Psychologist Toby Green wrote about the Bamm factor in her column published in Body and Soul. (I have a copy of the article somewhere and will add it to this.)
Here is the full text, by Psychologist Toby Green;<quote>
<There's an art to getting your point across while keeping your cool.
Bookstores are lined with information about the things that men don't understand about women. Here's something women don't understand about men. They have a communication anomaly I call the BAM factor. (Women can have it but it's more common in men.) BAM is a physical sensation of being overwhelmed. It's a feeling of frustration,
anger, confusion and too much going on to be able to explain what is happening as well as cope with what is happening.
Judy is analytical. Mike isn't. Judy is perceptive. Mike isn't. Judy thinks Mike should know what she's thinking, feeling, experiencing because that's what loving someone is all about. Mike can't. Judy is ruled by her feelings. Mike doesn't have feelings. Judy
is articulate about feelings. Mike, who doesn't have them, lacks vocabulary for them.
what is it?
Because men like Mike are incapable of identifying, defining, or explaining BAM, women in conflict often think they are being defensive, aggressive, or ignoring her. And unfortunately it can lead to abuse. Some men say to me, "I left because if I stayed I might
do something I regretted."
In a conflict interaction, Mike experiences BAM. When Judy pressed him too hard for a resolution, he'd end up shouting something like, "shut up you cow" just to make her stop. He explained that when he feels Judy coming down on him, he feels scared, threatened, frustrated, confused, and angry. He feels he's not allowed to use any of his natural abilities to make it stop, and is confused about where the argument is going other than that it's making him feel bad about himself and in the wrong.
When we started working on his reaction to conflict he'd go numb and freeze. As time passed, he said that he'd worked out that if he just stood still and nodded Judy would eventually stop. He was simply surviving and didn't hear a word she said. His BAM level was dropping.
new battle
Mike began to lift above the battlefield and be more objective. He sees Judy as a wave that builds then eventually crashes on the sand. While that's happening he can look down on it and separate his emotional response from his intellectual response. He can now separate her rage from what she's saying and can hear her. "All she's saying is that she's angry that I did or didn't do something and that she wants me to understand why. I don't always understand the "why" bit, but all I need to do is apologise and be willing
to be wrong. Hell, if that's all it takes, why not?" It's a good idea to talk about how you argue before you get into conflict. Choose a word, any word, like "pineapple". It means "enough". Say it when you know the conflict hasn't been resolved but one or both of you have run out of resources to deal with it. If you can't make headway, use a therapist. They're trained to paraphrase an issue to achieve clarity.
If you're a man in this situation, it's always smart to use "I" statements. "I get really upset when...". They draw the listener toward you. "You" statements make the listener switch from listening to defending. "You never do...". Try to see her impersonally and figure out what she's saying.
send your relationship questions to body+soul's psychologist Toby
Green via www.tobygreen.com or call 1300 888 510 (for genuine questions or appointments).
Toby is the author of If You Really Loved Me... and The Men's Room. Copyright 2004 / Sunday Herald Sun> unquote
Thanks Phillip. Sounds very similar to the ideas I have been using. A man's calmness is his power. Relationally aggressive techniques are meant to make him blow. If he does, he is sunk, and she can point to him as being the problem. I did a series on this that will be posted soon.
Yes, this is familiar feminist drivel. Note that Greg Andressen is in the comments telling the truth.,, Greg is a good man who has been leading the Australian 1 in 3 campaign for many years. https://www.oneinthree.com.au/
Yes, Tom, the written version is very helpful. Thanks for that.
It seems to me that relational aggression is not only a common strategy of women as individuals and a cornerstone of feminism as a political movement but also that of the many allied ideologies such as "identity politics" or "wokism." Think of the strategic shift from old-style Marxism to these new-style variants. Until well into the mid-twentieth century, Marxists (or communists) insisted on the necessity of violent revolution. When that proved unlikely in the West, they realized the benefits of provoking cultural revolution instead. It might take longer than violent revolution--one or two generations of indoctrination--but it would be much cleaner (no blood in the streets) and much more effective (infiltrating ready-made and well established institutions such as legislatures and courts and thus turning these into suitably "transformative" ones). And they could do all this as defenders of "our democracy" and therefore without admitting to any aggression.
Exactly Paul. I think this is so true. I wonder sometimes about the evolution of the usage of relational aggression as a political tool. It sure seems to be just that. This makes it very important to develop good skills to counter this. I am working on that one.
"See what you made me do!" or "He/she was asking for it!"
