Hard News: Narcissists and bullies
727 Responses
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Danielle, in reply to
Yes, I know. I was responding to the article’s assertions, not your take on them. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
ETA Or: what SteveH said.
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Also, Mr Fagan has an apology online which sounds a lot better.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
My take of that is they won’t be coming back. That was corporate speak for terminated.
I wouldn't be surprised.
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Fagan's apology was delightful. I particularly enjoyed the bit where Karyn Hay made him get out in the rain and walk, though mostly for what that action says about Karyn rather than what the apology says about Fagan.
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Greg111, in reply to
Cheers for your reply. Look, I'm not a regular reader of this blog in that I recently discovered it in the wake of the Len Brown scenario. I do enjoy this blog and am becoming regular. Kracklite's membership dates from 2007 while yours dates from 2006 so you have some history and I appreciate you going into bat for Kracklite. Maybe you would like to explain some of the points I have raised. Much of the overall debate has been around individuals and organisations presenting information that is not whole or timely. Kracklite has been an obvious critic of this. It is now abundantly clear by the record this member has engaged in exactly the same behaviour. It is a truism that what really pisses of the average punter is hypocrisy.
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Paul Williams, in reply to
It is a truism that what really pisses of the average punter is hypocrisy.
Rudeness rankles with me a little.
There are a lot of people here who manage to their disagreements with one another politely and respectfully. Something worth thinking about if you want what you're contributing to be taken seriously.
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Greg111, in reply to
Paul I accept your point.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Fagan’s apology was delightful. I particularly enjoyed the bit where Karyn Hay made him get out in the rain and walk, though mostly for what that action says about Karyn rather than what the apology says about Fagan.
Good to see humble pie is still on the menu.
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Hebe, in reply to
Y’can bet they didn’t write that apology themselves. Until the end of the year: not good enough. Hire some people with a shred of human feeling and decency rather than these two Neanderthals.T and J have slid lazily into being a pair of mouths our national discourse could well do without.
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Sacha, in reply to
Often these organisations need help from outside to turn the ship - commissions of inquiry
Like the one Bazley conducted half a decade ago after the Louise Nicholas complaint, you mean?
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Diane Revoluta discusses how we "look for how we can punish the individual rather than address the wider culture".
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Diane does an excellent job of explaining the importance of remembering that sex offenders are not monsters. It’s something I forget from time to time, but I’ve found useful for explaining part of why people who’ve been sexually assaulted can find it hard to be believed.
When people envisage sex offenders as evil monsters, they expect someone accused of a sex offence to be and look like an evil monster, and for that evil monster to be all they are, with no redeeming features. If they know and like the accused, the accused can’t possibly have perpetrated a sex offence, because the accused has been a friend to them, and evil monsters can’t be friendly.
So I talk about that aspect of the sex offender's person as a fatal flaw. It is terrible, but it is not all they are. We don’t turn other criminal flaws into demons, and nor should we with the ability/proclivity to perpetrate sexual offences.
However, that doesn’t change my earlier objection to the offenders in this case attempting to have the media present them as the victims. They may be victims in some way or another, but not in the ways those news stories spin it.
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BenWilson, in reply to
She's thought provoking, for sure. A public outpouring of rage over rape is a good thing to see, considering the nature of these rapes, that they're not your textbook Mark Stephens type offences At least a large segment of society does actually consider this to be rape now. But from the Facebook page you'd think the crimes were in the same category.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
However, that doesn’t change my earlier objection to the offenders in this case attempting to have the media present them as the victims. They may be victims in some way or another, but not in the ways those news stories spin it.
Earlier I called them sick. They are. They need serious education as to why what they do is sick. Seriously sad that Parents are nowhere to be heard ,all but one couple washing their hands of their off spring. Seriously sad that kids can get through school and not know what is right or wrong with their behaviour. One girl stated the kid Parker told another it was rape and it saved her then. I can only conclude early on they knew or learnt it was rape. They need to take responsibility .Perhaps Parker did that or was taken to the police station because he realised or was told by his parents. Reality is, that footage. Which indicates they were well aware. There is nothing else to say otherwise.
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Richard Aston, in reply to
Diane Revoluta discusses how we “look for how we can punish the individual rather than address the wider culture”.
Thanks for this link Sacha , its a good balance in the blame game currently emerging.
However, it’s more than just the fact dehumanising rapists perpetuates myths about rape. It creates the illusion that this person who committed the rape is an intrinsically bad person: the blame is squarely on their shoulders, “how could anyone do this?”, “what an evil, evil person”. It shifts the blame from the victim, which is how traditionally rape has been understood, to the offender, rather than looking at the wider issues that create a culture of misogyny, a society that doesn’t respect women, and a generation of young people who don’t understand what consent looks like.
We find someone to blame , we punish them , all sorted ... not.
In a way I am grateful to Tamihere and Jackson for showing us how pervasive the culture of misogyny truly is. They are not alone and do represent one male view of woman.How to change male misogyny culture without more blaming and shaming is what is challenging me to act. My work is broadly in this area and male friends and I are talking about what we can do ; education programmes in schools for example but I sense it needs to go wider than that.
