Empathy is a learned behavior. When parents have empathy, they teach it to their kids without even realizing it – it seems to “come naturally” because it was learned so young, while the brain was still forming (between eighteen months and four years).

But if the parent doesn’t have empathy, they can’t teach it to the child. And because they don’t see the child as equally human to themselves, these parents may abuse their children in the physical ways we can easily recognize as abuse. But they have another option, a sneakier one: they can manipulatively groom the child to be incredibly vain and selfish for the parents’ own purpose, which is usually extension of the parent’s ego via the child. Through the child, they seek to experience accomplishments, to punish enemies, etc. The child’s identity isn’t allowed to form as it would with an empathetic parent: the child is simply pushed to see himself as a super star, to achieve power by trampling others, to be a “success” who “takes what he wants” and “won’t take no for an answer” because these are the parents’ fantasies of grandeur.

The child’s developing personality is entirely subsumed – and warped – by the parent’s machinations, which are exploitative and grossly selfish. It’s most often boys who are groomed in this manner, since a girl couldn’t possibly enjoy all the triumphs of which the embittered parent dreams. This results in the psychiatric disorder Hazelwood believes most sex offender have (see original article), Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It’s essentially untreatable, and adults with it are extremely exploitative of others.

Children groomed in this manner have been deprived of personal identity and the chance ever to connect with another human being in the meaningful way (empathy) that makes us different from the reptiles. Despite any appearance of personal success and happiness, they will never experience the feelings of intimacy, bonding and love that most of us take for granted. Because they lack empathy, they lack conscience, and therefore compassion. The basis of this disorder is believed to be incredible shame – such shame that the child buried it early on and constructed a false “self”, a sort of second personality that believes itself godlike and expects to be worshiped accordingly. But deep down, it always feels inadequate, and lives in terror of someone else seeing that inadequacy.

This is what the empathy-free parent wanted. This is a person who will hurt others and sleep like a baby afterwards. This is the parent’s monster to turn loose on society, in whose triumphs the empathy-free parent will delight. And the parent will expect everyone to admire the child.

Deliberately, if unconsciously, warping a child’s personality so he cannot possibly learn to love, care or share is definitely a form of abuse. This is never an act of ignorance: the parent may not understand what he is doing, precisely, but he is always doing it for himself, without genuine concern for the child’s well-being. Don’t confuse this careful grooming with parenting styles that perhaps go overboard on encouraging high self-esteem or lavishing a child with material things: those upbringings may result in arrogant adults or adults with above-average entitlement. But it takes a special sort of training to produce a rapist.

See the original article for several sources. This is not an opinion piece. It is based on psychiatric research.

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1. Abused kids can’t really sue their parents
2. Abuse cycles – from macrocosm to microcosm

You know what that’s exactly like? It’s exactly like when I write a post about women and how awesome women can be and how we don’t always get the credit we deserved and male commenters flood in with “You said men suck, you are prejudiced.”

Of course, privilege leads people to unconsciously assume everything the less privileged ever say is a dig at them. Privileged men read claims that Women Are Cool Too and get nothing out of it but “Hey, this bitch isn’t worshiping my cock! How could she be so cruel! Mommy and Daddy promised me everyone would worship my gorgeous cock!” The extroverts in that thread are reading a post that basically describes how Introverts Are Cool Too and getting nothing out of it but “Hey, where’s the extrovert worship I’ve been promised everywhere I go all my life?”

Thanks, guys. I never could have demonstrated your privilege better with any amount of writing. You put on a great show for the benefit of everyone trying to examine their own privilege.

To be clear, here are the actual things I actually said about extroverts in the original article:

• “Extroverts are people who need external stimulation from others.” One commenter wanted to quibble over the definition, which is okay, but for some reason she took it as an insult, which I’m still not getting. What is so insulting about saying someone needs external stimulation (from others, or from whatever, per her definition)?
• “They’re more often in output mode than input, while extroverts are the other way around.” They meaning extroverts.
• “Introverts are less likely to engage in damaging relationships because they’re content to be alone.” Oddly, no one took offense at this, which is surprising, since with this comparison I am contending extroverts are more likely to put up with unhealthy relationships for the sake of not being alone. I anticipated this being controversial, but apparently it was not. Oooookay.