I never understood those comments, until I had a partner who tried to push all my emotional buttons. Today I still remember the confusion I felt, we were standing in the kitchen and a thought entered my head.
"Why are you doing this to me?"
then another thought "You are not going to stop until I hit you!" thats when I removed myself from the situation by going outside to cool down.
Tom, thank you for the perceptive analysis. The culture will eventually shift towards a more neutral place. I'm afraid, however, that things will have to get a lot worse to catalyze a meaningful change.
Young men need to hear about this before it’s too late. By the time I started looking for answers, the damage was already done (I suspect this is a common theme).
Wisdom should pass from fathers to sons, but feminism and the divorce system frequently sever that link.
Totally agree. This is the sort of knowledge we need to teach our young men. High school would be a good place for it. Male only classes. I wish I could teach it!
This article was exactly what I needed to read this morning. Crucially in my opinion, relational aggression / mean girl feminism is in play in every form of healthcare you can imagine, from the psychiatrist's office (Alexis "I'm the Only Game in Town" Bobek) to the pharmacy (Shabnam "My Name is All Over the Building" Richards) to the dentist's office (the dangerously judgmental women at the counter this morning) to the nurses I see all over Facebook expressing in endless creative ways their passionate hatred for men. When you fear to assert yourself to a healthcare provider even over trivial things lest you wind up behind bars for vaguely articulated crimes you never actually committed (you yourself may never even get to hear what you were accused of doing), or finding the well poisoned as you try to move on and find a healthcare provider who isn't man-hating, you know that merely being male in a man-hating world is a hazard to your health. It's the high crime of breathing while male, as it were, of not keeping your gaze to the ground where it belongs.
It's too bad we men are generally uninclined to work together, because working together is exactly what we need to do right now to protect ourselves from women's growing relational aggression. Here is a prediction that cannot be challenged: the situation is going to get much, much, much worse before the light bulbs start turning on in sufficient number. Think SCUM Manifesto. That kind of bad. It'll be one for the history books.
This is all very true. I would argue that we should call women acting as feminists what they truly are. AWFL people....and mean girls. Men need to be firm with ALL women in their lives and workplaces. When a woman starts being AWFL and playing the mean girl, call her out publicly for her conduct and remind her, and all the other women present, that such behavior is not acceptable and that ALL women will be sanctioned while any woman in the group participates in such conduct. Time for ALL women to be forced to choose which side of conduct they are on and pay the price for what they choose.
I had the pleasure of spending the 1985-86 school year as an exchange student in Germany. I had the opportunity to visit Prague with a class trip as well as East Berlin. The Iron Curtain had been in place for some 40 years with the Berlin wall being present for 25. Years of negotiations had allowed installations of phones along the wall where it crosses the Spree River so that people who accidentally fell into the river could be rescued without being shot by East German border guards keeping people IN the German "Democratic" Republic. No one at that time could imagine the Wall and Iron Curtain falling within their life times. 4 years later the Berlin wall and Iron Curtain fell virtually without a shot being fired because the people finally concluded they would not play along with the communist states any longer. My sense is that feminism will face a similar existential crisis...and we may be a lot closer to that moment than the mean girls dare to imagine! Efforts like yours and Janices help lay the groundwork for that day of liberation for men and women!
A very useful post, Tom, rich and balanced and insightful. Two ways of trying to get what you want--physical aggression, which is easy to spot and isolate; and psychological (relational) aggression, which is very difficult detect, a much more effective form of bullying, unfortunately. I saw a great example recently in an episode of "Yellowstone" (season 5). A girl asks a young cowboy to dance and he shamefully says he doesn't know how. She laughs and asks "Why kind of a cowboy can't dance?" Then she says "Girls can teach cowboys some things." No kidding! It took her about 5 seconds to take charge. I don't think he knew what had happened.
Psychologist Toby Green wrote about the Bamm factor in her column published in Body and Soul. (I have a copy of the article somewhere and will add it to this.)
Thanks Phillip, would love to see it.
Here is the full text, by Psychologist Toby Green;<quote>
<There's an art to getting your point across while keeping your cool.
Bookstores are lined with information about the things that men don't understand about women. Here's something women don't understand about men. They have a communication anomaly I call the BAM factor. (Women can have it but it's more common in men.) BAM is a physical sensation of being overwhelmed. It's a feeling of frustration,
anger, confusion and too much going on to be able to explain what is happening as well as cope with what is happening.
