I'm an ACX reader who submitted a book review and stumbled onto this project after missing the initial posts in the open thread. I figured I'd join in on the criticism because:
1. I like reading reviews and those written by people committed to getting better are probably better than average.
2. I like coming up with constructive criticism.
3. I'm hoping I can weasel my own review in here at some point and want to get in on the ground floor if this becomes a more general writing workshop group.
Feel free to tell me to get lost if y'all prefer this group stay more closed.
On to the actual review:
I thought this was quite good. I'd probably give it an 8 if I was reviewing it in the contest. I found the topic interesting, and the writing flowed well. At some point I realized I had forgotten I was reading an "amateur" book review and had the same feeling I get when I'm reading any well-written article on the internet--there's a level of polish and zip here that's commendable.
That said, the worst response anyone can give a piece of writing is "that was pretty good!" so here's some criticism:
-The biggest issue is that the section explaining Why He Does That is feels like it's only about 20% of the review. That topic feels like it should be the meat and majority (80%?) of the content here, but it feels neglected. It's implicitly given the same weight as analysis of how Bancroft's theory applies to different subgroups or your experience with a toxic D&D player. Both of those sections were interesting, and I am happy they were included, but I wish the main ideas of the book had been expanded on in more detail. I got to this sentence at the end:
"Well, it looks to me like he’s getting a lot of your time and attention with minimal effort and next to no cost, of course he’s going to keep doing whatever keeps that going. Let’s find some ways to cut off that easy supply.”
and realized I had kind of forgotten that was the main thing the book was saying. (It also felt more clearly articulated here than it had in the previous section, but maybe that's just me reading inattentively).
The biggest thing that would improve the review is increasing the amount of attention you paid to the core ideas of the book.
Here's some wild speculation/more personal preference stuff (take with grains of salt):
-IMO one of the joys of psychology books is the voyeuristic thrill of reading about real people being depraved or foolish. The brief examples of abuser behavior provided some of that, but I personally would've enjoyed more.
-In general, I think this could've used more direct quotes from the book. Quotation helps give the reader a sense of the original author's style and makes the review more authoritative.
-The intro is very effective, but I had a visceral negative response to the reveal that the relationship in question was one with a D&D group member. The belief that you had been in an abusive romantic relationship was in the back of my mind for the entire time I was reading, and it was pretty jarring to have that idea corrected--to the point where that might be the most emotionally memorable thing about the review for me.
But--thank you for writing this. Again, it was a genuinely enjoyable read, and the perspective on abuse gave me useful clarity on some personal relationships.
To my understanding, the agreement here is, that the list of reviews presented and discussed is closed, but additional critics are welcome. And maybe as you say there'll be follow-up projects. So glad you joined in for constructive feedback.
That's right, our plan is to discuss only the reviews of the 11 of us in the original group. Others are welcome to also comment on the reviews though. I suppose it's possible that this group will continue in some form after all 11 reviews are discussed, maybe taking on a new crop of reviews to discuss. But at this point we're just getting started, and have no idea how we'll all feel about this project by the time we get to the 11th review.
I think the most salient thing from this is the author of the book’s early statement that his intersessions really did not make much difference to the behavior of the people he was treating, and it became a matter of harm reduction. I totally understand that, but as someone with some very significant priors in this issue, it made me cry. It had to be turned into a black hats versus white hats scenario , and the underlying issues here have gone completely unexplored. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen too much. The reasons you don’t hear much from men who have been abused by women are plentiful.
1, men are, shall we say emotionally illiterate for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. It would take a man years to figure out he was being emotionally abused. It is far more likely that he just weaponizes it.
2 , it’s pretty embarrassing as a man to go to authorities and claim that he is being abused by a woman. Even on the off chance he is taken seriously, it’s still embarrassing.
I grew up in a very violent household. I saw my mother beaten up more than once, and I got slapped around pretty good as a child. My father was a bully and completely self involved, and I hated his guts. My mother was very pretty and kind of a party girl, and she tortured him with her appeal to other men. I loved her profoundly.
When he left us I was 13 years old, and I was very happy. Me and mom.
When she turned on me, I didn’t know what had hit me. I was 14 years old when she would literally drag me out of my bed at 2 o’clock in the morning and kick me out of the house. She would berate me with exactly the same insults she used to hurl at my father. (She was a severe alcoholic.)
It must’ve been at least 10 or 20 times that I walked out of that house in the cold hours of a Canadian winter, knowing that I could just punch her in the mouth and stay warm but that wasn’t really an option. I called her bluff once and let her call the police. They came, (two of them) with their flash lights on and their hands on their belts. I let them in. She gave them her pitch. She was scared, I was dangerous. etc. The police listened, then took me aside. "Does she get like this often?" one asked.
They gave me a ride to the bus station. I spent the night in an all-night diner and then showed up at school (grade nine) and pretended to learn something. That is a lot of anger and frustration to eat.
That’s why I love the Jamaican proverb on this issue.
“ if a woman, vex you man, go far.“
This issue is really fucking complicated and I don’t get the feeling that this book even scratched the surface of it.
Wow, you really went through hell as a kid! I have not read the book and have not yet read the review. Is the author saying that there are not many situations where women abuse men? Or is what's getting to you that the author says there's not much you can do about abuse except a bit of harm reduction? If it's the former, I can tell you that as therapist I have heard many stories from men of their being abused by women, and I did not doubt their accounts in the slightest. I'm sure no halfway decent therapist would. When you hear the story, and see their remembered anguish as they tell it, you know you are hearing the truth. Here's one story with sort of a good ending that I heard from a patient just recently. He and his brother, both grade school age, were living with an aunt because of complications in their parents' lives. The aunt was crazily strict and hot-tempered, and beat them with various objects for minor things like getting home late or spilling their milk. So there came a day when the aunt beat my patient's brother so severely that he was not only bruised but also bleeding in the places where the blows landed. This 10 year old little guy -- who was Black, by the way -- walked to the police station, described what had happened, and showed them his wounds. The next day both boys were yanked out of the aunt's care and moved to a foster home, where they stayed for several years. My patient remembers the years there as a happy time. The foster parents were benign but not of much importance to him. Mostly he remembers feeling safe and happy with the gang of other foster kids, hanging out together and playing, sleeping in the same room,
The guy's doing pretty OK now. Is getting an advanced degree in a field he loves. Has a lot of social anxiety, but is really making progress at pushing through it and getting to know people.
I haven’t read the book, only this review. Perhaps it does the book a disservice, but as it’s presented the abusing men come across like cartoon characters. I missed any sense of complexity.
I appreciate the story of your patient. Good for him…
My main feedback is that I think the quality of the writing is good.
Sentences and paragraphs are well structured, thoughts are phrased clearly, and there were several sentences that I thought were amusingly clever, the one about Yelowstone, judging people by the cartoons they watch and others. I’m not an expert writer or anything, but from my experience that’s the part of writing that’s most difficult and has to be learned inductively, so that’s a big positive.
Abuse in relationships, or psychiatry in general really, isn’t a subject I’ve read anything about before (unless some of the stuff on SSC/ACX counts) or that I’m particularly interested in. But I still found this review fairly engaging despite the fact that it’s so long.
My main criticism is that either the ideas in the book aren’t impactful enough for a contest with an audience that’s mainly interested in ideas, or the ideas in the book weren’t presented clearly enough or in a compelling way.
It wasn’t clear what the key ideas of the book were, or if it had an overarching thesis.
I’ll list a synopsis of the key ideas I noticed reading through, and you can see if there was anything major you were hoping to communicate but that didn’t come through (it is a topic I don’t really know anything about so I probably did miss a bunch of nuance.):
Bancroft has an approach to psychiatry that also involves the abuser.
Corrections of common misunderstanding of what causes abuse.
Some approaches to psychiatry exacerbate the problem.
Abusers believe themselves justified. Isn’t enrolment in the program a tacit admission of guilt though?
Types of abusers: Drill Sarg, Water torturer, Player.
Men’s expectations of women are often unrealistic.
Victims often stay because stay the initial relationship was good.
Bancroft is too environmentalist/not hereditation.
Maybe attitudes have improved in recent years, but that’s not much insurance against abuse.
Bancroft’s approach is useful for the victims, but reforming abusers is often a lost cause.
Last year’s winning entry for “The Dawn of Everything” presented the book’s novel interpretation of the whole of human pre-history, and the review itself added another big idea (about how normies hold back progress basically) that seemed insightful and very generally applicable.
I wouldn’t say anything on that list is comparably compelling.
Also, in my analysis of SCC/AXC reviews, in terms of structure they tend to build interest in the introduction, usually by pointing out flaws in a commonly accepted narrative, then presenting the new narrative from the book that addresses those flaws and gradually presenting new evidence/ideas in support of that thesis. The best SCC/ACX reviews usually subvert the new narrative from the book and offer an even more compelling perspective/twist on the book’s thesis.
The Dawn of Everything for example pokes holes in standard materialist anthropological theories with a bunch of counter examples, presents a new perspective about political agency in pre-historical cultures, and then the review subverts that new thesis, arguing it can’t account for the
Unless you were already looking for commentary on abusive relationships I don’t think this intro builds much engagement (maybe because the book deals with such a specific subject). And the ideas from the book don’t feel like it’s building to anything major, it feels more like a collection of scattered ideas that don’t add up to anything bigger. That’s probably more a problem with the book itself more than your review.
If it had been a contest to review this book specifically I’d say this was a solid entry, but I don’t think this is the kind of book that could win an open book review contest for the type of audience who read ACX.
Hopefully that’s useful feedback, I’m not really knowledgeable enough on the subject to say anything very interesting about the topic of the book itself.
A great review. Well written and insightful. Before I got too far in I stopped and wrote down my guesses for "why he does this", to see how close my assumptions would be and they pretty much all feel under the misconceptions section.
I feel like I understand how abusers minds work now, but I would like to better understand how they got that way. The section covering that felt very brief, I don't know if the book covers it in more detail or not.
I don't want to downplay your experience, but I did think I was reading something from the perspective of someone who had experienced an abusive relationship, and it was jarring to learn that it was, as you say, "a microcosm" of that. I think your experience was appropriate to include, I just would have rathered you were either fully upfront about it, or didn't mention it at all in the intro.
Some other comments here have given some good feedback. I agree with most of it, but it is already an excellent review which I would not have been surprised to see as a finalist.
Thanks for posting this! And for being willing to go first!
The quality of the writing was good. The prose was strong. The overall structure flowed well. My main suggestion would be more external research about the book. Unfortunately, I have quite a bit of knowledge about this topic and the book seemed to be lacking. But from your perspective, that could make for an opportunity for a interesting discussion as to the gap between what the author said and the data I’ll list below.
I would make a few points:
1. Writing is always about knowing your audience
2. ACX readers tend to like statistics more than the average audience
3. I've noticed that ACX book review finalists often have a lot of external research and information about the topic that often fact checks the book (correct me if anyone thinks otherwise)
One thought about the opening is that the most famous domestic violence trial in US history happened last year, the Johnny Depp trial. This might make a good hook for your opening. Although, it might be a bit tabloid-ish for the ACX audience, so I’m not sure.
A mistake that I believe that I personally made was that I picked a book that was somewhat controversial. I think the ACX audience prefers books on history, technology, science. I think this book might not appeal to them as much as something more tech/science/history. I think I made the same mistake with my choice of book.
In terms of external research, here are a few things that could be an interesting discussion:
1. The CDC estimates that roughly half of victims of intimate partner violence are men (2.1% per year vs 2.3% per year): “Severe physical violence by an intimate partner (including acts such as being hit with something hard, being kicked or beaten, or being burned on purpose) was experienced by an estimated 2.3% of women and 2.1% of men in the 12 months before taking the survey.” [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm]
It might’ve been an interesting question as to why the statistics and what he sees are so at odds. And (I think) these statistics were available when he wrote the book, so why did he not reference them?
There are many reasons why men don’t come forward as often:
1. In the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, the National Organization of Women successfully lobbied to have domestic violence be split into a lesser charge for violence against male victims. This makes it harder for men to come forward. If a man accuses his wife of abuse and the abuser make an allegation back at him, she is making a much more serious charge, and is more likely to be believed.