Related posts:

1. Extroversion privilege
2. Personal Privilege List
3. Niceness privilege

Fuck you, pathetic assholes.

I can’t even find a trigger word that would set off the most ham-fisted filter (that’s not on Hathor, anyway). I guess someone’s feeling awfully threatened by me. Really, there is no higher compliment than censorship. Proves you’re doing your job.

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1. How you see life depends on how much money you’re seeing it with

I don’t know where people are getting this idea, but it’s wrong. Even if I had nothing better to do with my time, I would not be required to respond to you. This is not a dialog. This is a place where I post articles, and you respond. Again, that’s “you respond.” That’s it.

Seriously, where are people getting the idea that they are entitled to enormous chunks of another human being’s time because they feel like discussing something? I wrote the freakin’ article, dude. I don’t owe you an eternal dialog on it. Look at Hathor, getting between 10 and 100 comments on every article. If we responded to every comment, we’d never post a new article. Is the illogicality of your position becoming clear now? Or is everybody just becoming so narcissistic that this is going right over their heads? And do you people also complain to CNN when they don’t respond to your every comment, or are you applying a different standard to bloggers because they don’t enjoy the same privilege to ignore people 100% of the time that you extend to really big companies?

And you know why the big companies don’t respond? It’s not just that they have better things to do with their time. It’s also their realistic anxiety that someday some commenter with a bruised ego is going to sue them for saying something they didn’t like, or for responding to one commenter but not another, or some other half-ass idea stemming from the increasingly common idea that Everyone Should Be Available To Me Right When I Want Them.

Get over it.

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2. Trolling: the privilege of way too much time on your hands
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http://feeds.blindprivilege.com/blindprivilege

Please update it to: http://feeds.whatprivilege.com/whatprivilege. You can do this by using the link at the top of the sidebar.

I’ll be deleting the blindprivilege feed soon (and eventually the whole domain, so I don’t have to keep paying for hosting), and I don’t want you to miss anything from What Privilege in the meantime. Thank you.

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A few minutes later, he got up from his desk, walked over to me, put his hands on my shoulders, and kissed me on the cheek. I was so startled, I froze. Then he tried to kiss me on the lips. I shoved my hand in between our faces and prevented him from doing so. He then tried to kiss me on the neck. I shoved him away. My only exit from the room was to run past him. He easily outweighs me by about 80 lbs. I was scared shitless of what would happen if I fled. I sat at my desk and shook, while he told me repeatedly that I “made” him do it. I “made” him kiss me. It nauseated me. He then told me that we’d keep it between ourselves, and said that the “other guys” won’t take kindly to me being bisexual and that he “has your back, sweetie”. That it would be “our little secret”.

But that’s not the worst part. No, if that was the worst part, it wouldn’t give you the slightest clue what it’s like to be a woman. The worst part is the company’s response:

Finally, today, I called and asked what the hell was going on. He said that they have “substantiated your report”. When I asked what was going to be done, they said that he will remain an employee (zero tolerance policy MY ASS) in my department, but that I will have zero contact with my assailant and any “contact would be accidental”.

There are three of them working in a satellite office. She and this man are two of them. They are to avoid so much as looking at each other, but he will still be allowed to attend meetings and other functions she can’t afford to miss. And – get this – the company says if they have to interact at meetings, to remember “we’re all adults here.”

This is what it’s like to be a woman. To know that if a man chooses to intimidate you, your company won’t understand why that bothers you. Boys will be boys, right? If you don’t like boys being boys, which is often used as a euphemism for straight-up rape and sexual assault, then you should stay home, quash your humanity, and learn to enjoy nothingness. We have drugs to numb you to it – open up and swallow like a good girl, and soon you’ll forget you ever had any feelings about anything.

Meanwhile, men like that keep right on using sex to hurt people. This is not the action of a typical man who’s made a mistake. This is a deliberate, calculated, carefully scripted technique for intimidation. I suspect he’s practiced it a number of times because he seems to have thought of such things as putting himself between her and the exit. He’s someone who makes a habit of using the implied threat of physical/sexual abuse as a form of emotional abuse.

But the company doesn’t see that as a real problem. Just a little misunderstanding.

