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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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I have a slightly related tangent story from my days at a psychological clinic. To cut a long story short, one patient was convinced she was being gang stalked by her family (and associates). Whether or not she was actually being gang stalked or not, I don't know. The evidence I saw is consistent with both confabulation and reality.

In any case, this (17-year old girl) patient was terrified to go to school. So she arranged an escort to accompany her there and back. Cue me and another (female) friend of hers, a highly schizotypal, spiritual person who believes in quantum healing and homeopathy, and so on. On our way to pick her up from school, we noticed a man standing outside and smoking (in the no-smoking area). He could have been watching us, or he could have been not. (Having gone to the same school, it was certainly not unusual for older middle-aged teachers to be chain smoking during the breaks.) Our reports to the clinic staff?

"She was being stalked by a man who gave off a menacingly evil aura! He did not fit the setting at all, I'm sure he was up to no good"

vs

"Uh, what I saw was a man standing next to a door. He didn't do anything of note, and I'm not sure if he even looked in our direction. The end."

tl;dr, different people can interpret radically different things into the same observations. Women are generally leaning towards the schizophrenic, neurotic end of the spectrum, and also generally more receptive to propaganda. So it does not surprise me one bit that a world filled with feminist "women are victims!" messaging has women end up hallucinating terrifying delusions of persecution into completely benign events.

Related: I once went to a trade show in Baltimore, and went to a bar to meet a friend of mine with a redneck-y guy from West Virgina from the trade show. The redneck kept telling me I was "lucky [he] came with" every time a black guy walked by. Perception of danger is relative.