Addiction and dissociation in AGP courtesy of twitter

[Tyrotoxicity]

I can't find a thread about this, but Tinsel just offered up this link on the Transwidows thread.

I was expecting to agree with the general thrust; I was surprised by the growing full-body horror-lurch I experienced while reading it.

The gist is: there's very valuable insight to be gained from analysing AGP through the lens of dissociation and addiction, which I thought would probably be of interest.

But if anyone wants to keep a tighter focus on the female experience - I've long suspected I'd have gone the ROGD route if I were a teenager, but it's often hard to adequately capture the reasons why, in words that resonate with people who've not had the misfortune to collect all these trauma-issues.

And I've just applied the lens used in this twitter thread to my own experience of being female and traumatised, and I've got a strong gut feeling that the latter part of the link (discussing how giving in to AGP demands doesn't help AGPs) is also very much applicable to the 'traumatised' aspect of the typical ROGD profile. But I'm still in the mulling-it-over and not-confident-putting-my-thoughts-into-words stage at the moment.

Would welcome others' thoughts and impressions.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1171239053867569152.html

Toomanytears - welcome. You can speak (relatively) freely here and you won't be judged negatively for not accepting or affirming your husband's behaviour. It is interesting that those who have direct or indirect experience of men fitting the AGP profile seem to find the thread resonates. Please feel free to vent or just chat.

You have a 'gaming identity', but you don't believe that you will be erased or die if someone else can't see you in your gaming identity. Well, quite. That's the way it should be, it's quite sufficient to be an elf wizard once a week, get completely immersed and it be awesome, then go to work the next day. There have been times in my life when nerd pursuits probably got a bit unhealthy (always times of feeling out of control / going through bad things / social isolation etc). When you're healthy and happy it's easier to manage moderation and perspective. Looking at the subjects of the original Twitter thread - they are rarely people who come across as healthy or happy.

role-players now, like a lot of young people, seem to read a lot less than they used to

Agreed. Without completely derailing the thread into a roleplaying nerd-out, I have noticed that more modern RP systems (Dungeon World, Fate etc) seem to be written so the game session simulates the pacing and focus of a TV episode, rather than the less structured storytelling and interaction amid dice rolls of traditional tabletops. It's not a bad thing IMO and can avoid spending hours of game time on the boring bits, but it is a change. Fandom also seems more fanart, vignettes and ~ aesthetics ~ than the essays and novel length fics it used to be.

This, in my opinion, is down to neo-liberalism and the cult of the self

Cannot disagree. It's such a cynical take on what liberal ideas about the self originally were (objectivist; critical of anything non-tangible in the real world being used as a basis for truth), and yes, it does seem to be strangely popular with people on the Left who would otherwise think about groups of people in terms of class and the material conditions of their oppression. I will check out the Gail Dines lecture mentioned.

Toomanytears - sounds like your DH and my ex are in a similar place in terms of recognising the harms of their own behaviour. I cling on to the fact that this is a start, and it's progress in the right direction.

When you're healthy and happy it's easier to manage moderation and perspective.

Yes - and the flipside is when you're not healthy&happy you lose the perspective that's a necessary prerequisite for moderation.

good books, aren't just an escape but help us understand ourselves and others at a deeper level

No disagreement here. But there's a potential effect on your ability to communicate effectively with other people in words - having words is good, but if your working understanding of the concepts and associations represented by a given word are informed by thousands of separate books, and then you go out into the world and run into someone who takes a lot of identity-affirming pride in the fact they haven't read a book since they were seven... Let's just say the chances of effective communication and no one feeling disgruntled or getting frustrated are low enough to potentially cause significant ongoing issues.

The more books I read, the harder it was to talk to other people, Basically I got too far out of sync with everyone else in terms of the process of absorbing words and divining their meaning from context and relative position via reading books.

Only became an actual problem in conjunction with impaired distress tolerance. But my capacity for distress tolerance was on the wane in part because I was reading books instead of processing overwhelming distress.

Oh goodness I found that interesting. And it seems to make sense with regards to the people who now 'identify as NOT a man/woman'.

Really insightful thread. There are quite a few “self-aware” AGP people online now. They get a huge amount of flack from others of course. But to deny that AGP exists (as they do) is patently ridiculous, the internet is awash with people demonstrating it.

Thanks for posting Tyro

There are quite a few “self-aware” AGP people online now.

Good point, that often occurs to me too. People self define (self identify) as AGP.

This whole agenda pushes the 'anyone can be anything they want to be, all identities and self definitions are valued and real' - while adding except for people who want to identify as AGP, or lesbians who don't do penis, or women who don't have a gender and only have a biological sex.

