Understanding Predatory Behavior

There's been so much drama recently with GoodReads and on blogs and crazy bullying and stalking... and I found myself leafing through an old favorite book: The Gift by Gavin DeBecker.

In Mr. DeBecker's brilliant books, he explains how to recognize predatory behavior. He's a security expert as well as a man who grew up in a household where he had to learn how to recognize threats and survive danger (Mom was a heroin addict as well as violent and suicidal).

The behavior described in his books is a lot of what you can see online.

The inability to hear the word no. Go to Dear Author and read Will Sh*tterly's comments about his outing a woman blogger. He's completely incapable of hearing anyone say no to him. He twists the conversations, he mocks other opinions, he circles around and around and never does he hear someone say no to him.

He's completely incapable of understanding that the word can apply to him.

There's the YA writer on GoodReads who admits to being one of the GoodRead bullies on that horrible site and then talks about outing teenage bloggers who accepted a free copy of his book but didn't review it as promised.

This same shit-masquerading-as-a-man actually, apparently, was in communication with a female teen blogger who developed a crush on him. His adult attitude led to his tricking her. She refused to promote his book on her blog and her friends followed. Now he's going to out them.

So the very fact that he was in communication with an underage girl and then lied to her, doesn't bother him at all. And no matter how many adults show up to point out his reasoning is flawed, he can't hear it.

Because no doesn't apply to him either.

The complete and absolute misogyny of these men is frightening. And so fits the predator.

Gavin DeBecker does a brilliant job explaining all the behaviors to watch for and how to be aware. Once you have that kind of awareness it's fascinating to watch men at play.

I wouldn't let any of those men in my life or 100 feet near my daughter.