Survival in a Hotbed of Dangerous Women
You want to know why everything is such a mess? Read your Bible. It’s right there in Genesis, up close and personal. Paradise was swell until Eve got mixed up with that serpent.
It was Eve’s fault, all right. The serpent was just doing its job. First the Lord God warns her not to eat the apple, but then the snake says it’s OK, it’ll make you feel like a god yourself. Given a choice between God and a snake, Eve trusts the snake.
Of course, Adam should have known better. He could have said I’m not hungry right now and, um, didn’t God tell us we’d die if we ate from that tree? But Eve would have pouted and said but honey I’ve already taken a bite, laying down an epic guilt trip. It’s hard to blame the guy.
Next thing you know they realize they’re naked and get so ashamed they sew some fig leaves together. And so today there’s a multibillion-dollar fashion industry and men are so screwed up they wage war, commit all sorts of crimes and ponder penile enlargement surgery. Good grief.
Now, maybe Eve doesn’t exactly fit Stephen Johnson’s profile of the Dangerous Woman, but she was at least the original enabler. Johnson, a therapist, is the founder and executive director of the Men’s Center of Los Angeles, a counseling agency based in Woodland Hills. The Men’s Center might be best known for running the Sacred Path Retreat, one of those camps where guys get together to beat drums, share secrets and ponder what it means to be a man.
Now Johnson is also focusing on the problem of what he calls the Dangerous Woman.
Consider this breathless news release:
“He is successful, wealthy, ambitious, charismatic, influential and intelligent. She is beautiful, charming, magnetic, fun-loving, smart, sexy, desirable--virtually irresistible. She is the woman of his dreams. But she is destined to become his worst nightmare. . . .
“She’s treacherous and doesn’t care if he’s married or single. She may stalk him, scream at him, embarrass him in public, slash his tires, threaten suicide, write letters to his wife, or worse.”
You know, the “Fatal Attraction” type.
Johnson is leading a workshop on April 20 to help men identify Dangerous Women. And he’s working on a book, tentatively titled “Fall From Grace: Men Who Love Dangerous Women.”
I wanted to talk with Johnson, man to man, before Geraldo got to him. So I found myself driving over Coldwater Canyon this week. Johnson works three days a week in the Valley and two days in Beverly Hills, in the Center for Holistic Psychology building. (Beverly Hills, not surprisingly, is said to be a hotbed of Dangerous Women.)
Johnson, a Woodland Hills resident, is 49 years old, has been married 19 years and is the father of two sons and a daughter. On the wall of his office were degrees from USC. He was stylish this day in blousy black shirt and black slacks, and seemed as friendly and open as a therapist should. We talk about “father wounds” and “narcissistic wounds.”
Men who have unreconciled “issues” with their father, it seems, are the type who might end up at the Sacred Path Retreat in search of heavy-duty male bonding. Hey, whatever works. Men who have “narcissistic wounds,” Johnson explained, are the most vulnerable to Dangerous Women.
They are “men who have a great need to feel special, to be adulated, exalted, adored.” The Dangerous Women who deliver that adulation often suffer “borderline personality disorders” rooted in childhood difficulties with both parents.
Drawn together in “adrenaline-surge relationships,” Johnson said, these men and women are often thought to deserve each other: Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn, Gary Hart and Donna Rice.
Apart from high-profile cases, Johnson said he’s gathering information about other “predatory women,” including some who’ve tricked men into paternity.
The more Johnson talked, the more I worried for the guy. How soon would it be before the National Organization for Women pickets the Men’s Center? Nobody, not even men, thinks of Clinton, Bakker and Hart as victims of Dangerous Women, but as guys who are guilty of thinking with their you-know-whats.
But it’s a two-way street, Johnson argued. “The men are guilty of not exercising good judgment, but each of these women capitalized on those situations.”
And women shouldn’t get angry with him, Johnson said, because they are often the victims of these predatory peers.
“Wives call me and say, ‘Dr. Johnson, my husband is involved with a Dangerous Woman . . . and I need to get him to see you.’ ”
The predatory women “don’t care about sisterhood,” he added. “They go after whatever they want. It doesn’t matter who’s in their way.” And though society tends to place more fault with the men, “the truth of it is there are women out there who are truly looking for opportunities to take advantage of these situations.”
*
The more we talked, the more nervous Johnson seemed to get.
“Dangerous Women,” he insisted, won’t be a backlash book, not a response to the men-are-pigs school of feminism. It won’t be some hairy-chested answer to, say, Susan Forward’s “Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them.” (“A good book,” Johnson added. “I still recommend it.”)
He continued: “I’m not trying to incense the feminists or ultrafeminists. It’s more that I’m trying to wake men up to be more careful.”
And sell some books. “Dangerous Women” should sell better than “Narcissistic Men.” Publishers like snappy titles, he admitted. And besides, he offered, by helping men, he’ll also help women.
What a guy.
Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Calif. 91311. Please include a phone number.
The more Johnson talked, the more I worried for the guy. How soon would it be before the National Organization for Women pickets the Men’s Center?
