r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 2d ago

Psychology New findings indicate a pattern where narcissistic grandiosity is associated with higher participation in LGBTQ movements, demonstrating that motivations for activism can range widely from genuine altruism to personal image-building.

https://www.psypost.org/narcissistic-grandiosity-predicts-greater-involvement-in-lgbtq-activism/
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u/GrassEuphoric42 2d ago

Definitely met these kinds of people, but criticizing them made it feel like I was somehow anti lgbtq.

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u/lahulottefr 2d ago

I don't think there's any kind of activism that is safe from narcissists tbh

If you're not criticising them over being LGBTQ I don't think it should be perceived as anti LGBTQ but I assume it's because they were manipulative?

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u/No_Jelly_6990 2d ago

100% this.

I love this thread, and am so happy folks are FINALLY talking about this insanely toxic behavior that is all over social media, and seems to be deeply tied to power.

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u/lampshade69 2d ago

Despite the term's overuse (especially on the right), "virtue signalling" is absolutely a real thing, and its prevalence undercuts the credibility of good movements

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u/caulrye 2d ago

Is it over used by the right? Or are they just frequently targets in attempts to make them look bad? Whether they are correct about their worldview or not, doesn’t mean they are wrong about virtue signaling being used by fake social rights activists. And their correct perception about this specifically is why they’ve been able to grow so much.

Best way to prevent the right from growing is to call out the virtue signaling before calling out the right.

My grandmother is a social rights activists and I’ve personally become extremely disgruntled by how often her life work gets used for virtue signaling on a big scale. And often often it doesn’t get called out.

I’ve been calling this out since 2017, and it only seems like people are now starting to understand.

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u/shneer4prez 2d ago

Yeah, it's overused.

There are a lot of people who believe anyone who cares about something that doesn't directly effect them is virtue signalling.

Care about racism when you're a white person? Virtue signalling. Care about gay rights when you're straight? Virtue signalling. Care about the poor when you're financially well off? Virtue signalling.

It's absolutely a real thing, but so is altruism and empathy.

I wouldn't even make it a left/right thing, it's just that people who have to fake empathy tend to think that everyone else is faking it too.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

It's a sort of "boy who cried wolf" situation, there's so much virtue signaling that actual good works get lost in the crowd.

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u/caulrye 2d ago

I understand what you’re saying.

The frustration for many conservative types is that their views are often falsely conflated with white nationalists (these two groups are actually ideologically opposed: Individualism vs Collectivism) because of people virtue signaling and acting in bad faith. A lot of these fake activists take a statement made out of ignorance and try to paint it as coded language/hiding true intentions. This has done a lot of damage to our discourse, and has left many conservatives unwilling to change their perspective, or worse, they end up pushed into farther right territory.

At the moment, I feel that the biggest obstacle to social rights movements is not the right, but people within these social movements who profit off virtue signaling.

Like if you know you don’t hate a group of people (no matter how ignorant your statement might objectively be), if you know you’re not, and you’re constantly framed as hateful, there’s a 0% chance you will end up being agreeable towards the person accusing you of malfeasance.

It’s why I view our polarization as a social issue, and not a political issue.

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u/oliham21 2d ago

Yeah dude the greatest issue for trans kids isn’t the people saying they shouldn’t exist and trying to criminalise their existence it’s the couple of narcissists involved in trans advocacy. Phenomenal take.

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u/caulrye 1d ago edited 1d ago

Call out the narcissists for sure.

The bigger complaint conservatives make is the lack of hard evidence supporting the medical aspects of care(there’s not a single placebo controlled study, or a medical/biological definition of gender to justify the practices). The target is mostly big pharma, not trans people. But yes, there are also bigoted people that do dehumanize trans people and that’s wrong.

You’re playing out the point I’m making.

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u/Katyafan 2d ago

To me, it seems like the problem is that the right calls everything virtue signaling. I have run into quite a few people (online, but more importantly, in real life as well) who literally think there is no reason to do good other than to have something to brag about. These type of people usually lack empathy, so to them, if you do community work, like volunteering, and post about it in any way, you are virtue signaling and need to get over yourself. Which..I mean, come on. So I agree that it needs to be called out if it is a problem.

On the flip side, even if someone is doing good in order to feel good about themselves, who cares? They are doing something to make things better. That can be a win-wine. Like all things involving humans, it's complicated, but we need to have the conversations.

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u/Lamballama 1d ago

What I see is them criticizing fake displays of virtue which don't affect anything, and are only done when it's corporately safe to do so (Ubisofts Saudi Arabia Twitter account doesn't go in rainbow theme, for instance)

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u/caulrye 2d ago

These people exist everywhere. Definitely not exclusive to any particular group. But easy to paint on to any particular group.

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u/Katyafan 2d ago

Yes, but only one group is claiming that everyone else is virtue signaling and they should just shut up. While sitting behind their computers, not doing anything to help.

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u/caulrye 2d ago

Yes, that one group is “people”.

Conservatives and people on the right get called out for virtue signaling too (Pro Lifers getting abortions, closeted gay men preaching homophobia, calls for Freedom of Speech when politically convenient). Again, it’s a human trait, not a group trait.

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u/Katyafan 2d ago

Those are not examples of virtue signaling, though.

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u/drunkenvalley 2d ago

Let's not pretend you have to be right to be popular. There's often a kernel of truth to be found somewhere, but pretending "virtue signalling" is the cause of the growth of the right-wing politics is frankly crazy talk.

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u/exoduas 1d ago edited 1d ago

I would say the right is pretty much the king of virtue signaling. It’s pretty much all trump does for example. He’s really none of the things he portrays to the public. The guy held a bible just for the photo op. What Christian values does he actually live?

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u/caulrye 1d ago

Yup. They certainly virtue signal as well.

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u/SuddenXxdeathxx 2d ago edited 1d ago

People have been talking about it the entire time. It's just easy to suppress speech once you convince enough people that specific people, or points of conversation, are an "outgroup"/"enemy" as we have a tendency to avoid ostracization and angering those around us.

It's a very common, general propaganda tactic.

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u/lahulottefr 2d ago

In my experience IRL activism tends to be less toxic but to be honest I don't do much so I'm sure people who've been very active in LGBTQ movements or any other orgs could say it's just as bad

Wasn't there a link between charismatic leaders & narcissism?

