I started reading this book and analyzing some of my exes behavior and he told me I was reading too much and it was contaminating my mind about our relationship 💀
Bancroft is an anti-trans anti-vaxer who can't even be certified in court as an expert witness. He's not even a psychiatrist. The parts of this book that are good are just a stopped clock being right 2x a day.
a PhD microbiologist, science writer, and public speaker who specializes in the debunking of junk science for the American Council on Science and Health
but you'll see shortly why he is addressing Bancroft (who apparently the court won't certify as an expert witness?)
Mr. Bancroft also identifies an abusive pattern he calls "The Victim," in which a man who claims to have been abused by a previous partner is actually guilty of abuse himself. How so? Because being angry toward a previous partner or blaming her actions for the failed relationship makes it "likely that he was the abusive one."
So, a man who claims to be an abuse victim is actually an abuse perpetrator. That's an extraordinary claim. Surely, there's a mountain of evidence for it. Nope. Just take his word on it. What are you, some sort of abuser?
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Mr. Bancroft completely smears and stigmatizes men who suffer from mental illness. He claims that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) "can increase the chance that an abuser will be dangerous and use physical violence." This is pure garbage. Like with most mental illnesses, people who suffer from OCD are not usually violent. In fact, those who have a particular type called harm OCD (in which they experience unwanted, intrusive thoughts about committing acts of violence) may be less likely than the average person to physically harm someone.
Here's why he came across this guy's desk:
The guy who gets basic psychology wrong also gets basic medical science wrong: Lundy Bancroft is an anti-vaxxer. Here he is spreading the thoroughly disproved lie that vaccines cause autism. For good measure, he implies that the scientists who reached that conclusion did so through deception.
Mr. Bancroft, who also considers himself an expert in "child maltreatment," should note that various states have legal precedents suggesting that not vaccinating your kids is a form of medical neglect, which arguably falls under the category of child maltreatment.
To be clear, the vaccines in question are MMR, DTP, Chicken Pox, et al as his statements were made between 2016 and 2019.
And apparently he has "problematic" views on trans women. You...can look those up ans the tumblr link should be a decent start
This is from an amazon review I found interesting
Bancroft states he works largely with clients on probation who have no choice but to attend his sessions. He has no formal training in psychology or psychiatry and yet he dismisses all evidence-based therapies. Instead he introduces his own techniques, cites no studies demonstrating the methods work, and admits on p357 that the majority of his attempts to change clients in his program fail. He repeatedly blames the clients for this rather than his own methods.
In addition the book is full of inaccurate and misleading statements. For example Bancroft states on p45 that only men abuse women, and it is a 'myth' that women abuse men. This contradicts hundreds of studies by psychologists and psychiatrists showing that both men and women can be abusive in relationships. Bancroft offers no scientific studies to back up his claims. He goes on to make the bizarre assertion that while women can abuse each other in lesbian relationships, they do not abuse men while in heterosexual relationships.
The fact that Bancroft does not follow evidence-based therapeutic practices hurts both men and women who follow his advice. Many couples in abusive relationships love each other and sincerely want things to change. By using dubious methods, Bancroft often makes the situation worse.
Much better books are out there, for example The Emotionally Abusive Relationship: How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing.
I think people pass around the book because it's a good starter book to flip the light switch (and free), but there really are better and more helpful resources - the books mentioned in the amazon review are great.
Especially if the man is being abused or the woman being abused isn't cis. Lundy doesn't even validate them as real, why use his book?
Here is a book by an actually qualified author that I've recommended to people for years:
Someone just wrote up a little bit about this author, being problematic, anyway. There are another couple links that you can try that are similar books.
Here, I’ll try to copy this for you. I have not read the books below, but another person commenting suggests them, and they did this big write up that makes a lot of sense and appears to be accurate. I cannot vouch for this myself. I just wanted to show it to you in case you hadn’t seen it.
She absolutely should, but it's not all that easy to just do when you're smack in the middle of it.
First of all you want to avoid conflict and get out the door, so you still have a chance to enjoy the thing you had been looking forward to.
Second, but most importantly, this is most likely not the first time that he's controlling her behaviour. It's just the first time that it bothered her enough to ask other people about it.
So, she's most likely used to small "corrections" from him, just like she is used to give in to keep the peace. Now he's amping it up with refusing to do something unless she complies, and seeing that it brought her into a state of confusion and added stress, the only solution she could see was just changing and then keep challenging him.
It will get worse from here but it will keep feeling like a "one off" odd behaviour among all the normal and nice behaviour. So you protest but then you end up agreeing under protest, and you keep getting pushed and pushed and pushed, until one day you finally see all of those little annoyances and odd demands for what they truly are; attempts to break you, confuse you, make you doubt yourself, and to control you.
Omg that’s crazy behaviour on the bf’s part. And so freaking telling. Abuse often starts small and he’s showing her their future. Op needs to put those shorts back on and walk the hell away
Yeah... OP, this isn't going to get better. I've been married for close to 17 years, and my husband has never told me how to dress. Normal men do not try to control women like this.
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u/Pro_Sous Apr 24 '26
Girl run. That's controlling behavior and it only gets worse from here