Weaponized Incompetence

Sorry it took so long to get back to this.

At the time, I suppose I didn't realize they were only pretending not to understand. Particularly with my brother, I honestly thought I just wasn't making myself clear. Now I know, that's just exactly what he wanted me to think, so I'd give up trying to express my opinion and get down off my soapbox. If I "can't" explain my position adequately, then maybe I'm full of baloney after all.

He knew perfectly well, all along, the point I was trying to make.

I do believe that pretending not to understand what I mean is a form of weaponized incompetence. It doesn't seem to me that my brother was looking for a fight so much as he was trying to get me to shut up. In either situation, whether pretending not to understand, or pretending not to be good at doing the chore, the goal is to silence the other person.

It makes sense. I was thinking of my dad who likes to pretend he doesn’t understand. He does not do it to make us shut up but rather wants us to get irritated and start arguing with him and then he can get all wired up and get the steam out. It seems like regardless if people do it to cause a fight or shut others up, it’s a manipulation. Frustrating

Let me give an example of my brother pretending not to understand. Before I went no contact with him and blocked him on Facebook, my husband came down with pneumonia right around the same time I had a pretty nasty cold. On Facebook, I used this real-life situation as an analogy. My cold still needed treatment, even though it wasn't as serious as my husband's pneumonia. We were both sick, and both needed to take care of ourselves (and each other). Ignoring my own symptoms and insisting I'm not sick, just because he is sicker, wouldn't have done him any good. Likewise, we shouldn't compare trauma. We need not pretend we haven't suffered, just because we know about somebody who went through something worse.

My exact post:

"Telling people they shouldn't feel traumatized because something worse happened to somebody else is like telling them they shouldn't take medicine for that cold, because somebody else has pneumonia." ----Me

Several friends responded and indicated they got exactly what I meant, but my brother instead tried to steer the conversation in another direction. He wanted to talk about people who only THINK they have pneumonia, until they meet somebody with REAL pneumonia..... Yeah. By the same analogy, he was saying our childhood wasn't abusive because other people had it worse. He just wanted me not to talk about the abuse. That's why he pretended not to get my point.