I wanted to share a story about the time I was taken advantage of by weaponized toxic femininity, as way to illustrate a couple points as it relates to how we see victims. It’s kind of long so if you don't have to time, I understand, scroll down to the TL;DR if you just want the cliff notes.

Around 5 or 6 years ago, I was approached by two women on the street. I was on foot, they were in a car. I saw one of them in the passenger seat point at me in the car, as the driver turned their head to me and veered over to pull over and talk to me.

The women were acting distraught, one looked to be around 40-50 and the other looked maybe about 26-32 , and told me this story about how the younger one’s husband left her with nothing and now they are stranded in town, and now they need some money for food and gas to get back home. The younger one kept going in and out from talking to me to going into these fits of crying and wailing, while the older one would look to me and be like “Look what she is going through, please can you help?”

The red flags of the situation were not lost on me. I asked several questions asking them to elaborate on certain parts of their story. They were saying they need about 150$ for mostly gas (they only brought up needing money for food too later) to get to San Diego, and I have driven to San Diego myself many times, you can get there in half a tank of gas, it’s not going to take 150$ at all, it will take 30$ at the very most. I brought that point up to them, do you know how they respond? They both immediately shifted their demeanor from victim mode to shame mode, and took on this “How dare you question our story, can’t you see she is suffering, how can you be so cruel to question a clear victim?!?” tone, and you know what? That fucking worked, my rational mind immediately shut down in that moment of being bombarded by shame by these two harpies. “Am I really being cruel by showing skepticism? I don’t want to be cruel…”

Her specific response to question about gas was “She has a small tank okay?!” which makes no sense, having a small take means you will have to stop for gas more, not spend 5 times more on gas. But I didn’t press the point, because she had succeeded in making me feel like an asshole for pushing back at all. So I was succumbed by this “I don’t want to make her suffer more with my skepticism” psychological attack she did on me. She wielded toxic femininity (the damsel in distress trope) as deftly as a veteran duelist wields a rapier, she got me to surpress my own rational mind, out of fear that my very much working-as-it’s-supposed-to brain is going to victimize her even more.

What you need to understand is that I am very much was and still am a “do-gooder”, I really want to do good in the world, I want to be a good person, I want to live in with integrity and honor, and did not realize until after the fact just how vulnerable to manipulation that makes me. I now believe they saw that in me from the moment they saw me in their car; I was/am a romantic, their ideal mark.

They claimed that they would pay me back once they are settled in San Diego, and they kept offering fake collateral, like photos of their driver’s license and debit cards, and going on camera to saying “I So-&-so have a agreed to pay [me] X dollars”. Even those offers were given with tones of shame though, as if I am being the asshole by doubting their stories enough to make them give me collateral. So I only took a picture of one of the older one’s of state driver’s license (which was useless)

I said to the younger one “Please don’t screw me over, I’m a starving artist, I want to help you, but I really don’t have much.” That was 100% true, I only had 600$ in my bank account. The younger one, in a suddenly somber tone asked “What kind of art do you make?” I said “Music” she said “Hmmm” as if she was feeling guilty for a second, but only just a second.

They followed me to the ATM machine. I wanted to run, I should have run, my brain was cut in half; I had my rational mind clearly seeing the red flags and just telling me to run away, and then I had my guilty do-gooder conscious, rattled by guilt, shame, and tears, that felt an obligation to play hero for these damsels in distress. As we were at the ATM, continuing to talk, the younger one kept one embellishing the story even more, suddenly saying the older one was pregnant, and that she will double what I let her burrow when she pays me back, she even showed me pay stubs to demonstrate that she does in fact have money (I later on realized that those pay stubs were most likely from previous cons). The Red flags just kept piling up, but at this point I just couldn’t think straight, their psychological attacks that they were leveraging on me to wear down my rational mind was working, they were effectively using my empathy against me. I never fathomed just how powerful empathy can be in shutting down the rational mind until that moment. Every time my rational mind tried to narrow in on the red flags, but it was been tactically worn down by those women, and my empathetic mind countered with “But what if they are right though, we can’t just abandon them.” I ended up giving them a little more than what they asked for, god the self-loathing I still feel about stupid I was for offering even more.