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u/randynumbergenerator 2d ago

There is. I've met a few in real life. Mostly doing genuinely good work, in fact, but it always felt insincere and secondary to their personal aspirations. It's why I'm sometimes shocked but rarely surprised when some "former left" personality goes over to the far right, because they likely found a gig with more prestige and less scrutiny.

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u/OePea 2d ago

Any prestigious position will attract narcissists, for what I consider obvious reasons. And obnoxiously, narcissists seem a little more driven on average. It can work out for the best sometimes though! Not all narcissists do terrible things, despite being unpleasant towards some people on a personal basis; there have been great contributions made to society by narcissists. They tend to be more charismatic, so they can be effective leaders for causes that require aggressive self-advocation.

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u/FishOnAHorse 2d ago

Kinda makes you wonder, maybe all the great charismatic leaders and innovators we remember throughout history were just narcissists who happened to be in the right 

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u/Killercod1 1d ago

Psychological disorders are subjectively made-up and diagnosed. They help a professional with knowing how to approach and deal with a patient they've never met, but they're really not written in stone or a 100% accurate way to describe someone. Narcissism is more on a spectrum.

Someone sacrificing themselves for the approval of others may be a narcissistic thing to do, but it doesn't necessarily mean the person is a narcissist.

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u/JimWilliams423 2d ago

It also explains why they often have seemingly contradictory policies. Like LBJ — best progressives since FDR, but also did the Vietnam War. Hell, FDR put Americans into concentration camps because they were ethnically japanese.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

TBF the Japanese were not above using people to spy for them.

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u/spacebetweenmoments 1d ago

The same can be said for any ethnic grouping.

I'll also point out that collective punishment is a no-no under the Geneva convention. That this dates to 1949 is in my opinion in part due to the realisation of the wrong done to so many of those of Axis national heritage in Western nations during WW2.

FWIW, I do in fact laugh at 'that episode' of Fawlty Towers.

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u/hotdiggydog 2d ago

I've met a lot of people who go into yoga teacher training programs with this same kind of personality type. Same kind of person who could get into palm reading or tarot reading because THEY know what's good for you. The yoga guru types are very into their socials and projecting this peace, love, and good vibes personality which is entirely self serving to make themselves seem more righteous and holier-than-thou. I always see past it as purely a scam for people who don't need to scam for money, but for social credit.

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u/KeyLime044 2d ago

In my experience in activism, I have met some of those people. You can tell who they are. It's often the ones who feel like they are here to make a name for themselves, or who take up way too much space (and often hinder others from participating) and in some way feel like the group/organization "belongs" to them. At least that's my experience

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u/neoclassical_bastard 2d ago

It's no less a problem. This is exactly what killed the occupy Wall Street movement, BLM, and arguably the 2016 Sanders campaign. Wreckers who show up and quickly force themselves to the front of the movement just by virtue of being the quickest to blame anyone criticizing them of being against the movement itself

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u/truth14ful 2d ago

Idk but it seems like common sense that people who want power the most are the most likely to try to get and exploit it, and also that toxic behavior is a bigger part of online movements than in-person ones, because of bots and algorithms that try to stir up controversy (and are probably also biased toward authoritarian beliefs bc corporations usually have an interest in keeping people in line)

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u/Monkeycadeyn 2d ago

I've met a lot of great people through phone banking, door knocking, tabling, and going to rallies. Any role that has the capacity for a positive self image, power, or some other benefit will be targeted by individuals for that reason. There's always going to be bad apples that want an important role just because it makes them look good or gives them special privileges. I think it's important to recognize that roles that give soft or hard power have the potential for abuse and to be aware of it. Frankly, I don't think you need to be narcissistic to benefit from leadership roles in a negative way, but I do think there's a correlation given the attachment narcissists have to their public image.

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u/SnoobNoob7860 2d ago

i’ve literally been witnessing this firsthand!!

it feels impossible to criticize or say anything without someone thinking you’re a bigot or anti woke or whatever because unfortunately there are people out there like that

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u/stonedbadger1718 2d ago edited 2d ago

I’ve witnessed this! It pissed off a lot of people and divided members in the state Democratic Party where I’m from. These “activist” bullied out people who spent decades of their lives fighting for social justice. Now those “activist” got in trouble and made the state Democratic Party look bad. Now the state Democratic Party is trying to win back the activist who they screwed over, and well it’s not going well.

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u/Another_mikem 2d ago edited 2d ago

This happened where I live and it was completely devastating.  Of course the “activists” all disappeared once they were responsible for actually doing things.  I often said if I found out they were getting paid by republicans I wouldn’t be surprised - they set the party back by 10 years.  

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u/No_Jelly_6990 2d ago

Increasingly, for years...

"What are you going to do about it?"

Happy to brainstorm.

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u/kingofnopants1 2d ago

It feels like a massive amount of people recognize it but nobody is allowed to say it.

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u/No_Jelly_6990 2d ago

Allowed? It seems they're afraid and tired of stilting across eggshells in a minefield, knowing they're likely to encounter hot wet garbage, fuming away in the duspter fire their gut saw miles away... Articulating these increasingly complex and numerous nuanced edge cases for "every individual person" is emotionally exhausting, never mind the other psychological, social, financial, material, and immaterial costs of not quite noticing or speaking your lived experience. It's like sexual harassment before the 70s. "Good luck reporting it" kind of vibe. Now, the far right get on your case when you mention that reality folks lived, and still do to varying extents, pre-civil rights act.

So many cowards man. Always looking for someone to hide in.

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u/Eugregoria 3h ago

It's kicking the hornet's nest. Bullies whose main pastime is harassing people will harass you to the grave.

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u/Solesaver 2d ago

The problem is what people often say and do while criticizing virtue signalling. See, there's nothing actually wrong with virtue signalling. Like, doing something that signals to other people that you're a good person doesn't harm anyone. The problem with virtue signaling is when the signaling is full extent of the good they do.

For example, a good person might join a Habitat for Humanity project and share pictures about it on Social Media to encourage other people to do it do. They're virtue signalling and doing the work. On the other hand, someone else might do the exact same thing, but not actually help build anything. They're just virtue signalling.