2. If a man calls the police many US states require the male partner to be removed from the house even if the police believe she is the perpetrator. So calling the police as a male victim is not safe.
3. There are 2,000 shelters for female victims and their children in the US. There is only 2 for men and their children. Without a place to go, he is less likely to come forward.
4. The court system often favors women for child custody, so if a man leaves a relationship he’s much more likely to lose access to his children, and if his wife is violent he often stays in the relationship to protect them.
Reviewing a book that is 20 years old could be very interesting to compare the new data available with what was available at the time and how that changes things.
I'm not sure I agree with 3. But I would like to discuss this elsewhere, not under the currently presented review. Maybe an open thread for this group or something.
At the beginning, I found the review very engaging. I continued to read on, even when I had planned to go to bed, because I really enjoyed the reading. I usually wouldn't recommend to start with a direct citation, but in this case it worked really well. The personal story that followed directly after that resulted in me being fully awake and attentive to what came next. The subheadings were helpful for structuring, and for the first pages I really liked the flow of the text.
The personal story also had the effect of me thinking 'am I reading a *bookreview* here, or is this not really something else?' This became less pronounced as I continued reading, but I still want to say that the effect of the personal story on my perception of the piece was quite strong.
Somewhen in the first third I started to get bored. I tried to find the place where it happened, but I'm not fully sure. I first read on, hoping the text would lead me back into 'exiting' mode, but in fact it stayed like this till the end ... even when I finished the review the next day. I wanted to pinpoint what led to this reaction of mine, but the truth is, I find it difficult to put my finger on it. Some guesses: there are no direct repetitions, but I think the ideas were progressing too slowly for my inner pace. Like too many words to explain an idea, which led to me thinking like, okay, I understand that, now let's move on. Maybe it was something else in the style that I can't quite figure out what it is. So maybe: a bit shorter? The presented topics as such were still interesting to me.
Additional points:
- When I read in the end that the initial story was not real, for a moment I felt really deceived. Remember the strong effect the story had on me initially. I'm glad you were honest and solved it at the end of the text. I still dislike the idea that you made me believe something different for almost the whole read, and I wouldn't recommend this for the future.
- I think it was courageous to present a book that focusses on male abuse of women for this specific context. I think ACX readership is more diverse than the commentariat feels to be, but overall I expect that *some* might have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the very topic. I also think *some* there might react in an allergic way to ideas you mention like *the patriarchy* or such. I'm very glad book reviews open up the range of ideas and discussions beyond the main foci of the commentariat! At the same time, I think it's a risky strategy if you want to enter or win the finalists.
- Understanding the content of the book was useful to me. This holds even - or because - the ideas as presented pretty much clash with what I have learned in other contexts. I find that more interesting than disturbing. Also, a book review is a book review, and IMO there is no need to know or cover the whole ground of the related field or knowlegde.
I wanted to add some smaller points, but have to leave now for a while, and will finish later.
"I want to know if I presented the book and its positions clearly and engagingly, and whether there's anything that I made an unconvincing case for. If people are interested in discussing the book and its positions further, further discussion of that would be great (whether in agreement or disagreement - I myself had a pretty major point of disagreement with the author). I did go into some speculation in my review on the book's applicability in modern contexts, and it'd be neat if people had thoughts on that."
I admit to not reading this before reading the review and before making my first comments. I can still try to respond more closely to the questions that were put forward (although I think some were covered). On another note, if there is something the review's author want to specifically get feedback on, I would like to see this together with the respective review - maybe in the first comment or something like that. Otherwise I'm afraid I will just do it my own way.
Thanks all for your feedback so far! If it's alright, going to respond to some of the recurring themes I'm seeing so far.
Length and weight of different sections, and length and pacing in general: This is something I struggle with a lot in my writing, keeping a bigger picture in focus and describing the forest instead of the trees. It sounds like it could have used some tightening up in general (in retrospect, there are some bits I think should have been footnoted, which probably would have helped) and more of the original work and less of my speculation about it. That's good to keep in mind for future reviews.
The bait-and-switch: Sounds as though this felt like a lot more of a letdown than I intended, and I should have found another way to handle this. I actually did try other ways of writing it, from not putting anything personal in the intro (which made it much less clear why I cared enough to write a review about it) to being up-front about it (which felt *really* bad, as there was no way to give the rest of it proper severity if I opened it by complaining about a bad D&D game). The solution I came up with seemed like the least-bad option, but I honestly didn't expect people to be that gripped by the intro, so I didn't consider that that would make the reveal feel like that much more of a betrayal. I probably got too cute.
Choice of subject: I thought this might come up; I knew I wasn't working with a crowd-pleaser either in the sense of "this is a fun topic to think about" or "this is the kind of book that wins these contests". I thought it was still worth entering because the concepts in the book meshed well with some of Scott's writings on human thought processes and vice-versa (specifically I remember reaching a point in the book where I said "Oh dang, that is a trapped prior he's describing"). I wasn't really "in it to win it" so much as I wanted to see what people who already have a grounding in rationalist theory would make of the ideas.
Bancroft's views on non-male-on-female abuse: I really would have preferred not to dwell on the gender side of it all, as I'm primarily interested in the mindset Bancroft describes, which I don't think is gender-specific at all except in how it presents, but it would have been impossible to accurately present the book or the worldview of its author if I didn't cover it. I do think Bancroft's dismissal of male abuse survivors is his biggest failing, but I didn't want that to become the focus of the review when so much of what it has to say isn't exclusive to the context Bancroft ties it to. I elected to address his conclusions, explain why I was disappointed by them, and move on, but I acknowledge that some number of people will consider that to be where my attention should have been. (FWIW, one of the identifying details I couldn't put into the review is that I'm kind of tentatively agender, so it's entirely possible that some of the reluctance to approach this comes from feeling like I really don't have a dog in this fight)
I liked the bait and switch. But that might be due to my (somewhat repellant?) take on your persona as an abused woman. On the other hand, I would have been very interested in the details of your actual struggle with the abusive D&D friend. It would have brought more immediacy to the situation, and provided examples of actual exchanges where it's possible to talk about what ELSE could you have said in response to friend's second (out of 10 or so) rants, and whether there was a clear and defensible way to make clear that being forced to read rants was not, in your opinion, a viable option. D&D groups seem to me a little bit like polyamorous pods in the intensity and intimacy of members' connection. A really interesting setting for exploring the balancing of empathy and boundary-setting.
Length and pacing: When I tried to figure out, why I was a bit bored in some places, I had a closer look at one or the other paragraph. I think you really have a talent for presenting a situation in a really tangible, vivid way. I find it very easy to imagine what you're talking about. That's great, and IMO can be used very beneficially - just take a more conscious decision on when to use this. In other cases, it might help to reflect on: "what would be the one sentence I want the reader to know from this paragraph?" And then decide how many more sentences to add to this in your text.
Intro: I fully see your point. Interesting to hear how this story came into beeing. My spontanous idea: why not mention your motivation in passing-by in the intro. Something like: 'The book was really important to me, because it helped see me through a difficult situation in which I was the target of unpleasant behaviour/ such anger. Even if this situation was harmless compared to the cases presented in the book. More about this later. ' .... I'm sure you would have found much better words for this. This would have allowed you to mention why the book was important to you at the outset, without going into detail on your real story at the beginning, which I agree would have been strange.
Non-male-to-female abuse: Personally I think you could have stated in the review what you said here. And then not dwell on the gender side further. I find 'book x is interesting for aspect z, not for (not fully covering) aspect y' is a fully legitimate reason, especially if mentioned clearly. I'm aware readers' preferences might be different though.
Wow, Rolaran, this is *really* well-written. Your sentences are graceful and cogent, and the overall shape of the review is very well-done too. As a reader I felt led courteously and competently along your train of thought, and never felt a bit aimless or disoriented. My interest did flag a bit in the section called The Relationship, but I don’t think that was due to a flaw in your presentation — I just don’t much like Bancroft’s way of thinking, and I recall that section as a pretty dense dose of his ideas without too many of yours in the mix. (In other sections, your mind was more of a presence, and I prefer your mind to Bancroft’s). And I enjoyed the reveal towards the end, which I won’t speak about in detail here since some may not yet have read your review. I even enjoyed the way it messed with my mind a bit, because I had been picturing you in a certain way, and suddenly that picture went poof.
But I don’t like the book. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I heartily dislike this book’s take on the abuse of women. I think my reaction to the book you reviewed is most of what I have to contribute to the discussion of this particular book review.
Any time I read something that says the reason people do X is because X-doers have a certain trait, I am skeptical. I’m a psychologist, and will be giving a combo of professional takes and personal reactions here. OK, here’s some professional, official psychology: Explanations for people’s behavior can be categorized as either trait explanations or situational ones. People are inclined to make trait attributions about behavior they disapprove of in others (“he’s rigid”), and situational ones for regrettable behavior of their own (“I was tired and knew I was going to have to leave in a couple minutes, so I just didn’t give their idea a fair hearing.”). These attributions are often not accurate. Bancroft sees the behavior of the male abuser as a result of such traits as being a person with rigid and unrealistic expectations about women partners, being committed to the abusive or coercive style of man-woman relationships they saw in their own home, and having a patriarchal take on how life works. But is his view of these people as saddled with traits created by early life lessons really accurate? Think about it. Lots of people leave home with a bunch of attitudes that seem self-evidently true to them, and that they are loathe to give up. Those attitudes may not be the exact 3 the abusers are said to have — though unrealistic expectations about love relationships is almost universal. But whatever their early attitudes are, most people modify these attitudes when they move out into the wider world. They make friends with people who don’t believe a bunch of that stuff — or they realize people have a poor opinion of a lot of their ideas — or life teaches them their ideas are false. Of course there are some people who cannot or do not modify some of their early simplistic ideas about how life works, but they are the minority. Most people lose the *trait* version of early ideas — the ideas are no longer things that are a part of them, things they take for granted. They probably do stay vulnerable to situational versions of those ideas. In situations that pull for attitudes like their old ones, they may slide more easily than others into that attitude. For instance, somebody who grew up with the idea that the male is the boss may slide into thinking that way again if he is with a woman who seems to see him as the boss. However, if on the 3rd date she surprises him by saying, “listen, I like you, but you’ve done this take-charge thing several times now, and I don’t like that” — if that happens, he’s likely to change his style.
(continued in Part 2 -- Substack said my original comment was too long.)
Actually, the book itself gives evidence of the situational nature of the abuse these men display with these women: They do not have meltdowns and bully people in other settings, or bully their woman in public. Why? Because it would cost them too much. They would lose their job, their friends, and their reputation as a normal friendly guy. So I have to say that I think that an important reason why male abusers of women do not stop abusing women is that the women do not object early and loudly enough, and do not make it clear that if there is any more of this they are going to do something that really costs the guy: Leave him, go to the police and report his behavior, or do anything else possible that is equally drastic.
I am a bit worried that some of you reading this are going to be angry at me for this view, and see me as blaming the victim. If it makes any difference, I myself am a woman, and I have experienced myself how hard it is to stand up to male bullies. My experience is that the hardest part of standing up to an angry, shouting male is not fear of retribution — it’s that it is hideously awkward. It feels wrong, crass, mean-spirited, self-centered, embarrassing. People turn and stare, and the surprise and disapproval in their eyes is not all directed at the guy. Most of us women are inclined to use our smarts and strength to deepen and enrich relationships, not to set limits. We are likely to view early signs of an abusive pattern as occasions where the guy needs soothing, not as lapses in civilized behavior. We pick him up at the airport and he snaps at us about a missed opportunity to merge into traffic, then explains that he would have overlooked our lapse if he hadn’t been awake for 36 hours straight. It does not come naturally to us to say, “what lapse? It wasn’t safe to move into the lane just then” or “we haven’t seen each other in 3 weeks and the first thing you do is snap at me about my driving?” Instead, we are going to feel like rubbing the back of his neck and saying, “you need a good long sleep, sweetie. But first some sex, right?” And once the pattern is established — he’s angry and unreasonable, she moves into affectionate I-can-soothe-you mode — it is difficult to draw the line. How awful does he have to be for her to recognize clearly and state openly that she sees his behavior as bullying, not as an understandable reaction to stress?