Judy is analytical. Mike isn't. Judy is perceptive. Mike isn't. Judy thinks Mike should know what she's thinking, feeling, experiencing because that's what loving someone is all about. Mike can't. Judy is ruled by her feelings. Mike doesn't have feelings. Judy
is articulate about feelings. Mike, who doesn't have them, lacks vocabulary for them.
what is it?
Because men like Mike are incapable of identifying, defining, or explaining BAM, women in conflict often think they are being defensive, aggressive, or ignoring her. And unfortunately it can lead to abuse. Some men say to me, "I left because if I stayed I might
do something I regretted."
In a conflict interaction, Mike experiences BAM. When Judy pressed him too hard for a resolution, he'd end up shouting something like, "shut up you cow" just to make her stop. He explained that when he feels Judy coming down on him, he feels scared, threatened, frustrated, confused, and angry. He feels he's not allowed to use any of his natural abilities to make it stop, and is confused about where the argument is going other than that it's making him feel bad about himself and in the wrong.
When we started working on his reaction to conflict he'd go numb and freeze. As time passed, he said that he'd worked out that if he just stood still and nodded Judy would eventually stop. He was simply surviving and didn't hear a word she said. His BAM level was dropping.
new battle
Mike began to lift above the battlefield and be more objective. He sees Judy as a wave that builds then eventually crashes on the sand. While that's happening he can look down on it and separate his emotional response from his intellectual response. He can now separate her rage from what she's saying and can hear her. "All she's saying is that she's angry that I did or didn't do something and that she wants me to understand why. I don't always understand the "why" bit, but all I need to do is apologise and be willing
to be wrong. Hell, if that's all it takes, why not?" It's a good idea to talk about how you argue before you get into conflict. Choose a word, any word, like "pineapple". It means "enough". Say it when you know the conflict hasn't been resolved but one or both of you have run out of resources to deal with it. If you can't make headway, use a therapist. They're trained to paraphrase an issue to achieve clarity.
If you're a man in this situation, it's always smart to use "I" statements. "I get really upset when...". They draw the listener toward you. "You" statements make the listener switch from listening to defending. "You never do...". Try to see her impersonally and figure out what she's saying.
send your relationship questions to body+soul's psychologist Toby
Green via www.tobygreen.com or call 1300 888 510 (for genuine questions or appointments).
Toby is the author of If You Really Loved Me... and The Men's Room. Copyright 2004 / Sunday Herald Sun> unquote
Thanks Phillip. Sounds very similar to the ideas I have been using. A man's calmness is his power. Relationally aggressive techniques are meant to make him blow. If he does, he is sunk, and she can point to him as being the problem. I did a series on this that will be posted soon.
https://theconversation.com/see-what-you-made-me-do-why-its-time-to-focus-on-the-perpetrator-when-tackling-domestic-violence-119298
Yes, this is familiar feminist drivel. Note that Greg Andressen is in the comments telling the truth.,, Greg is a good man who has been leading the Australian 1 in 3 campaign for many years. https://www.oneinthree.com.au/
Jess Hill wrote a book "See What You Made Me Do", I have not read it but in a nutshell she reinforces the feminist stereotype.
Easy to guess....
Yes, Tom, the written version is very helpful. Thanks for that.
It seems to me that relational aggression is not only a common strategy of women as individuals and a cornerstone of feminism as a political movement but also that of the many allied ideologies such as "identity politics" or "wokism." Think of the strategic shift from old-style Marxism to these new-style variants. Until well into the mid-twentieth century, Marxists (or communists) insisted on the necessity of violent revolution. When that proved unlikely in the West, they realized the benefits of provoking cultural revolution instead. It might take longer than violent revolution--one or two generations of indoctrination--but it would be much cleaner (no blood in the streets) and much more effective (infiltrating ready-made and well established institutions such as legislatures and courts and thus turning these into suitably "transformative" ones). And they could do all this as defenders of "our democracy" and therefore without admitting to any aggression.
Exactly Paul. I think this is so true. I wonder sometimes about the evolution of the usage of relational aggression as a political tool. It sure seems to be just that. This makes it very important to develop good skills to counter this. I am working on that one.
The last time I hit a woman
Adam Mitchell learned early in life that in certain curious circumstances society makes special allowances for women.
https://www.certifiedmale.com.au/issue9/lasttime.htm
Damn. That is a beautiful piece of writing. Thanks for posting that.
I have studied alot of the issues for a long time, it is easy to assume someone else knows what I know.
"See what you made me do!" or "He/she was asking for it!"