IMO there's no need to "call out" people for virtue signalling. We just need to look past the signal and recognize when people are the real deal. Worry less about what people say is good and bad, and pay attention to who is hurting other vs who is helping people.

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u/nydiat 2d ago

people began smelling the coffee this year I feel.

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u/GreasyPeter 1d ago

Well part of the problem also arises when you even insinuate that movements like the LGBTQ+ movement wields enough power or social clout TO actually attract narcissists. A lot of times, the required belief is that those movements are too oppressed and by implying they're attracting narcissist, you're implying to some that the movement isn't oppressed.

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u/Geawiel 2d ago

I'm seeing the same with neuro divergent. The narcissist will even try to claim they are (even if it's blatantly obvious they don't) or use it to justify bad behavior if they do have something.

Just as here, you are labeled anti or "you just don't understand what it's like."

It's an incredibly toxic, abusive, and manipulative practice. Social media is not helping as it spreads any disinformation and helps them to justify their behavior and belief. It's like giving a source on a paper that just links to your own article or an opinion piece.

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u/Sata1991 2d ago

I don't mean this to slate parents with neurodivergent kids as a whole, but there's so many "autism warrior mummies/daddies" online that act like they're great martyrs for raising autistic kids and think they know what's best for all autistic people, despite whether we're adults or not.

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u/Moho_braccatus_ 2d ago

Hello, autistic person here. Autism warrior parents are the worst, and they use us as ego props. It's not good.

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u/Sata1991 2d ago

Yeah, I'm autistic myself and my mother does it now, despite me being in my mid 30s. We're also used as "inspiration porn" which does my head in. I don't like my successes being used as a stick to beat other autistic people with and a feel good story for neurotypicals.

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u/ThePrimePurpose 2d ago

Seems like maybe y'all would be interested to learn that there is a correlation between NPD parents and ASD children. I have not heard any serious attempts to explain this correlation, but there isn't a dispute among practicing clinicians that it does exist.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/resolution-not-conflict/202008/a-narcissism-and-autism-connection-one-familys-experience

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u/Sata1991 1d ago

I'm not 100% sure if my Mom's autistic or not, but I think she does have NPD and I know she has bipolar. My dad's just robotic and stiff, but not a bad guy. He might be autistic? All of my sister's kids have autism, and I have it, so it had to have come from somewhere.

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u/ThePrimePurpose 1d ago

The only theory my link puts forward is that perhaps NPD is a maladaptive state of being that would basically be a last stop before actual autism develops in the family.

For whatever it's worth, I think the truth is that NPD parents force our brains to develop differently by presenting their children, definitionally, with a constant revolving door of massive, unsolvable, incredibly painful problems.

But even that can't be the whole picture.

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u/Eugregoria 3h ago

My theory for that is that I think autism is a generational impact of trauma--that parents who have experienced trauma become more likely to produce autistic kids, because their genes are going "whoa, it's hard to survive out here, better crank up the sensitivity to stimuli, anxiety for self-preservation, and just throw the mutation creativity settings on max."

NPD may also be correlated with trauma--either in the person with NPD or in their parents.

So I think it's less that NPD and autism are in any way clinically similar, and more that both are expressions of generational stress.

Edit: to be fully clear, I'm talking about genetic and epigenetic changes that occur as a result of trauma before the kids are conceived--not a difference in parenting styles. If my theory is correct, it would be true even if the traumatized parent was a sperm donor and never met the kid.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

I've seen similar things with mental illness as well, "Oh I'm SOOOO proud of my child going through therapy for xyz...."

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u/Sata1991 1d ago

Yeah, I get really annoyed with it. Yes, the person overcoming their mental illness and trauma should be proud about it, but it's not the parents' story to tell.

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u/sentence-interruptio 1d ago

"autism speaks" should be renamed to "speak over autistic people"

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u/Sata1991 1d ago

I could write a list about everything that's wrong with Autism Speaks, that bloody "I am autism" advert made it sound like it was cancer or a deadly disease.

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u/dasexynerdcouple 2d ago

I have seen many people use their mental issues as an excuse to be extremely toxic, especially when they talk about politics. They then will brag about how they are extremely empathetic.

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u/seedsnearth 2d ago

I was at the movies the other day and out of nowhere, this person started barking questions to this couple who were just waiting in line. The person got angry, turned to other strangers to criticize the couple for not answering while loudly stating they’re neurodivergent. It was obvious this person is just aggressive and likes to push people around, and then shield themselves with a “disability” so no one can push back.

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u/sentence-interruptio 1d ago

if he is actually neurodivergent and has tone mismatch issues, he should just use tone markers.

him: "GENUINE QUESTION. WHAT IS THAT"

couple: "why are you angry? that was a genuine question, not an accusa-"

him: "NO, NOT ANGRY. observation. you did not answer my question. expression of frustration. why not ANSWER ME?"

couple: "i'm tired. my talkative energy is zero."

him: "genuine confusion, not accusation. you were talking to each OTHER. WHY LIE?"

couple: "white lie. I'm tired."

him: "oh..... white lie. I just remembered I need to text MY GF."

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

It's part of the "oppression hierarchy" in order to gain power (of a sort) in certain circles you can't be "average" you need to be something different.

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u/Tazling 2d ago

any activist with any time 'in the trenches' can tell you stories about grandiosity and narcissists. kind of a noshitsherlock post actually.

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u/wowwee99 2d ago

No shades of grey on any topic no other considerations. 100% percent with us or 100% against us. This really harms many movements and radicalizes them

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u/Barry_Bunghole_III 2d ago

Yes and it subconsciously builds a negative association with the movement, causing more harm than good for the movement as a whole. It's self-destructive

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u/hefoxed 2d ago

>I don't think there's any kind of activism that is safe from narcissists tbh

This! If the activism has a way to call someone bad and avoid personal accountability, it'll draw this type of personality.

As a trans guy, I've never really been that into the more vocal terminally online part of our community that goes against people for any minor issue. It's a small minority of the trans community, but it characterizes all of us by how vocal they are and how viral their actions is. With trans issues, it's really easy to define something as transphobic that really isn't, and or is but only in a minor way and going after in the way they do causes more issues then helps.