Of course, in some circumstances the woman is compelled to hide her real reaction of the man’s behavior, because if she does not he is likely to hurt her severely — or because she has no other place to live and no way to support herself. And there are some men who have a wiring problem that keeps them stuck with their early simplistic takes on relationships, and prevents them from processing situations more flexibly even if the woman makes perfectly clear that she hates his behavior and is not willing to tolerate any more of it. However, outside of circumstances of that kind, I think an important reason that male abusers do not modify their behavior is that the woman does not insist on it.
Women are often not good at paying attention to their own reactions and speaking up about them. Saying they must bget better at those things is not the same as saying that they deserve what they get if they don’t speak up at the early, miniature incidents of abuse, and speak up ever more loudly about later and worse incidents. Of course they don’t deserve them! But life is tough, and there are no real playground monitors. You have to learn to head certain things off early on, to complain vigorously if they continue, and to raise hell or leave if they become a pattern. Bancroft himself acknowledges the power of vigorously setting limits with abusers. Oddly, he sees doing that as his job: “The only place Bancroft sees even a slim hope of lasting change on the part of the abuser is if the question is shifted from engaging with his justifications to enforcing unavoidable, non-negotiable consequences. Someone needs to disregard the excuses, see through the deflections and distortions, and keep a laser focus on the abuser’s accountability: “You are being abusive, and this is not acceptable; you can stop it, only you can stop it, and if you don’t stop it, the relationship will end.” In his program, he and others like him aim to be that person. Abusers make them work for it.” Why is no one in his program teaching women to say that stuff? Does he think words like that can only be delivered via a penis with a microphone attachment? I am here to tell you that is not the case.
Notice Bancroft’s own report about the effect of his program in women victims of abusive partners: “In Bancroft’s mind, the primary client whose needs he is serving is not the abuser, but the target (or targets) of his abuse, and their situation frequently improves whether the abuser successfully changes his ways or not. The program enables them to find resources or other groups that can help them, learn to advocate more effectively for themselves, or regain enough sense of self to get out of the relationship entirely. Even just having the clarity of knowing that what’s happened to them is not normal and not their fault can be immensely empowering as they go forward.” Women are helped by learning to advocate for themselves, regain enough sense of self to get out of the relationship, and get clear that what is happening is not normal and not their fault. Why not work with the women to bring about those changes in a way less roundabout than via their participating as witnesses in a program where abusive men get the active treatment? And I don’t believe women really need to be informed that being screamed at and hit is not normal and not their fault, unless they grew up getting that kind of treatment. Does Bancroft think these women are morons? Of course they know it’s not normal and not their fault. The problem is that it feels awkward and wrong to them to act from that knowledge. They need encouragement to push through that feeling of wrongness, and practice coming up with words that convey the blunt truth: “I hate it when you treat me this way.”
I am here to tell you that kind of treatment is perfectly possible. But you have to cut out the middleman — Bancroft.
Fair concern WRT Bancroft seeming to take on a task that he should be letting those facing abuse do for themselves. I must say that Bancroft seems, to my reading, to fare better than many would-be counselors in terms of focusing on "abuse victims have all the tools they need to improve their own situation, and my job is primarily to give them the confidence to stand up for themselves" rather than "abuse victims don't know what they're doing and I need to save them from themselves"; if that doesn't come across, it may be a weakness of my review. I would be curious if Bancroft's hand is somewhat forced by the fact that his group is mostly composed of people who are there by court mandate- I imagine that filters for pretty dire circumstances, where it could be more necessary for Bancroft to re-establish boundaries that shouldn't have been in doubt in the first place!
Well, I am relieved to hear you do not feel profoundly undercut by what I wrote. Mostly what I'm objecting to is that Bancroft's ideas seem to spring from ideas about the female victims that are inaccurate and somewhat patriarchal. If the therapist can empower the female abuse victim to tell the male abuser exactly who they think and feel, the women will zap the guy way, way more effectively than Bancroft, his pecker and his PhD or MD could. Bancroft's approach of shrinking the abuser via depicting him as a weird lttle guy with some absurd fixed ideas is a move in the right direction. But a much better move is to tap into and validate the knowledge victims already have: The abuser's complaints are unreasonable; and even if they were reasonable they do not justify verbal or physical abuse of the woman they are complaining about. Abused women *already know* they do not deserve the shit they are getting from the man. What they need is not a second man, this one with a PhD instead of big biceps, to tell them they do not deserve the treatment they are getting. What they need is permission to speak the actual truth as they perceive it, without being inhibited by concerns that they are not being nice enough.
I like your comment, but I think you're very close the book itsself, instead of presenting an anti-thesis.
This: "Why? Because it would cost them too much. They would lose their job, their friends, and their reputation as a normal friendly guy. So I have to say that I think that an important reason why male abusers of women do not stop abusing women is that the women do not object early and loudly enough, and do not make it clear that if there is any more of this they are going to do something that really costs the guy." is exactly reflecting the book's hypothesis and even core statement, in what I understood from the review.
The main difference you might have, is Bancroft as a middle man vs. working only/ mostly with women. More to that later ...
I strongly disagree with this part: "Abused women *already know* they do not deserve the shit they are getting from the man." Also more later ... I think we have another 4 days until the next review and I will try to write something more till then.
I also disagree with that part. If my experience in any way maps to other scenarios of abuse (I'm happy to consider any reason why it wouldn't, as I already know it's not the usual case), one of the reasons I put up with it for so long was that it escalated so slowly, producing a growing sense of doubt that the treatment was undeserved.
My problem player told us up front that he couldn't pick up on social cues because of his autism, and so we would need to be direct with him if he did something we disliked. He wasn't our only neurodivergent player, and I'm mildly neurodivergent myself, so we agreed to do our best to accommodate his need for directness. Over the course of a year and a half "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll stop" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll 'try' to stop but it'll probably keep happening" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll insist on a precise legal definition of what I'm being banned from doing" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll insist on a full philosophical proof of the objective wrongness of doing it" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll claim that enforcing behavioral norms on me is ableism". On all but the last one, the transition was so gradual that I didn't notice it except in hindsight. As a result, my internal thought process was "I said I would make accommodations for his needs, and while that's proving more difficult than I expected, it's up to me to make good on that" for a *shockingly* long time.
The severity of his responses also ramped up gradually, from "telling me he needed me to avoid certain admittedly-touchy topics or he'd be 'unable' to respond civilly" to "having a meltdown because I had brought up something not generally considered objectionable in game, entirely unaware and unwarned that it was a thing that would 'set him off'" to "telling me the way I was running my game reminded me of how he was treated by his alcoholic father" to "telling me I was morally unqualified to run a D&D game". I was never thinking "I shouldn't have to put up with this shit", I was thinking "wow, that last one was a bit worse than the previous one". If you're familiar with the boiling frog story, that was me.
In the end, it wasn't me that noticed that I was accepting insinuations I would never stomach from a stranger. Someone else in the group who had divorced a narcissistic partner noticed how bad things had gotten and expressed worry that my situation paralleled hers. I knew the treatment was unpleasant, but I genuinely did not put together myself that it was unwarranted. And if I hadn't kicked him out, I suspect my problem player would still maintain that it was justified and so was he.
Well, let me say a little more about what I meant. When I say these women knew they did not deserve the abuse they were getting, I don’t mean they were clearly saying that to themselves right while the guy was bellowing at them, and feeling no doubt they were right. I mean that they knew in their hearts (kind of a corny phrase, but I cannot think of a better one) that they did not deserve it. For instance, I’m betting that if instead of being partnered with an abusive man they had a friend who was partnered with one, and the friend’s abusive partner was inflicting on the friend all the same kinds of abuse, they would have no trouble recognizing that the friend did not deserve to be treated that way. If the friend had said, “Yes, but I was insensitive, He came home tired and I asked him if he could mow the lawn,” the woman would have said, “Yeah, but that doesn’t justify him smacking you.” If the friend had said, “but he felt terrible afterwards. He promised never to do it again,” the woman would have said “Come on! He’s promised that a dozen times at least, but he keeps hitting you.” If you think the abused women would have also thought their friend had fucked up and kind of deserved what she got, then we just disagree about the beliefs and state of mind of abused women, and there’s no way to resolve that except with actual data, which we don’t have. But if you kind of agree that the woman would recognize abuse as abuse if it was happening to someone else, hear me out.
It seems to me that the problem these abused women have isn’t recognizing that bellowing at someone and slapping them is just wrong. The problem is that they have trouble acting on that knowledge, There are barriers that keep people for pushing back when they are treated badly, and women generally have more barriers than men.
-It’s awkward to say “nope, I don’t agree.” You, Rolarans, may have felt some reluctance to object to my views. I set up this group. That makes me a little bit of an authority figure. Also, it was a good idea, and so fucking nice of me to go to the trouble, blah, blah, blah. (Actually, it wasn’t much work). So it’s a maybe a bit awkward to hassle me about my first fucking post. Have you no gratitude!?
-It’s awkward for me to say “nope, I don’t agree” back to your “nope.” Part of the reason I set up this group was because I wanted some people to read my review and respond to it. I now feel sort of worried of that maybe everybody’s going to be annoyed at me about my post about your review, and won’t even want to give my review a fair hearing.
-Women, and some empathic, nurturant men, are used to helping people and groups function by understanding how people feel and what they need and responding to that. That is often just exactly what the person or the group needs, and works really well. But it’s only one tool in the toolbox. There are situations where the helpful thing is limit-setting: “No matter how you are feeling, you cannot do that.” Empathic types have less practice with that, and are vulnerable to feeling harsh and unkind when they do it.
-There’s a slippery slope phenom that can happen, where having once gone into empathy mode when someone is expressing their distress in an unpleasant, entitled way, the empathic, nurturant person feels as though they have a sort of unspoken contract with the difficult person: When you are difficult, I will be soothing and giving. Departing from the “contract” feels mean and unfair. Rolarans, you identified this dynamic very clearly in your account of your dealings with the difficult person in your D&D game.
-Many people. especially women, have not been warned that there are situations in life where someone is going to want you to do things that you do not want to do, and if you do not refuse to go along with what the person wants, nobody will step in to help you. There’s a playbook in situations like this, and women are much less likely than men to have been taught it.
So I think what these abused women need is a forum that gives them a place to express their real inner reactions to being abused, which is to hate that shit. And then help identifying the inner barriers to speaking up from one’s actual reactions. And then practice in developing a playbook. And then support while they implement it.
Rolarans, I don’t doubt that the book was helpful to you. It certainly helped you identify the slippery slope aspect of it, and gave you a term for what that D&D guy was doing: psychological abuse. So I think you will be more aware the next time there’s a slippery slope of this kind. Still, whoever tries to exploit you next time may be so different from the guys in the book and from you D&D guy that you will not be able to rely on the book to tell you that you are being mistreated. You are going to have to be able to respect your actual reactions, without having anybody around to give official approval that they are fair, and say, early on, “I don’t like it when you do that and I want you to stop it.” My complaint about Bancroft is that he doesn’t seem to get that that’s what it comes down to. HE’s the one telling these abusers they do not get to behave that way. He doesn’t grasp that (1) the woman is much more important to the abuser than Bancroft is, and so her communications pack more punch (2) the woman is capable of recognizing the truth of that statement and saying it. and (3) if the woman does not reach a point where she is willing to speak up clearly when she does not like what the man is doing, she is going to continue being abused, on a large scale or small, depending on how awful the next entitled, coercive person she meets is.
Oh no, just lost my whole comment. Can't rewrite now. Somewhen ...
VERY SHORTLY I think the story you tell about women beeing able to clearly see the situation *when it concerns somebody else* is not an argument for them *deep in their hearts* knowing they don't deserve it. I think it says that they maybe know in a 'rational way' / with some parts of them, that nobody deserves this, maybe even not them, but it's precisely an indication that *deep in their hearts* they don't know this but instead feel responsible, believe they deserve this, are unsure who is right, whatever.
