• What We Know About Women in the Viking Age Is Steeped in Cultural Bias by Nancy Marie Brown

What We Know About Women in the Viking Age Is Steeped in Cultural Bias by Nancy Marie Brown

What We Know About Women in the Viking Age Is Steeped in Cultural Bias by Nancy Marie Brown

Snippets:

History books are not “true.” They do not, and cannot, capture the totality of what happened in any one place or time. Historians choose what to tell and what to leave out.

That choice is an interpretation.

But the process of interpretation only begins there. History books are not collections of facts; they are not lists. They are stories that stitch facts together. The more facts, the closer the story may approach reality. But no matter how many facts a historian recounts in her book, it remains a story—an interpretation. And as such, it reflects her cultural biases.

Until very recently, one of those cultural biases was to ignore women.

• China Wants ‘Sissy Idols’ and ‘Effeminate Men’ Scrubbed From Entertainment Industry

China Wants ‘Sissy Idols’ and ‘Effeminate Men’ Scrubbed From Entertainment Industry

China bans ‘sissy’ and ‘effeminate’ men under new macho media rules

China wants to be a country of macho men, and it’s trying to make that happen by banning “sissy” boybands and “effeminate” males from all media in the nation.

Broadcasters must “resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,” the National Radio and TV Administration wrote in a new set of rules released Thursday. It also used the term “niang pao,” an insult for effeminate men that means “girlie guns.”

• Often, People Ask Their Therapist or They Wonder, “Why Do I Keep Attracting Jerks and Abusers?” (and: Why DO Some People Keep Attracting Jerks?)

Often, People Ask Their Therapist or They Wonder, “Why Do I Keep Attracting Jerks and Abusers?” (and: Why DO Some People Keep Attracting Jerks?)

I am not a mental health professional. (I did take psychology courses in college, but I am not a psychologist or therapist.)

I am just posting here on my blog about what I have learned in my years of research and based on my personal experiences and observations of other people’s experiences.

(Below, I will include some links or embedded videos with content about “why do I keep attracting narcissists / jerks / abusers.” First, I wanted to offer a lot of commentary up front.)

One thing that has struck me in my years of reading books, articles, and watching videos about abuse, psychology, and relationships on You Tube (by licensed therapists and psychiatrists) is that these therapists and psychiatrists say that many of their clients will often ask their mental health professional,
“Why do I seem to keep dating, marrying, or attracting jerks, narcissists, or abusive people in other areas of my life?”

I remember by the time I got into my late 20s wondering the same thing about myself.

I remember getting home from an internship one day, looking at myself in the mirror after a bad day at this job (where a co-worker had been rude to me yet again), and thinking,

“I’ve spent my whole life being kind to others, I often do nice gestures for other people, but I don’t seem to attract normal, mentally healthy, or kind-hearted people who are genuinely interested in me or in meeting MY needs. I seem to keep attracting selfish people, strange people, or jerks. Why is that?”

A lot of the material I’ve read or seen (i.e., on You Tube) by licensed psychotherapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists will tell you, that yes, there are ingrained or learned patterns in many people’s thinking or behavior that makes them feel pulled toward abusive people (and some of these behaviors may be the result of the type of family you grew up in).

There are, these mental health professionals say, things you tend to think, ways you usually behave, or there are assumptions you make about relationships and people, and assumptions about how you think a relationship “should” work and how you think you “should” respond, that can make you very appealing to people who are mean, narcissistic, abusive, selfish, or exploitative.

And you may not always be aware that you are being, thinking, or acting a certain way – until a therapist points it out to you, or, if, like me, if you start reading case studies of people similar to yourself in self-help literature.

Once you start hearing about other people’s life experiences (especially if this is written by a therapist or psychiatrist who then explains to you what was going wrong in that person’s life and why – these are generally case studies of patients they actually saw in years past), then you start recognizing your own distorted or toxic thinking patterns or relationship behaviors.

And in almost every case I’ve seen so far, depending on the type of problem you have, or type of person you are, the MHP (Mental Health Professional) reassures you that, YES, there are things you can do to stop having toxic, false, wrong, bad, hurtful reactions, assumptions, or behavior.