Those people are evil, their self identification is invalid and they shouldn't be allowed to do it.

So how do we pick the ones allowed to be whatever they want regardless of the impact on others (who just need to get over it) and the ones not entitled to the same respect? Where's the sauce for the gander? The answer is it's not fair, it's not genuinely held values, it's a game that goes 'I get whatever I want and saying no to me is bad'.

Oh and transsexual people who have had SRS and are still clear that they are male. They're not allowed self definition and to be their authentic selves either.

Shades of communist Russia: if you don't hold the correct political beliefs you forfeit your human rights.

There are quite a few “self-aware” AGP people online now.
Given the damage it does then, if they were that self aware you'd think they'd find a way not to be.

You'd think, Tinsel.

I know how it works with a booze problem - if you're ever going to stop spiralling down you have to gradually increase your self-awareness of your own behaviours AND your self-awareness of all the ways in which your brain lies to you to try to keep you locked into your current status quo.

I think the "self-aware" AGPs 2B is referring to haven't yet got far enough to be able to make a genuine attempt at going into long-term recovery. They still haven't grasped the reasoning behind the imperative to never touch another drop.

They still haven't fully connected the roots of their behaviour to the systemic and ongoing oppression of the female sex class. They don't (yet) intuitively understand that there is a causal link between where they are (occasionally indulging while generally agreeing with us that tw aren't w) and where we are (still being oppressed).

AGP only "works" if the person who's experiencing it has got the right initial conditions programmed in their brain. The preconditions have to be there, or it can never develop in the first place, and those preconditions have to be maintained in order for AGP behaviour to be maintained.

One of the preconditions is the association between particular, sexualised, feminine-coded behaviour and quite literally feeling good.

Every single incidence of AGP behaviour reinforces the association.

Every time they do it they're maintaining and reinforcing the sexist bias that's been built into their own brains. Net result: the continued maintenance of the conditioned-human-minds element of patriarchy.

And part of them still doesn't fully accept the validity of our need to smash the patriarchy.

It's theoretically possible that there are AGPs who've been successfully in recovery and haven't touched a drop for quite a long time. But I've never seen any evidence of them.

Interesting side-point: there is perhaps some merit in holding up the lens of addiction and self-awareness, and considering men's inability to fully grasp the sexist ramifications of their well-meant intentions. Because they get a happy little moment of power when they indulge in minor sexist behaviours, don't they? And part of their brain wants to be able to keep indulging in that little fix of power and status and control. So it does everything it can to stop them from achieving the base level of self-awareness necessary to make the shift into a genuine recovery attempt. Does that make sense?

Raising awareness of AGP being an addiction not an identity might actually get traction from people AGP.

There is a backlash coming due to sports (TW) and young detransitioners (TM). I worry about it.

It's an addiction could be an understanding that helps that backlash become benign.

Given the damage it does then, if they were that self aware you'd think they'd find a way not to be.

I would not tend to think that would be easy, or maybe even possible at all for many. We don't tend to say that about other kinds of personality disorders or compulsions, why would it be that easy for this one?

It's all about where you draw the line between healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms.

A coping mechanism is "healthy" if it doesn't impede your functional ability to navigate the world you're living in.

The exact same behaviour is "unhealthy" if it is currently impeding that functional ability.

It is absolutely crucial not to lose sight of the fact that the sociocultural context is not an inherently-fixed variable. It's in a constant state of flux, as social norms and behavioural expectations evolve.

So the "self-aware" AGP who happily indulges as a coping mechanism in a manner that doesn't have a negative impact on his perceived ability to navigate the world - that's technically a healthy coping mechanism, because it's entirely consistent with and not challenging male-dominance norms in any significant way. It's not an extreme outlier that can't be integrated into society properly. It's just a particular subset of male-edition patriarchy-brain, so it fits into patriarchal society no problem.

The manner in which they're indulging in this harmful-to-women behaviour is not causing them sufficient significant problems to tip them over the edge into realising they're still part of the problem.

I would not tend to think that would be easy, or maybe even possible at all for many.

I suppose I was being flippant. What I mean is, like the "reasonable" transsexual "allies", believing there's such a thing as a "reasonable" AGP, is in my opinion inadvisable if feminism and women's rights are your priority.

There used to be a poster on Twitter called Angus, who admitted to having AGP feelings, but was no longer indulging them. He’s long since banned, of course.

Just musing momentarily on what sort of behaviour might make someone a reasonable candidate for me to consider whether a meaningful alliance with them is technically possible.

If a "reasonable" transsexual "ally" wants to lose those inverted commas, they're going to have to be actively working to mitigate the damage done - to them personally and also to wider society - and the damage still being done.