I agree with many things you say in your paragraphs in the middle, as applying to a variety of persons and social situations, but I don't think they counter what I just wrote.
I think I understand what you mean about knowing rationally that something's OK, but feeling deep in your heart that it's not ok for *you.* I think everybody has minor versions of this: You know it wouldn't be a big deal if anyone else dropped the microphone in the middle of a presentation, but if *you* do all the listeners will think you're a fool. Or whatever.
Here's something that influences my thinking about abused women. About half my work as a therapist is with people with anxiety disorders -- OCD, phobias, crippling social anxiety. Many have severe anxiety disorders. For instance I had someone who took hundreds of pictures daily of every setting she was been in because of a fear that she had dropped a USB drive with embarrassing information on it. She was a smart, sensible scientist, and not a bit crazy. She knew that her fear made no rational sense, but it *felt* horribly valid. In fact all of the people I see readily acknowledge that their fear is irrational -- but they all say that it feels so valid that dropping whatever precautions they take is simply out of the question. So these people are an extreme example of what we are talking about. Their felt truth feels so true that they are unable to act in line with the rational truth, even though acting in line with their fear via avoidance or weird precautions is exacting a terrible price. Like the women, they are paying a terrible price for acting in line with the felt truth rather than the rational truth.
If in fact my anxiety patients were stuck until they no longer *felt* in danger, it would take a very long time to help them. I'm not even sure how anyone could. Seems like it would be the same with the abused women, if in fact the core problem was that they deeply believed they deserved abuse. I mean, can you think of anything that would change that core problem other than a long, deep psychotherapy (and actaully does not work for many people)? While there's certainly no harm in telling these women that of course they do not deserve abuse, saying so seems unlikely to bring about any change. They have probably been listening for quite a long time to friends and relatives and magazine articles tell them that, and urging them to leave the guy. Similarly, virtually all of my anxiety patients have obtained extensive reassurance from family and friends that no, of course their fears are not valid, and they have been urged over on over to "face your fear."
What I have found is that it is not necessary to change somebody's felt truth that their fear is valid and they are in terrible danger if they defy it. The way change usually happens is that they become willing to defy their fear in small ways, and get evidence that the feared consequence does not happen, and also that their fear while doing the exercise is quite unpleasant but not unbearable. That weakens their commitment to the felt truth a little bit, and then they’re able to try a slightly bolder challenge. After a while of this they hit a sort of tipping point where they realize that the more they defy their fear the smaller it get, and they’re able to really commit to the process.
As for what gets them to do that first small exercise: I *never* give anybody the hard sell. I more talk over pros and cons of their experimenting with an exercise. I answer their questions about what exposure therapy is like. If they ask me whether they should try it, I say that only they can decide, but I’m happy to answer every single question they have so they can decide which is worse, trying the exercise or committing to living as they have been. A lot of people then cry, “but I CAN’T STAND my life as it is now.” Long and short of it, my very strong impression is that people who know their behavior is irrational but feel that they must do it usually opt for acting in line with what they know rationally is the case if they are offered direct help in doing so, and a clear explanation of how the help works, and an opportunity to begin the change process gradually.
So it seems to me that the situation of the abused women is similar enough to that of my anxiety disorder patients that thinking of it as having sort of a similar structure makes sense. In some way these people believe the rational truth more than they believe the felt truth. And practically speaking, it seems like a good model to use because if a long psychotherapy is required to change her picture of herself before she can take steps to stop the abuse, that means she's going to be getting abused for several more years.
I finally got around to reading the review and writing down the feedback, sorry for the late reply.
I enjoyed the review overall. I didn't rate many reviews at the contest, but yours is better than any of the ones I did read and rate. Reading it, I feel like it goes on a par with some of last year's finalists. There are some issues though, which would keep me from giving it a higher rating (and some of them are issues that I have with the kind of writing that the SSC/ACX community tends to select for the finalists, so take some of them with a grain of salt, as I might not be representative of the community overall).
I'll start by discussing the points you've said you specially want feedback on:
> I want to know if I presented the book and its positions clearly and engagingly, and whether there's anything that I made an unconvincing case for.
I've found you've manged to present the book, its positions and your own case in a very clear manner. Your writing is great regarding that! At no point reading the review have I felt like I didn't understand your point.
The key problem I've found with your review, which would stop me from giving it a 9 or 10, is the engagingness. The review is long (I count 10439 words), which is great for being able to express the book's positions in a clear manner, but gives an additional burden of making it constantly engaging so one doesn't feel like it's a drag to read it to the end. I've found this to be specially an issue with the first and third quarters of the review. The discussion and conclusion are great and very engaging, but the review seems to take a while to build up the interest of the reader, and I would probably miss out on them if I were reading it as a blog post, as I would get bored in the beginning.
There are three issues that I find might be causing this disengagement. First, the writing style when you contextualize summarize the main points of the book seems a bit monotonous (in a literal sense). This would be desirable if this part were shorter, but as it takes up around half of the review, it starts to drag on a bit. If you varied your style a bit more, it would probably solve the issue. Second, while your writing is well structured, I didn't get a sense of where you were going with it until I read the review to the end. The book's name is "Why does he do that?", so, as a reader, I was really interested into understanding "why he does that", but I wasn't sure whether you (or the book) would address that question until I got to the "WHERE ARE THESE ATTITUDES COMING FROM?" section. A bit of tweaking on the writing to let the readers a sense of where you're going and create a drive for them to want to keep reading would do wonders here. Third, the writing could be a bit more concise and focus more on the big picture, so as to make the review (and the more "monotonous" parts) shorter and better-flowing. I understand that you want to present everything in a clear manner, and longer writing gives you space to do that. But there are parts where it could be a bit cut down while still keeping the writing clear and engaging.
Regarding the discussion and speculation you've made regarding the book and its applicability on modern contexts, I have nothing to say but that I've found it very interesting and engaging, and would like to read more from you.
I would rate the review 8/10, and the only thing stopping me from giving it a better rating would be the length/flow issues I've mentioned earlier. But given that I find that many of the finalists show the same issues, I do feel like they bother me more than the average SSC reader who rates lots of reviews. So, I would speculate that a reason why the review didn't get selected as a finalist might be due to the subject matter being approached in a different way to that of the usual themes of the finalists. As there weren't many ratings, all it takes is a single bad rating to keep a review from becoming a finalist. But as a blog post (with a more selected audience), this wouldn't be a problem, but an advantage instead. I do believe it could've been a finalist if it were more engaging, though.
a) I found the presentation of the abusers quite one-dimensional. In my understanding, the book says: The abusers are 'healthy individuals' (not explicitely, but implicitely), they are in full control of their behaviour, and they are just egoistic A. Egoistic A. with a talent for manipulation. They will mistreat you, as long as you allow them and stop, if you don't. Therefore, forget everything about where their behaviour comes from, stop making excuses for them and instead give them constly incentives to change.
I understand why B Civil calls that a caricature / cartoon characters. I don't think this is a full, adequate or even true description. Nevertheless, I think it's an important point, and one that the victims of abusers need to hear. Or in a broader sense, one that is worth reading for everybody who usually is more busy with the more complex origins of such type of bad behaviour.
b) To the extend to which my understanding of the books' presentation as above is accurate, I find it both oversimplified, and I think it doesn't really hold scrutiny. To my understanding, many of Bancroft's 'clients' are just out of jail for their behaviour. That's hardly prove of a cool cost-benefit calculation. Or of 'no consequences'. Also, I'm not fully sure if I remember that correctly, but the fact that different kids with similar backgrounds develop very different reactions to this and not all become abusers, would hardly be an argument for the background not playing a relevant role.
c) When I was reading the review I was flabbergasted by the idea, that before Bancroft's programme most similar efforts would work *only* with the abusers, and *not even talk* to the victims to cross-check on the potential changes ... let alone help and support *them*. I think changing this approach this is the revolutionary aspect of the book. Everything that follows - e.g. the oversimplification of abusers and the message to the victims - is a result from that context and approach. I didn't read the book, so I'm interested to hear your opinion. Even less do I know what those kind of programmes were like in the 70ies and 80ies of last century.
a) This is fair. I think this may be a situation where some "reading backwards" is needed- if the prevailing attitude is "you need to understand why the abuser is behaving that way, and help them sort out whatever issue is causing their behavior" (an attitude that is by no means extinct) it's understandable that someone will want to wave their arms and shout "No you don't! You can just leave! You're hurting right now and it can stop! You don't need to understand thermodynamics to pull your hand out of a fire!" I did encounter another writer (an advice columnist), writing more recently, whose advice to an abuse victim was more along the lines of "Your abuser can figure out what he thinks is causing his abuse on his own time; you're not obligated to help him figure that out, or have an opinion on it at all, before you're allowed to leave the situation", which seems to me like the synthesis of Bancroft's position and the one he was reacting against.
b) Something I considered, but couldn't find a good way to get into the review, is whether Bancroft's perceptions would be colored by the fact that he is only seeing the abusers whose control of the situation slipped enough that somebody saw through their act. Whether the intended victim found it in herself to stand up to them, or a court saw enough evidence to convict, that's a scenario where the situation has already gotten partway out of the abuser's hands. It reminds me of a quote from a wildlife expert talking about a type of animal that normally avoids humans and is very good at doing so, cautioning people against assuming that our encounters with them give us a picture of their typical behavior: "We only see the slow, the sick, or the stupid".
c) I can't really speak to this, I'm afraid. Bancroft doesn't go into a lot of detail about how previous programs operated, or even if any existed. He does talk about why he thinks conventional therapy is a poor substitute, since making the abuser more confident and self-actualized is exactly what nobody involved needs, and any knowledge of psychology they do pick up gets co-opted in ways that serve them first and foremost.
First, I think this review is really good. I enjoyed reading it—thanks for sharing it. It wouldn't have surprised me to see this amongst the finalists.
But I'll jump into what I hope is constructive criticism because I think that's what you're looking for. Note that I haven't read the book so I'm not making any claims about the accuracy of your representation of it.
I read your comment so I know you've already heard this, but I'll still add my vote that I did not like the fact that the intro was misleading. For me, it was probably the #1 detraction (but keep in mind, I think the review is really good so don't weigh this too heavily). The intro made it much better, so when you took it away, naturally, the review as a whole got worse. It reminded me of the movie Fargo, which starts by saying it's based on a real movie. This made the deaths feel much more impactful because we've been desensitized to deaths in fictional stories. But when I later found out it wasn't real, that took something away from it for me. Similar thing here.
I know other people mentioned this as well, but it also dragged a little in the middle. I think just some extra tightening up and summarizing would have made the difference. Or perhaps find a way to be a little engaging. Maybe even a picture or an aside or something would have been a nice break (see Scott's first two points here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/). It's possible that varying the style a little more would have helped.
One thing that makes reviewing this book tricky is there was a lack of interesting ideas presented. I want to be clear that I think these are IMPORTANT ideas and an IMPORTANT topic. But none of the ideas were interesting in the sense that I said: "Wow, I've never thought of it like that before". None of the ideas surprised me. None changed the way I think about the world.
I don't know if there was more evidence in the book or not, but I thought there wasn't much evidence presented for the notion that the seeds of abuse are planted early in life. Was there no discussion of genetic susceptibility? I would think there would be a lot of variation here, but I interpreted what you were saying as "It's mostly/all nurture and it's nurture in the early years". Maybe I misinterpreted though. I was also left wondering, if the sessions don't work, what's the plan then? Sadly, maybe no one has that answer though.
Overall, I thought your review was great. I'm specifically listed the criticisms above in the hopes of being constructive. Your writing flows really well and and I think you a great job.
I'm an ACX reader who submitted a book review and stumbled onto this project after missing the initial posts in the open thread. I figured I'd join in on the criticism because:
1. I like reading reviews and those written by people committed to getting better are probably better than average.
2. I like coming up with constructive criticism.
3. I'm hoping I can weasel my own review in here at some point and want to get in on the ground floor if this becomes a more general writing workshop group.
Feel free to tell me to get lost if y'all prefer this group stay more closed.