That in turn will increase your chances of attracting sincerely good, loving people into your life.

And, once educated on these subjects, you’ll become much faster and better at quickly spotting the abusers, jerks, the self absorbed, the toxic, and other problematic people, and not get involved with them to start with.

Or, if you do get involved with one, you’ll now refuse to put up with the abusive behavior, you’ll know to break things off as soon as possible, how to break things off, or how minimize damage if you cannot exit a bad relationship for some time.

All of which is a good thing, right?
(But there are some people out there who actually think this is bad. I will explain more below.)

• When Brown and Black Men are White, When White Men Are To Blame For the Bad Actions of White Women, and White People are to Blame for Anti-Homosexuality Attitudes Held by Any Black Person

When Brown and Black Men are White, When White Men Are To Blame For the Bad Actions of White Women, and White People are to Blame for Anti-Homosexuality Attitudes Held by Any Black Person

According to the left, Black people are sometimes White.
(Brown people are also sometimes White, the left says.)

On other occasions, the left says that White Men are to blame for the questionable or bad actions of White Women.

(Also according to the left: all Jews of any skin color are white, and Asian people are White.)

I will cite examples of this absurdity in this blog post.

Duke professor blames white men for white female professors impersonating women of color

CNN Sees a Racist Future Full of Nonwhite White Supremacists

Snippets:

Can America’s white supremacy be stopped?
Not according to CNN — even if white people can.

The outlet makes a powerful prediction: After Caucasians no longer control the world, nonwhites will take up the mantle.

…Via an article on its site, CNN argues that “whiteness is elastic”:

The census suggests that white Americans will be a minority by 2045, but as several commentators have already noted, that date can easily be postponed. whiteness isn’t a fixed identity; it’s like taffy — it expands to accommodate new members, if they have the right look.

“So many racial groups,” the piece postulates, “gravitate toward whiteness.”
— /// —

If you are unaware, Larry Elder is a black man. From a Los Angeles newspaper writer:

Column: Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned

by Erika D. Smith
August 20, 2021

Larry Elder smiled the smug smile of a Black conservative who could very well be liberal California’s next governor.

…As longtime political consultant Kerman Maddox put it: “Larry Elder goes out of his way to be at odds with the leadership in the Black community and at odds with the thinking in the Black community.”

Like a lot of Black people, though, I’ve learned that it’s often best just to ignore people like Elder. People who are — as my dad used to say — “skinfolk” but not necessarily kinfolk.
— /// —

 Again, Larry Elder is a BLACK MAN. He is not a white guy:

CNN’s Stelter allows guest to call Larry Elder a ‘white supremacist’ unchallenged, avoids racist attack on him

This is by a Damon Young from The Root (you may have to read this more than once to grasp what it’s saying):

Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People

Snippets:

by Damon Young

It feels counterintuitive to suggest that straight black men as a whole possess any sort of privilege—particularly the type of privilege created for and protected by whiteness.

• Semantics Game (It’s All The Same): Trauma Bonding, Codependency, People Pleasing, Push Over, Doormat, Nice Girl Syndrome, S.L.D.D.

Semantics Game (It’s All The Same): Trauma Bonding, Codependency, People Pleasing, ‘Push Over,’ Doormat, Nice Girl Syndrome, S.L.D.D.

I see a lot of sharp disagreement among therapists or survivors of abuse online about terminology.

There is a lot of pointless bickering about what to refer to this or that type of person, attitudes, assumptions, coping skills, or behavior, or set of behaviors.

One therapist says in his videos about relationships that in the past few years, a lot of people began using the word “codependent” or “codependency” in a derogatory manner – it’s used as an insult.

Self Love Deficiency 

That particular therapist, a Ross Rosenberg, coined the terms and phrases SLD and SLDD to use, rather than use “Codependency” and “Codependent.”

Rosenberg has a web site about all this called Self Love Recovery Institute.

