SECOND POST

[hoisinsauce]

WE MADE IT!

Post about fandom or whatever else, meme isn't picky.

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Re: BOOKS -The Gift of Fear

[(Anonymous)]

SA

"Now, as we are talking, she realizes that if the Klines had admitted a guest over the intercom, she’d have heard the loud buzz of the electric lock being released, and Mrs. Kline would have been at the top of the stairs, already well into a high-volume conversation with her visitor. It was because of all this that Kelly’s intuition sent her the signal to be wary."

[Citation Needed]

See if he presented this as a *hypothesis* I'd be fine with it, but the unverifiable statements presented as fact are grating on me. You can interpret anything afterwards. Maybe she instead picked up on something creepy in the guy's voice. Maybe the fact a guy was there at all creeped her out. Maybe the sequence of events and lighting reminded her of a horror film she'd seen once. Or maybe she recognised him without realising it. I can believe the brain processes all sorts of things that the verbal bit isn't looped in on, picks up on weird details and warns. So that underlying idea is fine by me. But I don't like his certainty around the specifics just because he's hit on something that seems kind of plausible to him. Jumping straight from "it could be this" to "it must be this"... it's annoying. With no science, no control group, no checking the number of false alarms vs real ones to establish if his proposed system is actually usable... grr. And I'm someone who likes to generalise and go with my gut.

Re: BOOKS -The Gift of Fear

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Now after an America-specific chapter about avoiding hiring employees who might decide to shoot everyone, he's talking about domestic violence. It's a weird mix of sensible observations and UTTER BULLSHIT. Which... matches the rest of the book, really. He talks with great confidence and some of this is just nonsense he's made up. Other things are patterns that many agree on. I don't get why he felt the need to shove his random showerthoughts in there, but he did.

Re: BOOKS -The Gift of Fear

[(Anonymous)]

(paraphrase) 'women in abusive relationships end up with a skewed sense of danger because they go through so much shit, so stuff that would shock other people no longer shocks them'

Yep.

'women in abusive relationships get addicted to the relief they feel when the abuse pauses and that's why they stay. They love the intensity of the highs and lows.'

NO.

Then he's talking about how abusive men need therapy and fudhfhdhssgfjss.

Re: BOOKS -The Gift of Fear

[(Anonymous)]

Now he's trying to claim that the absence of a father can cause aggressive behaviour, rather than blaming all the factors that might lead one to not have a father in one's life, and just jfc this man is an idiot. "They teach boys how to be men" oh fuck off.

Re: BOOKS -The Gift of Fear

[(Anonymous)]

Well, finished. That started off vaguely interesting but ended up being full of far too many badly-told anecdotes, theories he'd pulled outta thin air, questionable statements unbacked by evidence, and sexist condescension. There's very little of substance and anything that is sensible is mostly common sense anyway. I suppose it's interesting seeing how influential it seems to have been while simultaneously being a bit shit. The cherry on top is how he devotes two whole pages to security measures parents should demand in schools, and then notes that he doesn't support gun control. His ideal world seems to involve guns for all but with a great many metal detectors, security personnel and locked doors anywhere people gather; he doesn't seem able to understand why people sometimes put quality of life and aesthetics above safety from random nutters, yet he also doesn't support the one measure that'd be the most effective against them, so okay. This is not an intellectually-stimulating book.

Re: BOOKS -The Gift of Fear

[(Anonymous)]

sa

Suppose part of my annoyance is that right before this, I read Why Does He Do That. Both these books had been on my list for a while, since they're SO famous, but I was wary because you never know how much is going to be 'here are lots of stories about how great I am, look at these silly women, if only they had listened to me! pay me a tenner and I will give you a checklist of warning signs like "is controlling" or "stalks you"'. But, credit to Bancroft, Why Does He Do That surprised me; I found it excellent overall, and have recommended it to friends. :) So I was like 'okay time for the Gift of Fear at last!', only to be reminded exactly why I'm fucking wary of the genre. Which is not to say it's terrible, especially at the time it came out, it's just very blah and there's not much left when you take out the waffle, self-promotion and stating of the obvious. did u no that u can make a better prediction if wat u r predicting is measurable. bc it's not like that is a fucking tautology or anything

But I'll get over it, just pissed the book took several hours out of my life to underwhelm me