On to the actual review:
I thought this was quite good. I'd probably give it an 8 if I was reviewing it in the contest. I found the topic interesting, and the writing flowed well. At some point I realized I had forgotten I was reading an "amateur" book review and had the same feeling I get when I'm reading any well-written article on the internet--there's a level of polish and zip here that's commendable.
That said, the worst response anyone can give a piece of writing is "that was pretty good!" so here's some criticism:
-The biggest issue is that the section explaining Why He Does That is feels like it's only about 20% of the review. That topic feels like it should be the meat and majority (80%?) of the content here, but it feels neglected. It's implicitly given the same weight as analysis of how Bancroft's theory applies to different subgroups or your experience with a toxic D&D player. Both of those sections were interesting, and I am happy they were included, but I wish the main ideas of the book had been expanded on in more detail. I got to this sentence at the end:
"Well, it looks to me like he’s getting a lot of your time and attention with minimal effort and next to no cost, of course he’s going to keep doing whatever keeps that going. Let’s find some ways to cut off that easy supply.”
and realized I had kind of forgotten that was the main thing the book was saying. (It also felt more clearly articulated here than it had in the previous section, but maybe that's just me reading inattentively).
The biggest thing that would improve the review is increasing the amount of attention you paid to the core ideas of the book.
Here's some wild speculation/more personal preference stuff (take with grains of salt):
-IMO one of the joys of psychology books is the voyeuristic thrill of reading about real people being depraved or foolish. The brief examples of abuser behavior provided some of that, but I personally would've enjoyed more.
-In general, I think this could've used more direct quotes from the book. Quotation helps give the reader a sense of the original author's style and makes the review more authoritative.
-The intro is very effective, but I had a visceral negative response to the reveal that the relationship in question was one with a D&D group member. The belief that you had been in an abusive romantic relationship was in the back of my mind for the entire time I was reading, and it was pretty jarring to have that idea corrected--to the point where that might be the most emotionally memorable thing about the review for me.
But--thank you for writing this. Again, it was a genuinely enjoyable read, and the perspective on abuse gave me useful clarity on some personal relationships.
Welcome!
To my understanding, the agreement here is, that the list of reviews presented and discussed is closed, but additional critics are welcome. And maybe as you say there'll be follow-up projects. So glad you joined in for constructive feedback.
That's right, our plan is to discuss only the reviews of the 11 of us in the original group. Others are welcome to also comment on the reviews though. I suppose it's possible that this group will continue in some form after all 11 reviews are discussed, maybe taking on a new crop of reviews to discuss. But at this point we're just getting started, and have no idea how we'll all feel about this project by the time we get to the 11th review.
I think the most salient thing from this is the author of the book’s early statement that his intersessions really did not make much difference to the behavior of the people he was treating, and it became a matter of harm reduction. I totally understand that, but as someone with some very significant priors in this issue, it made me cry. It had to be turned into a black hats versus white hats scenario , and the underlying issues here have gone completely unexplored. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen too much. The reasons you don’t hear much from men who have been abused by women are plentiful.
1, men are, shall we say emotionally illiterate for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. It would take a man years to figure out he was being emotionally abused. It is far more likely that he just weaponizes it.
2 , it’s pretty embarrassing as a man to go to authorities and claim that he is being abused by a woman. Even on the off chance he is taken seriously, it’s still embarrassing.
I grew up in a very violent household. I saw my mother beaten up more than once, and I got slapped around pretty good as a child. My father was a bully and completely self involved, and I hated his guts. My mother was very pretty and kind of a party girl, and she tortured him with her appeal to other men. I loved her profoundly.
When he left us I was 13 years old, and I was very happy. Me and mom.
When she turned on me, I didn’t know what had hit me. I was 14 years old when she would literally drag me out of my bed at 2 o’clock in the morning and kick me out of the house. She would berate me with exactly the same insults she used to hurl at my father. (She was a severe alcoholic.)
It must’ve been at least 10 or 20 times that I walked out of that house in the cold hours of a Canadian winter, knowing that I could just punch her in the mouth and stay warm but that wasn’t really an option. I called her bluff once and let her call the police. They came, (two of them) with their flash lights on and their hands on their belts. I let them in. She gave them her pitch. She was scared, I was dangerous. etc. The police listened, then took me aside. "Does she get like this often?" one asked.
They gave me a ride to the bus station. I spent the night in an all-night diner and then showed up at school (grade nine) and pretended to learn something. That is a lot of anger and frustration to eat.
That’s why I love the Jamaican proverb on this issue.
“ if a woman, vex you man, go far.“
This issue is really fucking complicated and I don’t get the feeling that this book even scratched the surface of it.
Wow, you really went through hell as a kid! I have not read the book and have not yet read the review. Is the author saying that there are not many situations where women abuse men? Or is what's getting to you that the author says there's not much you can do about abuse except a bit of harm reduction? If it's the former, I can tell you that as therapist I have heard many stories from men of their being abused by women, and I did not doubt their accounts in the slightest. I'm sure no halfway decent therapist would. When you hear the story, and see their remembered anguish as they tell it, you know you are hearing the truth. Here's one story with sort of a good ending that I heard from a patient just recently. He and his brother, both grade school age, were living with an aunt because of complications in their parents' lives. The aunt was crazily strict and hot-tempered, and beat them with various objects for minor things like getting home late or spilling their milk. So there came a day when the aunt beat my patient's brother so severely that he was not only bruised but also bleeding in the places where the blows landed. This 10 year old little guy -- who was Black, by the way -- walked to the police station, described what had happened, and showed them his wounds. The next day both boys were yanked out of the aunt's care and moved to a foster home, where they stayed for several years. My patient remembers the years there as a happy time. The foster parents were benign but not of much importance to him. Mostly he remembers feeling safe and happy with the gang of other foster kids, hanging out together and playing, sleeping in the same room,
The guy's doing pretty OK now. Is getting an advanced degree in a field he loves. Has a lot of social anxiety, but is really making progress at pushing through it and getting to know people.
I haven’t read the book, only this review. Perhaps it does the book a disservice, but as it’s presented the abusing men come across like cartoon characters. I missed any sense of complexity.
I appreciate the story of your patient. Good for him…
My main feedback is that I think the quality of the writing is good.
Sentences and paragraphs are well structured, thoughts are phrased clearly, and there were several sentences that I thought were amusingly clever, the one about Yelowstone, judging people by the cartoons they watch and others. I’m not an expert writer or anything, but from my experience that’s the part of writing that’s most difficult and has to be learned inductively, so that’s a big positive.
Abuse in relationships, or psychiatry in general really, isn’t a subject I’ve read anything about before (unless some of the stuff on SSC/ACX counts) or that I’m particularly interested in. But I still found this review fairly engaging despite the fact that it’s so long.
My main criticism is that either the ideas in the book aren’t impactful enough for a contest with an audience that’s mainly interested in ideas, or the ideas in the book weren’t presented clearly enough or in a compelling way.
It wasn’t clear what the key ideas of the book were, or if it had an overarching thesis.
I’ll list a synopsis of the key ideas I noticed reading through, and you can see if there was anything major you were hoping to communicate but that didn’t come through (it is a topic I don’t really know anything about so I probably did miss a bunch of nuance.):
Bancroft has an approach to psychiatry that also involves the abuser.
Corrections of common misunderstanding of what causes abuse.
Some approaches to psychiatry exacerbate the problem.
Abusers believe themselves justified. Isn’t enrolment in the program a tacit admission of guilt though?
Types of abusers: Drill Sarg, Water torturer, Player.
Men’s expectations of women are often unrealistic.
Victims often stay because stay the initial relationship was good.
Bancroft is too environmentalist/not hereditation.
Maybe attitudes have improved in recent years, but that’s not much insurance against abuse.
Bancroft’s approach is useful for the victims, but reforming abusers is often a lost cause.
Last year’s winning entry for “The Dawn of Everything” presented the book’s novel interpretation of the whole of human pre-history, and the review itself added another big idea (about how normies hold back progress basically) that seemed insightful and very generally applicable.
I wouldn’t say anything on that list is comparably compelling.
Also, in my analysis of SCC/AXC reviews, in terms of structure they tend to build interest in the introduction, usually by pointing out flaws in a commonly accepted narrative, then presenting the new narrative from the book that addresses those flaws and gradually presenting new evidence/ideas in support of that thesis. The best SCC/ACX reviews usually subvert the new narrative from the book and offer an even more compelling perspective/twist on the book’s thesis.
The Dawn of Everything for example pokes holes in standard materialist anthropological theories with a bunch of counter examples, presents a new perspective about political agency in pre-historical cultures, and then the review subverts that new thesis, arguing it can’t account for the
Unless you were already looking for commentary on abusive relationships I don’t think this intro builds much engagement (maybe because the book deals with such a specific subject). And the ideas from the book don’t feel like it’s building to anything major, it feels more like a collection of scattered ideas that don’t add up to anything bigger. That’s probably more a problem with the book itself more than your review.
If it had been a contest to review this book specifically I’d say this was a solid entry, but I don’t think this is the kind of book that could win an open book review contest for the type of audience who read ACX.
Hopefully that’s useful feedback, I’m not really knowledgeable enough on the subject to say anything very interesting about the topic of the book itself.
A great review. Well written and insightful. Before I got too far in I stopped and wrote down my guesses for "why he does this", to see how close my assumptions would be and they pretty much all feel under the misconceptions section.
I feel like I understand how abusers minds work now, but I would like to better understand how they got that way. The section covering that felt very brief, I don't know if the book covers it in more detail or not.
I don't want to downplay your experience, but I did think I was reading something from the perspective of someone who had experienced an abusive relationship, and it was jarring to learn that it was, as you say, "a microcosm" of that. I think your experience was appropriate to include, I just would have rathered you were either fully upfront about it, or didn't mention it at all in the intro.
Some other comments here have given some good feedback. I agree with most of it, but it is already an excellent review which I would not have been surprised to see as a finalist.
Thanks for posting this! And for being willing to go first!
The quality of the writing was good. The prose was strong. The overall structure flowed well. My main suggestion would be more external research about the book. Unfortunately, I have quite a bit of knowledge about this topic and the book seemed to be lacking. But from your perspective, that could make for an opportunity for a interesting discussion as to the gap between what the author said and the data I’ll list below.
I would make a few points:
1. Writing is always about knowing your audience
2. ACX readers tend to like statistics more than the average audience
3. I've noticed that ACX book review finalists often have a lot of external research and information about the topic that often fact checks the book (correct me if anyone thinks otherwise)
One thought about the opening is that the most famous domestic violence trial in US history happened last year, the Johnny Depp trial. This might make a good hook for your opening. Although, it might be a bit tabloid-ish for the ACX audience, so I’m not sure.
A mistake that I believe that I personally made was that I picked a book that was somewhat controversial. I think the ACX audience prefers books on history, technology, science. I think this book might not appeal to them as much as something more tech/science/history. I think I made the same mistake with my choice of book.
In terms of external research, here are a few things that could be an interesting discussion:
1. The CDC estimates that roughly half of victims of intimate partner violence are men (2.1% per year vs 2.3% per year): “Severe physical violence by an intimate partner (including acts such as being hit with something hard, being kicked or beaten, or being burned on purpose) was experienced by an estimated 2.3% of women and 2.1% of men in the 12 months before taking the survey.” [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm]
2. “97% of men who experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner had only female perpetrators.” [https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/men-ipvsvandstalking.html]
It might’ve been an interesting question as to why the statistics and what he sees are so at odds. And (I think) these statistics were available when he wrote the book, so why did he not reference them?
There are many reasons why men don’t come forward as often:
1. In the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, the National Organization of Women successfully lobbied to have domestic violence be split into a lesser charge for violence against male victims. This makes it harder for men to come forward. If a man accuses his wife of abuse and the abuser make an allegation back at him, she is making a much more serious charge, and is more likely to be believed.
2. If a man calls the police many US states require the male partner to be removed from the house even if the police believe she is the perpetrator. So calling the police as a male victim is not safe.
3. There are 2,000 shelters for female victims and their children in the US. There is only 2 for men and their children. Without a place to go, he is less likely to come forward.
