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Open (More or Less) Post on Covid 65
As we proceed through the second year of these open posts, it's pretty clear that the official narrative is cracking as the toll of deaths and injuries from the Covid vaccines rises steadily and the vaccines themselves demonstrate their total uselesness at preventing Covid infection or transmission. It's still important to keep watch over the mis-, mal- and nonfeasance of our self-proclaimed health gruppenfuehrers, and the disastrous results of the Covid mania, but I think it's also time to begin thinking about what might be possible as the existing medical industry reels under the impact of its own self-inflicted injuries. So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:
1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry et al. are causing injury and death. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.
2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its tame politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.
4. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religious, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.
With that said, the floor is open for discussion.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-02 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)ISTM "leading lights" are a group who can be discussed separately from the general community they're trying to influence, whether or not some or all of them are also part of that community.
I'm unaware if any of the leading lights whose responses were linked here and on the last thread are young moms (TBH nor do I care). I know Heather Heying is an old mom ;) and I like her article: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/psamamabears
In my search for a pediatrician who will accept my baby despite my failure to follow the CDC's "recommendations" (mentioned upthread) I've been taking strength from it. (I'm personally not all that agreeable, but I do have the IN_P "spinelessness" so w/e. (Well, to be thorough, we flip between "spineless" and "overreacting to minor pressure"...but anyway.))
-Ochre Shabby Sea Serpent
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
But...The thing about the "mama bear" narrative - which, while helpful for the people who admit they need a buck up sometimes, I get that! - is that this:
"Mothers have a special bond with, and a particular ferocity around protecting, their children."
Is only partly true. Some mothers are particularly ferocious about protecting their children. Others - my own great-grandmother, for example - are utterly unfit parents. Many of the people on this forum have stated that the reason they could see through the gaslighting is that they had a narcissistic parent. And, while they were carefully politically correct, based on what I've seen with friends, roommates, family that married in... I'd bet that a sound majority of those "parents" were mothers. One uncle-in-law once described his mother (who did not raise him, her sister did) as "the most selfish woman I ever met", and until I met one roommate's mother, I would have agreed. Maybe it's not a mother thing, and selfish dads just leave, but the anecdata were overwhelming. And I always feel bad when that narrative about saintly mothers comes up and I know that that must sting a lot of people who know it's more complex than that.
And this is also very true:
"Mothers, like everyone, can be conned into thinking that the very wrong thing that they are doing is the very right thing."
Mothers also happen to be women, who are people, and they as are equally prone to use their privilege for moralizing social crusades as anyone else.
The white feather campaign comes to mind, and this article reads just like the same sort of propaganda that would have been used to recruit soldiers.
On balance, I'm very glad that she ended with this:
"Be ferocious in protection of your children, and then, ferocious in protection of all children."
Because that is the one that usually bites first - when it becomes "mama bears" all believing they're doing the right thing by protecting their children, and attacking other people's children to do so, especially given how often people don't even have the full context before they go into attack mode. Hilarious example: a friend of mine was fuming because a boy at school had punched her daughter, and she wanted the school to Do Something about that clearly horrible, threat to society. They're 6. And the daughter, shiner and all, was getting really upset, didn't want her mother to call the school - "She's already trying to protect abusers! We have to do something!" - no. It turned out they'd been fighting about who go to go first down the slide, and shoving turned to hair pulling turned to... she sacked him. So he socked her. I laughed so hard at my friend's face I nearly fell off the bench; the girl knew she'd started it.
Sometimes mama bears also need to know when to wait and see, and when to call it a fair draw.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-03 01:11 pm (UTC)(link)For what it's worth, I'm one of those people whose narcissistic parent was in fact my mother, and I have some thoughts on that, based on personal experience, experiences of people I know, and on-line blogs and forums by and for children of narcissistic parents.
I think fathers are probably no less likely to have narcissistic personalty disorder (aka NPD, which is a real condition and should not be confused with just "having a big ego" or garden-variety self-absorption), but that children of narcissistic mothers and fathers tend to have somewhat different experiences. One, you're probably not wrong - a lot of bad fathers of any stripe likely are more prone to just leave, as you said. I also suspect that high-status NPD fathers may devote more time and energy to careers, and spend less time directing their poison at their children.
But another thing that makes the experience different - and this is based on a lifetime of anecdata from my own and others' experience - is that society gaslights children of bad fathers far less than children of bad mothers.
