Greek manners and Gothic morals

A politically incorrect follow up
The Last Psychiatrist is a guy who never fails to bash males. If you read through his archives you will find that he connects masculinity with narcissism with a regularity that would suggest that the two words are really synonyms for him.

So watching him squirm and twist and do everything he can to avoid reaching "incorrect" conclusions about women is quite funny. For example, he has a post in which he deals with the rather touchy issue that some women who have encountered male psychopaths sometimes report that they found these men charming. Well, we can see why he wouldn't want to go there.

I can see the easy explanation: these women are more easily manipulated, especially because the charm carries a sexual connotation.  There's a power differential—some of the fear is processed sexually, etc. Summary: the women don't see what's really in the psychopath.

Anytime someone tells you that an explanation is the easy one ....



But get yourself a copy of CSI Las Vegas on DVD and watch a few whole seasons and you'll begin to suspect that there is indeed something to the easy explanation. For the charming psychopath who does horrendous things to women is a regularly recurring feature on that show for which the audience is mostly women. And these episodes always play the erotic aspects of these encounters to the max. The suspicion that women do, indeed, process some kinds of fear sexually gets a certain amount of traction. And maybe the teenage boy who willingly pays for his girlfriend to go on all the scary rides at the fair knows a thing or two about female sexuality after all.

TLP's attempt to explain the thing away starts with a two interesting moves:

But that doesn't seem right; these women aren't stupid; they've been around, and even on some level they must know the guy is bad news.  So what if these women who are charmed see something in psychopaths everyone else doesn't?  Are they detecting something good, or at least attractive, that I for one can't see?

The first move is one that never fails to make me laugh.  Irrationality is not stupidity and you can't cure irrationality with rationality. Imagine a Nobel prize winner with an irrational fear of spiders. Okay, is telling him the truth about spiders going to cure this? Of course not: it's an irrational fear. Saying that these women aren't stupid is entirely beside the point. Very intelligent people do irrational things all the time.

The second move is my old favourite: the purported moral superiority of women. Except that it's kind of weird to say that the explanation of something troubling in someone is their supposed moral superiority. Poor Gillian keeps dating creeps because she is so sweet and caring. WTF?

What do I think is happening? Well, let's revisit that 'power differential' that TLP talks about above.

There's a power differential—some of the fear is processed sexually, etc.

The power differential he sees is all to the man's side. The psychopath charming the woman is physically stronger than the woman and dangerous.  Well, that's true. But what about going the other way? Here is an example cited by the Last Psychiatrist. This is interesting because the woman charmed by the psychopath isn't just really intelligent she is actually a professional whose job includes the evaluation of criminal psychopaths:

"I sat down and took out my clipboard," she said, "and the first thing this guy told me was what beautiful eyes I had. He managed to work quite a few compliments on my appearance into the interview, so by the time I wrapped things up, I was feeling unusually... well, pretty. I'm a wary person, especially on the job, and can usually spot a phony. When I got back outside, I couldn't believe I'd fallen for a line like that."

Okay, here is my counter hypothesis. She didn't fall for the lines despite knowing that they were just lines from a psychopath. She fell for them because she knew she was dealing with a psychopath. Because that is the fantasy. It's just the sexy young woman and Hannibal Lecter in the room alone and he is dangerous but she is going to outplay him at his own game. He is manipulating her for his ends and she'll play along in order to manipulate him to hers. It's dangerous but ... wait a minute, what do we mean by "but", the whole thrill here is that it's dangerous. That's the whole thrill. It's like riding the backwards-upside-down roller coaster; the more people tell you this ride is terrifying the keener you are to be on it.

And, shocking as this may seem, this is not completely unlike a woman and man manœuvring their way into sex. She knows full well what he wants to do to her and she knows full well that she is vulnerable (and he has his own vulnerabilities, although this is not noted quite so often). The second she agrees to play the game she has already issue a provisional yes. And she knows full well about that always present male sex drive. She is playing with fire because it's fun to play with fire.

The  thing that makes it different when there is a psychopath involved is that there is a psychopath involved. The non-psychopath sees seduction as a game where power can shift back and forth. The psychopath doesn't see that possibility at all. He isn't actually dealing with a separate being at all. Anything she does to show that she has desires, fears and vulnerabilities can only anger or empower him. And a woman keen to play with fire just might miss this even if she already knows that the man she is dealing with is in fact a psychopath. That is not true of all women, nor is it never true of men. It's just that you find it more often among women. The easy explanation is, in fact, the right one, women are more likely than men to fail to see what is really in the psychopath. And if that really offends you, then you have to promise to never do the reverse and suggest that some kinds of irrational behaviours are more likely in men than they are in women.