Unmasking the Abuser Episode 12 - Pretty Woman (about Female Abusers)

[Music] Well, you've made it to Episode 12 of Unmasking the Abuser, the podcast. I'm Dr. Dean McMillan. I'm a social psychologist and a domestic violence expert. I'm also the author of the book, sold internationally, called "Butty Says He Loves Me". The crucial knowledge I share in these podcast episodes are from my domestic violence prevention program, also called "Unmasking the Abuser". They include insights from my book, along with a wealth of expertise I gained from customizing my prevention program, listening to participants, and continuing to learn as new research on this topic has become available. This episode is a little different from the rest. At the beginning, I made a promise to my male listeners and also to the women who are concerned for their sons and brothers. I noted that cultural norms make teen girls and women far more likely to be successfully trapped in a relationship with an abuser. But there are female abusers, and a relationship with a female abuser can be just as destructive as a relationship with a male abuser. Today, we're going to talk about female abusers who target teen boys and men. In the second part of this episode, also four and about the guys, we're going to explore something as much or even more important. We're going to look at male cultural norms that can make teen boys and men vulnerable to becoming abusers themselves under the right circumstances. These forces also predispose them to stand by while other men exploit, mistreat, or even brutalize women. Scary, but we'll look at some practical ways to nip that corrosive thinking in the bud. If you're a woman and don't have male relatives whose relationships concern you, I'd still advise you to listen in. Most of the tactics used by female abusers are just standard abuse maneuvers adapted to fit existing gender and cultural norms. Not only is it a good idea to have a wide range of knowledge, uncovering these tactics can help you spot female abusers who may be your relatives, your friends, or your work colleagues. This information can also give you an important preview of what we're going to discuss next episode about abusive relationships that aren't romance based. Keep in mind everyone, whether you're male or female. Chances are good you know someone who's an abuser. If the abuser you know uses the flying monkey tactic to cast doubt on the credibility of their partner, your ability to correctly identify this ploy and your refusal to play along can mean one less weapon for them to use against their victim. As for the second part of this episode, when we reveal the attitudes and behaviors by teen boys and men that are linked with abuse, that's valuable knowledge in protecting yourself. It could motivate you to actively intervene if the person displaying these is your son or perhaps a nephew. For many women, you may have that "I knew it light bulb go off today" because those sayings, jokes, and behaviors always felt wrong to you, but you couldn't put your finger on why. Your listening to the unmasking the abuser podcast with Dr. Dina McMillan. Before we delve into the topics today, I feel obligated to admit some bias. I actually like masculine men. I admire masculinity. I'm not someone who views all masculinity as toxic, or who believes we need to demand men become more feminine as a solution to abuse. For you guys out there who just breathe the sigh of relief, there's a catch. I don't like toxic masculinity. Let me quickly define the difference. Positive masculinity in boys and men means politeness, protectiveness, family orientation. It means having a strong sense of personal accountability and the determination to honor your word. It means a devotion to duty, a strong work ethic, and real effort to provide for your family, either alone or in partnership with your spouse. A masculine man is like the guy who stopped right after I pulled over to the side of the road with a non-working engine. He said he knew a good garage nearby. He contacted a tow company he knew, and unknown to me, paid for the tow. I didn't find out until after I arrived at the garage and went to pay, and the driver told me the cost had been taken care of already. I couldn't repay the guy whose name was John because he had refused to give me his last name. He laughed and said he saw I needed help and just likes to do what he can. I have too many stories for a single podcast of examples of positive masculinity, of men who are willing to protect and help out and do things for others because they've been taught that's what men do. Masculine men are a blessing. Toxic men are more of a curse. Toxic masculinity is defined by me as selfishness and sexual entitlement. These guys admire those who've achieved through exploiting vulnerable people like the guy in the Wolf of Wall Street. Their fantasy life includes being admired by other males and having the opportunity to use a never-ending parade of attractive women. In their real lives, they believe anything they do to gain sexual satisfaction for themselves is fair, including lying, deceiving, and taking advantage of someone vulnerable. They believe because they're male, they're automatically more valuable and important than women whom they don't really view as people. Women are there to serve two purposes in their minds, to be decorative and to be useful. Toxic masculinity men will often get angry and act with cruelty towards any women they view as unattractive, especially if those women don't seem to make an effort to be appealing to men. The only out for these women possibly is to be incredibly useful and submissive towards men. These guys are all about themselves and fixate on how much they believe they deserve without considering what others also deserve. When they're in a