I've seen with my own eyes how when someone says "my dad is a jerk, he's very selfish and uncaring and not nice and manipulates", people are far more likely to respond with some variation of "oh, I'm sorry, that must have been hard! Men can be such jerks, even when they have kids! At least your mom was there for you!" But when someone says "my mother's a witch, she is very selfish and uncaring and not nice and manipulates", the response more often than not is to ATTACK THE VICTIM with some variation of "You shouldn't say that about your own mother! Your mother loved you, even if she wasn't perfect! Mothers do their best! You need to work to repair the relationship - she's the only mother you'll ever have!" and of course, some variety of "you're spoiled and selfish and blaming your poor mother for your own problems - perhaps you should see a psychiatrist."
The same story, over and over. With the end result that the children of females with NPD get double and triple gaslighted, first by the narcissist - who is likely to have more childcare responsibilities in the first place - then by the larger society, and even close friends, who, for whatever reason, are deeply invested in believing that all female parents love their children and that being a selfish, uncaring jerk towards children is the exclusive province of male parents. And that children who say otherwise about their mother (but not their father) are ungrateful brats.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-03 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)Murmuration
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-05 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)As children of mothers with NPD go, I probably had it less bad then many. My "enabling parent" (father) was a dupe, not malicious, which is easier (I know plenty of people have two malicious parents). I also had grandparents and extended family around in my childhood, which buffered the personality-disordered parent somewhat. It also helps you see what's normal - when you go over your aunts' houses and everyone is soooo much kinder, you realize that Mommy Dearest isn't the norm. And, we were far from poor, so my mother - who was very snobby and status-conscious, as people with NPD often are - sent me to private schools and summer camps. Back then my fancy schools provided me with good teachers, and being sent away for 8 weeks every summer in my middle-childhood years was also helpful, because any sort of getting away from an NPD environment into a "normal" milieu is good. And snobbery and social status dictated that I be sent to a fancy college - which, back then, was still a good thing. Of course, having a snobby mother with enough money to pay for social-status markers often gets misinterpreted as "she cared about you!" when it's really "no, she was showing off her socioeconomic status while avoiding childcare responsibilities!", but like I said - as NPD mothers went, there are degrees of bad. My mother was a foul woman, but I didn't have it nearly as bad as some.
And on the bright side, the last 2.5 years seem to have indicated that I did develop robust natural immunity to gaslighting, lol.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-04 11:03 am (UTC)(link)This resonates with me very strongly. Both of my parents were narcissists which made things very difficult. My dad is just a regular narcissist and, growing up, he was only really interested in himself. My mother was not only a narcissist, but consumed by the paranoid delusions brought about by schizophrenia and those delusions lasted for the rest of her life. I too went no-contact with her over 20 years ago and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Essentially she stopped her mothering role when I was about four, but even people who know that, who are aware of her violence towards me, will chastise me with 'But she's your mother!' or 'Surely, even if she was mentally ill she was still loving?'. No, she wasn't. It's frustrating and difficult to talk about, except with a few people.
As such, by the age of eight, I started noticing the gaslighting all around me (starting with the bizarre concept of 'fashion') and have always sought to see through the mind-twisting manipulations our culture subjects us to. What surprises me is that so many people fall for what they are told and meekly follow whatever orders are issued.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-04 03:33 pm (UTC)(link)Murmuration
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
So between us, we developed some fairly awful feedback-loops, where she'd tell a socially-appropriate lie, and I'd correct her, right out in front of everybody, because I couldn't understand why she'd said it and I couldn't handle cognitive dissonance or inaccuracy. She'd be embarrassed and scold me for it later, and then I'd chafe at being scolded for being truthful-- which was clearly wrong. I'd read my Bible!
Or, because I was really slow at auditory processing, she'd rattle off a list of five things she needed me to do, and then expect an immediate response, even though it was going to take me several seconds, at least, to figure out what she'd said, compare it to what was already on my schedule, and make a decision about whether I could do it... and there's no way in heck I was going to remember more than two out of the five things anyway without writing them down. It left me in a horrible bind, because if I waited until I'd processed what she'd said, she'd assume I was ignoring her and get pissy about it. So in self-defense I learned to just answer "OK" immediately, while I continued to decode whatever was said, to avoid the charge of "not listening". But then I'd find, a few seconds too late, that I'd agreed to a whole slate of things I didn't want to do, that conflicted with other things I was already obligated to do, or that I couldn't possibly remember all of... and then I'd get yelled at for being "lazy" or "avoiding chores" or making promises and not keeping them. Which, to be fair, is often what it looked like. But on my side, I felt as though I'd been cruelly trapped and tricked.
