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Can we talk for a moment about how a reputation for "stretching the truth", "taking artistic license", or "heightening for effect" can help cover for abusive behavior?
To start off, let me say: exaggerations do not mean you're a bad person. But they can be used as a smokescreen.
To start off, let me say: exaggerations do not mean you're a bad person. But they can be used as a smokescreen.
Backstory: I had an advisor well known for his bawdy humor and over-the-top jokes. I loved him enough to ask him to be a groomsman at my wedding. Couple weeks before the wedding, though, we found out he was a serial philanderer who'd had affairs with multiple students for years.
In fact, it became clear that he'd had a standard way of testing limits and escalating in order to either find or groom new partners, and our friendship primarily served as a way to find a new pool of potential targets.
And while I'd like to take the shock that folks in our circle/department felt when this all came out and chalk it up to male obliviousness, many of the women I know, including ones he'd had affairs with, were equally shocked by the revelation of how predatory he was.
And we all thought, "but how could he be such a sleaze and openly joke about being a sleaze? How fucking brazen is that?" And the thing was, it wasn't brazen, it was shrewd.
You see, his "heightened" sense of humor gave him cover.
You see, his "heightened" sense of humor gave him cover.
First, it meant he could toe the line with women and if they thought he crossed it, it was, "wow, he let that joke go too far" instead of suspicion.
And even if it did become a suspicion, folks around her would say, "that's just how he is" instead of listening to her concerns.
And even if it did become a suspicion, folks around her would say, "that's just how he is" instead of listening to her concerns.
Second, it meant he could tell stories about things that happened, and as long as some parts were hyperbole, people would happily assume the line was somewhere they were comfortable with.
And third, if people who really knew things he'd done and "that girl who ____", listeners would assume it was a humorous reference to the story he told, not a reflection of real facts.
TL;DR: cultivating a reputation for "heightening reality" gives people a lot of cover to believe the best of you because they know "well, *that* horrific part was clearly a joke".
(BTW, I don't think it was accidental that he focused all his attention on college students. In his particular case, I think anyone over 30 would have immediately twigged a bunch of red flags, but instead most of us were still just learning how the world worked.)