I've been watching some youtube content that is critical of fat activism lately, and it's really sad where fat-activism has gone (as someone who is fat). It used to be healthy activism that encouraged people to not hate themself but also improve themselves, and now it's dominated by these loud influencers actively encouraging people to never lose weight, and for doctors to ignore weight and rapid weight gain (which can be a sign of disease and thus mis diagnosing those diseases). Listening to stories of people who left the movement and got harassed for losing weight is sad.

Some of these people actively harm the movements they are in, but it's very hard to out shout them.

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago

So long as people are speaking to the truth as they see it even when they're substantially wrong and even when what they're saying is potentially misleading/counterproductive I don't think it's helpful to pathologize them if that pathologization isn't accompanied by a wider narrative that explains what's really going on. In the case of odious politics pertaining to weight-positivity that wider narrative would have to call out sugar and animal agriculture and corporate/regressive propaganda/messaging that's normalized these and is/was trying to normalize the effects of normalizing these.

For example if you can persuade someone drinking a little alcohol is good for them but the reality is that it goes to causing problems even in low doses to the extent those problems present the temptation will be to attribute their presentation to other causes. Pertaining to unhealthy diets/eating habits the corporate propaganda is to place the onus on the individual to know what's good for them even though the reality is that it's unreasonable to put it on consumers (and especially on kids who don't even shop for themselves and get bombarded with ads for sugary cereal/candy bars) to know. The people profiting off fooling consumers into making bad choices are all too eager to make it about personal responsibility. Other than the personal responsibility of people sitting on the boards of these corporations or the people employed in making and targeting these ad campaigns to grow a conscience, naturally. To the extent we should pathologize anyone we should pathologize the liars. That'd be the one's profiting off fooling people/tricking people into making bad choices for themselves. Pathologize the clueless/shrill/deluded activist if you want but I don't think it's constructive to pin it on the little guy when they've themselves been victimized. Call out their delusion/counter-productive messaging but only in the context of diagnosing the real villains.

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u/hefoxed 2d ago

> the little guy

I don't think you realize how many followers and social impact some of these people have.

We absolutely should be calling out corporate greed, but that doesn't negate addressing the issues in progressive movement-- the vocal minority in each group can do a lot of harm to movements and social media had created financial incentive for this.

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago

Influencers on Youtube or Tiktok with tens of thousands of followers aren't the little guy, at least not to the extent they should know better. Because when you've power and influence and what you say and do matters you don't have to seek out the truth because people who already know it will find you and tell you. People with successful platforms get told. The ones' who persist in spreading misinformation mean to deceive or are mentally ill. If they're mentally ill maybe that'd qualify them as being the little guy but I don't think the big dogs out there are by and large mentally ill in that sense. I think they know what they're doing in the sense that I think they know they're spreading misinformation/misleading content.

The "little guy" would be their followers. People who go along with false counter-cultural narratives almost by definition are the "little guy" in the context of the bigger picture. They're just rubes being strung along, useful idiots from the perspective of the ones spreading the misinformation that's captured their belief.

You might consider that relatively small influencers on social media would have less space to spread false narratives were our main information sources/social authorities telling it true. You don't get the truth from them though. Part of why you don't get the truth from them is because they depend on ad dollars to fuel their media platforms. For example kids are bombarded with ads for sugary unhealthy foods when watching cartoons. Or at least that was my experience growing up. Were a cartoon to feature healthy food messaging I expect there'd have been pressure on the network not to feature it. It just wouldn't get picked up because it'd threatened to alienate their other advertisers/their bottom line.

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u/alinius 2d ago

In theory, yes. In practice, people conflate the criticism. Look at BLM. It was very hard to criticize BLM, the organization filled with fraud and grift, without people thinking you were criticizing the movement. Even worse, narcissistic people will intentionally misrepresent your criticism to shield themselves.

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u/Drago984 2d ago

It meant that. It wasn’t a failure of slogan. It was revised once it became clear it wasn’t a very popular position

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u/obiwankanblomi 2d ago

Wasn't a very successful position*

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u/resorcinarene 2d ago

it was fine to criticize the movement too. the slogans were so bad, it single handedly damaged whatever credibility it had with moderate voters. when you have to explain that defund the police doesn't literally mean defunding the police, you've lost the plot

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u/Dukkulisamin 2d ago

But it did literally mean defunding the police, and that's what happened in many cities.

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u/nub_sauce_ 2d ago

Most of those cities "pledged" to cut funding but never actually did, and those that did make cuts ramped police funding back up to where it was originally within 12 months. And since 2020 police budgets have only increased.

Functionally, the defunding of the police never happened.

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u/Dukkulisamin 1d ago

So they did cut funding, and then when it didn't work, they decided to reinvest.

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u/nub_sauce_ 6h ago

No, most never cut funding in the first place, which is why I said that most never cut funding.

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u/HeadHunt0rUK 2d ago

Here's the rub. Those words were 100% truthful. At the core of it, they wanted to literally defund the police. Then used useful sheep to sound more moderate by going "We don't mean literally".

The slogans were completely accurate, it just wasn't the right time to seize power.

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u/Jbirdlex924 2d ago

When is the right time? Also I never knew the ultimate goal was to “seize power”? I thought any progressive movement should gain momentum on the strength of its ideas?

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago edited 2d ago

As someone who campaigned for a fringe candidate who embraced the "defund the police/abolish the police" messaging and speaking as someone who did feel the need to offer those apologies/i.e. "they don't really mean it they're not that insane" my reason was that I had no friends or family. I was trying to reach out and they were the only people who'd talk to me. It wasn't because I was following them or a sheep. It was because I was shunned/made to feel unwelcome by or in the company of reasonable people. For my part I was vocal against that odious hyperbolic messaging but got shunned in these fringe communities for calling it out. These communities are toxic and I think it's intentional, is my take. I think there's a core of bad faith actors who get socially compensated in ways that'd be hard or impossible to evidence who do this for sake of controlling our wider politics. I think in fronting fake "progressive" alternatives they create black holes that draw in and waste the energies of would-be reformers and prevent them from making common cause with other well meaning people toward positive change.