I never understood those comments, until I had a partner who tried to push all my emotional buttons. Today I still remember the confusion I felt, we were standing in the kitchen and a thought entered my head.
"Why are you doing this to me?"
then another thought "You are not going to stop until I hit you!" thats when I removed myself from the situation by going outside to cool down.
Well played!
Tom, thank you for the perceptive analysis. The culture will eventually shift towards a more neutral place. I'm afraid, however, that things will have to get a lot worse to catalyze a meaningful change.
It sure seems like you are correct though there are a couple of signs that the dam is breaking.
Perseverate is a new word to me and I like it. I will probably wind up saying it reflexively and too often.
LOL! You can perseverate on it! It's a good word!
Young men need to hear about this before it’s too late. By the time I started looking for answers, the damage was already done (I suspect this is a common theme).
Wisdom should pass from fathers to sons, but feminism and the divorce system frequently sever that link.
Totally agree. This is the sort of knowledge we need to teach our young men. High school would be a good place for it. Male only classes. I wish I could teach it!
This article was exactly what I needed to read this morning. Crucially in my opinion, relational aggression / mean girl feminism is in play in every form of healthcare you can imagine, from the psychiatrist's office (Alexis "I'm the Only Game in Town" Bobek) to the pharmacy (Shabnam "My Name is All Over the Building" Richards) to the dentist's office (the dangerously judgmental women at the counter this morning) to the nurses I see all over Facebook expressing in endless creative ways their passionate hatred for men. When you fear to assert yourself to a healthcare provider even over trivial things lest you wind up behind bars for vaguely articulated crimes you never actually committed (you yourself may never even get to hear what you were accused of doing), or finding the well poisoned as you try to move on and find a healthcare provider who isn't man-hating, you know that merely being male in a man-hating world is a hazard to your health. It's the high crime of breathing while male, as it were, of not keeping your gaze to the ground where it belongs.
It's too bad we men are generally uninclined to work together, because working together is exactly what we need to do right now to protect ourselves from women's growing relational aggression. Here is a prediction that cannot be challenged: the situation is going to get much, much, much worse before the light bulbs start turning on in sufficient number. Think SCUM Manifesto. That kind of bad. It'll be one for the history books.
Sadly Virgil, I think you are totally correct. Glad it was what you needed this morning!
This is all very true. I would argue that we should call women acting as feminists what they truly are. AWFL people....and mean girls. Men need to be firm with ALL women in their lives and workplaces. When a woman starts being AWFL and playing the mean girl, call her out publicly for her conduct and remind her, and all the other women present, that such behavior is not acceptable and that ALL women will be sanctioned while any woman in the group participates in such conduct. Time for ALL women to be forced to choose which side of conduct they are on and pay the price for what they choose.
I would love to see that happen. If it was a large movement doing this the feminist ideas would not last long.
I had the pleasure of spending the 1985-86 school year as an exchange student in Germany. I had the opportunity to visit Prague with a class trip as well as East Berlin. The Iron Curtain had been in place for some 40 years with the Berlin wall being present for 25. Years of negotiations had allowed installations of phones along the wall where it crosses the Spree River so that people who accidentally fell into the river could be rescued without being shot by East German border guards keeping people IN the German "Democratic" Republic. No one at that time could imagine the Wall and Iron Curtain falling within their life times. 4 years later the Berlin wall and Iron Curtain fell virtually without a shot being fired because the people finally concluded they would not play along with the communist states any longer. My sense is that feminism will face a similar existential crisis...and we may be a lot closer to that moment than the mean girls dare to imagine! Efforts like yours and Janices help lay the groundwork for that day of liberation for men and women!
Oh! Do I hope you are right! Thanks for the hopeful comment.
A very useful post, Tom, rich and balanced and insightful. Two ways of trying to get what you want--physical aggression, which is easy to spot and isolate; and psychological (relational) aggression, which is very difficult detect, a much more effective form of bullying, unfortunately. I saw a great example recently in an episode of "Yellowstone" (season 5). A girl asks a young cowboy to dance and he shamefully says he doesn't know how. She laughs and asks "Why kind of a cowboy can't dance?" Then she says "Girls can teach cowboys some things." No kidding! It took her about 5 seconds to take charge. I don't think he knew what had happened.
Thanks Allen. Yes, he was honest and open and then didn't know what hit him. A simple "I can help you with that" would have done wonders....
I beleive this article is a powerful indication of relational aggression, (sadly it is behind a paywall)
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/hatred-of-feminism-linked-to-violence-report-finds/news-story/1285876eb4b77f1d13a9c21386013c1d