this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
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Er, yes actually, I think there's an outright fetishization of this. It's one of the things that drives the enduring multi-generation popularity of the Joker & Harley Quinn characters.
Beyond the simplistic "I can fix him!" trope (which is a reflection of behavior that real people exhibit) there's a kind of strange attraction that some individuals have to a person who does not generally display affection - they want to win affection from that person because it feels exclusive, it feels special, and that makes them special.
It's part of why you see some people go back to the same bad relationships, the same abusive partners repeatedly (there's also the sunk-cost fallacy).
You might say, "oh, but that's just a few unhealthy people", but I don't think that's true. These behaviors exist as tropes in our media because they are relatable to many audiences - which means that the behavior is fairly common, everyone knows somebody who acts that way.
Yes it's a massive trope in media, we're all taught it from a young age. DA is complicated the coercive control is a really hard thing to break.
Well, yes certainly there is evidence that domestic abuse behavior is often repeated by children who grow up in that environment, but that's kind of an extreme example of what I'm trying to describe.
There's an attraction to the "bad boy" figures. It's deeply interwoven with the cultural experience of romance, and it's more subtle than obvious examples of physical violence. If you are a woman who has felt attraction to Steve McQueen, or John Bender (Judd Nelson) in The Breakfast Club, or Han Solo, or if you were on a "team" for the Twilight series (or you liked 50 Shades of Grey), etc... you experienced this.
Aggressive behavior is frequently associated with perceptions of strength and dominance (not in the D/s kink sense, but in the being in control or leadership sense) which are generally attractive.
So to bring it back to the original, I don't think it's valid to simplify this issue down to just "bad men" being deceptive. Certainly that does happen, but reality is far more complex than that and framing it this way paints the women as only helpless, foolish victims, which robs them of their own agency.
The truth is that women do in fact pick "bad men", not in ignorance or because they were deceived, but knowing full well what they're getting into (when your parents don't approve of your boyfriend and that just makes you want to keep him more)... this is bound up in thousands of years of human culture. There is absolutely need for change, but... It's just not as simple as the idea presented in the original post. People are far more complex than that, in their emotions, in their desires, in their relationships.
Hey, I wanna be respectful and ask before I give my two cents. I'm a supportive dude (read I was raised by not a terrible influence) but I didn't want to insert myself into conversations where my opinion isn't welcome.
Is it alright if I chime in? (Totally valid to tell me to fuck off, I respect the need for certain zones of exclusion)
Hi Yiddish! Your name made me smile. We are women only so please don't comment again ❤️
🫡
Edit: lo ciento
Personally I'm extremely leery of echo chambers, so my opinion is yes, if you want to contribute to the discussion in a constructive way then do so.
After all, the only way to learn and grow beyond your own individual experience is to gain from someone else's experience.
Counterpoint:
99.44% of Lemmy groups are male dominated (even the ones ostensibly about women). I don't think the one single group that is women-only is about to turn into an echo chamber.