couple, guys with toxic masculinity often go golfing or boating or play amateur sports on the weekends, never asking themselves if they're partner to whom they leave the vast majority of responsibility for housework and childcare could use more help or even a break. They do this even when their partner also works full-time. They demand applause if they do the least thing to help out in their families and bring it up repeatedly. When these guys do help someone outside of their family unit, they demand something immediately in return. These are the kinds of landlords who demand sexual favors from women if their rent is late or the kind of law enforcement officers who prey on the vulnerable women turning to the police in a crisis. Toxic masculinity is a mindset that sits firmly on the abuse spectrum. We'll talk about this more in the second part of this episode. The differences between the two types of masculinity is dramatic and I feel it's not talked about enough. The fact I do like men is why I decided to do this episode on abusive women. I don't like bullies and I don't want anyone to be abused, female or male. In many ways, the abusive women we're going to discuss aren't that much different from the men. Both sexes actively manipulate the hopes, dreams and desires of their targeted partner to gain control. Both begin the process by demeaning their partner while at the same time doing whatever they can to increase their targeted partners dependence upon them. In addition, many teen boys and men don't even realize women can be abusers. seriously dangerous ones. We need to do what we can to get the word out. Due to cultural norms around sex roles, the methods used by female abusers often have to be a little different. For males, cultural norms actually provide some level of protection against female abusers. Controlling females who want to move fast into a commitment around strong warning instincts in most guys. His friends and family will also warn him. This is in sharp contrast than the situation for women where most cultures promote rapid commitment and often her friends and family try to convince her to ignore her warning instincts. And I can say before we describe them, I shared a house with the female abusers some years ago. She was smart, attractive and could be generous, but her intense need for control and thinly disguised anger were too close to the surface. When we met, she hadn't had a boyfriend in almost a decade. If you watch the film, how to lose a guy in 10 dates, you see a pretty good example of how female abusers behave. Kate Hudson is adorable in the film and it's all done in a way to make it light and funny, but the steps to getting a man trapped in an abusive relationship are all there. Here are some of the most common. First up is the lore. While male abusers often use promises of a lifestyle and happily ever after future to entice women, female abusers use other tricks to get their hooks into their male target. At the top of the list is physical attractiveness. Unlike male abusers who may or may not be physically attractive, female abusers who are unattractive have a much harder time pulling in a target. Most of the female abusers I've met and whose partners I've interviewed were at least reasonably attractive and physically fit. Most were markedly more attractive than their male partner, even if it was due more to time and attention paid to their appearance than real physical beauty. They used their appeal to catch their target's eye and keep him involved even after he realized as she may have serious issues. These men wanted physically appealing partners they could show off to their friends. They also bought into that unspoken cultural belief that someone who's physically attractive must also be emotionally healthy. In the interest of fairness, I've also met female abusers who had a string of partners in spite of the fact these women were physically unattractive. They were successful because they were able to grab extremely desperate and lonely men and trap them in a relationship. Second on the list, yep it sex. Even unattractive female abusers can enjoy some level of romantic success if they're able to tap into the desires of their male target and get him used to having his needs easily and fully satisfied. I see this a lot with male teens who think they've hit the lottery after finding a female willing to do so much to please them. Often, whether teen or adult, female abusers are willing to do more without demands or complaint and pretend to enjoy it. Much more so than non-abusive women. Third on the list is practical help. Female abusers can often work their way in by offering practical support or even nurturing to assist their target. Nothing seems to be too much trouble. Many work hard to develop a range of practical skills that they seem to offer freely to make their target's life easier or even to help him with his schoolwork or his career aspirations. Yet all of these benefits come with a high cost that's also included from the opening bell of these relationships. Like their counterparts, the male abusers, these teen girls and women move fast to gain a commitment from their target. The cunning ones do this in a way that flatters their target's ego, making him think he got lucky a woman wants to bond with him. He doesn't often ask himself why she's in such a rush. By this point in the podcast series, you realize there's no such thing as a free lunch. One of the first and most evident costs of being with one of these girls or women is the damage they do to their target's self-esteem. From the beginning, they make little jokes, ask questions or do other things to draw attention to all of their target's flaws and mistakes and worries and anything he self-conscious about in order to lower his confidence. Remember, people