Don’t think that there are fewer male victims. I don’t think there are fewer men who are victims. After all, about half of all narcissists are women and all narcissists are abusers. It stands to reason that the number of male victims and female victims, the numbers are the same. It’s just that men are victimized differently. There is a disparity in physical power, for example, so men are unlikely to be physically or less likely to be physically abused. But men are as much victims of narcissistic abuse and other types of abuse as women. And women today are equally as likely to be narcissists and closing the gap when it comes to psychopathy. Actually, shortly I think half of all psychopaths would be women as well. But men feel less comfortable to admit to having been victimized and traumatized. Because to be victimized and traumatized is perceived as a weakness, a kind of deplorable and ridiculous vulnerability. It’s a feat, it’s effeminate to have been victimized and traumatized. It means something’s wrong with you as a man. It defies and negates masculinity, especially toxic masculinity. But also classical traditional masculinity. Men don’t cry and men don’t lie down, don’t take it lying down and men don’t just give in and men fight back and men are never victims. And a real man is never traumatized. He faces the exigencies and vicissitudes and difficulties of life head-on and copes with them as a man. Be a man, you know, man up and so on and so forth.
So it’s perceived as a weakness and a vulnerability and it’s something women do, you know. Women do trauma, women do victimhood, men don’t.
And if you’ve been victimized as a man, something must be wrong with you. I don’t know, maybe you’re just stupid, maybe you’re gullible, maybe even you had it coming, maybe you deserved it. It’s inconceivable that a man would be victimized and traumatized unless something is wrong with that person, with that man functionally, mentally, physically, psychologically, circumstantially. His past, his under qualifications, his lack of education, his laziness.
So this is known as attribution error. Attribution error when you say someone’s behavior and someone’s personal history, autobiography and someone’s traumas and someone’s episodes of victimhood, they’re all reflective, they all emanate from someone’s essence.
In the case of a woman, she’s a victim, she has nothing to do with the abuse. The abuse is imposed on her, at least this is the stereotype. Women are not guilty, they’re not to blame for having been abused, but men are.
When a woman is abused, something is wrong with her abuser, when a man is abused, something is wrong with him. And so this is an asymmetry which makes it very difficult for men to come forward. And confess to having been abused and to share instances of trauma and pain and to admit to emotions which are out of control and unmanageable and so on and so forth.
Men do this, you know, with a very good friend or with a therapist, but most of them will be loath and reluctant to come out in public the way women do, on four rooms and so forth and to say I’ve been sufficiently weak, I’ve been sufficiently unguarded, I’ve been sufficiently vulnerable, I’ve been sufficiently effeminate, feminine to have been victimized and traumatized. I got the big, the men business thing, I got it wrong. I don’t know how to be a man. What a man would admit to this, except me of course.