I encourage you to read the comments at Feministe, because it gets pretty glum. Basically, she has a few options: call the police and have him charged with assault, sue him and/or the company, go to the EEOC, etc. But a number of commenters stress that there’s a fair chance she’ll lose her job if she takes any action. Having rights isn’t much help when your living is held over your head in an economy where jobs are hard to come by.

At no point was this man’s job in jeopardy. The company wants him. They’re probably hoping this woman leaves, since that would make it easier for them.

And that’s one snapshot of what it’s like to be a woman. It’s not just the individual psychos you have to deal with; it’s all the enablers who back him up because it suits their plans and they don’t really see you as a person they way they see men as people.

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1. For being effective, you are sentenced to…

• It actually has the gall to begin comments with “Without having actually read the article, I can say…” wank wank wank.
• It says things like “…because I sense the article will be full of X, Y and Z…” wank wank wank.
• It demands clarification of points that were spelled out carefully in the article.
• It discredits the writer for having failed to make points that are also spelled out carefully in the article.
• It argues passionately against things the article never, ever said.

Your initial thought may be that this person read but did not understand the original article. The vast majority of the time, you would be mistaken. Usually, these are simply trolls who can’t be bothered to read, because they’re much too anxious to start wanking, wanking, wanking their own comments.

Instead of trying to explain anything to these people, or to draw them out on their reasoning, I advise you to just ignore them, report them, or if you have the power, delete them.

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1. On being a white ally
2. Response entitlement: you don’t have any
3. White Trash Blues: Class Privilege v. White Privilege

That assertion is rolling in privilege. Specifically, the privilege of not having a health condition for which doctors advise a special, non-vegan diet.

Let’s get one thing clear: the debate about whether or not some vegan diet somewhere would work for people with insulin-resistance, Crohn’s disease or failing kidneys or a medical requirement for more protein than the typical human needs is not the issue. In fact, let’s just take it as a given that there is a vegan diet for everyone, somewhere. But at this point, it’s a matter of fact that a functioning vegan diet for some of these conditions remains unknown. Vegans complain online of being told by doctors they have a condition that requires them to eat red meat or eggs or whatever. Some of this may be ignorance or prejudice on the part of the doctors.

That’s not the issue. The issue is: people are being told by their doctors they have conditions which require a low-carb diet, or require more protein than most people, or that keep their systems from digesting half the foods available on a vegan diet. For a vegan to say “humans only eat meat for pleasure or tradition” is absurd, insulting and privileged. And untrue. People often eat meat and animal by-products because they are being advised by the experts in healthcare that they must.

Take me, for example. I ‘ve never liked beef. I’d rather never eat it. But I get anemic. I take iron pills every day and eat quite a lot of veggies and dark leafy greens per week. And when the anemia happens, I take extra iron pills and eat even more greens. No help. I have on multiple occasions systematically tried every food but beef known to help with anemia, to no avail. I’ve tried herbs. I’ve tried everything anyone at health care stores can think of. Nothing but beef gets me going again. I languish in fatigue until I break down and eat beef I don’t like or enjoy. Then I’m fine.

That’s a really mild example. There are people with immediately life-threatening problems who are being advised by well-informed doctors that they need to eat animal by-products or meat, at least for a certain period during their illness. When a vegan says no one eats meat except for pleasure/tradition – read “selfish purposes” – they are callously erasing that person and his concerns. How does that fit in with the vegan philosophy – deleting people who don’t fit your scenario?

There are people halting the progress of their diabetes by eating a non-vegan diet. Could there possibly be a vegan diet that would do them even more good? Sure, anything’s possible. But like I said, go subject yourself to medical experiments. How does advising others to be the vegan movement’s guinea pigs fit in with the vegan philosophy?

Additionally, there’s something very classist about asserting that everyone could just go vegan right now if only they’d stop making excuses. The US is full of people who don’t know how to eat properly by any standard. We don’t teach nutrition in schools anymore, and many parents just don’t have a clue. Fortunately, a vegan diet doesn’t have to be expensive, so it may be possible for them to eat vegan for the same or less money. But what about families where all the adults work very long hours just to make ends meet, and no one has time to do food prep and cooking? The answer I usually hear is: “They just need to buy a slow cooker and there are tons of vegan recipes that’ll be quick and easy to fix that way.” Yeah? Because everyone has an extra $24 or whatever it costs to buy a slow cooker? Check your privilege – not everyone does.