Rosenberg is open to the word “codependency” but likes to refer to it as “Self Love Deficit Disorder,” or to say that being self-love deficient is at the root of codependency:

Introduction to Self-Love Deficit Disorder and Self-Love Abundance

Snippets:

People find themselves chronically in unhealthy and unbalanced relationships, where they give most of the love, respect, and care; only to receive nothing in return. Despite the pain, they stay in this unhappy and toxic dance, because they are afraid of feeling the intense shame and pathological loneliness that will arise if they leave.

Often this has been called codependency, however a more appropriate name is Self-Love Deficit Disorder or SLDD. On the SLDD pyramid, codependency is a mere symptom of not loving oneself. Codependency is not what needs to be treated, rather the root cause needs to be addressed.
— /// —

This same guy, Rosenberg, also wrote a book about how and why codependents often end up marrying pathological narcissists, and he titled his book “The Human Magnet Syndrome,” so I take it one could even, based on this, start referring to super passive, boundary-less people who tend to repeatedly attract abusive people to them, as “Human Magnets.”

Some Objections

Other objections I’ve seen about use of the word or concept of “codependency” includes…

There are many, many authors out there on the internet who believe that codependency “pathologizes” normal, caring, giving behavior, or that it “victim blames” women abuse victims and lets male abusers off the hook for their behavior – when it does no such thing (but that may be a topic for another, separate post).

Codependency is Not Sexist, Nor Does The Concept Pathologize Normal, Caring Behavior

By the way, let me pause here to say: it’s an absolute strawman argument to suggest that the term or concept of Codependency pathologizes or “gives a bad name” to normal, loving, empathetic, care-giving behavior.

That there may be some individuals out there who read books about codependency and mistakenly conclude,

“Oh wow, I now realize I never, ever have to care about other people ever again! I can always put me first all the time, and never show care or concern for another person ever! I can be totally selfish!,”

does NOT invalidate the concept or the word.

Nobody (sane) who agrees with the term or concept of Codependency, such as myself, is arguing that every one should stop having any and all empathy for other people or should stop doing nice, kind gestures for other people.

Codependency is a form of pathological caring, pathological empathy – it’s doing too much, it’s caring too much; it is an individual’s becoming too focused and too wrapped up in other people and always trying to fix or rescue the hurting, or to try to fix every problem in the lives of their family and friends.

Codependency properly understood is an OVER-ABUNDANCE of caring, and of being overly focused outside of one’s self on other people, that becomes unhealthy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being excessive and 1  being quite low, many codependents would rate at a ten or higher at trying to solve other people’s problems, and only thinking of other people!

To get totally lost in another person and that other person’s problems and life is not normal or healthy. Codependents get so consumed in pleasing or trying to rescue other people, they don’t stop to think on what THEY want in their own life, nor do they stop and work out their own identity.

So, nobody who supports the concept of codependency is telling other people to stop helping hurting people – but there is a limit at which your help ceases to be helpful and becomes harmful or enabling.

People who agree with the concept of Codependency are not sitting around encouraging people to behave like selfish, self-absorbed jackasses all the time.

If you’ve been in a relationship with a selfish jackass who used “codependency” as an excuse, I am sorry that was your personal experience, but your mother’s, your boss’s, ex- spouse’s, or ex- friend’s co-opt of the term to mis-use it to excuse their selfishness does not invalidate it.

(And your ex- spouse, boss, ex- friend, whomever it was, was probably a text book case Narcissist who was inaccurately or falsely claiming to be Codependent to get away with their lousy behavior.)

Still other mental health professionals claim that the word “codependency” is much too broad.

Cry For Justice Blog’s Barbara Roberts

I’ve seen Barbara Roberts at A Cry for Justice blog (blog pertaining to domestic violence from a Christian perspective) pitch a fit about my use of the word “Codependency” (or discussing the concept) back when I used to post to her blog, because she once read a book by some psychologist or someone who claims that the term “pathologizes” abuse victims.

People like Roberts will go on to prefer to use the phrase “trauma bonding” which has seemingly become trendy in the last few years.
(Note, I do not recall if Roberts herself specifically uses that term or approves of it; but I am saying that I’ve seen others who object to the term “codependent” prefer to use the term “trauma bonding” – she may or may not be one of those, I am unsure.)