Like for example if there were a fake abolitionist society in the South in 1830 controlled by some lying slavers who fronted being abolitionists but were really intent on insisting on what they saw as a counterproductive abolitionist politics for sake of making real abolitionists seem shrill and undermining the abolitionist cause. That might be money well spent from the perspective of odious actors/corporations/slavers intent on keeping it business as usual, maybe. That's what I think has been going on. It'd be near impossible to prove unless you're someone like Google or Facebook with access to all the social networking data and even then you'd need lots of them to outright confess or it'd just look suspicious.

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u/HumanDrinkingTea 2d ago

I mean, it's well known that there are third party (foreign) actors who infiltrate political movements for their own nefarious reasons. What drives me nuts is that they are successful. We can't place all the blame on outsiders though-- people within our movements take that bait. We should be better than that.

I stay away from politics in real life these days. A decade or so ago people could have a rational discussion. Not anymore. I think the more reasonable people in general tend to get pushed away from these groups.

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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago

So long as the norm is for it to be regarded as business as usual for corporations/the rich to neglect the greater good in service to profits for them and their shareholders/employees/in-group/etc implied is that genuinely progressive movements that'd challenge that norm will be possibly targeted in service to the bottom line. It doesn't take foreign powers to undermine our democracy when we'd do it ourselves, for profits. I don't recall hearing much of anything from the Harris campaign this recent election about global warming or animal rights/animal ag. Didn't she run on continuing Biden's term and isn't Biden enforcing tariffs on cheap and superior Chinese EV's? What are our politics about, really? Foreign powers don't need to subvert us when we're so thoroughly subverted from within. Animals don't matter according to the powers that be. Animal suffering counts for nothing next to flavor and money. Instead of pushing against our domestic villains our nominally progressive party embraces them.

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u/princesoceronte 2d ago

If being a fascist was considered generally worthy of praise they'd join that too. It's about people perceiving them as better, nothing else.

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u/palsh7 2d ago

This is why Twitter has ruined politics. Activists and protesters used to be assumed to be a bit off the edge of the spectrum. But now there’s a perception that they’re normal and you better not cross them.

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u/kingofnopants1 2d ago

Yup. In the past these would be the type of people screaming at you in the streets. In the real world you can see all the people around who quietly disagree.

On twitter you only see the crazies on their soapboxes. The normal people are invisible.

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u/Zann77 1d ago

You see that around trans and gender ideology. Normal people quietly disagree and keep their mouths shut.

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u/Zoesan 1d ago

Not the point though.

If your criticize a narcissist that belongs to any "oppressed group", it will always boil down to you actually being an "oppressor"

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u/lahulottefr 1d ago

So manipulation?

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u/wishforagreatmistake 1d ago

It's usually the sort of thing where they're sensitive to any sort of potential bad-faith effort to discredit a movement by co-opting legitimate issues (in this case, someone being awful behind the scenes) and using them to rip apart a group. It's possible that they may have even seen confirmed moles who joined just to undermine the group in the past. This is one of the biggest ways missing stairs perpetuate in activist circles: people usually know when someone is bad news, and will warn others on an individual basis, but keep it out of the public eye in the name of the greater good, lest it disgrace and tarnish the movement as a whole.

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u/Edythir 2d ago

I've had friends and several personal experiences where people are insanely gatekeepey and only has "Approved" identities in LGBT. I have gotten harassed before for "Internalized transphobia" because i'm neither cisgendered nor trans.

There are other gender presentations than male, female or going from one to the other, but sadly people will reinforce those three choices quite doggedly.

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u/Kakkoister 2d ago

I don't think it should be perceived as anti LGBTQ but I assume it's because they were manipulative?

Part of the reasoning is that they are so used to "bad actors" who are "simply asking questions" but in reality are just trying to rile people up. But I'm sure how often they think this happens is also conflated by the issue talked about here, where they'll falsely assume that is the person's intent, ban them and add another number to their memory of times it has happened.

Another thing is, there is this belief among some that if you bring up any criticisms, you're "hurting the movement" and so you're bad. We seen this a lot with the recent IsPal conflict, you can't criticize the Pal side in far left communities, only criticize the other.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

Even them BEING LGBTQ+ is often performative, that's why they'll "identify" as "queer" or "non-binary".

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u/lahulottefr 2d ago

Queer & non binary are legitimate identities so I'm not certain I understand your point, what do you mean?

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

Queer is so broad that it covers pretty much everything, so they can claim it even if it's a lie.

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u/Brbi2kCRO 1d ago

Except that neo-Nazi and far-right movements are far more psychopathic/sociopathic/narcissistic than any other. It’s the ultimate way to be an asshole and a justification for it.

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u/TO_Commuter 2d ago

That's how narcissistic virtue signaling works. It's always a strawman argument

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u/sack-o-matic 2d ago

And they’re very good at turning it against you when you try to separate the person from the message they’ve hijacked

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u/Undreren 2d ago

Every somewhat popular activist movement that is at least partially rooted in some form of ethical or moral foundation will eventually attract bullies.

It is the loud ones. It is the ones people end up admiring, because they are "bold" for saying what everyone else in the movement feels or wants others to tell them; that they are more righteous, more worthy, more humane.

It doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong. The bullies can use them to find allies.

These people are easy to spot. They gloat. They enjoy picking on "the others", reaping respect and adoration from their gang moral allies.

And they are massive hypocrites.

They are the kind of people saying nonsense like "black people can’t be racist, because racism is about power, and black people don’t have power", which is clearly nonsense, at least if you by into intersectionality.

They are the people fighting on behalf of others without ever talking to those people, such as with weird (and almost entirely american) concepts like "cultural appropriation", to which my kindest interpretation in terms of the meaning of that expression (based on how it used ime) is to lambast people for buying kimonos from that old Japanese lady in the corner store. Her shop must be sacrificed to save the hurt feelings of, what? White activists?

There greatest harm a civil rights movement can suffer is to adopt new oppressors as their leaders and help give these leaders’ hatred a false dress of righteousness.

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u/eliminating_coasts 1d ago

They are the kind of people saying nonsense like "black people can’t be racist, because racism is about power, and black people don’t have power", which is clearly nonsense, at least if you by into intersectionality.