My twenties involved a lot of working through these issues, finally figuring out what had gone so terribly wrong, and figuring out how to relate to my mother in a grownup, healthy-boundaries kind of way. I actually explained to my mother the dynamic, and asked for her help and understanding in trying to have more positive interactions... and it worked. Once I explained it, she could kind of see it too. Wasn't instant, but we have reached a point where we can communicate, and I can tell her "no", and we can treat each other like adults. So now we don't have to be enemies.
But the tremendous WRONGNESS of those patterns of interaction is etched very deep. I will NOT tolerate being shamed for saying what I believe to be true. And I will NOT be manipulated into agreeing to things I don't actually want to do/say. And any time I find myself in a situation where there's even a whiff of that going on-- where I feel pressured to do something I'm not sure about, where people are saying obviously untrue things, or things that cause cognitive dissonance, any kind of high-pressure sales tactics or people laying on shame for something I don't believe is wrong... it brings out the fight in me. All that childhood bad-feeling bubbles right to the surface, and OH NO YOU DON'T! I spent YEARS disentangling myself from that trap and I will NOT go there again. I don't have to answer you right now. I don't have to go along with this. I will take as much time as I need to think about it, and then I will make my own decision. Any attempt to push me in some other way... is not a good way to get my cooperation. And... lie to me once, about anything, no matter how trivial, and I will never trust another word you say.
There has just been SO MUCH of that going on the last couple of years. Even though it was really painful and a lot of work to get where I could be around my mother... I'm really glad I did it, and it confers a certain immunity to manipulation tactics. It's like... well, you could have trapped me that way when I was fourteen. But I'm way past that now.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
(Anonymous) 2022-11-04 12:20 am (UTC)(link)I've never joined any support group or anything. My experience has been that harmful narc parents are assumed to be mothers; it's called "JustNoMIL," not "JustNoFIL"; most support groups and books are for those who had narc moms, not narc dads; etc. There's been a support-group gap similar to the support-group gap between abused wives and abused husbands.
I'm willing to believe it may be for the same reasons. It may be that there are more toxic (as opposed to absent) moms than dads out there, and/or that those with toxic moms have more of a need for support groups.
W/e the result for me is that I've never before discussed this problem with anyone but my husband. I'm even kind of afraid to post this bc again, my experience really has been that people agree that narc moms exist but narc dads aren't even like on the radar. What do you mean a narc dad? Bad dads disappear, they don't stick around and compete with your mom over your love and ask you if while making out you could feel your boyfriend's "thing" (yeah that's the way he put it, "his thing") and so on. Narc dad? Does not compute. IMX. (That's also why I didn't chime in on the narc parent discussion earlier. I did see it, but...)
Anyway. Heather Heying is an evolutionary biologist, so she's talking about human mothers in the same way another evolutionary biologist might talk about the mothers of another species: She means the typical ones. (Not the dysfunctional exceptions.) Just like someone talking about dog reproduction usually describes the typical dog moms--not the ones that eat their puppies.
(Buuut for more on poor behavior from mothers from an evolutionary perspective, I thought Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's /Mother Nature/ was pretty interesting. One chapter title: "How to Be an 'Infant Worth Rearing.'" ;))
-Ochre Shabby Sea Serpent
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
I am sorry about your dad... that is... blech.
I think what someone said above about male narcissist being more likely to just be out of the home in the workplace (more) than a female one; which creates a particular gaslight pattern that seems to go for pretty much any dysfunctional dad/husband type: the "But he's such a great guy/ he does so much for the community". It's not that people deny what you say, it's just that it doesn't matter at all, because he is good to everyone else, and how dare you ruin a good man's reputation!
That that particular gaslight pattern matches up exactly with the powerful famous man who abuses his wife/children/younger actresses in his studio, etc. later is not a coincidence.
I've actually been thinking about it for the past two days, because I'm not actually even sure it's gaslighting - that term suggests a cognitive dissonance - that you can see a pattern that other people deny, but that's not really what happens. No one ever denies what happened, or what you're seeing, they just assure you that it doesn't matter if the bad things are happening to you, because you don't matter - everyone else does.
It leads to the very "pro social" authoritarian conformance that got us to this point I saw in a lot of women: tolerating abusive jobs so you don't "let down the team/client/boss"... right up to take the shot so you don't kill the people that matter.
Re: Emily Oster says 'Let's forgive and forget'
Personally I seek to be lead, and influenced, by the light that is inside me.
Many blessings in all of your goings and doings.
May you find the best of guiding lights!