In this post at her blog, Roberts writes:

Of course, a victim-survivor is free to say about herself “I was lacking in certain qualities / skills / discernment / character traits.” …or… “I was enabling my abuser.”  It’s fine if you want to speak that way about yourself; but please don’t speak that way about other victims.
— /// —

I’ve actually written a blog post responding to Roberts’ blind spots and double standards before:

ACFJ Blog’s Hennessy Domestic Violence Series: Yes, Codependency Makes An Appearance 

I can and will speak this way about other victims – because it’s true.

What I have said at your blog before, and what I continue to say here at my blog, Ms. Roberts, is accurate and true.

Roberts actually promotes the views and work of other authors at her blog that she feels helps domestic violence victims, but those authors she gives the “stamp of approval” to are all saying the same things I’ve said on my blog and which I said at her blog.

The only difference is that those “Roberts-approved” authors do not use the word “codependency.” I refer you again to this former post at my blog for an example of what I mean.

• ‘It’s Time To Stop This Trans Sports Insanity Before Women Start Being Killed’

‘It’s Time To Stop This Trans Sports Insanity Before Women Start Being Killed’

‘It’s Time To Stop This Trans Sports Insanity Before Women Start Being Killed’

Snippets:

by Piers Morgan

It was the moment ideology met cold, hard reality.

Alana McLaughlin, 38, the second transgender MMA fighter to compete in the sport, used a powerful choke hold to beat Celine Provost, 32.

The latter was demonstrably a more skilled and experienced fighter during their bout on Friday night – McLaughlin only took up MMA earlier this year, whereas Provost’s been doing it for a decade – but just couldn’t compete with the overwhelming physical strength of her opponent.

Provost’s punches bounced off McLaughlin like a baby lion’s off its father, and when she was pinned to the ground, she couldn’t move and quickly tapped out.

None of which is entirely surprising given that McLaughlin spent six years serving in the US special forces as a man.

• The Status Game: Male, Grandiose, Humiliated by Will Storr

The Status Game: Male, Grandiose, Humiliated by Will Storr

Very long (yet interesting) essay of which I will only be including a portion here on this blog; it’s worth the read, so you should really click the link to read the entire piece:

The Status Game: Male, Grandiose, Humiliated by Will Storr

[The essay discusses serial and spree killers Ed Kemper, Ted Kaczynski, and incel (involuntary celibate) Elliot Rodger, who murdered several people – some of these men experienced emotional abuse in childhood from their parents, or felt rejected by girls when they were teenagers, or else experienced humiliation and shaming experiences when in their early 20s, etc]

….If life is a status game, what happens when all our status is taken from us? What happens when we’re made to feel like nothing, again and again and again? Humiliation can be seen as the opposite of status, the hell to its heaven.

Like status, humiliation comes from other people. Like status, it involves their judgement of our place in the social rankings.

Like status, the higher they sit in the rankings, and the more of them there are, the more powerful their judgement. And, like status, it matters.

Humiliation has been described by researchers as “the nuclear bomb of the emotions” and has been shown to cause major depressions, suicidal states, psychosis, extreme rage, and severe anxiety, “including ones characteristic of post traumatic stress disorder.”

• Most Adult U.S. Christians Don’t Believe Holy Spirit is Real: Study

Most Adult U.S. Christians Don’t Believe Holy Spirit is Real: Study

Most Adult U.S. Christians Don’t Believe Holy Spirit is Real: Study

by Leonardo Blair

Of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6% or 15 million of them actually hold a biblical worldview, a new study from Arizona Christian University shows.

The finding was published by the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University in its recently released American Worldview Inventory, an annual survey that evaluates the worldview of the U.S. adult population. Conducted in February, the survey included a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults.

• A Caveat or Two About Boundaries and Counseling (part 1)

A Caveat or Two About Boundaries and Counseling (part 1)

Generally, having boundaries is a good thing (but which most Christians will heavily discourage girls and women from having – under the bogus “Gender Complementarian” view, which thinks God’s perfect plan and design for females is for females to go through life being passive, docile, and never, ever defending themselves or their time, energy, money, or attention), there may be a few exceptions.

