How do you handle men who turn victim when challenged?

[Shawiiing]

I’ve NC but longtime user.

I’m sick of a variety of different men blaming me for their emotional immaturity when I finally stop allowing them to treat me like a punchbag/therapist.

These aren’t all men I’ve been in romantic relationahips with they’re friends, brothers, my father too. I’ve noticed if I stand up to them and use their previous words back at them they instantly resort to victim mode and blaming me for being so mean to them. No recognition of their meanness or that these are in fact their own words and responses.

I recently put this to the test with my extremely rude brother who has always used me as his go to when shit hits the fan with his wife. I’ve been trained by my mother that this brother is the golden child and what he needs he gets because he “trusts me with his feelings”. Until now (I’m nearing the end of perimenopause for context) I’ve always listened and been kind and just ignored it when he became extremely rude to me because “he doesn’t know how to express himself or his emotions” or “he loves
you he’s just hurting” (my mum) but my tolerance for male bullshit is extremely
low now and this time I called him out on it and he instantly turned on victim mode.

I didn’t take it, I responded with the kind of shit he and all the other men who’ve done this respond and he didn’t like it one bit.

Now that’s just an irrelevant anecdote as an example, I’m just curious if any other women have turned the tables on men who’ve treated them poorly and had the man become a victim? How do you deal with the shit when cutting them off isn’t a realistic option? (Unfortunately I live in the real world where cutting people off isn’t as easy as man users make out) I’m grey rocking him now but I just wondered if there were other responses (even ridiculous or funny) that I can use. I enjoyed not being the punchbag and holding the power.

I'm sick of being men’s punchbag because they don’t have the emotional maturity to recognise their own behaviours towards me and other women or that their behaviours as actually unacceptable. I can’t be the only one?

Not just with men but in general, I’ve stopped allowing people to treat me like shit and have started calling people out on it. And in the majority, they’ve turned on me and tried to make out I’m a terrible person, I’ve changed, I’ve been called names, and been subjected to all kinds of emotional manipulation. Odd how all of them justify their treatment of me but can’t see that they’ve simply been called out on shitty behaviours

I find just telling the truth very helpful, it doesn’t have to be done with the intention of inflicting harm on someone. But just state the truth.

I tell them first. As in, ‘Before you say anything, I’m not in the mood to put up with any shit today. So don’t start blaming me for your behaviour.’

It also works when you need to raise your own ill health, or success, or anything else that the man in question is inclined to hear as an invitation to centre themself.

Look up DARVO and see whether that seems familiar.

And I get the same treatment from my DM in relation to my dear sister. Who regularly makes remarks about my hair or my skin, puts me down in front of others and is generally a bitch, which my mother claims is just sibling banter. Hee hee how funny right ? But if I were to respond with the same, I’d be labelled a bully.

You say your brother and father do this and your partners too. Refusing to take responsibility but blaming others is a very male autistic behaviour. Autism runs in families. It may be that you are getting into relationships with autistic men because your father and brother are autistic and that is the pattern of behaviour thats imprinted on you.

Didn’t mention partners but I did have one who was like this and he went fairly quickly.

No my brother and father aren’t autistic they’re self absorbed arseholes but very much neurotypical. I see it as a general male behaviour rather than a ND one

The brother and father are first class practitioners of DARVO

I think as a person., you need to discover your boundaries. You need to decide what you will tolerate and what you wont.
It is ok to loose family along the way. I lost my sister because only her version of events mattered!
Be safe and kind to yourself.

No, it's not autism, it's patriarchy that's created legions of emotionally stunted, selfish, navel-gazing male brats.

Their self-pity is monstrous.

I'm sick of it too, and have no time for it anymore.

It's the only good thing about (peri)menopause: the scales fall off your eyes and you recalibrate and ditch the parasites, and you become free to set your course for the path that YOU want to travel for whatever time you have left.

I find this interesting, because I'm bi and have been in a LTR with a man and a woman (separately, not at the same time).

The woman I was in a relationship with constantly used to tell me that I was very judgemental of other people (I disagree, but whatever). It did my head in. So I started accusing her of it. She never acknowledged that I was turning the tables on her, but she stopped saying it to me.

The bloke I was in a relationship with would constantly critique my appearance. Negging. I was expected to just take the critique or he'd claim it was a joke. But when I criticised him, he'd very self pityingly accuse me of attacking him. Zero self awareness. He never put two and two together either. His best one was telling me I needed to have my varicose veins sorted out. When I retaliated by pointing out he needed a nose job and a face lift, he told me I was unkind and that he was vulnerable!

Out of the two, my boyfriend was far more intelligent than my girlfriend. Yet in relation to this? Nope. Total victim.

LEAVE!!! Ignore the fixkers!! They are abusive!!!

