“A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her prosocial sense, you are damaging it - and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.”
About This Quote
Stout brilliantly illuminates how young girls are socialized to be "nice" and "demure" sometimes at the risk of disregarding their own personal safety. When young girls are constantly told to avoid conflict, to not be angry and to not follow what their gut instincts are telling them, they place themselves in harm's way. If they are conditioned to always see the good in everyone, without considering that there are predators out there with little to no empathy or even a conscience, they are unable to also envision ways to protect themselves from the tactics of the conscienceless.
More from Martha Stout
“The ultimate manipulation is to kill someone, and sociopathy is murderous in a…”
“Most of us have some kind of positive goal in mind when we think of winning. A sociopath…”
“Well, the perfect victim, from the sociopath’s point of view, is the person who is smart…”
“Another lynchpin is dishonesty. Lying for the sake of lying. Lying just to see whether you…”