Pointing the finger at "those other people over there with whom I share this problematic characteristic or behaviour" isn't going to cut it. Because it means they're still in denial.

Still not acknowledging and taking ongoing responsibility for their own role in this (or any other) patriarchal shitshow.

Still trying to put the blame on someone - anyone - else, so they can continue to shirk their responsibility to change, and keep indulging the thing that gives them their little fix of happy and lets them stay integrated with the current norms of our society.

What I mean is, like the "reasonable" transsexual "allies", believing there's such a thing as a "reasonable" AGP, is in my opinion inadvisable if feminism and women's rights are your priority.

You're talking about people with mental health issues that they acquired through poorly understood mechanisms that they don't really control. If I treated everyone in that situation as if they were unreasonable, irrational, and should be left out of social discourse, there'd not be much society left, and I'd be a jerk to boot.

I'm not saying they should be left out of society, I'm saying they should be left out of feminism.

I don't know what that means. If they have something useful to say, we should listen to it. If they don't, we make an argument against it.

Feminism can't exist as a separate ideological stream that hopes to influence society without understanding that everyone has an interest in the way that society operates and is structured. If a feminist approach screws over other people or fails to account for their ideas and experiences, or fails to even attempt to try and convince others that its ideas are sound and good, it quickly becomes irrelevant. As with all ideological movements.

No. My feminism is by, about, and for women. This is a boundary I have arrived at through my own experience and through talking to many other trans widows. It's not negotiable for me any more.

Suggestion: males who want to get a feelgood fix from perceiving themselves as "allies to the feminist cause" could start a new men's movement, focused on the needs of all males - with the inviolable prime directive of supporting the feminist cause.

Make a movement for men and build the liberation of women right into it, from the very foundations up.

Men need to start working on liberating men from patriarchy.

We're already doing our side of the dismantling operation. They need to be doing theirs.

Transsexuals need to be exploiting the common male disdain for transsexuals to tackle homophobia. Hammer it home as hard as you can: sex stereotypes breed transsexuals.

Transphobia is rooted in homophobia is rooted in misogyny is rooted in the imperative to maintain male-dominance&female-subservience.

If you're a man who wants to fight transphobia or homophobia, you ally yourself with us by rejecting male-dominance and insisting your brothers join you in your mission.

If you're a man who thinks he isn't sexist - prove it. Reject male-dominance and insist your brothers join you. Go to them. And make them behave.

That's the only way you can be an ally. I can't declare that you are my ally. It doesn't work that way. I cannot change you or your behaviour by saying a few words. It's not a role that I can identify you into. That's not how alliance works.

That's an absolutely brilliant post, Tyro. Men, (including male transexuals) need to form a movement to liberate everyone from toxic masculinity.

Men, (including male transexuals) need to form a movement to liberate everyone from toxic masculinity.

And that means we need be doing the complementary women's version of this.

Feminism needs to liberate everyone from toxic femininity.

Which is an absolute fucker of a problem, because how many of us have an instinctive aversion to associating the word "toxic" with women? I felt a roiling discomfort deep in my stomach just writing those two words together.

We've got as far as identifying Toxic Masculinity is a Problem. We've been trying to fix it in men and it's proving a bloody intractable problem. Because it's theirs to fix.

Which means we have to acknowledge Toxic Femininity, and take responsibility for fixing it. That's our job. Not men's. They can't fix it. And they can't make real progress on their problem unless we are keeping pace with progress on ours. It has to be in tandem.

The fact that toxic femininity is hanging around waiting to be exploited by proto-AGPs is a collective problem for women created by collective action by both sexes.

This is not just on men to fix. Our role in the solution is to hold firm on our hard boundary while dismantling socially-constructed femininity.

And it's really really hard, because women indulge in socially-constructed femininity as a coping mechanism for living in a patriarchy, and a critical mass of women are still addicted.

My brain's starting to squeak a bit. I think I need a tea break.

Brilliant posts Tyro.

Tyro, if I had it in me to be a political lesbian, you would be in trouble right now!

What do we women need to do to counteract toxic femininity is a great idea for its own thread,and something I shall give some thought to.

As it says in the Freedom Programme (can't be bothered to look it up so I'm précising) it's OK to be on your own rather than settle for something toxic. That is Stage 1, I think.

One of these days I'll get round to actually doing the Freedom Programme. For now I make do with picking up the principles by osmosis hanging round on MN. There's a hell of a lot of wisdom in there.

And I'm going to try really really hard not to get derailed into a discussion about political lesbianism (as a concept and as a label). Because it would probably be interesting but it would take me far too many words to usefully connect it to the start of the thread.

Make a spreadsheet of the other threads we need to start.