May 21, 2014
Powerful women are often portrayed as sociopaths, i.e., a person with a disorder manifesting itself in antisocial attitudes, behaviors, and a general lack of conscience. This disorder can be what helps them succeed in a male-dominated world. “Normal” women don’t do those sorts of things and are thus relegated to submissive if not dominated positions. Women are apparently given a choice between these two extremes: doormat or sociopath.
In today’s Link of the Day, Merve Emre, writer and doctoral candidate from Yale, reviews Confessions of a Sociopath by the pseudonymous author, M.E. Thomas.
Thomas, a woman and self-proclaimed sociopath, explains that embracing her personality disorder gave her a way to combat injustice in both the boardroom and the bedroom. Be that as it may, Emre laments that when women rely on sociopathic behavior as the way to assert their strength, they are still capitulating to male dominion: “When we accept as ‘revolutionary’ the well-worn conditions that dictate how a man is allowed to be, and how a woman ought to change to match his success, there is no progress.”
While Emre doesn’t offer readers a tidy solution to the problems, she does challenge us to wrestle with them.
Read Emre’s assessment and review here: The Female Sociopath.
posted by Corbin Lambeth
