I got an email from my father this morning and am now translating that other narcissist's novel. Some similarities stand out eerily now for the first time.
They gladly talk about the men they know, turning casual acquaintances into good friends, if these are powerful or high-ranking or wealthy or educated or possess whatever quality will make the narcissist look better by association.
This does not apply to women. The women around them are something like accessories. Objects. Something they possess and dominate, but unworthy of mention, especially in relation to "qualities" they can brag about.
My father wrote about a "friend" - a former landlord they went out on one outing with - a sailor, naval officer, now retired and vice-whatever, who knows everyone and is very respected and well-liked, a very good friend of his, whom they see every time they go to the summer resort where he and his girlfriend are now. The entire email was about this man. There were photos attached, in which two women were also visible, the man's wife and my father's girlfriend. Not to my father, they weren't.
The author describes every casual male acquaintance in detail, listing his excellent qualities, brags about him as a good friend who'd do anything for him, and this goes on for 400+ pages. Somewhere between the lines, you can make out he also has two children with a wife (?), but this is in no way clear. He also mentions a former girlfriend who he physically abused (!), but only as part of a story about how his "good friend" who is the son of a famous politician and a rich and influential man, helped him track her down once. Sick stuff.
My father will not only never love me or see me for who I am. He will also never see me as a potentially respectable human being, simply because I'm a woman. Nothing I accomplish will change that.
His sleazy displays of affection for my husband, though, show that he's intimidated by him. As irony would have it, my husband, a musician, is actually pursuing my father's dream career, which his horrible parents talked him out of, as it didn't sound prestigious enough at the time.
All male narcissists are misogynists. My NDad defended a sex offender - and fellow narcissist - who was my teacher in highschool that I, along with other students, went on overnight trips with. He had absolutely no concern for me, his teenage daughter. Never once asked me if the creep harmed me. All he cared about was that this poor guy was being dragged through the mud and strung up by his balls for seducing 15 year old girls. I really think he admired him. NDad is such a weirdo. He also mutes the TV when a woman is talking on the news, or there is an ad for women with breast cancer etc. He despises women in general but he likes his cleaning lady.
ReplyDeleteBy the same token, female narcissists are man haters. They are all so twisted.
Do you think female narcs do the equivalant of this? Is there at all a term for "hating men" - the female form of misogyny?
ReplyDeleteMisandry... My narcissistic grandmother indiscriminately abused her husband and children, though; my father was her golden child who could do no wrong, and my aunt was the slave girl.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they just choose whatever prejudice suits them and makes it possible for them to despise as many humans as possible?
I read this post and thought of your post about being spun around in the playground by your dad:
ReplyDeletehttp://forbiddentopic.blogspot.com/2008/09/disorientation-plus-terror-element.html