I don't think they get off on us being helpless whiny miserable crybabies. I think it makes them feel powerful (which is different from "empowered") while stroking their "I'm a good person" egos. Like how good Christian Midwestern women will be aggressively "pro-life" so that they can feel like they're doing something genuinely good in the world when, according to ALL research and evidence, what they're really doing is 1) failing to save fetuses, 2) killing women, and 3) reducing the moral value of conscious, sentient people to less than a cluster of semi-formed mammalian cells. If you try to call them on this, they'll defend their position to the death, because to admit that you're right is to admit that they've been doing horrible things for their own vanity.
The flag these "ally" types are waving may be progressive instead of batshit conservative, but the psychology behind their motivation is, I think, pretty much the same.
Feel free to refute me. You took a lot more psych courses than I did.
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chiming
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Date: Thursday, June 9th, 2011 12:40 am (UTC)From:I don't think they get off on us being helpless whiny miserable crybabies. I think it makes them feel powerful (which is different from "empowered") while stroking their "I'm a good person" egos. Like how good Christian Midwestern women will be aggressively "pro-life" so that they can feel like they're doing something genuinely good in the world when, according to ALL research and evidence, what they're really doing is 1) failing to save fetuses, 2) killing women, and 3) reducing the moral value of conscious, sentient people to less than a cluster of semi-formed mammalian cells. If you try to call them on this, they'll defend their position to the death, because to admit that you're right is to admit that they've been doing horrible things for their own vanity.
The flag these "ally" types are waving may be progressive instead of batshit conservative, but the psychology behind their motivation is, I think, pretty much the same.
Feel free to refute me. You took a lot more psych courses than I did.