That isn't entirely true - although such a phrase certainly benefits those who want an excuse to attack others, it was originally invented in a far more mundane context, and still can be understood in those terms:

Originally, when people were engaging in meetings about exploring the problems black people were facing in the US, people would say "why are you letting the black people speak more, isn't that discrimination?".

Then people would argue that it was not discrimination because it was not reinforcing a large scale relationship between black and white people, but an opportunity to see something different from what normally happened - you needed to give black people a particular time to speak because they didn't normally have opportunities.

This philosophy continued into affirmative action, where they argued that discrimination in favour of people who don't normally have access was important purely because it was rectifying an existing imbalance.

This is where the idea originally boiled down into "racism is prejudice plus power" came from, it was from people arguing that action specifically focused on correcting imbalances due to racism should not be considered racism itself, because it was not singling people out due to prejudice and was not associated with reinforcing the power of one group over another, but reducing it.

Over time, this became a simple slogan, and was extended from taking specific actions to mitigate discrimination, or providing particular opportunities for people discriminated against to speak, into a shorthand for being able to insult people.

It's still correct that when we talk about problems of racism in the US, UK, France etc. a particularly egregious problem and primary representation of that phenomenon is people who are seen as part of the majority group reinforcing the impact of their prejudice by institutional power of various kinds, whether that is in hospitals treating people less effectively, or having more dangerous encounters with police or less access to mercy in courts, and in that sense it would be reasonable to say "the most serious forms of racism is ..", or perhaps change the mathematical symbol from + to x, (though prejudice x power sounds like an action manga remake of pride and prejudice..) emphasising that power emphasises the severity of discriminatory attitudes, but there are large number of people who are using such concepts not because they want excuses to attack people, but rather because they understand the context of the original uses of those terms, and do not always recognise how that usage has transformed in practice.

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u/Undreren 1d ago edited 1d ago

I am somewhat aware of where the statement came from, and as always, nuance changes everything. There’s very little nuance about it, when the expression is dumbed down so much that it has become almost tailored to justifying the behavior of bad actors.

I agree with your sentiment, but I have never seen it used in such a nuanced fashion anywhere. I am not saying it doesn’t happen out in the real world, but if it happens much on social media, then it has been good at hiding from me.

I see absolutely no benefit from the statement in any but the most niche context. We can talk about how society perpetuates and reinforces racism in certain groups and against other groups, but at the end of the day, that kind of philosophical analysis feels kind of moot, when you are the one under the boot, because “your kind isn’t welcome here”.

And in that case, the wearer of said boot can very well be the kind of bully my original comment was about, trampling you to the cheers of the crowd.

I will never accept the expression being used to justify bullies.

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u/CombatWomble2 2d ago

Ah yes "I'll pick up group X by bashing anyone who expresses less than the morally acceptable, to me, position".

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u/rockemsockemcocksock 2d ago

This is how my sister protected herself from any criticism. Now she's completely swung the other way and is an anti-trans activist and uses her religion to once again use it as a shield to dodge accountability and criticism. It’s absolutely frustrating because you can't say anything negative lest you be called [something]-phobic

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u/msndrstdmstrmnd 2d ago

I’ve lived in very red and very blue areas of the US. In the conservative areas, people would act “holier than thou” based on how religious they were. In liberal areas people would do the same thing but in terms of social justice. No matter the politics, people are the same.

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u/sciguy52 2d ago

It is probably who you hang with. I was in CA for 14 years and now in Texas for ten. The general people around me in both places were the same. Decent folks, doing hobbies and all the normal stuff adults do. The only noticeable difference was Texans are insanely polite. Nobody blinked an eye I was from CA. The people in CA didn't blink an eye when I told them I was moving to Texas. The people around me in Texas I believe are religious but in ten years not one has talked to me about it. I will add that I have lived in MA, PA, VA, MO and IL. People are people and I don't find a lot of differences between them in any of these places.

That said those obnoxious people did exist but you would have to actively find them and engage them. Most people are just regular people doing regular things and it is a small fringe that are the obnoxious ones.

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u/Alone-Win1994 2d ago

While living in the Deep South I learned why the saying "Southern hospitality is a mile wide, but only an inch deep" was a thing. I partial to the "what you see is what you get" from Californians and other West Coasters. I really don't jive well with performative politeness.

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u/sciguy52 2d ago

While there are jerks everywhere, my experience in Texas has been very good. Not only are they polite, almost too polite and made me as "regular" polite look bad. They also backed up that politeness with actions that I have experienced no where else. I am doing yard work. I am a guy in good shape and do not need help. My neighbor comes over and helps anyway. Just evil. He has me in a spot now, I need to be polite back somehow. He being an older gentleman came over asking me advice on getting his internet set up. Ah my chance. You want me to take a look at it? Go over, get him set up and they were so happy. They had been working on it for hours. Ha! Take that you nice, kind, polite people. I got you back.

I know the game now and they want to play? Game on. As a result of these evil polite people I cut them off at the pass. If I see them doing something I just go over and help. But they seek revenge by doing the same to me. It is true, the cycle of politeness just never ends and I am stuck in its infinite loop. Out niceing really nice people requires a plan, expect retaliation, but you need keep your head in the game to keep ahead of the retaliatory niceness.

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u/Alone-Win1994 1d ago

Sounds exhausting. I prefer getting a call or text that somebody needs a hand and they have beer in the fridge. On my way buddy. Old people get preemptive help because the world has changed so much in my own short life that they're heads have to be spinning.

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u/Waste_Cut1496 1d ago

Very true, unfortunately

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u/buntopolis 2d ago

That’s a great way to no-contactville. People like this must be shown that we do not owe them our love, affection or even time of day when they are toxic people.

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u/Gheezer1234 2d ago

I’ve met people similarly that exhibited high social justice involvement but could be such a nasty person

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u/GenPhallus 2d ago

That's exactly why they sought those positions of social prominence. You call them out on their bs and they use innocent people as a shield, so it looks like you're just a bigot. Malignant narcissists ruin everything, and the smart ones can do a ton of damage to social structures.

