brigid | The Gift Of Fear (Reply)

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker has some really helpful information when it comes to reminding people –primarily women– that paying attention to their gut instincts is good. However, de Becker is a bit of a proselytizer. He grew up in a violent family and managed to survive, and therefore everyone should do what he did and they’ll survive too. It’s frustrating that someone who grew up in a culture of domestic violence would posit that someone who gets hit by a family member/loved more than once is “a volunteer,” especially as on the same page he goes into details about how abusers are controlling including controlling finances, and how women who flee abusers frequently wind up murdered by their abusers. There was just this victim-blamey disconnect between the reality of domestic abuse and what de Becker’s ideal is (that people get smacked around once, have a sudden brilliant wake up, and then stalk out triumphantly never to be abused again). de Becker also buys into some shitty gender essentialism about women being more innately intuitive than men.

One of my favorite parts of the book involves addressing tools that Pick Up Artists use including “negging” (insulting a woman to keep her off balance and hope that she’ll want to prove the insult wrong IE “I bet you’re too proud to accept help” “but of course you’re too stuck up to have a drink with me” etc) and “loan sharking” (forcing a favor/debt on a woman so she owes you IE insisting on fetching/buying her a drink or insisting on carrying things for her). So there’s some really interesting and useful info in here, but there’s also some personal baggage of de Becker’s and some sexist malarky to wade through as well.