without confidence are easier to manipulate. Abusive women quickly find employees to justify, staying in touch at all times with their partner, saying things like it makes them feel safer or using some other maneuver to appeal to his masculine protectiveness. The result here is also the same as with the male abusers. It allows these women to monitor and control all of their partners or targeted partner's movements. Lonely guys are just as likely as commitment-focused women to allow a new partner to sweep in and take over. They're just as likely to mute their instincts and allow themselves to be distracted by the positives in the relationship. Admittedly, in some ways the female abuser has to do things a bit differently. There are reasons for this. Abused men have an out. There's no culture I've studied or encountered that forces men to remain in a relationship with an abusive woman. Their families and their culture will give these men permission or even encourage them to end the relationship and get as far away as possible. But don't feel sorry for female abusers. They still have some arrows in their quiver they can use to keep their targets and their victims from walking away. Let's discuss a few. Dependence is one. The female abuser will work fast to make herself useful or even irreplaceable to her target. A man who doesn't understand the potential harm of abuse by a woman will be especially vulnerable. He'll believe she's being nice and will stop whenever he asks. Not likely. And she'll be furious because she believes he owes her. Threats. Like the male abusers, female abusers will threaten to publicly humiliate their target using any information she gained if he walks away. Anything she knows about him, any mistakes he's made are all fair game. So are any revelations he's made during their intimate moments when he was feeling he could trust her. If he wants to walk away, the female abuser won't just try to ruin him with his family and friends. She'll also try to ruin his job or his career. If the relationship becomes committed, the male victim is really in trouble. Of course female abusers will pull a lot of tricks to get that commitment fast. Purposely getting pregnant is a move I've seen most often in these cases. This will not only emotionally and legally tie the male victim to his female abuser, the woman will then have no hesitation about using the children to keep the male victim compliant to her will. Now that we're talking about the children, female abusers are notorious for using their children as pawns to hurt their male partner if he leaves or does anything she doesn't like. She won't allow him to see them or she'll turn the children against him or she'll slip out into the night and move far away. Men who are strongly attached to their kids can be trapped in this way. Then they're stalking. I don't think this factor is discussed enough, nor is the real and present threat of being stalked. Abusers of both sexes often stalk their targets or their victims if the relationship ends. Abusers don't believe their target or victim has the right to reject them. They'll follow them to encourage a change of heart. They'll follow them as an implicit threat. This will both be online and in person. Stalking isn't just annoying. Anyone who invades your life in personal space in this way could potentially hurt you or even try to kill you. Female abusers also have the advantage that many people don't know they exist. Because men are usually bigger and almost always physically stronger, too many people dismiss the potential threat of female abusers, viewing them as annoying at worst. I've seen female abusers seriously attack male victims until the men held them off to keep from being hurt further. The women then used the resulting bruises to claim they were the victims. In all but one case of this when I worked for the court, the female abuser was believed by the authorities. The one case where she wasn't was my case, and I went to bat for the male victim. Female abusers are no joke. When I coordinated the Orange County domestic violence fatality review team, I saw a few dozen male victims with female abusive partners. That doesn't seem like much when I saw thousands of female victims. But keep in mind, most male victims won't call the cops. The men I dealt with had often underestimated the threat because of the significant size and physical strength difference between themselves and their partners. These men were tall or very athletic, and their female partners were usually petite. These guys felt safe at least physically. I told them don't you believe it. This was the dynamic I saw most often on the coroner's slab because the abusive women used an equalizer, a gun, a knife, a car. While most abusive relationships don't end in murder, the coercive control and psychological cruelty that underlie abusive relationships can ruin a person's life whether the victim is female or male. Listen to the details in all of these episodes. Take the time to ask yourself how these tactics could show up in your circumstances and for your sex. It's worth the effort. I want everyone to stay safe. Welcome to the second part of Unmasking the Abuser, the podcast. I'm Dr. Dina McMillan. I'm going to begin here by reading a folktale that's become pretty popular. The story is attributed to the Cherokee, but I don't really think that's accurate. I think this was done because the grounded wisdom of the Native American tribes is widely respected so it makes people more likely to listen. An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. He told him a fight is going on inside of me. It's a terrible fight and it's between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He's anger, envy, lust, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. He continued the other wolf