4. The court system often favors women for child custody, so if a man leaves a relationship he’s much more likely to lose access to his children, and if his wife is violent he often stays in the relationship to protect them.
Reviewing a book that is 20 years old could be very interesting to compare the new data available with what was available at the time and how that changes things.
I'm not sure I agree with 3. But I would like to discuss this elsewhere, not under the currently presented review. Maybe an open thread for this group or something.
Sure, how about here: https://bookreviewgroup.substack.com/p/i-think-were-about-ready? Or we could ask to create a post for general discussion.
I opened up a comment / thread on the new Open Thread here. Maybe it's even worth copy-pasting your respective points there?
Okay, my 3 cents:
At the beginning, I found the review very engaging. I continued to read on, even when I had planned to go to bed, because I really enjoyed the reading. I usually wouldn't recommend to start with a direct citation, but in this case it worked really well. The personal story that followed directly after that resulted in me being fully awake and attentive to what came next. The subheadings were helpful for structuring, and for the first pages I really liked the flow of the text.
The personal story also had the effect of me thinking 'am I reading a *bookreview* here, or is this not really something else?' This became less pronounced as I continued reading, but I still want to say that the effect of the personal story on my perception of the piece was quite strong.
Somewhen in the first third I started to get bored. I tried to find the place where it happened, but I'm not fully sure. I first read on, hoping the text would lead me back into 'exiting' mode, but in fact it stayed like this till the end ... even when I finished the review the next day. I wanted to pinpoint what led to this reaction of mine, but the truth is, I find it difficult to put my finger on it. Some guesses: there are no direct repetitions, but I think the ideas were progressing too slowly for my inner pace. Like too many words to explain an idea, which led to me thinking like, okay, I understand that, now let's move on. Maybe it was something else in the style that I can't quite figure out what it is. So maybe: a bit shorter? The presented topics as such were still interesting to me.
Additional points:
- When I read in the end that the initial story was not real, for a moment I felt really deceived. Remember the strong effect the story had on me initially. I'm glad you were honest and solved it at the end of the text. I still dislike the idea that you made me believe something different for almost the whole read, and I wouldn't recommend this for the future.
- I think it was courageous to present a book that focusses on male abuse of women for this specific context. I think ACX readership is more diverse than the commentariat feels to be, but overall I expect that *some* might have a negative knee-jerk reaction to the very topic. I also think *some* there might react in an allergic way to ideas you mention like *the patriarchy* or such. I'm very glad book reviews open up the range of ideas and discussions beyond the main foci of the commentariat! At the same time, I think it's a risky strategy if you want to enter or win the finalists.
- Understanding the content of the book was useful to me. This holds even - or because - the ideas as presented pretty much clash with what I have learned in other contexts. I find that more interesting than disturbing. Also, a book review is a book review, and IMO there is no need to know or cover the whole ground of the related field or knowlegde.
I wanted to add some smaller points, but have to leave now for a while, and will finish later.
Thanks for the opportunity to read this!
Okay, Rolaran had in fact said:
"I want to know if I presented the book and its positions clearly and engagingly, and whether there's anything that I made an unconvincing case for. If people are interested in discussing the book and its positions further, further discussion of that would be great (whether in agreement or disagreement - I myself had a pretty major point of disagreement with the author). I did go into some speculation in my review on the book's applicability in modern contexts, and it'd be neat if people had thoughts on that."
I admit to not reading this before reading the review and before making my first comments. I can still try to respond more closely to the questions that were put forward (although I think some were covered). On another note, if there is something the review's author want to specifically get feedback on, I would like to see this together with the respective review - maybe in the first comment or something like that. Otherwise I'm afraid I will just do it my own way.
Thanks all for your feedback so far! If it's alright, going to respond to some of the recurring themes I'm seeing so far.
Length and weight of different sections, and length and pacing in general: This is something I struggle with a lot in my writing, keeping a bigger picture in focus and describing the forest instead of the trees. It sounds like it could have used some tightening up in general (in retrospect, there are some bits I think should have been footnoted, which probably would have helped) and more of the original work and less of my speculation about it. That's good to keep in mind for future reviews.
The bait-and-switch: Sounds as though this felt like a lot more of a letdown than I intended, and I should have found another way to handle this. I actually did try other ways of writing it, from not putting anything personal in the intro (which made it much less clear why I cared enough to write a review about it) to being up-front about it (which felt *really* bad, as there was no way to give the rest of it proper severity if I opened it by complaining about a bad D&D game). The solution I came up with seemed like the least-bad option, but I honestly didn't expect people to be that gripped by the intro, so I didn't consider that that would make the reveal feel like that much more of a betrayal. I probably got too cute.
Choice of subject: I thought this might come up; I knew I wasn't working with a crowd-pleaser either in the sense of "this is a fun topic to think about" or "this is the kind of book that wins these contests". I thought it was still worth entering because the concepts in the book meshed well with some of Scott's writings on human thought processes and vice-versa (specifically I remember reaching a point in the book where I said "Oh dang, that is a trapped prior he's describing"). I wasn't really "in it to win it" so much as I wanted to see what people who already have a grounding in rationalist theory would make of the ideas.
Bancroft's views on non-male-on-female abuse: I really would have preferred not to dwell on the gender side of it all, as I'm primarily interested in the mindset Bancroft describes, which I don't think is gender-specific at all except in how it presents, but it would have been impossible to accurately present the book or the worldview of its author if I didn't cover it. I do think Bancroft's dismissal of male abuse survivors is his biggest failing, but I didn't want that to become the focus of the review when so much of what it has to say isn't exclusive to the context Bancroft ties it to. I elected to address his conclusions, explain why I was disappointed by them, and move on, but I acknowledge that some number of people will consider that to be where my attention should have been. (FWIW, one of the identifying details I couldn't put into the review is that I'm kind of tentatively agender, so it's entirely possible that some of the reluctance to approach this comes from feeling like I really don't have a dog in this fight)
I liked the bait and switch. But that might be due to my (somewhat repellant?) take on your persona as an abused woman. On the other hand, I would have been very interested in the details of your actual struggle with the abusive D&D friend. It would have brought more immediacy to the situation, and provided examples of actual exchanges where it's possible to talk about what ELSE could you have said in response to friend's second (out of 10 or so) rants, and whether there was a clear and defensible way to make clear that being forced to read rants was not, in your opinion, a viable option. D&D groups seem to me a little bit like polyamorous pods in the intensity and intimacy of members' connection. A really interesting setting for exploring the balancing of empathy and boundary-setting.
Hej, cool. Some ideas, just quickly:
Length and pacing: When I tried to figure out, why I was a bit bored in some places, I had a closer look at one or the other paragraph. I think you really have a talent for presenting a situation in a really tangible, vivid way. I find it very easy to imagine what you're talking about. That's great, and IMO can be used very beneficially - just take a more conscious decision on when to use this. In other cases, it might help to reflect on: "what would be the one sentence I want the reader to know from this paragraph?" And then decide how many more sentences to add to this in your text.
Intro: I fully see your point. Interesting to hear how this story came into beeing. My spontanous idea: why not mention your motivation in passing-by in the intro. Something like: 'The book was really important to me, because it helped see me through a difficult situation in which I was the target of unpleasant behaviour/ such anger. Even if this situation was harmless compared to the cases presented in the book. More about this later. ' .... I'm sure you would have found much better words for this. This would have allowed you to mention why the book was important to you at the outset, without going into detail on your real story at the beginning, which I agree would have been strange.
Non-male-to-female abuse: Personally I think you could have stated in the review what you said here. And then not dwell on the gender side further. I find 'book x is interesting for aspect z, not for (not fully covering) aspect y' is a fully legitimate reason, especially if mentioned clearly. I'm aware readers' preferences might be different though.
Thanks again, I'm also learning a lot and cheers.
Part 1 of 2:
Wow, Rolaran, this is *really* well-written. Your sentences are graceful and cogent, and the overall shape of the review is very well-done too. As a reader I felt led courteously and competently along your train of thought, and never felt a bit aimless or disoriented. My interest did flag a bit in the section called The Relationship, but I don’t think that was due to a flaw in your presentation — I just don’t much like Bancroft’s way of thinking, and I recall that section as a pretty dense dose of his ideas without too many of yours in the mix. (In other sections, your mind was more of a presence, and I prefer your mind to Bancroft’s). And I enjoyed the reveal towards the end, which I won’t speak about in detail here since some may not yet have read your review. I even enjoyed the way it messed with my mind a bit, because I had been picturing you in a certain way, and suddenly that picture went poof.
But I don’t like the book. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I heartily dislike this book’s take on the abuse of women. I think my reaction to the book you reviewed is most of what I have to contribute to the discussion of this particular book review.
Any time I read something that says the reason people do X is because X-doers have a certain trait, I am skeptical. I’m a psychologist, and will be giving a combo of professional takes and personal reactions here. OK, here’s some professional, official psychology: Explanations for people’s behavior can be categorized as either trait explanations or situational ones. People are inclined to make trait attributions about behavior they disapprove of in others (“he’s rigid”), and situational ones for regrettable behavior of their own (“I was tired and knew I was going to have to leave in a couple minutes, so I just didn’t give their idea a fair hearing.”). These attributions are often not accurate. Bancroft sees the behavior of the male abuser as a result of such traits as being a person with rigid and unrealistic expectations about women partners, being committed to the abusive or coercive style of man-woman relationships they saw in their own home, and having a patriarchal take on how life works. But is his view of these people as saddled with traits created by early life lessons really accurate? Think about it. Lots of people leave home with a bunch of attitudes that seem self-evidently true to them, and that they are loathe to give up. Those attitudes may not be the exact 3 the abusers are said to have — though unrealistic expectations about love relationships is almost universal. But whatever their early attitudes are, most people modify these attitudes when they move out into the wider world. They make friends with people who don’t believe a bunch of that stuff — or they realize people have a poor opinion of a lot of their ideas — or life teaches them their ideas are false. Of course there are some people who cannot or do not modify some of their early simplistic ideas about how life works, but they are the minority. Most people lose the *trait* version of early ideas — the ideas are no longer things that are a part of them, things they take for granted. They probably do stay vulnerable to situational versions of those ideas. In situations that pull for attitudes like their old ones, they may slide more easily than others into that attitude. For instance, somebody who grew up with the idea that the male is the boss may slide into thinking that way again if he is with a woman who seems to see him as the boss. However, if on the 3rd date she surprises him by saying, “listen, I like you, but you’ve done this take-charge thing several times now, and I don’t like that” — if that happens, he’s likely to change his style.
(continued in Part 2 -- Substack said my original comment was too long.)
Part 2 of 2
Actually, the book itself gives evidence of the situational nature of the abuse these men display with these women: They do not have meltdowns and bully people in other settings, or bully their woman in public. Why? Because it would cost them too much. They would lose their job, their friends, and their reputation as a normal friendly guy. So I have to say that I think that an important reason why male abusers of women do not stop abusing women is that the women do not object early and loudly enough, and do not make it clear that if there is any more of this they are going to do something that really costs the guy: Leave him, go to the police and report his behavior, or do anything else possible that is equally drastic.
I am a bit worried that some of you reading this are going to be angry at me for this view, and see me as blaming the victim. If it makes any difference, I myself am a woman, and I have experienced myself how hard it is to stand up to male bullies. My experience is that the hardest part of standing up to an angry, shouting male is not fear of retribution — it’s that it is hideously awkward. It feels wrong, crass, mean-spirited, self-centered, embarrassing. People turn and stare, and the surprise and disapproval in their eyes is not all directed at the guy. Most of us women are inclined to use our smarts and strength to deepen and enrich relationships, not to set limits. We are likely to view early signs of an abusive pattern as occasions where the guy needs soothing, not as lapses in civilized behavior. We pick him up at the airport and he snaps at us about a missed opportunity to merge into traffic, then explains that he would have overlooked our lapse if he hadn’t been awake for 36 hours straight. It does not come naturally to us to say, “what lapse? It wasn’t safe to move into the lane just then” or “we haven’t seen each other in 3 weeks and the first thing you do is snap at me about my driving?” Instead, we are going to feel like rubbing the back of his neck and saying, “you need a good long sleep, sweetie. But first some sex, right?” And once the pattern is established — he’s angry and unreasonable, she moves into affectionate I-can-soothe-you mode — it is difficult to draw the line. How awful does he have to be for her to recognize clearly and state openly that she sees his behavior as bullying, not as an understandable reaction to stress?
