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"Stop Calling Your Ex a Narcissist"

It Excuses the "Horrible F*ing Ways He Treated You"
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Dr. Jessica Taylor, author of “Sexy But Psycho: How Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them”, explains why women should stop calling their abusive exes narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths. She says it provides an explanation, a reason, an excuse for their abuse.

Stop calling your ex a narcissist. Stop saying your ex has a personality disorder. Stop calling your ex a psycho. Stop calling your ex a sociopath.

Every time you do that you’re giving them reasons and excuses; you're giving them labels and disorders that explain in some way the horrible f*ing ways they treated you...

Dr. Taylor contends that abusive exes don’t have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) or any undiagnosed disorder that causes them to abuse their intimate partners. They do it because they like the power and control.

They haven’t got some sort of undiagnosed mental health issue that caused them to abuse you and control you and rape you and attack you and make you feel like shit every day.

They did it because they want to. They enjoy the power and control.

She says abusers are not ill or disordered and should be called what they are: perpetrators, abusers, sex offenders.

Call them what they are. They are perpetrators; they’re abusers; they’re sex offenders. They’re not ill. They’re not disordered. That’s bullshit!

Taylor points out that society encourages the oppressive dynamics of male power and control over women, so society itself must be changed.

We live in a society that encourages people to take power and control over others to harm and oppress them. That’s not a mental illness. That’s the way society is built. If you want to change it, you change society.

The predominant traits in Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) are an inflated sense of importance and lack of empathy. But most kinds of abuse are criminal acts; even coercive control is now recognized as a crime in many places.

So even if an abusive ex is a diagnosed—or diagnosable—narcissist, calling him a Perpetrator or Sex Offender better describes the criminality and cruelty of his behavior.

NARCISSISM & THE CUSTODY CRISIS

There is another reason women caught in the Family Court nightmare might want to resist the temptation to refer to their exes as narcissists.

Since both men and women can be narcissists, it obscures the gendered reality of the Custody Crisis—that judges are routinely switching custody to abusive fathers. There is no epidemic of judges switching custody to narcissistic mothers.

That’s important because it’s only by establishing the gendered nature of the crisis that an effective solution can be sought. Training judges on narcissism or other personality disorders—or anything else for that matter—is not going to make a difference, because ignorance is not the problem; they know exactly what they are doing.

Mothers who believe they lost custody because their judge did not understand narcissistic abuse have gone down a metaphorical rabbit hole. The Abuse Rabbit Holeis where women have been misled into thinking the crisis is fundamentally about abuse, rather than about power: the power men are given to take and abuse children and the power women don’t have to keep or protect them.

Also, the fact that both men and women can have a personality disorder allows for covert Fathers’ Rights Activists [FRAs], who claim their ex-wives are narcissists, to infiltrate groups that focus on narcissism. FRA’s position is that women falsely accuse exes of abuse to get custody, and actively promote mandatory equal parenting, which disempowers women further from protecting their children. So being in these gender neutral groups is akin to sleeping with the enemy.

SOCIETAL CHANGE

Dr. Taylor correctly points out that if we are to make a dent in male violence against women, we need to make change on a societal level. To make meaningful and lasting social change, there must be a system in place in which men are held accountable and substantial consequences imposed as a result of their abuse.

The Family Court system does just the opposite: it does not hold abusive men accountable and actually rewards abusive behavior by consistently giving them custody.

The Child Custody Act provides for a new system in which a jury, not a judge, has the power to hold men accountable. If the civil jury finds abuse occurred by preponderance of evidence (the burden in criminal court is much higher), the abuser is restricted to supervised visits. If the jury finds there was sexual abuse, there will be no contact with the child(ren) until the age of majority.

If men know ahead of time there is a good chance they will lose custody for their abusive behavior, it will surely deter them from committing it—and that will make meaningful societal change.

CALLING IT WHAT IT IS

Dr. Taylor is encouraging women to call abusive exes what they really are: Abusers, Perpetrators and Sex Offenders.

Women are also encouraged to call the Custody Crisis what it really is: judges giving Male Perpetrators and Male Sex Offenders custody. Because they are Male. Because they are The Father. Because Family Court became the main staging grounds for maintaining Male Power in the Family after women, finally, after 10,000 years, gained the ability to divorce their abusive husbands.

Let’s also call the judges who give custody to abusive fathers what they really are: Perpetrator and Sex Offender Enablers.

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The Women’s Coalition is documenting custody cases that involve sexual abuse to support our contention that judges are deliberately disregarding evidence. If you reported sexual abuse of your child in Family Court, please take a minute to fill out this form. You may remain anonymous. Thank you.


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