is good. He's joy, peace, love, hope, connection, modesty, kindness, benevolence, empathy, trustworthiness, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person. His grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather with this fight which wolf wins. The old Cherokee said simply the one you feed. In a nutshell, if we want healthier relationships between men and women, we have to raise our boys and encourage our men to feed their good wolf and starve the evil one. This isn't so easy. In a society where many industries, including those peddling pornography, make mind-boggling fortunes from encouraging boys and men to feed and get addicted to feeding their bad wolf. These industries never tell these boys and men about the real cost, not just in terms of money, but also with regard to their personal relationships with women, their sexual health, their principles against exploitation and abuse. We could do a whole episode on the real cost of using pornography, not just for women, but also for men. Yet it's not the only influence in our culture that places teen boys and men on a continuum where the scales are slanted to increase the likelihood they'll slide further down. At that further end, lies exploitation, misogyny, and abuse. I'll give you an example. In 2015, the major U.S. Department store Bloomingdale's ran an ad campaign that showed a man looking longingly at a woman as if they were at a party. In the picture, she's laughing with others and not paying attention to the man. The ad said, "Spike your friend's egg-nog when they're not looking." That ad should bother you and not just because it's advocating ignoring consent by drugging or sneaking liquor into someone else's drink. It's understood in toxication or drugging in this woman would probably get her to do something sexual she wouldn't do otherwise. It should also bother you because a lot of people would have had to see and approve this ad campaign before it was plastered on billboards and paid to be included in magazines. Digital norms that teach our boys and men that anything done to acquire sex is not just okay, but clever is what's meant by rape culture. This includes obvious psychological manipulation that's advocated by the groups known as pickup artists. It also includes music and music videos with male entertainers singing or rapping about women performing sex acts on them or having sex with these women with or without the women's consent. All of this defines masculinity as the willingness to turn women into objects that are used, abused, and tossed aside. That's how abusers think and believe. Abusers do what they do because of a sense of entitlement, a need for control, unending demands for attention, and submission. We've talked about the fact they often start early in their teens or even in childhood with the manipulation and maltreatment of other people. But abusers can also be crafted later by a combination of circumstances and experiences. The mindset can gain ground in adulthood if a man isn't careful. What can be done to fend off these influences? A few simple things. If you're a guy, do what you can to see women as people. If you're male, read books with female protagonists. If you're a parent, have your boys also read books with positive females in bold roles. Make sure the girl or the woman isn't a beautiful ad-along, but the lead in the story without emphasis on her appearance. Don't make jokes or laugh at jokes that mock women or their bodies or their functions. This includes the common derision about women being on their periods. When you examine a behavior by a teen boy or man that may be morally questionable, ask yourself, would I feel the same way about what's being done if a woman did it? A moral double standard leads to trouble on a large scale both within your family and within society as a whole. Don't use female names or attributes as an insult. Calling another guy a derogatory name for female genitals if he seems weak is both rude and wrong. Women can give birth through their parts. Can you do that? Remember sex is supposed to be a shared experience between two people. It's not all about the woman just servicing the man. Extreme selfishness in this and all other ways is firmly on the abuse continuum. Don't try to control your partner. If a demand wouldn't be okay if she made it on you, don't ask it of her. If you're a teen guy or a man, spend more time building your positive masculine traits. Also, frankly and honestly consider whether you have any toxic masculine attitudes or behaviors. If you're not sure, ask the women close to to you. Get help if you need it. If you realize you're not an emotionally healthy guy, don't try to fix it all yourself. There are a range of services that can assist, including seeing a therapist. Therapists are required by law to keep their client list in what occurs in sessions confidential. So no one has to know. If you fully commit to getting better, you'll just notice your relationships. It will start to become stronger. The toxic masculinity on the abuse continuum is so common, many people just shrug and accept it. Yet if you take someone with these attitudes and perceptions, add in high stress or job loss or personal rejection, and they're highly at risk of sliding smoothly down that pole into abuse, think about it. Anytime you have to make a choice on how to behave, ask yourself whether a type of response will feed your good wolf or your evil wolf. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact me at [email protected]. That's unmaskingpodcast all one word at gmail.com. Next episode we're going to look at abuse in non-romantic relationships. This includes family relationships, friendships, and among work colleagues and employers. I hope you'll join me then. Thank you for listening. I'm Dr. Dena McMillan.