Of course, in some circumstances the woman is compelled to hide her real reaction of the man’s behavior, because if she does not he is likely to hurt her severely — or because she has no other place to live and no way to support herself. And there are some men who have a wiring problem that keeps them stuck with their early simplistic takes on relationships, and prevents them from processing situations more flexibly even if the woman makes perfectly clear that she hates his behavior and is not willing to tolerate any more of it. However, outside of circumstances of that kind, I think an important reason that male abusers do not modify their behavior is that the woman does not insist on it.
Women are often not good at paying attention to their own reactions and speaking up about them. Saying they must bget better at those things is not the same as saying that they deserve what they get if they don’t speak up at the early, miniature incidents of abuse, and speak up ever more loudly about later and worse incidents. Of course they don’t deserve them! But life is tough, and there are no real playground monitors. You have to learn to head certain things off early on, to complain vigorously if they continue, and to raise hell or leave if they become a pattern. Bancroft himself acknowledges the power of vigorously setting limits with abusers. Oddly, he sees doing that as his job: “The only place Bancroft sees even a slim hope of lasting change on the part of the abuser is if the question is shifted from engaging with his justifications to enforcing unavoidable, non-negotiable consequences. Someone needs to disregard the excuses, see through the deflections and distortions, and keep a laser focus on the abuser’s accountability: “You are being abusive, and this is not acceptable; you can stop it, only you can stop it, and if you don’t stop it, the relationship will end.” In his program, he and others like him aim to be that person. Abusers make them work for it.” Why is no one in his program teaching women to say that stuff? Does he think words like that can only be delivered via a penis with a microphone attachment? I am here to tell you that is not the case.
Notice Bancroft’s own report about the effect of his program in women victims of abusive partners: “In Bancroft’s mind, the primary client whose needs he is serving is not the abuser, but the target (or targets) of his abuse, and their situation frequently improves whether the abuser successfully changes his ways or not. The program enables them to find resources or other groups that can help them, learn to advocate more effectively for themselves, or regain enough sense of self to get out of the relationship entirely. Even just having the clarity of knowing that what’s happened to them is not normal and not their fault can be immensely empowering as they go forward.” Women are helped by learning to advocate for themselves, regain enough sense of self to get out of the relationship, and get clear that what is happening is not normal and not their fault. Why not work with the women to bring about those changes in a way less roundabout than via their participating as witnesses in a program where abusive men get the active treatment? And I don’t believe women really need to be informed that being screamed at and hit is not normal and not their fault, unless they grew up getting that kind of treatment. Does Bancroft think these women are morons? Of course they know it’s not normal and not their fault. The problem is that it feels awkward and wrong to them to act from that knowledge. They need encouragement to push through that feeling of wrongness, and practice coming up with words that convey the blunt truth: “I hate it when you treat me this way.”
I am here to tell you that kind of treatment is perfectly possible. But you have to cut out the middleman — Bancroft.
Fair concern WRT Bancroft seeming to take on a task that he should be letting those facing abuse do for themselves. I must say that Bancroft seems, to my reading, to fare better than many would-be counselors in terms of focusing on "abuse victims have all the tools they need to improve their own situation, and my job is primarily to give them the confidence to stand up for themselves" rather than "abuse victims don't know what they're doing and I need to save them from themselves"; if that doesn't come across, it may be a weakness of my review. I would be curious if Bancroft's hand is somewhat forced by the fact that his group is mostly composed of people who are there by court mandate- I imagine that filters for pretty dire circumstances, where it could be more necessary for Bancroft to re-establish boundaries that shouldn't have been in doubt in the first place!
Well, I am relieved to hear you do not feel profoundly undercut by what I wrote. Mostly what I'm objecting to is that Bancroft's ideas seem to spring from ideas about the female victims that are inaccurate and somewhat patriarchal. If the therapist can empower the female abuse victim to tell the male abuser exactly who they think and feel, the women will zap the guy way, way more effectively than Bancroft, his pecker and his PhD or MD could. Bancroft's approach of shrinking the abuser via depicting him as a weird lttle guy with some absurd fixed ideas is a move in the right direction. But a much better move is to tap into and validate the knowledge victims already have: The abuser's complaints are unreasonable; and even if they were reasonable they do not justify verbal or physical abuse of the woman they are complaining about. Abused women *already know* they do not deserve the shit they are getting from the man. What they need is not a second man, this one with a PhD instead of big biceps, to tell them they do not deserve the treatment they are getting. What they need is permission to speak the actual truth as they perceive it, without being inhibited by concerns that they are not being nice enough.
I like your comment, but I think you're very close the book itsself, instead of presenting an anti-thesis.
This: "Why? Because it would cost them too much. They would lose their job, their friends, and their reputation as a normal friendly guy. So I have to say that I think that an important reason why male abusers of women do not stop abusing women is that the women do not object early and loudly enough, and do not make it clear that if there is any more of this they are going to do something that really costs the guy." is exactly reflecting the book's hypothesis and even core statement, in what I understood from the review.
The main difference you might have, is Bancroft as a middle man vs. working only/ mostly with women. More to that later ...
I strongly disagree with this part: "Abused women *already know* they do not deserve the shit they are getting from the man." Also more later ... I think we have another 4 days until the next review and I will try to write something more till then.
I also disagree with that part. If my experience in any way maps to other scenarios of abuse (I'm happy to consider any reason why it wouldn't, as I already know it's not the usual case), one of the reasons I put up with it for so long was that it escalated so slowly, producing a growing sense of doubt that the treatment was undeserved.
My problem player told us up front that he couldn't pick up on social cues because of his autism, and so we would need to be direct with him if he did something we disliked. He wasn't our only neurodivergent player, and I'm mildly neurodivergent myself, so we agreed to do our best to accommodate his need for directness. Over the course of a year and a half "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll stop" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll 'try' to stop but it'll probably keep happening" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll insist on a precise legal definition of what I'm being banned from doing" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll insist on a full philosophical proof of the objective wrongness of doing it" became "Tell me I'm doing something wrong, and I'll claim that enforcing behavioral norms on me is ableism". On all but the last one, the transition was so gradual that I didn't notice it except in hindsight. As a result, my internal thought process was "I said I would make accommodations for his needs, and while that's proving more difficult than I expected, it's up to me to make good on that" for a *shockingly* long time.
The severity of his responses also ramped up gradually, from "telling me he needed me to avoid certain admittedly-touchy topics or he'd be 'unable' to respond civilly" to "having a meltdown because I had brought up something not generally considered objectionable in game, entirely unaware and unwarned that it was a thing that would 'set him off'" to "telling me the way I was running my game reminded me of how he was treated by his alcoholic father" to "telling me I was morally unqualified to run a D&D game". I was never thinking "I shouldn't have to put up with this shit", I was thinking "wow, that last one was a bit worse than the previous one". If you're familiar with the boiling frog story, that was me.
In the end, it wasn't me that noticed that I was accepting insinuations I would never stomach from a stranger. Someone else in the group who had divorced a narcissistic partner noticed how bad things had gotten and expressed worry that my situation paralleled hers. I knew the treatment was unpleasant, but I genuinely did not put together myself that it was unwarranted. And if I hadn't kicked him out, I suspect my problem player would still maintain that it was justified and so was he.
Well, let me say a little more about what I meant. When I say these women knew they did not deserve the abuse they were getting, I don’t mean they were clearly saying that to themselves right while the guy was bellowing at them, and feeling no doubt they were right. I mean that they knew in their hearts (kind of a corny phrase, but I cannot think of a better one) that they did not deserve it. For instance, I’m betting that if instead of being partnered with an abusive man they had a friend who was partnered with one, and the friend’s abusive partner was inflicting on the friend all the same kinds of abuse, they would have no trouble recognizing that the friend did not deserve to be treated that way. If the friend had said, “Yes, but I was insensitive, He came home tired and I asked him if he could mow the lawn,” the woman would have said, “Yeah, but that doesn’t justify him smacking you.” If the friend had said, “but he felt terrible afterwards. He promised never to do it again,” the woman would have said “Come on! He’s promised that a dozen times at least, but he keeps hitting you.” If you think the abused women would have also thought their friend had fucked up and kind of deserved what she got, then we just disagree about the beliefs and state of mind of abused women, and there’s no way to resolve that except with actual data, which we don’t have. But if you kind of agree that the woman would recognize abuse as abuse if it was happening to someone else, hear me out.
It seems to me that the problem these abused women have isn’t recognizing that bellowing at someone and slapping them is just wrong. The problem is that they have trouble acting on that knowledge, There are barriers that keep people for pushing back when they are treated badly, and women generally have more barriers than men.
-It’s awkward to say “nope, I don’t agree.” You, Rolarans, may have felt some reluctance to object to my views. I set up this group. That makes me a little bit of an authority figure. Also, it was a good idea, and so fucking nice of me to go to the trouble, blah, blah, blah. (Actually, it wasn’t much work). So it’s a maybe a bit awkward to hassle me about my first fucking post. Have you no gratitude!?
-It’s awkward for me to say “nope, I don’t agree” back to your “nope.” Part of the reason I set up this group was because I wanted some people to read my review and respond to it. I now feel sort of worried of that maybe everybody’s going to be annoyed at me about my post about your review, and won’t even want to give my review a fair hearing.
-Women, and some empathic, nurturant men, are used to helping people and groups function by understanding how people feel and what they need and responding to that. That is often just exactly what the person or the group needs, and works really well. But it’s only one tool in the toolbox. There are situations where the helpful thing is limit-setting: “No matter how you are feeling, you cannot do that.” Empathic types have less practice with that, and are vulnerable to feeling harsh and unkind when they do it.
-There’s a slippery slope phenom that can happen, where having once gone into empathy mode when someone is expressing their distress in an unpleasant, entitled way, the empathic, nurturant person feels as though they have a sort of unspoken contract with the difficult person: When you are difficult, I will be soothing and giving. Departing from the “contract” feels mean and unfair. Rolarans, you identified this dynamic very clearly in your account of your dealings with the difficult person in your D&D game.
-Many people. especially women, have not been warned that there are situations in life where someone is going to want you to do things that you do not want to do, and if you do not refuse to go along with what the person wants, nobody will step in to help you. There’s a playbook in situations like this, and women are much less likely than men to have been taught it.
So I think what these abused women need is a forum that gives them a place to express their real inner reactions to being abused, which is to hate that shit. And then help identifying the inner barriers to speaking up from one’s actual reactions. And then practice in developing a playbook. And then support while they implement it.
Rolarans, I don’t doubt that the book was helpful to you. It certainly helped you identify the slippery slope aspect of it, and gave you a term for what that D&D guy was doing: psychological abuse. So I think you will be more aware the next time there’s a slippery slope of this kind. Still, whoever tries to exploit you next time may be so different from the guys in the book and from you D&D guy that you will not be able to rely on the book to tell you that you are being mistreated. You are going to have to be able to respect your actual reactions, without having anybody around to give official approval that they are fair, and say, early on, “I don’t like it when you do that and I want you to stop it.” My complaint about Bancroft is that he doesn’t seem to get that that’s what it comes down to. HE’s the one telling these abusers they do not get to behave that way. He doesn’t grasp that (1) the woman is much more important to the abuser than Bancroft is, and so her communications pack more punch (2) the woman is capable of recognizing the truth of that statement and saying it. and (3) if the woman does not reach a point where she is willing to speak up clearly when she does not like what the man is doing, she is going to continue being abused, on a large scale or small, depending on how awful the next entitled, coercive person she meets is.
Oh no, just lost my whole comment. Can't rewrite now. Somewhen ...
VERY SHORTLY I think the story you tell about women beeing able to clearly see the situation *when it concerns somebody else* is not an argument for them *deep in their hearts* knowing they don't deserve it. I think it says that they maybe know in a 'rational way' / with some parts of them, that nobody deserves this, maybe even not them, but it's precisely an indication that *deep in their hearts* they don't know this but instead feel responsible, believe they deserve this, are unsure who is right, whatever.
