By David Futrelle
A lot of what’s called “Red Pill Dating Strategy” is little more than abuse — mimicking the behavior of real-life skeezebags who employ assorted psychological tricks designed to keep their partners feeling desperate and insecure. It’s as if the Red Pillers read a rundown of toxic behavior in relationships and decided to use it as a to-do list.
But for this strategy to work properly, the subject of this sort of manipulation has to remain unaware of the tactics their abuser is using. So what happens if a woman learns about these tricks and realizes they’re being used on her?
Well, for one thing, it freaks out this dude who never thought he’d get caught. And so he turned to the Ask The Red Pill subreddit for help.
Oopsie daisy!
Naturally, one of the Red Pill regulars suggested that he respond to the accusations of manipulative abuse by … gaslighting her.
“I would honestly look at her crazy … and act stupid, ‘redpill? I don’t understand what you mean by that?’ Or some bullshit,” wrote rprookie.
Another suggested that he try to convince her that the abuse was a good thing.
Be blunt, yes it is selfish and narcissistic in some ways. Here’s the catch there’s nothing wrong with that. Surprise!! Most of therapy or psychology is helping people prioritize themselves in a healing process to develop healthy and more effective habits/behaviors. The red pill provides a way for men to better themselves and simply be honest about what they want and encouraging them to pursue it. For example, how many men want a threesome, but never try to get it?
The red pill has literal posts about how to get it and that’s the point self improve men/ actualization has an element of selfishness because you are the subject of change.
I’m sure his “abuse is good at least when I’m doing it because then I might get a threesome” argument will go over swimmingly.
Another commenter blames the therapist, and psychiatry in general.
So your midwit girlfriend learned some big girl words from her therapist, thus causing the very untheraputic outcome of more conflict on her life.
Your basically experiencing the same thing ever American Dad experiences when their daughter gets back from libtard university.
Google the antipsychiatry movement and if your not a midwit you should be able to hard counter with serious anti therapy critique.
Still another commenter thought that the OP had nothing to worry about.
All of the girls who called me a manipulative, abusive narcissist went on to fuck me even better. Those are just cute nicknames they use for us with their friends and orbiters.
Meanwhile, another commenter suggested that the girl was being the manipulative one:
If a women calls you manipulative/abusive whatever, basically anything remember that it’s for her personal gain. It’s just a tactic to manipulate you into turning into a little beta pussy for her. You should be worried tho if someone you trust and respect calls you this.
I’m pretty sure he neither trusts nor respects her; that’s why he’s treating her like shit.
There were also numerous commenters telling the OP to break up and move on and though their reasoning was often suspect I have to agree with them on this. OP, end this abusive relationship — and move on from the Red Pill altogether. Use this as a wake-up all. Get some therapy yourself. And don’t get into another relationship until you’ve expunged all traces of the “Red Pill philosophy” from your system.
H/T — The Blue Pill subreddit
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You don’t know this individual as well as you think.
“I have had positive experiences and interactions with this person” is not the same as “This person is not a damaging bigot.”
“I like this person” is not the same as “This person is not a damaging bigot.”
“I have seen this person defend and support some groups of vulnerable people, and they’re not stereotyping and insulting most group of vulnerable people” is not the same as “They’re not someone who punches down.”
Once you see them punching down, you need to believe that they’re the kind of person who punches down, or you end up defending bigotry because you like that particular bigot.
Well, as much as I’d like to explain why I read Dalilama’s post as probably a miscommunication, I just don’t think it’s worth dissecting it before she has made a response, which apparently she’s elected not to do, so I guess I’ll just hold that. What I will say is that dismissing someone as a bigot because of one instance is not a strategy that ends well. Everybody has unexamined bigoted views; that’s just the nature of our current society. So then some people go on a crusade to “cancel” people for all kinds of singular faults, but since it’s impossible to do that completely fairly, what really happens is that marginalized people get a disproportionate amount of the negative attention while people who have done worse things get off relatively scot-free.
If she changes, I’m open to accepting that.