One of the things you can learn if you spend some time reading about certain types of people or personality disorders, or by watching psychology videos by licensed psychotherapists on You Tube, is that some people will not and cannot change.

If you try to enact boundaries with certain types of people, that strategy may not work.

One thing you will discover after you’ve researched it enough (and perhaps you can also factor in life experience here as well) is that the only workable solution for you is to limit time around certain people, or to cut them out of your life entirely (which may mean divorce, if you are married to someone incapable of change).

There are some people with some conditions – whether it is pedophilia, or cluster-B personality disorders (borderline personality disorder, NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), or Anti Social Personality Disorder (i.e., sociopathy or psychopathy) who cannot or will not ever change.

No amount of being sweet, loving, deferential, or kind-hearted to anyone in those groups will change them or improve your relationship with them. No amount of Bible reading, prayer, hope, or faith, will make the Narcissism, Sociopathy, or whatever other condition, vanish.

• The Amazons of Dahomey: They were the world’s only all-female army. Their descendants are fighting to recapture their humanity.

The Amazons of Dahomey: They were the world’s only all-female army. Their descendants are fighting to recapture their humanity. by Danielle Paquette

They were the world’s only all-female army. Their descendants are fighting to recapture their humanity.

Snippets:

August 26, 2021
by Danielle Paquette

ABOMEY, Benin — Her step-grandmother could remove a man’s head with a curved blade. She could scale a wall of thorns. She devoted her life to defending the king.

These details — all true, the elderly woman said — landed in the notes of foreign explorers. But they failed to capture the whole story.

Nanlèhoundé Houédanou wants people to know more about the Amazons of Dahomey, the only documented female army in modern history. Researchers have spent decades combing through European and West African archives to craft a portrait from the jottings of French officers, British traders and Italian missionaries.

Yet a crucial piece of the Amazon legacy has been lost to the eraser of time and colonial rule: Their humanity.

“My Amazon was gentle,” said Houédanou, who, at 85, is one of the last people on Earth to have grown up with one. “She was known for protecting children.”

…Now a team of Beninese researchers is working to reshape the narrative. For the last three years, historians at the African School of Economics, a private university that Wantchekon founded near Cotonou, the capital, have been tracking down descendants of Amazons across the nation.

• ‘Trans Woman’ Who Exposed Himself to (Biological Girls and Women) Wi Spa Customers Is Actually a Serial Sex Offender

‘Trans Woman’ Who Exposed Himself to (Biological Girls and Women) Wi Spa Customers Is Actually a Serial Sex Offender

This is just one recent example of this phenomenon of a biological male claiming to identify as a woman so that he can sexually harass biological women in women’s only spaces, such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and so forth.

There are other examples of this same situation involving other “transwomen” (i.e., perverted biological men who sexually harass biological women using claims of “identifying as a woman”) going back several years.

And yet, leftists, liberals, and Democrats defend allowing biological men into women’s spaces and have the audacity to claim they support women and are against sexual harassment (remember the “Me Too” trend of just a few years ago?)

You cannot support a position (“trans rights,” “trans activism,” or whatever label you choose) that makes it easier for biological men with nefarious intent to enter women’s only areas, which jeopardize the safety of women and also simultaneously have me believe you are anti-sexism.

I don’t care how many biological men you know personally who identify as women and you swear they are swell people; that doesn’t change the fact these sorts of practices are dangerous and unfair to natal girls and women.

Liberals, Leftists and Democrats used to say “Believe women” any time a woman said she had been sexually harassed by someone – especially by a biological male – but now, if the biological man harasses a woman and then claims to be a woman, those same Liberals, Leftists, and Democrats refuse to believe the biological woman and dismiss her accusation as “transphobia.”

As to this first link, please click to read the whole thing; below I give just some excerpts.

The Wi Spa and the strange decline of the liberal press

by The Glinner Update and ripx4nutmeg
September 2, 2021

Not a hoax, but a cover-up.

….It has emerged that four women and a female child have alleged that [Darren Agee] Merager [the man who identifies as a woman now] was ‘partially erect’ when he exposed himself.