To wrap up the story, when I called the number they gave me to arrange the how they will pay me back, they was ignored at first, and then the older one answered sobbing and claimed the younger one killed herself (lol, Oh okay then I guess you don’t have to pay me back now), hung up immediately after that sentence, and then blocked my number.

A wave of complete self-loathing washed over me as I finally accepted that I got played like a fiddle. “You fucking idiot” I thought to myself “How could you let them do this to yourself, you knew this looked wrong, how could you betray yourself like this. I literally yelled at myself in the mirror for about an hour, I have never self-flagellated like I did that morning.

This moment was a wake up call, and maybe a wake up call that I needed. There was a lot that I needed to reflect on, because what the fuck just happened to me back there?

I later looked up this con on the internet and found out it actually has a name, it’s called the Gypsie Con. The details of the story might be different but the goal is the same, two or more women corner a man, drop sobs story on him about how they are victims of some man, or they are stranded and they need money to get home, they use the damsel in distress trope to overwhelm his empathy and out-shout the signal of the rational mind take advantage, they extract money from the man, and bail.

Why is this a time tested con that continues to repeat itself? Because it fucking works, clearly, it is very effective.

Now the point of telling you all this is not to say “woman suck because some are con artists”, I am telling you this because I think we all need to be aware of just how powerful victim status is, and how empathy can be used against you to stop your rational thoughts in their tracks. I think we all know that already, but when you have had an actual female predator weaponize it to successfully to hurt you, you tend to dwell on not allowing that to happen to you again and gain a certain trauma-clarity from it.

When a person claims to be a victim, they are inherently elevated to a kind of pedestal status. For one, it is a call to empathize “I am hurt, I have been hurt, see that in me, respect my pain, take care of me, don’t hurt me, don’t let them hurt me” none of that really need to be spoken outloud, but the implication of it tends to be received by the people surrounding the self-proclaimed victim either way. It is a call to protect the victim.

So because of that, whoever claims victim can very easily control the conversation if that is how they choose to wield that power. So for instance with the con artist, when I pushed back, she was able to shut that down by amplifying her own contrived “I’m hurt I’m hurt” signals to suddenly make me feel like I’m the villain now, and get me to surprise my thoughts as a means to not victimize her anymore.

So patterns of feminists pushing the narrative that women are perpetual victims, makes a lot of sense to me. There is power in being the victim, and a lot of it, so I think feminists either consciously or subconsciously see the victim label as a kind of resource to hold on to. Victimhood is almost like it’s own kind of platform that allows people to listen with an empathetic ear instead of a critical one. When institutions or feminists are against the idea of men ever being seen as victims is actually to deny them these powers, so at no point will a man’s word ever really be taken without the critical mind, while female victim status is free from the critical mind.

There is something else too, I don’t think that gypsy con would be so effective on women. Maybe some of them would, especially if they have disposable income, but I get feeling that this con is distancing designed for a male audience, with an intention of playing off of classic female to male tropes. The con artists used the female Damsel in distress trope to call out to the male heroic problem-solver trope in me, I think this motif might run deep in our psyche, and can be exploited if we are not mindful.

The other important take away from this was that Empathy can actually shut down rationality; I have experienced it myself. Don’t get me wrong, I think empathy is really important, I really do believe we need to be able to nurture it and invest it in the people around you who deserve it. But here is the thing about vulnerability… It’s vulnerable. So this is why just telling men that they need to be more vulnerable is fucking stupid; no they don’t. We need to be strategically vulnerable; vulnerable with those that have earned our trust and who can actually help, and with a sound critical mind that is listened to when inconsistencies arise. Empathy with no critical counter-balance however can and will be taken advantage of if you allow it to be, and I assure you, there are people who are trying.

Thank you for staying with me the whole post if you made it to the end, I hope you all got something out of this.

TL;DR - I once got conned out of some money by women who weaponized tactical toxic femininity. In this post I tell the story, and break down how that was happening to me on a psychological level. Then I make some points about how powerful victimhood status, and why it is seen by many feminists as something they need to monopolize, and how we need to be aware of how our empathy can be exploited, but also empathy is still great so we need to cultivate a balance of empathy with rationality.