I have a couple of friends with diagnosed PDs, who have worked very hard on therapy, and have worked to significantly reduce their symptoms in a way that prioritizes eliminating behavior that can harm others. One was terrified when she found out her diagnosis, because she thought it meant she was terrible, and when her friends found out, they would hate her. One is putting up with unhealthy behavior in his romantic relationship, because he’s internalized the idea that when there’s conflict, his diagnosis means he’s the asshole and even if it doesn’t feel like it, he must be the unreasonable one making unhealthy demands. Both get suicidal thoughts centered around the idea that everyone thinks they’re inherently, willfully, and irredeemably bad.
So the one thing I give a shit about is that people like my friends aren’t repeatedly and unpredictably stumbling on comments telling the that their diagnosis means that the thing that’s wrong with them is their tendency to victimize others, therapy can’t help them, their illness is their own choice, and their diagnosis means they are assholes. Beyond that, cancel or not, I don’t actually care. I don’t need a display of contrition, and I don’t have an opinion on cancelling Dalillama overall or not. (Before that nasty bigoted comment, I had a vaguely positive impression of Dalillama, although I wasn’t paying that close of attention.
Now I’m wondering what other kind of bigoted nastiness I missed.)
I just want it to stop. I want people to not do it again, because if they stop, maybe they won’t add to the stigma and pressure that’s inflicting a brutal toll on the mental health of my friends. And if people understand that it’s shitty bigoted behavior to claim “personality disorder” means “willful asshole who never changes”, or to spread misinformation claiming that “neither medication nor therapy can help” people who are badly in need of mental health support, they tend to stop.
However if a group of friends rush to their defense and try to persuade everyone that their nice, pleasant friend couldn’t possibly be doing anything that bad, the person calling them out is just a big bad cancel culture meanypants who’s being unfair, that often makes them feel righteous and victimized, and they don’t tend to stop.
I will admit that I was inaccurate about the mob response of defensive rage, and I don’t know if Dalillama will change and stop saying bigoted, inaccurate, and harmful things about people with personality disorders or not. Trying to get people to remember that “personality disorder” or even “Cluster B personality disorder” doesn’t mean “inevitably and permanently a terrible person” has gone badly before and I’ve come to expect the worst.
From that discussion, I have the impression there is a terrible lack of words for mental states.
I might develop later, but fear being vexing if I try to do it without thinking about it, but there’s a lot of complicated notions that intervene through each other.
One thing Dalilama is not, is the type of person to ever admit to being wrong about something, or even not the hyper-expert on any given topic, so I’m not surprised there’s been no response to the criticism here. I have never witnessed her back down about anything, and I don’t expect her to back down about this either.
I mean I guess I might as well at least say this. The thing that’s made me uncomfortable with this thread was the apparent shift from critiquing the institution of psychiatry as putting labels on people to lump them together wrongly, to now talking about people who have been *diagnosed* with PDs. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t be classified as having a PD now, who probably would have in the past, or even who might as well be seen as having a PD today.
I relate to Sick of your ableism’s stories to some extent as an autistic POC. I’m sure others also relate to some extent as queer people and/or some combination of the three. So I often feel a certain way about people talking about how a disorder can be “treated” so that the person with the disorder can “alter their behaviour” and that’s why the disorder is not “bad”. And I know people do genuinely benefit from certain treatments, but then there are probably more people who could also benefit but are gatekept by a diagnosis that they can’t get. It’s all a big quagmire.
I thought maybe Dalilama was trying for a nonstandard usage of the term “personality disorder” to make something resembling this point. I guess there’s no point in speculating about that now.
And you know, that’s a useful discussion to have. I am active in the bipolar community, and there’s an ongoing and endless discussion around gatekeeping the diagnosis, and whether a home-brew Dx is legit. On the one hand, there is a significant money outlay to get a professional Dx, and it takes an average of 6 years for a person with bipolar to get a correct diagnosis, so there’s an argument to be made that people should be “allowed” to diagnose themselves. On the other hand, bipolar is sometimes a trendy Dx when some celebrity or other comes out as having it, or Kanye West drops a new album. Bipolar is not fun and not hip, but people who don’t have bipolar don’t know this and have some misconceptions about it, and so there are periods when there is a flurry of self-diagnosed people with questionable symptoms popping in to claim the bipolar flag, so to speak. Whenever someone self-diagnoses as bipolar because “I can go from happy to sad and back in an instant!” I am definitely gatekeeping that person in my mind, and possibly (as gently as I can) with my words.