I agree with many things you say in your paragraphs in the middle, as applying to a variety of persons and social situations, but I don't think they counter what I just wrote.
I think I understand what you mean about knowing rationally that something's OK, but feeling deep in your heart that it's not ok for *you.* I think everybody has minor versions of this: You know it wouldn't be a big deal if anyone else dropped the microphone in the middle of a presentation, but if *you* do all the listeners will think you're a fool. Or whatever.
Here's something that influences my thinking about abused women. About half my work as a therapist is with people with anxiety disorders -- OCD, phobias, crippling social anxiety. Many have severe anxiety disorders. For instance I had someone who took hundreds of pictures daily of every setting she was been in because of a fear that she had dropped a USB drive with embarrassing information on it. She was a smart, sensible scientist, and not a bit crazy. She knew that her fear made no rational sense, but it *felt* horribly valid. In fact all of the people I see readily acknowledge that their fear is irrational -- but they all say that it feels so valid that dropping whatever precautions they take is simply out of the question. So these people are an extreme example of what we are talking about. Their felt truth feels so true that they are unable to act in line with the rational truth, even though acting in line with their fear via avoidance or weird precautions is exacting a terrible price. Like the women, they are paying a terrible price for acting in line with the felt truth rather than the rational truth.
If in fact my anxiety patients were stuck until they no longer *felt* in danger, it would take a very long time to help them. I'm not even sure how anyone could. Seems like it would be the same with the abused women, if in fact the core problem was that they deeply believed they deserved abuse. I mean, can you think of anything that would change that core problem other than a long, deep psychotherapy (and actaully does not work for many people)? While there's certainly no harm in telling these women that of course they do not deserve abuse, saying so seems unlikely to bring about any change. They have probably been listening for quite a long time to friends and relatives and magazine articles tell them that, and urging them to leave the guy. Similarly, virtually all of my anxiety patients have obtained extensive reassurance from family and friends that no, of course their fears are not valid, and they have been urged over on over to "face your fear."
What I have found is that it is not necessary to change somebody's felt truth that their fear is valid and they are in terrible danger if they defy it. The way change usually happens is that they become willing to defy their fear in small ways, and get evidence that the feared consequence does not happen, and also that their fear while doing the exercise is quite unpleasant but not unbearable. That weakens their commitment to the felt truth a little bit, and then they’re able to try a slightly bolder challenge. After a while of this they hit a sort of tipping point where they realize that the more they defy their fear the smaller it get, and they’re able to really commit to the process.
As for what gets them to do that first small exercise: I *never* give anybody the hard sell. I more talk over pros and cons of their experimenting with an exercise. I answer their questions about what exposure therapy is like. If they ask me whether they should try it, I say that only they can decide, but I’m happy to answer every single question they have so they can decide which is worse, trying the exercise or committing to living as they have been. A lot of people then cry, “but I CAN’T STAND my life as it is now.” Long and short of it, my very strong impression is that people who know their behavior is irrational but feel that they must do it usually opt for acting in line with what they know rationally is the case if they are offered direct help in doing so, and a clear explanation of how the help works, and an opportunity to begin the change process gradually.
So it seems to me that the situation of the abused women is similar enough to that of my anxiety disorder patients that thinking of it as having sort of a similar structure makes sense. In some way these people believe the rational truth more than they believe the felt truth. And practically speaking, it seems like a good model to use because if a long psychotherapy is required to change her picture of herself before she can take steps to stop the abuse, that means she's going to be getting abused for several more years.
Thanks, that was very helpful in understanding better how you think about that.
I'm late with replying, but I hope to get back to this and the above answer by Rolaran still lateron.
I finally got around to reading the review and writing down the feedback, sorry for the late reply.
I enjoyed the review overall. I didn't rate many reviews at the contest, but yours is better than any of the ones I did read and rate. Reading it, I feel like it goes on a par with some of last year's finalists. There are some issues though, which would keep me from giving it a higher rating (and some of them are issues that I have with the kind of writing that the SSC/ACX community tends to select for the finalists, so take some of them with a grain of salt, as I might not be representative of the community overall).
I'll start by discussing the points you've said you specially want feedback on:
> I want to know if I presented the book and its positions clearly and engagingly, and whether there's anything that I made an unconvincing case for.
I've found you've manged to present the book, its positions and your own case in a very clear manner. Your writing is great regarding that! At no point reading the review have I felt like I didn't understand your point.
The key problem I've found with your review, which would stop me from giving it a 9 or 10, is the engagingness. The review is long (I count 10439 words), which is great for being able to express the book's positions in a clear manner, but gives an additional burden of making it constantly engaging so one doesn't feel like it's a drag to read it to the end. I've found this to be specially an issue with the first and third quarters of the review. The discussion and conclusion are great and very engaging, but the review seems to take a while to build up the interest of the reader, and I would probably miss out on them if I were reading it as a blog post, as I would get bored in the beginning.
There are three issues that I find might be causing this disengagement. First, the writing style when you contextualize summarize the main points of the book seems a bit monotonous (in a literal sense). This would be desirable if this part were shorter, but as it takes up around half of the review, it starts to drag on a bit. If you varied your style a bit more, it would probably solve the issue. Second, while your writing is well structured, I didn't get a sense of where you were going with it until I read the review to the end. The book's name is "Why does he do that?", so, as a reader, I was really interested into understanding "why he does that", but I wasn't sure whether you (or the book) would address that question until I got to the "WHERE ARE THESE ATTITUDES COMING FROM?" section. A bit of tweaking on the writing to let the readers a sense of where you're going and create a drive for them to want to keep reading would do wonders here. Third, the writing could be a bit more concise and focus more on the big picture, so as to make the review (and the more "monotonous" parts) shorter and better-flowing. I understand that you want to present everything in a clear manner, and longer writing gives you space to do that. But there are parts where it could be a bit cut down while still keeping the writing clear and engaging.
Regarding the discussion and speculation you've made regarding the book and its applicability on modern contexts, I have nothing to say but that I've found it very interesting and engaging, and would like to read more from you.
I would rate the review 8/10, and the only thing stopping me from giving it a better rating would be the length/flow issues I've mentioned earlier. But given that I find that many of the finalists show the same issues, I do feel like they bother me more than the average SSC reader who rates lots of reviews. So, I would speculate that a reason why the review didn't get selected as a finalist might be due to the subject matter being approached in a different way to that of the usual themes of the finalists. As there weren't many ratings, all it takes is a single bad rating to keep a review from becoming a finalist. But as a blog post (with a more selected audience), this wouldn't be a problem, but an advantage instead. I do believe it could've been a finalist if it were more engaging, though.
Some quick thoughts on the book, as presented:
a) I found the presentation of the abusers quite one-dimensional. In my understanding, the book says: The abusers are 'healthy individuals' (not explicitely, but implicitely), they are in full control of their behaviour, and they are just egoistic A. Egoistic A. with a talent for manipulation. They will mistreat you, as long as you allow them and stop, if you don't. Therefore, forget everything about where their behaviour comes from, stop making excuses for them and instead give them constly incentives to change.
I understand why B Civil calls that a caricature / cartoon characters. I don't think this is a full, adequate or even true description. Nevertheless, I think it's an important point, and one that the victims of abusers need to hear. Or in a broader sense, one that is worth reading for everybody who usually is more busy with the more complex origins of such type of bad behaviour.
b) To the extend to which my understanding of the books' presentation as above is accurate, I find it both oversimplified, and I think it doesn't really hold scrutiny. To my understanding, many of Bancroft's 'clients' are just out of jail for their behaviour. That's hardly prove of a cool cost-benefit calculation. Or of 'no consequences'. Also, I'm not fully sure if I remember that correctly, but the fact that different kids with similar backgrounds develop very different reactions to this and not all become abusers, would hardly be an argument for the background not playing a relevant role.
c) When I was reading the review I was flabbergasted by the idea, that before Bancroft's programme most similar efforts would work *only* with the abusers, and *not even talk* to the victims to cross-check on the potential changes ... let alone help and support *them*. I think changing this approach this is the revolutionary aspect of the book. Everything that follows - e.g. the oversimplification of abusers and the message to the victims - is a result from that context and approach. I didn't read the book, so I'm interested to hear your opinion. Even less do I know what those kind of programmes were like in the 70ies and 80ies of last century.
To be continued (maybe) ...
PS: I think I mixed up some thoughts I had when reading the review with some of my reactions to Eremolalos longer comments. Anyway, need to leave now.
a) This is fair. I think this may be a situation where some "reading backwards" is needed- if the prevailing attitude is "you need to understand why the abuser is behaving that way, and help them sort out whatever issue is causing their behavior" (an attitude that is by no means extinct) it's understandable that someone will want to wave their arms and shout "No you don't! You can just leave! You're hurting right now and it can stop! You don't need to understand thermodynamics to pull your hand out of a fire!" I did encounter another writer (an advice columnist), writing more recently, whose advice to an abuse victim was more along the lines of "Your abuser can figure out what he thinks is causing his abuse on his own time; you're not obligated to help him figure that out, or have an opinion on it at all, before you're allowed to leave the situation", which seems to me like the synthesis of Bancroft's position and the one he was reacting against.
b) Something I considered, but couldn't find a good way to get into the review, is whether Bancroft's perceptions would be colored by the fact that he is only seeing the abusers whose control of the situation slipped enough that somebody saw through their act. Whether the intended victim found it in herself to stand up to them, or a court saw enough evidence to convict, that's a scenario where the situation has already gotten partway out of the abuser's hands. It reminds me of a quote from a wildlife expert talking about a type of animal that normally avoids humans and is very good at doing so, cautioning people against assuming that our encounters with them give us a picture of their typical behavior: "We only see the slow, the sick, or the stupid".
c) I can't really speak to this, I'm afraid. Bancroft doesn't go into a lot of detail about how previous programs operated, or even if any existed. He does talk about why he thinks conventional therapy is a poor substitute, since making the abuser more confident and self-actualized is exactly what nobody involved needs, and any knowledge of psychology they do pick up gets co-opted in ways that serve them first and foremost.
First, I think this review is really good. I enjoyed reading it—thanks for sharing it. It wouldn't have surprised me to see this amongst the finalists.
But I'll jump into what I hope is constructive criticism because I think that's what you're looking for. Note that I haven't read the book so I'm not making any claims about the accuracy of your representation of it.
I read your comment so I know you've already heard this, but I'll still add my vote that I did not like the fact that the intro was misleading. For me, it was probably the #1 detraction (but keep in mind, I think the review is really good so don't weigh this too heavily). The intro made it much better, so when you took it away, naturally, the review as a whole got worse. It reminded me of the movie Fargo, which starts by saying it's based on a real movie. This made the deaths feel much more impactful because we've been desensitized to deaths in fictional stories. But when I later found out it wasn't real, that took something away from it for me. Similar thing here.
I know other people mentioned this as well, but it also dragged a little in the middle. I think just some extra tightening up and summarizing would have made the difference. Or perhaps find a way to be a little engaging. Maybe even a picture or an aside or something would have been a nice break (see Scott's first two points here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/). It's possible that varying the style a little more would have helped.
One thing that makes reviewing this book tricky is there was a lack of interesting ideas presented. I want to be clear that I think these are IMPORTANT ideas and an IMPORTANT topic. But none of the ideas were interesting in the sense that I said: "Wow, I've never thought of it like that before". None of the ideas surprised me. None changed the way I think about the world.
I don't know if there was more evidence in the book or not, but I thought there wasn't much evidence presented for the notion that the seeds of abuse are planted early in life. Was there no discussion of genetic susceptibility? I would think there would be a lot of variation here, but I interpreted what you were saying as "It's mostly/all nurture and it's nurture in the early years". Maybe I misinterpreted though. I was also left wondering, if the sessions don't work, what's the plan then? Sadly, maybe no one has that answer though.
Overall, I thought your review was great. I'm specifically listed the criticisms above in the hopes of being constructive. Your writing flows really well and and I think you a great job.