Gender bias can often color our judgment when it comes to correctly perceiving someone’s character.

There are predators among us. There’s something qualitatively different about them. They use powerful tactics to play on your strongest needs and insecurities and to make you abandon your instincts about them, allowing you to eventually become captive. Their true nature often only comes to light when the jig is up.

There’s been a lot of media hype about psychopaths in recent weeks. But true psychopaths are neither as common nor as easy to identify as some in the popular media would have you believe. You have to really understand those devoid of empathy, remorse, and conscience in order to minimize the risk of victimization.

The more often they’re held accountable by others, and the more often they’re expected to abandon their typical manipulative tactics for more appropriate behaviors, the more “practiced” [disturbed characters] become at being responsible.

The tactic of denial can be expressed in several other subtle variations such as feigning innocence, feigning ignorance, and acting surprised. But no matter what form in which it comes, it’s most often merely a way of lying.