Saying the only reason people don’t go vegan is they don’t want to erases a lot of people who have legitimate reasons to believe they can’t.

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They did. Americans were hurt to learn their country – even their culture – had lost so much credibility with Europe. We discussed the reasons, and found the difference in perception boiled down to Americans not seeing quite as many “lies” from the Bush administration as the Europeans saw, and dismissing European concerns as baseless.

That was just one forum. It wasn’t a forum about politics, which is why I’m not linking to it. It was just friends united to enjoy a fandom talking about something else and getting their feelings bruised and trying to understand. It went fairly well.

But I’ve been thinking lately about the depths of American hypocrisy, and two examples from the past couple of decades really stand out:

• We said we hated Iraq and Hussein, we sure did, and yet we just spent 10 years driving gas guzzlers and buying his oil. Even more ironic: the people trying to spend less on gas (whether to be green or just frugal) were more likely to be liberals than conservatives, and it was the conservatives who wanted to “kick Iraq’s ass” so badly. Doesn’t really mesh with making them loads and loads of money.
• We hate Communism and want to kick its ass and have been working on that for decades, but we have absolutely no problem with the fact that almost everything you can buy in the US is made in China.

Maybe it’s not that we’re hypocrites; maybe we’re just so uneducated we can’t think stuff like this through. I personally do have a problem with bolstering China’s economy – not because of their governmental philosophies, but because of stuff they actually do, like treating workers badly and drowning baby girls because they aren’t worth much. I’d like to hit them where it hurts – the pocketbook – but the anti-Communist hell-raisers of the U.S. haven’t provided me that option. They’re too busy wanting to buy stuff cheap at Wal-Mart and not tell the all-hallowed Big Business what to do. Likewise, I wouldn’t have a problem with not bolstering Hussein’s regime (it’s just I’m aware of the fact we installed him), so I work at keeping my gas consumption low. But the anti-Iraq ass-kickers just spend another $80 or whatever it costs to fill up their giant SUVs.

It’s not that American culture is full of contradictions. It’s that a lot of Americans, all by themselves, are so self-contradictory in their actions it’s impossible to take them seriously. Except, they’re really well-armed. Yeah, I can see why Europe was scared.

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What seems to set apart those at the very top of competitive pursuits from others of roughly equal ability is the degree to which, beginning early in life, they can pursue an arduous practice routine for years and years. And that doggedness depends on emotional traits — enthusiasm and persistence in the face of setbacks — above all else.

This forces me to doubt Goleman’s emotional intelligence. In fact, this is exactly the sort of Unexamined Privilege Episode that always leads me to doubt experts can deliver advice that applies to the planet I live on.

Music is a remarkably expensive talent. Not only are instruments costly (unless you’re a singer), but so are the lessons. And if you’re a child musical prodigy growing up far from a major urban center, you’re extremely unlikely to have access to music teachers of the caliber you need to become Julliard material — at any price. You can have it in you to practice 10 hours a day and bounce back from every rejection with renewed determination, but doing it all with that air violin and that music book for first graders you found at the library isn’t going to cut it.

What always sets everybody apart from everybody else is primarily opportunity. It’s true that the optimism, determination and mental resilience associated with a high emotional IQ help you discern unapparent opportunities someone else in your situation might have missed. But nobody gets every opportunity in their lifetime; a high emotional IQ doesn’t magically cause expensive musical instruments and a great teacher to fall into your lap at the right price. When equal opportunities exist for two people, then and only then can you logically infer that the more successful one is the more able one.

Does Goldman think rural poor children are never musical prodigies? Or does he think there are government satellites watching over us all to make sure talented kids from the wrong side of the tracks get the opportunities they need? Or maybe he just thinks poor people are all so unrefined that their kids could only be talented at sports.

Goleman’s unexamined privilege serves as a fine example of why so many people assume those at the top got there through sheer ability and persistence, and those below them simply didn’t try hard enough. By ignoring the cost factors, they enable themselves to maintain the comfortable belief that every playing field is perfectly level.

Note that I’m not even arguing we need to level the playing field. I’d be very happy if, for a first step, we would just acknowledge as a society that it’s not level, and ability, talent, and persistence aren’t always automatically rewarded proportionately.

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1. How you see life depends on how much money you’re seeing it with