The sickening necessity of the charm offensive, and when to drop it

It’s slightly juvenile, but I have really enjoyed Ginny & Georgia on Netflix. Briefly, for those who don’t watch, it’s a show about Ginny, a teenager, and her mother Georgia, who is only in her early 30s, drop-dead gorgeous, and has done some questionable things in the name of her and her kids’ safety. I think the appeal for me is Ginny’s sincere interest in knowing her mother and all about her past, and Georgia’s resistance to sharing. This is a most unusual mother/teen daughter dynamic. I didn’t consider my mother as having a life besides the one I knew until I was well into my twenties.

But relevant to this essay, in the latest season, Ginny and her friends ice out their fourth friend Maxine, who they think is just too sensitive and whose feelings are too easily hurt. I think Maxine’s friends were pretty cruel to her; on the other hand, I sort of admire their refusal to concern themselves with her many emotions.

@driesen.aepending the season loving & feeling so bad for max was not on my s3 bucket list #ginnyandgeorgia #maxinebaker #sarawaisglass #ginnymiller #abbylittman #marcusbaker

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I have a very low tolerance for walking on eggshells. If I sense a responsibility for others’ feelings, I’m out. I consider myself a kind person, so of course I care about the feelings of my friends and family, and I don’t want to hurt them. But there is an element of dysfunction when said friend or relative insists that I make personal choices or behave in a particular way in order for them to be kind back to me.

I spent every day of my life for 25 years walking on those eggshells, and it induces an intolerable anxiety. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I spent every moment on high alert, searching for clues to my mother’s mood, second-guessing the things I did and said in anticipation of how she might react. If her feelings were hurt, that spelled hours, days, weeks of turmoil for me. I continued this hyper-vigilance with anyone I was close to, believing it to be normal. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I realized it was not normal, or healthy, and that a more relaxed and reciprocal relationship was even possible.

So perhaps this is why I have the same impatience for men in leadership roles who insist those around them also tiptoe around their emotions. Over the last several months I’ve seen many stories that reveal how people have acted in a deliberate way to placate tyrants. Take Donald Trump, whose “bromance” with France’s Emmanuel Macron garnered headlines, as did the U.K.’s Keir Starmer’s state visit invitation. Much has been made of these and other politicians’ strategic charm offensive, aiming to win over Trump rather than piss him off with overt signs of strength or assertiveness. Theirs is the opposite of what we saw from Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his visit to the White House, and we all know how that went for the Ukranian president.

Earlier this year, Sarah Wynn-Williams published her memoir, Careless People, about her time at Facebook. In at least one interview as part of her book tour, she explains the staff’s techniques — like playing board games — for calming Mark Zuckerberg when they thought he might get angry or frustrated at things not going his way. He, like Trump, is a grown man.

These are examples of people in powerful positions placating others in more powerful positions. But many of us “regular” people do this every single day. Women so often navigate men’s feelings because we are afraid of what they might do if they’re hurt or upset, or feel rejected or weak. We all know that mishandling a breakup can end in tragedy, as it did for Louise, Hannah and Carol Hunt. Of course their brutal murder is an outlier in the realm of men’s hurt feelings, but it was not a surprise to any woman who’s swiped right on the wrong guy. We are all afraid of this outcome. These types of murderous rampages might be rare, but how many murderous rampages can be traced back to a man believing he is owed something by a woman? A lot.

We saw the exact same scenario play out in the Netflix hit, Adolescence. A boy, angry at a girl for bullying him online and making him feel foolish, responds with murder. While the program received rave reviews (mine included), it did seem to go to pains to exclude the victim’s story while also painting her as somewhat responsible for her own death: maybe if she hadn’t been mean to this particular boy, she’d be alive.

There are countless jokes about women’s emotions and mood swings, about how men must tiptoe around our feelings. Just watch any episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. But the difference is that men don’t need to fear for their safety. It all goes back to that old Margaret Atwood quote:

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

―Margaret Atwood

These power dynamics are scariest when a dangerous man is wielding it over a vulnerable woman, but it’s not the only possible scenario. It might be a narcissistic politician, or a genuinely Bad Mother. They all insist their own stability and rationality, and your own safety, is dependent on you, giving the illusion of control. But in reality, they are using their power to manipulate.

I don’t know the big picture solution, other than continue the hard work of breaking down patriarchal structures that give men control over women. In families and romantic relationships, however, it may be that the dynamic is so unhealthy as to be unsustainable. In those cases, we must not judge people who leave for their own self-interest and safety.