So you fell for a narcissist?

At least that is what YouTube said with its handy 5 point checklist.

You definitely feel tricked, used, discarded, unsure of yourself, wondering how the fuck you got here.

In this podcast we'll discuss where the word narcissism comes from (a myth), what the psychology profession defines as a narcissist, and why there are suddenly so many of them.

Here's a quick run down in case you don't listen to the whole podcast.

Narcissist is a rather tragic mythical hunter who saw his own beautiful reflection in a pool of water—he fell deeply in love with the person he saw—when he discovered that it wasn't another person, he was devastated and distraught that his love could never be requited. He lived in misery and eventually committed suicide from heartbreak. (Various versions of the details of this myth exist.)

The profession of psychology uses the MMR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to define mental illness. True narcissism is characterized as a mental illness in this book.

Essentially it says a narcissist is profoundly selfish, trashes the self esteem of those around them to feel important, is deeply insecure yet completely absorbed in himself, surrounds himself with those who adore him (and ditches those same people when the illusion is fractured and the person sees the narcissist as the asshole he really is).

The MMR also states that for a person to be characterized as a narcissist he must be DIFFERENT from the social and cultural norms in which he exists.

THIS is the fundamental problem with our new definition — as defined by YouTube and Internet Memes, of course. Most of these men that women are being played by are no different than the cultural norms!

(yes in this episode about this topic we ARE addressing men being narcissists (go make your own podcast if this offends your preferred illusion of fairness).

How can this be?

Because ours is a civilization that makes narcissists! That's what we do! That's what we've been doing in all of our political, social, religious, tribal and cultural institutions for our entire history!

OF COURSE THESE ASSHOLES THINK THEY'RE AMAZING! Of course they don't give a shit about you or your feelings (unless they cursorily pretend to care to get what they want).

Of course they think they're smarter and wiser and deserve your adoration and OBEDIENCE!
Duh.

Women have been outlawed from having any say whatsoever in their own lives, let alone any public life or legal institution until a few decades ago. Literally a few decades ago it was legal to beat your wife with “a stick no wider than your thumb.” In America. That was a law. All over the world it is STILL legal to beat any woman in your life.

A woman has been prohibited from an education. Stoned to death if someone raped her. Forbidden from owning property and ousted from the majority of professions—certainly all professions that had any actual power. Women have been legally written out of inheritance law. We've even been written out of our own spiritual autonomy and the Creation story itself.

We have been controlled not through threats of violence and rape: but through ACTUAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE. AND DEATH.

A mother – to this day in the majority of the global population – is overruled by her SON. He outranks her.

We were property friends! And not that long ago!

Ours is a happyness bubble, a privileged perceptual illusion promising the fiction of equality. But we are nowhere close.

That narcissist? The one who abused you?
This new sudden explosion of narcissists that seems to have occurred over the last few years as the SEO keyword has taken hold …

Ladies. They're just men.

They aren't the ones who changed. We are.

We're the ones that raised the bar of what is and what is not acceptable.
And we're the first goddamned generation who could even try. Because we're the first version of women who have any hope whatsoever of being economically independent and partially safe from violence. There is no other time in history when women had access to money or protection from the legal system.

Now. As you move forward you need to take responsibility for protecting yourself. That's right.

You protect you. Men have not only proven they're incapable of protecting women, they don't even actually give a fuck. The same guy who says he loves you is the one harassing that woman at work and paying the other one less. We have this compartmentalization of men and it serves our sanity to go about the world pretending that the ones in our lives are the “good ones.” But are they? Do they vote for more equality? Do they hire and promote women in their business positions? Do they watch violent pornography? Do go to religions that don't allow women to speak in church or that tell wives to sit down, shut up and obey their husbands? Yeah. Don't look under the covers if you're not prepared to see what's there. It's pretty devastating when the happiness bubble pops.

Dads? Dads just stopped selling daughters in “modern civilization”.

And Globally? There's still a thriving slave trade. The product is women. And the men in their lives—fathers, grandfathers, brothers, uncles, husbands—are the slave traders.

Patriarchy – the structure on which our global civilization is run — is a fundamentally narcissistic enterprise. As are 99% of traditional religions. As is our history of colonialism. And the United States of America is the global leader of patriarchy. Right now. Not in history. Right. Now.

The ultimate way to stop making narcissists is with our sons. Their whole universe is set up to create them to be narcissists.

The #1 thing to prevent them from becoming narcissists is to raise them with the VALUE of equality, but make sure that they understand that the way things currently are things are NOT equal. Tell them they have the burden of correcting the entire civilizations habit of abusing women. POINT OUT EVERY INSTANCE OF INEQUALITY, HARASSMENT, ABUSE, CRAPTASTIC BELIEFS on TV, the news, the classroom, people you know, in church. MAKE HIM SEE IT and instill the responsibility for him to change it.

Oh does that seem like a heavy burden?

Not as heavy as BEING a woman who has carried the burden of civilization in the face of fierce brutality. No, not nearly as heavy as that. His sister has to carry it.

This is our “normal” people. But, it doesn't have the be. However, to end it we're going to have to make a fuss, stop allowing patriarchy to be so fucking in love with itself and … yes, we women have to get okay with being alone.

If you don't want to be with another narcissist you'll have to get okay with waiting for that one special guy to come along who has done enough true work on himself to be a good human being. Don't be fooled by the guy who talks a good game—he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Narcissists become better and better narcissists every time.

He very well may never come. If not, and you're not prepared to be alone …

well … have fun with your next narcissist.

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