What do you think?
Rate this book
Venus: The Dark Side
Who are more manipulative, men or women? If you answered 'women', you'll want to know more about this new book which explores how some women have become 'black belts' at the martial art of manipulation (with the shoes and accessories to match of course!) Helpful to men and fascinating to women, Venus: The Dark Side catalogues for the first time, how these women operate. And in so many cases, they know how to get away with it. But how do you recognise their covert behavior? How can you tell if she is preying on YOU? Venus: The Dark Side is a practical guide on how to recognize the signs and provides detailed help and advice on what you can do (and NOT do) to extricate yourself from her clutches. Already described as 'a very very important book' by a female reader and 'Required reading for all young men today', the book also includes a Due Dilgence Checklist to limit the risks of marrying one of these women. This checklist is equally valuable to women. With a US divorce rate at 51% (and rising), anyone planning to marry would be well advized to study it. And what about the men who are already married to one of the women described in this book what can they expect when it comes to the divorce? The authors offer detailed protection strategies.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 2007
1 person is currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Roy Sheppard
19 books9 followersAn early career as a BBC reporter and presenter on network radio and TV in the UK. Claim to fame: I read the letters on BBC1's "Points of View".
Had a book published by one of the world's largest publishers in the mid-1990's. They made such a mess of it, I decided I could do better myself. So I created Centre Publishing.
My first self-published book (now out of print) was "Your Personal Survival Guide to the 21st Century" The average sales for such a genre is about 5,000 copies. It sold 13,000. My next book Rapid Result Referrals sold about 22,000 copies. Meet Greet & Prosper about 35,000. (This is now available as a free eBook on Smashwords).
In 2007 I co-wrote a controversial book with Mary T Cleary, the founder of Amen.ie, an Irish charity set up to help innocent men who become the victims of horrendous domestic abuse. A taboo topic. This book has helped thousands of innocent men and women. The media refused point blank to have anything to do with a book called "That Bitch: Protect Yourself Against Women with Malicious Intent". For America we changed the title to the more politically correct "Venus: The Dark Side". Still no publicity. That Bitch outsells Venus by a factor of about seven copies to one. They are EXACTLY the same book. Both books receive 4 and 5 star ratings on Amazon in the UK and US. Bitter women tend to give it 1 star ratings. It is absolutely not anti-women.
Genuine, nice women have no problem with it because they know its not about them. We have both been verbally attacked quite viciously by the very women the book is about.
Our "dangerous women" channel on YouTube has attracted about 330,000 visits (without any proactive publicity). We are both asked repeatedly why the book focuses on 'women' not 'people' generally. Countless books exist about 'bad' men. That seems socially acceptable. Yet, there is very little written about the atrocious behavior of these women. They have sold about 8,000 copies all together.
After a few years, I really needed to write about a more uplifting topic though and turned my attention to kind, loving relationships. I wrote "How to be The One" - its premise is; rather than being obsessed about finding 'the one', it asked the question "If you met 'the one' how confident would you be that they would regard you as 'the one' for them?" The book looks at how to be a far more appealing person, first to yourself, then to others. Getting yourself 'ready' for the time you meet that special person. It's about being a better girlfriend, boyfriend, husband or wife. Sort of personal development for relationships. It's different approach to the subject led to a double page spread in the UK's largest circulation women's magazine YOU - part of The Mail on Sunday. CNN.com also featured it and it picked up many detailed articles in a lot of national magazines.
People who read it, loved it. But interestingly, it didn't sell a lot of copies (3,500 or so). It is the least successful of all my books. A real shame but I've been told that its fatal flaw as a book is that it requires the reader to put some effort into their relationships! It's so much easier, to keep looking for someone who is 'perfect' who is prepared to accept them just as they are!
More recently I have written two books. They are a pair. And will be published together mid-2013, although they are available to buy today from the book's website.
One is for all 15-25 year guys, the other is for all 15-25 year women. Called Dear Son: what I wish I'd known at your age and Dear Daughter: what I wish I'd known at your age (which includes interviews about life by a group of amazing women).
These books are designed to provide all young people with practical, no-nonsense advice on a variety of topics. And provide a platform for more meaningful conversations with parents.
Had a book published by one of the world's largest publishers in the mid-1990's. They made such a mess of it, I decided I could do better myself. So I created Centre Publishing.
My first self-published book (now out of print) was "Your Personal Survival Guide to the 21st Century" The average sales for such a genre is about 5,000 copies. It sold 13,000. My next book Rapid Result Referrals sold about 22,000 copies. Meet Greet & Prosper about 35,000. (This is now available as a free eBook on Smashwords).