Also, he is a tier-one registered sex offender with—among other felony convictions for sexual offences—two prior convictions of indecent exposure stemming from incidents in 2002 and 2003. In 2008, he was convicted for failing to register as a sex offender.

Incredibly, Darren is also currently facing six charges of indecent exposure over a women’s locker room incident at a swimming pool in 2018.

Following that arrest, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued an internal flyer that stated: “Merager claims to identify as female so he can access women’s locker rooms and showers.”

Here we have a serial sex offender, who the police less than three years ago said pretends to be a woman so he can access women’s and girls’ spaces in order to sexually abuse them, being allowed to enter a women’s spa – where he allegedly exposed himself to women and girls.

In July, on the basis that an unnamed source in an LGBT publication with an unnamed byline had said the police had failed to find witnesses (we now know that even this wasn’t true), a large tranche of the liberal press did everything they could to dismiss the story as a ‘transphobic hoax’.

…Memorably, The Guardian tried to discredit the women who had reported the exposure, by broadcasting the same claim in two separate articles.

‘Trans Woman’ Who Exposed Himself to Wi Spa Customers Is Actually a Serial Sex Offender

by Kevin Downey Jr

Remember that viral video from last June showing an angry black woman, Cubana Angel, confronting the staff at Wi Spa in California (of course), regarding a man exposing himself in the women’s changing room?

The spa took the side of the “trans” man and all hell broke loose.

Turns out the supposedly trans dude is a tier-1 sex offender with a long history of exposing himself to women and girls.

Andy Ngo of The Post Millennial broke the story.

Darren Agee Merager is now being charged with indecent exposure for dangling his partially turgid junk in front of Angel, her daughter, and several other women at Wi Spa.

• 20 States Sue Biden Administration For Corrupting Title IX With ‘Gender Identity’ Mumbo Jumbo by K. Zempel

20 States Sue Biden Administration For Corrupting Title IX With ‘Gender Identity’ Mumbo Jumbo by K. Zempel

20 States Sue Biden Administration For Corrupting Title IX With ‘Gender Identity’ Mumbo Jumbo

‘The Biden administration has far exceeded its legal authority to mandate that people deny basic biological reality.’

September 2, 2021
by K. Zempel

Left-wing leaders frequently accomplish their goals by hijacking preexisting infrastructure to fit their objectives. They often do this with language, perhaps nowhere as clearly as the redefinition of “sex” to encompass “gender identity and sexual orientation.”

So far, these endeavors have been successful — albeit through executive order and judicial activism — but now Republican state lawmakers are pushing back, specifically on Title IX.

In response to a Title IX executive order out of the Biden administration, 20 states are suing the Department of Education, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the Department of Justice.

Their complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee on Aug. 30, asks for declaratory and injunctive relief and centers on the way that both of these federal entities have “issued ‘interpretations’ of federal antidiscrimination law far beyond what the statutory text, regulatory requirements, judicial precedent, and the Constitution permit.”

….But the bureaucrats in the Biden administration, by “flouting procedural requirements in their rush to overreach,” have decided to rewrite the law so that wherever “sex” appears, it actually means “sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.”

• Middle School Teacher Tells Students They Must Choose Between Being A Christian or Supporting “LGBT People”

Middle School Teacher Tells Students They Must Choose Between Being A Christian or Supporting “LGBT People”

A middle school teacher in Norman, Oklahoma can be heard telling his students they must choose between being a Christian or supporting LGBT persons (you can hear it in the audio in Tweet way below on this page).

In the past several years, I lurked in many forums, groups, and blogs for ex-Christians, many of whom claim to have grown up in mainstream to conservative evangelical (or other varieties) of the Christian faith.

Many of the ex-Christians are now atheists, while others flipped in a 180 degree opposite direction from being conservative to being very hard left.

Many of the ex-Christians I kept seeing on those sites object to the concept of “live and let live,” or “agree to disagree but get along politely,” or “hate the sin but love the sinner.”

I disagree with them. It’s not necessary to fully support someone else’s political or theological views or lifestyles to be kind to them or to love them. But that is a view many progressives reject.