume of complaints; you'd have to do a count of total number of posts mentioning narcs and count where the term was used in relation to a separate individual, to be able to draw any conclusions - otherwise one thread containing ten posts about one person, and one thread, containing eight hundred posts about fifty people, would both count as one.

So just (hopefully!) to clarify that... if one poster makes three threads about their narc mother-in-law over a year; and each thread receives 30 comments; and on each thread there are another two people posting about narcissists they know.

Would that count as 1 – same thread starter complaining about same person; 3 – number of threads on the subject; 7 – total number of narcissists discussed; 9 – total number of comments about individual narcissists or 93 – total comment count on the subject of narcissists?

It sounds from your OP that you’d count that as 3 (number of threads)? But it seems the answer you’re really interested in is total number of narcissists discussed (eg 7) and whether they are men or women.

Realistically the only way to get to that figure would to make lists of who individual posters are posting about (because one person posting five times about a narc mother in law, is still only posting about one narcissist). That’s the kind of research which would need approval from Mumsnet HQ, because the ethics of it – researching into individuals without their consent on a sensitive topic – are difficult. Which is why, I suspect, there isn’t much research in this area and we can only speculate.

(Not taking into account here the potential for poster to name change or lie,)