I recently read up on psychopathy. Robert D. Hare wrote a couple of books on that topic, but Martha Stout also comes up a lot. Her book The Psychopath Next Door seems to be selling quite well. For some reason, I have not yet bought any of her books. I assure you that it has absolutely nothing to do with her being a woman. Really, I am not a bigot. Anyway, while there is the claim that there are both male and female psychopaths, the standard claim pushed by “science” seems to be that there are many more male psychopaths, outnumbering women by a factor of perhaps as much as six to one. This seemed a bit odd because if there is one dogma science preaches, then it is that men and women are completely identical. Even their sexual organs can be swapped easily, thanks to modern medicine. So, what could be going on?
According to “research” male psychopaths have one-night stands or short-term sexual relationships, in addition to other issues in their lives. In short, they follow, according to Hare, a particular pattern for social interactions: assessment, manipulation, and abandonment. I do not like the wording too much. It would have been a bit catchier to call the stages identify, exploit, move on. There is a reason why I am using those terms, primarily because they are closer to everyday language.
Male psychopaths, we read, exploit their environment. Their victims include women. Those evil swine pump and dump women, getting their rocks off and skirting commitment, “scientists” write as they are getting hot under their collar. I have not done an extensive literature review, but I have read or at least skimmed quite a few resources, and there seems to be a very odd blind spot. If we addressed it, we would probably conclude that female psychopathy is not an exception but basically the norm.
Look up how many women initiate divorces, or breakups in general! The vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, often based on their delusion that they can get a man more worthy of them to commit. True, they normally quickly regret leaving their husband as, in almost every case, the man she is currently with is the best she will ever get, considering that her looks develop only in one direction as an adult: they decline. Granted, many women seem to have a hard time assessing the consequences of their actions. However, this makes them incompetent psychopaths, just as there are a lot of male psychopaths who end up in prison because they threw caution completely out the window.
I posit that most women behave like utter psychopaths in sexual relationships. First, they identify men, almost like a criminal identifies a co-called mark. They manipulate men by dangling the prospect of sex in front of them and they may even put out. All of this they do to build trust with the target. Once they have solidified the exploitation starts, and once they have siphoned off his resources, they move on. They get a divorce lawyer and their behavior towards the man they supposedly still loved the day before completely changes, which is exactly like a psychopathic con-artist would behave. These people also just walk off with the life savings of pensioners, without the slightest hint of remorse.
The observed behavior of women is identical to psychopaths. Yet, “scientists” turn a blind eye towards it, presumably because they perceive women to be victims. They cannot do wrong. Yet, if that is the case, why are women habitually bleeding their men’s finances before, during, and after divorce? They are like psychopaths on overdrive, even going so far as to maximize short-term gains at the expense of overall gains. You can find countless women who drive their men into bankruptcy by getting the most they can, causing serious problems for the man, instead of asking for less, which would ensure that the guy is able to pay alimony for longer. This makes more sense if you view them as psychopaths who simply want to maximize short-term results as they believe that there will be another target just around the corner.
There is also the humorous metaphor of “monkey branching”, i.e. women starting a new relationship while they have not yet exited the current one. This is also psychopathic. At that point, they view their earlier relationship as nothing more than a safety net. They only want his resources at this point, which includes, of course, emotional support. If you really want to see how psychopathic women can be, then go out and bang a few random chicks. Plenty of them are in relationships. There is probably nothing as eye-opening about the nature of women than observing how a woman you just banged casually calls her boyfriend, telling him that she will be a bit late because she is still hanging out with her bestie, or some other bullshit. They slip into an entirely different role, like a psychopath.
Without having read much about psychopathy, and without wanting to excuse women for their shitty behaviour, it occurs to me that there is a difference.
If I understand correctly, psychopaths are well aware of what they are doing and deliberately manipulate the people around them, abusing their basic expectations of trust. But it is a self aware behavior, am I correct?
Typical female behavior does not seem to be self aware in many cases, to me it looks more like an emergent behaviour which they later backwards rationalize. Rather that plan or calculate, their behaviour is mostly improvised on the base of how they feel, with little regard to responsibility or rationality, and only later the rationalization hamster kicks in and does the work of trying to justify it somehow (especially once consequences begin to become evident).
It is not clear if psychopaths are self-aware. I recall watching a talk on online game design, and the speaker mentioned that there is a particular category of players that is very difficult as they “view other players as content”. Even though he did not use that term, in hindsight it seems that these players exhibit psychopathic tendencies, at least when playing games. In real life, psychopaths may just be natural manipulators that subconsciously pick up on who is a good target. Some women are probably cold and calculating, while others instinctively know whom they can get their claws in.
In literature, there is a difference between highly-functioning psychopaths and anti-social ones. The latter seem to be too impulsive, thus ending up in situations they cannot easily get out of. Thus, they get thrown in prison. In contrast, white-collar psychopaths seem to often be very sophisticated and play the long game. Both have in common that they feel no remorse for their action, and the same can be said of the typical woman who acts in an utterly selfish manner.
“Even though he did not use that term, in hindsight it seems that these players exhibit psychopathic tendencies, at least when playing games.”
This is an interesting observation and reminds me of how when some people play GTA, for example, they’ll drive within the lanes and obey all the traffic laws. During my second playthrough of DS1 I experienced a “psychopathic” online player. I even remember messaging my shmup buddy and telling him there was a psycho online.
There is a mechanic in the game that requires you to expend some of your rare humanity resources. You’ll first need to use one to reverse your hollowing effect and become human. Anytime you die you lose this status effect and become hollow again. Secondly, you have to spend another humanity if you decide you want to kindle a bonfire, so as to increase your max amount respawning heals at that particular site. This is particularly useful for the more difficult areas of the game.
Being human comes with certain benefits and drawbacks. The biggest negative is that other players can invade your world. You can see videos of some players doing so in an honorable way and bowing before engaging in combat. There are even players who will invade you and drop rare items that you can harvest, presumably because they no longer have a need to upgrade any weapons/armor. However, what I had experienced was some asshole who would invade me while I was progressing nicely towards the boss and then completely slaughter me. This happened a few times from the same guy, and it was clear that he had spent many hours maxing out his character/armor/weapons etc. and was just going around dominating lesser players for lulz.