How to encourage respect and caring for women and also acknowledge the beautiful wildness of sexuality. How to find this balance and a pathway into the male psyche to awaken that deep respect.A work in progress...
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Ben Austin, in reply to
It was one of the better apologies I've read. I should book mark it to send to the no doubt inevitable non apologies from public figures we will all encounter in the future.
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Hebe, in reply to
How to change male misogyny culture without more blaming and shaming is what is challenging me to act...How to encourage respect and caring for women and also acknowledge the beautiful wildness of sexuality. How to find this balance and a pathway into the male psyche to awaken that deep respect.
:-)
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Despite agreeing with that piece in large part, I think it's pretty weird to blame the dehumanisation of rapists on feminists. Who, after all, are the ones who came up with "rape culture" as a concept. That theory makes rapists all too human, not monstrous at all.*
*Actually a point made far more eloquently by @tui_talk on Twitter. I am merely repeating it.
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TracyMac, in reply to
Uh, while I appreciate your broader point, I don't like the hint of "victim Olympics" in it. Yes, being violently assaulted and brutalized by a stranger is horrendous. Being (semi) stupified and assaulted by someone you kind of know, with the full knowledge of their mates and probably some of your friends, and who you may see around semi-regularly, can't really be qualified as "better".
Sure, there are most definitely differences in "severity", but long-term effects are long-term effects. Not to mention the ramifications around betrayal of trust and questioning one's judgement on an ongoing basis.
FWIW, I agree that there *probably* would be more trauma for a Lundy victim, but let's not pretend that it's an absolute "ranking" of stranger vs acquaintance rape. And since these offenses occur on the same continuum anyway (leaving aside actual offender psychopathy), assigning rank is really bloody unhelpful.
I knew the person who assaulted me very well. The violence was "light" - I couldn't get away from a strong man twice my size, but there were no bruises on the outside. And while I'm not going "omg trigger!1!" every day, it's still with me 35 years later. So yeah.
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Absolutely right TracyMac. I think of all the women and men I've spoken to over the years who've experienced sexual assault of one kind or another, and the different harms they've taken from it, and severity or longevity of harm doesn't necessarily equate with the "severity" of the assault.
The other problem with Victim Olympics is that it sets a common trap for the assaulted: a risk that we will try to discount our own harm on the basis that "it could have been worse, at least I wasn't [insert "worse" scenario here]." e.g. "Well, I was molested, but it could have been worse, at least I wasn't raped", or "Well, I was raped, but it could have been worse, at least I wasn't beaten", or "at least I didn't get an STD", or "at least he didn't drug me", or even just "at least I'm still alive", and all the other ways we try to minimise what happened to us. Yes, objectively some of these statements are probably true. Being dead would be worse. But the statements create a dichotomy of "not so bad" (what happened to us" vs "terrible" (what could have happened) and thus imply that what happened to us isn't also terrible.
Victim Olympics also focus on what did and didn't happen, rather than how we feel about what happened, but it's the latter we take with us from day to day.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Victim Olympics also focus on what did and didn’t happen, rather than how we feel about what happened, but it’s the latter we take with us from day to day.
That tallies with what my friend revealed to us last week. On the face of it, the assault she suffered as a teenager definitely "could have been worse", but the response of family and the subsequent impact on her life was very bad.
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Carmel Sepuloni posted this on Facebook this morning:
At the Waitakere Violence Free network. Some shocking revelations in our discussion. One guy said he spoke to 36 thirteen and fourteen year old boys and some of the responses were along the lines of 1) its only rape if a stranger does it 2) if a girl is drunk and/ or flirting and/ or wearing a short skirt then she is 'up for it' 3) boys set their moral compass as a group. If you didnt think we had a problem then think again.
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Emma Hart, in reply to
2) if a girl is drunk and/ or flirting and/ or wearing a short skirt then she is ‘up for it’
We've had a couple of articles in local papers asking high school principals what they're doing about their net safety programs. Not one asking what they're doing about teaching consent. If you want to take someone to a movie, you ask them, right? So why does it seem crazier to ask someone if they want to have sex with you than to try to deduce it from their clothes?
The persistence of the virgin-whore dichotomy is astonishing. About half a dozen times in my late teens and early twenties I had a guy actually ask me, with genuine puzzlement, "If you'll sleep with him, why won't you sleep with me?" You're either someone who has sex - and is therefore up for it with anyone - or someone who doesn't, and you can tell them apart by the way they dress or drink or something.
Consent is not complicated. It's really fucking simple. If you find it too confusing, you should err on the side of Always Asking, every time. And we should stop pretending that talking about sex isn't done because it's dull. It isn't done because it's terrifying.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Consent is not complicated. It’s really fucking simple. If you find it too confusing, you should err on the side of Always Asking, every time. And we should stop pretending that talking about sex isn’t done because it’s dull. It isn’t done because it’s terrifying.
+1
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Hebe, in reply to
Consent is not complicated. It’s really fucking simple. If you find it too confusing, you should err on the side of Always Asking, every time. And we should stop pretending that talking about sex isn’t done because it’s dull. It isn’t done because it’s terrifying.
Yep.
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