Refusing to take responsibility and blame others is very much an abusive behaviour. Your brother has learnt also that DARVO works for him

Yes it is a trait autistic men can have. It’s caused by the extreme ego centrism, rigid thinking, inflexible thinking, and inability to see the perspectives of others that are caused by autism. A condition you clearly know little of.

But if you want to talk feminism, the intense trauma and damage caused to women by autistic spouses is the domestic trauma feminists won’t talk about. No one talks about the trauma caused to women by these men, and when they try to talk about it they are subjected to the sort of gas lighting, denying shit seen in the above post. Responses like this add to the trauma experienced by spouses of autistic men. They already live in an unreality where all their experiences are denied by their autistic partner. Then they get the same when they try to speak to others outside their family.

@LouiseMadetheBestBroccoliPasta a feminist you ain’t. You’re just another person who doesn’t believe women.

(yes, yes NAAMALT, there are different traits and degrees of traits. And some have to the degree I describe, and yes that is due to the autism).

"No one talks about the trauma caused to women by these men, and when they try to talk about it they are subjected to the sort of gas lighting, denying shit seen in the above post. Responses like this add to the trauma experienced by spouses of autistic men. They already live in an unreality where all their experiences are denied by their autistic partner. Then they get the same when they try to speak to others outside their family."

What living with ND men does to the women is called Cassandra Syndrome: "the deep emotional distress and trauma a person feels when their valid concerns, instincts, or reports of relationship pain are chronically disbelieved, minimized, or dismissed by their partner and others". Both psychologists and feminists are fully aware of this term.

Feminists absolutely DO talk about the weaponisation of male neurodivergence against women. Some of these feminists themselves are ND. It's clear that the "oh he's ND, that's just the way he is" rubbish that we see being trotted out on MN is just another excuse for the terrible way men behave, because ND women by and large do NOT behave like this.

Recent feminist discussions on this include:

https://kateanthony.com/podcast/episode-285-weaponizing-neurodivergence-in-abusive-relationships-with-zawn-villines-neurodivergence-in-relationships/

https://zawn.substack.com/p/maybe-hes-neurodivergent-gaslighting

The narcissism, lack of self-awareness, and entitled selfishness in men as a sex class is not due to autism, since it affects the vast majority of men and ND accounts for a few % of men. Instead, these traits are due to acculturation that tells them that they are more important than and superior to women and that women are NPC sex-maid appliances than men can use (while disdaining them).

Women with ND don't have these traits as a whole, because they too are acculturated, but in the other direction: they mask their ND and work even harder to try to fit in.

It is quite possible to be an arsehole and not be autistic.

It is also possible to have autism and not be an arsehole.

Gosh this resonates. You are over 50% of the way there to removing them from your world. Those you have to work with in the future (brothers fx) keep on the very fringe of your world. Respond only in facts and when they do start the sympathy phising edge out of the conversation with a "sorry for your troubles" type of language and then be busy for the next week. Just don't engage unless it is a practical family matter. With "friends", recognise the users and lose them - don't need to be aggressive, just stop being there at their beck & call

Then get friends linked to hobbies ... that's where I am at! It's brilliant! My time and thoughts belong to me. Still work to be done but progress gently being made

With family who are the worst culprits it’s hard avoiding them without not attending wider family events and not helping with organising and caring for non abusive elderly relatives. Keeping it factually is what I’ve done but they have skills unknown to modern psychology to turn everything towards their victimhood.

Friends like that I tend to distance from but I don’t have many friends or means of making new ones through hobbies because of caring roles.

No it's not. It's a male pattern.

And you are an ableist generaliser. Not all autistic men are like this at all. And I don't even like men half of the time but this is ridiculous.

Playing the victim card is a way of failing to take accountability and as such is narcissistic. Narcissists are only into themselves really and use others to suit themselves. Therefore I have no compunction in not taking seriously victim card players. They aren’t capable of honesty. And that isn’t me being harsh. It’s just a psychological fact.

I just distance myself from them. I've had it with neighbours, family members, exes, friends. So I just stop being around them. Even if I attend a family gathering I just stay away.
I will employ a well executed "fuck off" the next time a man storms into my life telling me what to do.

How do you handle men who turn victim when challenged?
You don't, you just walk away and let them dwell in their own self-pity. Nobody has time for this nonsense.

I just grey rock them when they become the victim. I just can’t be bothered to engage with the drama. A flat “ok then” does the trick.

as an added bonus, I genuinely give zero fucks. Maybe I should spell that out to
those around me.

I’m sick of a variety of different men blaming me for their emotional immaturity when I finally stop allowing them to treat me like a punchbag/therapist.
These aren’t all men I’ve been in romantic relationahips with they’re friends, brothers, my father too. I’ve noticed if I stand up to them and use their previous words back at them they instantly resort to victim mode and blaming me for being so mean to them.

So you've had this response from a variety of men, partners, friends and those who've grown up with you and parented you... There's one common factor in all these relationships...