But there are some treatments that people who self-diagnose can claim without help (some types of therapy can be learned independently by a diligent and motivated person) and some that they can’t (like prescription meds). I don’t have any issue with someone self-diagnosing as borderline, and learning some DBT to treat it on their own, because if they are wrong no harm done anyway. They can only go upward in their life trajectory with this action. I have a problem with people self-medicating for a disorder like bipolar, because they can go very, very wrong if they are wrong with their Dx. There are others who feel differently, that people should definitely take their internal chemical balance in their own hands and gatekeeping meds is wrong. This is a topic on which there are good arguments on all sides. So yes, this is something worth discussing, definitely.
@PoM
There’s a similar argument in the autistic community for similar reasons like how hard it is to get a diagnosis or the various ways in which many groups (like women or PoC) are heavily underdiagnosed due to systematic biases and outdated ideas. However, in the autistic community the stakes are probably lower because autism in and of itself does not require medication, medications may be prescribed to help with comorbid symptoms such as depression or anxiety but autism itself doesn’t have any specific pharmaceutical treatment so people won’t be as likely to self medicate.
As an autistic person, I’m over all fine with people self-diagnosing. The only group I take issue with is when incel/alt right assholes either get a professional diagnosis or self-diagnose and then use that as an excuse for abhorrent behavior or blame it for their failures, though that isn’t so much an issue of self-diagnosis so much as just some people being assholes.
@An Impish Pepper. I think you really have some really good points. When I talk about stigma, I talk a lot about people who are diagnosed, because, regardless of what else is going on, they’re disproportionately likely to get hit with the stigma. It can, however, quickly get screwed up if people either conflate “has a diagnosis”, “has the condition” and “has certain behaviors and symptoms that are common with the diagnosis”, or even if there’s unclear communication about that.
And you’ve got a good point about equating “can be treated” with “not bad”. I think often, particularly for people with highly stigmatized diagnostic labels, there’s an unfair overemphasis on minimizing how difficult it is for others, at the expense of the health and happiness of the person being treated. I don’t like it that my friends got such a one-sided view of what being healthier looks like that they’re afraid to do legitimate things, like communicate needs or recognize that sometimes the other person is treating them unfairly. I’m glad that the “Feelings don’t get brutally painful as easily, and I can take non-self-destructive steps to feel better when they are” aspect is there, but I don’t like it that people going for help are getting taught such an intense tendency towards self-policing they can’t healthily stand up for themselves. And I really don’t like it when my friends are doing that to themselves and people are still describing their diagnostic label as if it was Willfully Being An Asshole Disorder.
Reminder, NOBODY, people with personality disorders have problems with strong emotions and how to control them. You are so ignorant in your post I dont even know where to start, except to say you should stop commenting and listen to people with personality disorders to try and fix your ignorance. You are choosing to do harm right now. Stop it.
Something also which didnt get mentioned, many personality disorders are from childhood abuse or trauma. Personality disorders cant be diagnosed before 18 years, becuase your brain is still developing. In a way, personality disorders are like your childish brain and responses remained in some way or didnt develop in a way that it is meant to. So to talk about ‘chosing” behaviour is also victim blaming, as well as abelist.
Secondly, some personality disorders from abuse mean that people do not have empathy. They are not capable in that way. Empathy is also something we learn when we are children, so if you expreince abuse you may not learn it. This doesnt mean you will be a bad person, it means you will have to learn how to be respectful without empathy. And that is possible. @jaythenerdkid on twitter writes about how they learned to live without empathy, becuase of their childhood abuse.
This is why it is important to listen to people diagnosed with personality disorders.
There is also the discussion of medicine and diagnosis and if it is good or bad, but again for this I will say, listen to the people diagnosed! They are the ones with the best insight about this and how it affects their life. They went through the system and talked to the doctors. They seen how it works and how the diagnose affects them.