🧵37/n
Ch 13
This one is about public figures again. Back in his wheelhouse. He dumps the cumbersome and too frequent metaphors and gives specific details and talks about cases. This chapter, along with two others, if not particularly relevant to everyday personal safety, is at least far more interesting and less annoying than anything else in the book.

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🧵36/n
Then he blames absent fathers. I think this had been debunked. Very of its time. And brings up genetics, the D4DR gene. But then says other factors could make this person a killer or war hero...

Ch13
I don't expect this chapter to be problematic, but i was highly amused at a sentence near the beginning. I love how he says the assassination of public figures is VERY important for us all (implication being his job is most important).

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🧵35/n
Ch12
...more about isolation due to too much consumption. Slightly better?

Lack of things humans need (Emotional Intelligence by Goleman)- motivate ourselves, persist against frustration, delay gratification, regulate moods, to hope, to emphathize, control impulse. And angry children. And child abuse. Are incident indicators. Not bad.

Ok it starts with why does this occurr to how to prevent parricide = be a loving parent. Uhhh...
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🧵34/n
Ch 12 Many examples he provides have misogynistic tinges. I think we've had far better conversations and studies about this lately, after the book's time. It's patriarchy, gender binary, expectations for men (that they be manly) and women (that they obey). No idea what he had to say about the school and mass shootings.

He blames drugs more than media products part way thru. Ugh. Gives another nod to violent media consumption (a myth!) before talking...

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🧵33/n
Ch 11 P203 the disturbing idea that once you aren't being pursued, it's bc he's harassing someone else. Usually, they have to attach a tentacle to someone else before detaching all the tentacles from their current object.

Chapter 12
More hindsight is 20/20 here.

He's asking the question can media products compel people to violence about boys who blamed Judas Priest for suicide.

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🧵32/n
As in the DV chapter, he tell us what women SHOULD do, then explains that that won't keep them safe either. Women shouldn't say they don't want to be in a relationship right now, but they don't want to be in one WITH YOU. Be clear. But sometimes the man won't hear that either. Lol, okay...

P200 we see de Becker does understand... "They are taught that speaking it clearly and early may lead to unpopularity, banishment, anger, and even violence."

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🧵31/n
Stalking is bad, movies equated it to romance, men have a responsibility to recognize tendencies in themselves.
"...the stakes of resisting romantic attention have risen sharply."

This is sort of reading like a man who wants you to know he's an ALLY and posts scoldy activist things on Twitter but ends up being massively disappointing. Sub sexual harassment with describing men and women in cringeworthy victim blaming ways.

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🧵30/n
Ch 10
He admits leaving is what kills them AND has many stories from a book on stalking where she'd already LEFT and still was murdered.

He invented MOSAIC20, which assesses the women's info and flags the most likely to kill so i guess he's solved it for LA. (I wish i could verify his claims here).

Chapter11
If we were left in doubt of his understanding of women and women's rights, he's more clear in these first pages.

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🧵29/n
Ch 10. This is an old book, by an old dude, so he's kind of judgemental about which relationships are successful or acceptable too.

I appreciated the bit about TROs not fixing the problem, but instead of calling on police to do anything differently even though they have signs the man they've arrested will kill the woman - he still puts it on the woman to not expect a TRO to keep them safe.

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🧵28/n
Chapter 10
I wish I had read or knew a DV expert who could critique this chapter. I feel at a loss. I have only my intuition, and isn't that what this author celebrates? There's a nice list of warning signs &he talks about Nicole Brown Simpson. A lot of it seems ...not wrong. But i will say it's pretty clunky and leans toward victim blaming. He does try to explain that away, but he didn't really succeed.
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🧵27/n
...but maybe weren't all able to be compiled until something bad happened.

All the analyses are post event. He's saying you could've predicted this with intuition, but could you? Really? I'm not convinced.

Okay. The account of the firing of employees was fine. He's a consultant. This is clearly his wheelhouse. He stayed away from horrible clunky and too frequent metaphors. I still think he should stay away from women's safety though.

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🧵26/n
The difference in nonviolent but annoying letter writer getting to be on TV and the annoying turned deadly letter writer when engaged was interesting. If he stuck to cases, i think it'd be an ok book.

Chapter 9
Arrrgh. So sure, you should check references and sure there are some things you can glean ahead of time, but a lot of this feels like hindsight is 20/20. He makes a neat list of facts which when taken together are cause for alarm...

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🧵25/n
Chapter 8 maybe is fine.
Story of Tommy. Nonviolent but annoyingly persistent business idea guy. For this, that old idea that ignoring them makes it go away was the right thing. This isn't going to be for true all cases, like those targeted for gender or race - i hope the author makes a distinction.

So many little analogies - still annoying and too plentiful.

Famous people. His specialty, fine.

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🧵24/n
Another not unuseful thing- Threats to public figures vs regular people are opposite. A direct threat to a famous person isn't serious, but the adoration, rejection, travel plans, or belief owed something is. But direct threats by close friends or family increases the possibility of violence.

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🧵22/n
That coconut tree analogy.

But I hope he doesn't do the what were you wearing thing. Or tell women not to walk alone or at night - that's too general to be realistic.

He uses 'stay in a violent relationship' as a context you can avoid as easily as not walking under a coconut tree. Bullshit. Does he know anything about abusive relationships? (He claims to, given his family.)

Edit: He didn't go there with women or rape victims, thank glob!
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🧵21/n
Two toots ago- Step 8 is objectivity, then in step 9, investment, you have to care about the outcome? That's the opposite of objective?

In chapter 7 maybe a few paragraphs are okay. I get what he's saying about context, but again, it's too obvious.

And he's going in a blame the victim direction... idk... maybe not. I'm cringing anyway. Sure, giving him the benefit of the doubt, of course you can eliminate some danger by not being there.
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🧵20/n
I like how he thinks comparing the US killing 100 Iraqis (you know, "good" guys killing bad guys) and a Palestinian he's called a terrorist elsewhere killing 100 Israelis (you know "bad" guys killing good guys) will be shocking. Lol.

I consider most US and Israeli actions terrorism, so this was completely lost on me. Ridiculousness. But clearly i know how he thinks we think.

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🧵18/n
Ch 6
Starts with another story or scenario. We can really cut all these.

He does link violence to language of rejection, entitlement, grandiosity, attention seeking, revenge, attachment, identity seeking. That's on the verge of getting to a point. I wish he'd explore that.

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🧵17/n
P80 List of 8 things common to us all

P81 Then list of 8 features of people who act in spite of conscience or empathy

P83 the list of normal vs sketchy behavior - nine points. Like "does his job and no more" vs "offers to help on unrelated tasks" (This i think most know. Maybe men could read it to learn how to be less creepy... if they didn't know how?)

Four ridiculous multiple choice predictions.

Lots of lists. Ok- do I need to memorize that?😫
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🧵16/n
Chapter 5
Starts with this weird- imagine if this were 2050 and all our predictions were perfect- babysitters and rideshares easy. And keeps going back to it. Ugh. Cumbersome.

He says animals perceive danger chemically, but he doesn't know if humans do. You're writing a book, dude, shouldn't you know this? Maybe read a book or talk to a scientist?

Note - look up psychologist John Monahan. He influenced de Becker's life and work a lot. Any clues?

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