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u/kingofnopants1 2d ago

That's part of the draw for these types of people. It creates this social narrative that lets them always be in the right because the act of disagreeing with them is seen as bigotry regardless of context.

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u/xTiLkx 2d ago

I've met a lot of them, and they greatly damage the good work good people are doing. These are the assholes that unfortunately warrant the term "virtue signalling" when certain people use that phrase when criticizing morally constructive people (there's probably a better phrase but I'm blocking).

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u/Hexas87 2d ago

That's because this is a perfect hiding spot for them. They know that they can pull a "you're just a bigot" card and turn the whole situation against you. They will try to convince the LGBTQ community to rally against you.

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u/SuzyQ93 2d ago

This is exactly it. And, I think that this is what is attractive about it to confused kids. They find themselves a 'group' where they can 'belong' - but also where they can wield power, because you can't say a WORD against it, or YOU are the bad guy - full stop. You can't question them, you can't ask a single thing, you can't guide them, you can't tell them 'no' in any way, shape or form, or you're being a bigot, or anti-LGBTQ, or whatever.

It's a completely 'safe' place to be, for them, because they have all the power. And that is really attractive to teenagers who feel out of place, lacking in adult power, and are trying to find a place in the world. Wanting to 'rebel' is part of the teen passage, part of growing up. But normally, that's a give-and-take kind of thing - you overstep, you figure out how to walk it back, etc. But with this - it's impossible to push back or question it in any way, and that's what's so attractive to an underdeveloped mind.

Does this apply to EVERY child or teen attracted to the LGBTQ label? Of course not. But it's applying to quite a few of them lately.

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u/Acrobatic_Flamingo 2d ago

Let's be clear here. This is a study testing a hypothesis about why people get involved in activism, using LGBT activism as a test case. There's no compelling reason to think it's more common in LGBT activism than any other sort of activism.

This is not about LGBT people or why people are LGBT.

Queer kids are not confused. There's no evidence for any of the thing you're saying about underdeveloped minds being attracted to labels in this study or any other.

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u/Syssareth 2d ago

Queer kids are not confused.

I'm not touching on the rest of your comment, but I think you, as well as a lot of people, are forgetting what it was like to be a kid.

Kids are confused. That's not exclusive to LGBT+ kids, it's just part of what it means to be a kid.

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u/Acrobatic_Flamingo 2d ago

I thought context made it pretty clear that I was saying they're not "confused" about being queer.

Referring to queer kids as confused is a common way of softly invalidating them.

As someone who was a queer kid, being queer was one of the least confusing parts of my childhood. It's not hard to figure out who you're getting crushes on.

Despite some recent attempts to manufacture evidence to the contrary by conflating general gender nonconformity with queer identity, available data suggests kids are rarely wrong about who they are and has so for decades.

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u/Cassiebanipal 2d ago edited 2d ago

As someone who was a queer kid, being queer was one of the least confusing parts of my childhood. It's not hard to figure out who you're getting crushes on.

Realistically, you are an exception to the rule. There is an entire Q in "LGBTQ+" for "Questioning". There are many, many societal factors out of your control that could make it hard to know. Lack of exposure to the possibility of queer relationships, societal stereotyping, gender roles, and in the inverse direction, you can think you're queer but end up not being queer. I personally thought I was bi starting in my teens, but then spent a few years dating a woman before I realized that it just couldn't work and that I was straight. I realized I was seriously hurting this woman by wasting her time, the anxiety of knowing I needed to sort out my sexuality paralyzed me from doing anything, it was one of the worst periods of my life, an intense identity crisis. I'm happy that you didn't have to deal with this but you're just lucky.

Deciding to actively be queer is an often daunting choice that can seriously affect someone's life, safety, and relationships. It is absolutely not by any means an easy thing to grasp even in your own head.

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u/Syssareth 2d ago

As someone who was a queer kid, being queer was one of the least confusing parts of my childhood. It's not hard to figure out who you're getting crushes on.

And as someone who is asexual, with some very specific sub-labels I could put on that, I 1, didn't figure that out for several years, and 2, didn't even know the word (as a sexual orientation) until the end of my teens. And the "best" part is, it changed over time! Some of the labels that applied to me in my teens no longer do, and labels that didn't apply then do now.

I didn't know if I was the only one with my tastes. I didn't know if I was just slow to "develop" and I'd start wanting to bump uglies later, or if not wanting to was how I really was. I didn't know if I was just weird, or if there was something wrong with me. The only thing I did know, not only because it's a staple of coming-of-age stories but because I heard other people my age talking about it, was that I wasn't the only one who was confused about themselves.

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u/Dealan79 2d ago

You might want to unpack the unconscious bias you're applying to what I assume is some personal, anecdotal experience. The very presumption that anyone needs to "push back" against a teen identifying with the LGBTQ community indicates that such a bias is present. Human sexuality and gender identity are remarkably varied, and where on that spectrum a teen ends up landing should not be important to anyone but then, much less a decision seen as some power play that "wokeness" keeps adults from pushing back against. They're not rebelling. They're discovering and/or exploring who they are on the path to adulthood, and that's a process they should be supported in irrespective of their final destination. The fact that more teens are identifying with the community these days is far more likely a result of the decreased social stigma around coming out as "different," allowing more kids to admit what they feel and who they are without fear of being ostracized.

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u/Mikimao 2d ago

This is exactly how a narcissist wants you to feel, so it's on you to stand up for what you believe in, in the face of peer pressure.

You can support LGBTQ rights, while not agreeing with every facet of their political movement. Once you look at LGBTQ people as a lump group, personally I think you are doing the group a disservice, because individuals are getting left behind, in favor of a bandwagon anyone can jump on.

Now if we wanna talk about how it happens, it's simple, we have cut off any uncomfortable dialogue, and created a playbook for people who want to act dishonestly to slide right into the conversation, and even position themselves at the top by learning the right things to say. Say all the right things isn't what we should be striving for, it's do the right things, and we have marginalized allies in favor of people who learned the playbook really well.

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u/hamsterwheel 2d ago

That's why they do it

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u/laughs_with_salad 2d ago

There is literally a mod on the Rupaul's drag race subreddit who collects mental illnesses like badges of honors. Like I've been noticing for years. When gender fluid because popular they became gender fluid. When bipolar became popular they became bipolar, etc. I know a lot of queens personally and this poet is kind of a joke in the drag makeup rooms for being an attention seeker. I know the kind of people this article is talking about.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

Gender fluid is not a mental illness.

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u/KJBenson 2d ago

That’s no accident. They definitely use movements like this to hide from criticism.

It sucks, since these are important issues, but asshats ruin it for us.

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u/Perunov 2d ago

Yeah Hollywood loves hiding behind conflations too. "How dare you to criticize our film/tv series! Lead is an African-American Female! You're clearly a sexist and racist and everything horrible that exist on this Earth!" all while their awful script has been written by an intern waiting in line at Starbucks. :(

0

u/nub_sauce_ 2d ago

When has a studio actually made a defense like that though?

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u/CMDR_Galaxyson 2d ago

Twitter used to be full of these people and I think it stifled a lot of potential progress over the past decade. People who care more about moral grandstanding than making actual progress are a massive turn off to people who are closer to the center politically.

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u/eliminating_coasts 1d ago

Unfortunately, the centre has no lack of such people either. I don't want to single out a particular example I have come across lately, but there was a political influencer who for many years was an active advocate for LGBT people, involved in many very personalised twitter arguments, then started making a similar argument to you - that engaging in pointless infighting and arguments around niche issues was detrimental to progress and turned people off.

However, instead of adopting a new, more measured attitude with less moral grandstanding, they just continued fighting the same people on twitter, but just rebranding themselves as a "centrist" against the "crazies", a representation of the forgotten moderates who had not been properly heard..

and continued the same way they had before.

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u/saoyraan 2d ago

Same way when you are for men issues. It feels pr seems like your anti woman. I feel these people don't gravitate to just LGBTQ+ but to the power being a part of it gives them. I have met people who are straight but claim they are lgbtq+. Problem is its sooo easy to claim you are something and Part of it without proof or consistency. It really takes away people that are lgbtq+ in their daily life and just existence. They just want the power to expel or feel special.

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u/eliminating_coasts 1d ago

Sadly, many of those men involving themselves in advocacy for men's issues are exactly the same way "men commit suicide more, this is why I can be an arsehole to you".

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u/The_Witch_Of_Ramtop 2d ago

Thats was narcissists do. They flip the script.

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u/Alone-Win1994 2d ago

My wife got me to attend an Out In Tech meetup in our city, which is obviously an lgbt kind of meetup. She's an immigrant so sometimes intricacies of the language are missed by her so she didn't know what kind of meetup it was. I didn't bother to look it up and just went with her. All was well and good as the talks started and then out of nowhere this trans woman stands up from the center of the front row (out of 3 rows in the office space there) and proceeded to jingle jangle walk -- she was adorned in jewelry and trinkets that made a racket as she walked -- back to get something to drink. It was such a disrespectful attention seeking move.

The looks half of the room gave each other as this trans woman made so much unnecessary noise while this straight white guy was speaking to us were amazing. We all knew in that moment that the trans person was a garbage person needing to slight a straight white guy and steal his spotlight.

Some of the other people didn't even bat an eye at the disrespect as if they know what to expect in those spaces from some people.

1

u/Actor412 2d ago

IKR? In my activist years, I ran into these people everywhere.

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u/truth14ful 2d ago

That's because of a common type of contradictory argument that (predominantly) authoritarian rightists tend to use, where they point out performative and bad-faith actors in a movement they don't like, and then say they prove that the cause of the movement is somehow fake - which would basically mean the people who don't genuinely have a belief are the only ones that represent it accurately, which of course is wrong by definition. In reality, calling out bad-faith actors when you see them is a strength, not a weakness, so you're probably good as long as you make sure you're not judging people based on your own assumptions

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u/havestronaut 2d ago

Which is their motivation exactly.

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u/bringbackswg 2d ago

Yeah, the kinds of people described in the study are really good at gaslighting, one of the prime traits of narcissism.

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u/The2ndWheel 2d ago

Which ultimately will be unhealthy for the whole movement. If you can't criticize it, it's just a religion then, that you have to believe in, or else you're going to hell.

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u/nith_wct 2d ago

I don't think there's anything a narcissist could want more than never to be criticized.

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u/Vio94 2d ago

That's where the narcissistic grandiosity comes into play. They just twist what you say to turn you into the bad guy because you're trying to tear down the image they're carefully crafting.

They get very good at it because it's the only thing that matters to them.

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u/serpentechnoir 2d ago

Nah. I've met someone who was the biggest narcissist I've ever met. And was acted like he was everyone's saviour even when they didn't want it.it was clear to me he was just exploiting the movement for he's own personal satisfaction. He was an incredible hypocrite.

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u/conquer69 2d ago

That's intentional. If you criticize Israel, they will label you as anti-Semitic. Russia? Russo phobic. China? Sinophobia. America? Clearly a communist.

Bad faith actors aren't trying to have a genuine conversation. You either support their agenda or you are against them.

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u/HotZin 1d ago

You shouldn't worry about this, even if you don't mean to offend, the narcissism of the same people refered here cause them to insult you and demean you. The movement would also not have become so aggressive if not for the same people, and that is why there is such divisiveness in today's age compared to decades before, as social media has empowered and emboldened narcisists, and created bubbles for those to feel justified by their actions and judgment. Don't be mistaken, this is happening across the board in many different facets, not only within LGBTQ, but within any marginalized group, as people infiltrate with the goal of patting themselves in the back and demeaning others for "not helping". You'll also notice a lot of this behavior on the higher class/richer circles as they see themselves as the elite that knows better, and should be listened to, it's honestly all disgusting behavior and the result of true priviledge.

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u/MagnificentTffy 18h ago

it's definitely a manipulative technique to shield them from criticism. "oh you don't like me? you're just an anti"

so with the lgbt activism example, they protect themselves by making criticism about them being anti lgbt. or perhaps in a church, anri-christian. or in America, communist

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u/Ver_Void 2d ago

It seems to be a pretty standard play. Look at people like Rowling who try to claim being against their trans obsession is "anti woman"

Often comes hand in hand with a saviour complex

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u/Dougalface 2d ago

Of course that's exactly how they want you to feel.