In 2007 I co-wrote a controversial book with Mary T Cleary, the founder of Amen.ie, an Irish charity set up to help innocent men who become the victims of horrendous domestic abuse. A taboo topic. This book has helped thousands of innocent men and women. The media refused point blank to have anything to do with a book called "That Bitch: Protect Yourself Against Women with Malicious Intent". For America we changed the title to the more politically correct "Venus: The Dark Side". Still no publicity. That Bitch outsells Venus by a factor of about seven copies to one. They are EXACTLY the same book. Both books receive 4 and 5 star ratings on Amazon in the UK and US. Bitter women tend to give it 1 star ratings. It is absolutely not anti-women.
Genuine, nice women have no problem with it because they know its not about them. We have both been verbally attacked quite viciously by the very women the book is about.
Our "dangerous women" channel on YouTube has attracted about 330,000 visits (without any proactive publicity). We are both asked repeatedly why the book focuses on 'women' not 'people' generally. Countless books exist about 'bad' men. That seems socially acceptable. Yet, there is very little written about the atrocious behavior of these women. They have sold about 8,000 copies all together.
After a few years, I really needed to write about a more uplifting topic though and turned my attention to kind, loving relationships. I wrote "How to be The One" - its premise is; rather than being obsessed about finding 'the one', it asked the question "If you met 'the one' how confident would you be that they would regard you as 'the one' for them?" The book looks at how to be a far more appealing person, first to yourself, then to others. Getting yourself 'ready' for the time you meet that special person. It's about being a better girlfriend, boyfriend, husband or wife. Sort of personal development for relationships. It's different approach to the subject led to a double page spread in the UK's largest circulation women's magazine YOU - part of The Mail on Sunday. CNN.com also featured it and it picked up many detailed articles in a lot of national magazines.
People who read it, loved it. But interestingly, it didn't sell a lot of copies (3,500 or so). It is the least successful of all my books. A real shame but I've been told that its fatal flaw as a book is that it requires the reader to put some effort into their relationships! It's so much easier, to keep looking for someone who is 'perfect' who is prepared to accept them just as they are!
More recently I have written two books. They are a pair. And will be published together mid-2013, although they are available to buy today from the book's website.
One is for all 15-25 year guys, the other is for all 15-25 year women. Called Dear Son: what I wish I'd known at your age and Dear Daughter: what I wish I'd known at your age (which includes interviews about life by a group of amazing women).
These books are designed to provide all young people with practical, no-nonsense advice on a variety of topics. And provide a platform for more meaningful conversations with parents.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 17, 2021
‘Women are as aggressive as men… Anyone who claims anything different is lying, has an ulterior motive, or simply does not have accurate data to back up their claims.’
We live strange time. Anyone knows perfectly well that women can be as aggressive, toxic, manipulative, jealous, angry, controlling, vindictive and lying as men, yet, when men open up and talk about being in abusive relationships with just such women, they get dismissed, mocked, mistrusted, and ridiculed. Worse: they might even get blamed, as if being abused by a woman was somehow their fault!
Sexism and prejudice come under weird clothing indeed: on the one hand, due to misandry-that-dares-not-speaking-its-name we deny men the status of victims no matter what, while, on the other hand, in an unconscious misogynist mindset still highly prevalent we keep reducing women to poor little emotional creatures, so supposedly disempowered, in fact, that they are nothing but uncapable of controlling behaviours, let alone violence.
Addressing violence perpetrated by women is important, though, for without doing so we are letting down not only their victims, but also these women who are perpetrators too (abusers might not get sympathy, but they surely need help to solve their toxic behaviours). Here’s a necessary book, then, co-authored by Roy Sheppard, a journalist, and Mary T. Clearly, a nurse and founder of Amen, a charity helping men victims of domestic abuse in Ireland.
Focused mainly on what happen behind closed doors, it’s a stark reminder of what men go through when it comes to physical, emotional, and financial abuse from female partners. It also is a stark reminder of what happen when such men are out of such relationships, with chapters dedicated to acrimonious divorces, false and traumatic accusations of abuse, and, even, parental alienation (for let’s not forget that the victims of such women are not only their male partners, but their children too).
The book has its imperfection. It starts quite strongly (some may find with an angry tone) and I confess I was a bit afraid it would turn out to be a rant (fortunately it’s not; as it become less and less passionate as we go along). Trying to explain why such women behave the way they do it also focuses a great deal on mental health issues. Mental health surely is a factor, but it’s not the only one, and so I found it dedicated too many pages to the topic (e.g. when it comes to psychopaths -psychopaths constitute less than 4% of the population, wouldn’t it have been more relevant to focus more on narcissistic, way more common?).
Having said that, it has its core strength too; for instance, in reminding that, if we are addressing women’s behaviours, we are certainly not denying nor minimising the pleas of women being abused at the hands of men (a silly yet very a common fallacy when bringing such topic up!). In fact, the authors remind us that, contrary to a naïve yet popular view domestic abuse are not only about a clear-cut dynamic abuser vs victim (read: a man vs a woman). Half of such toxic relationships involve in fact what experts call ‘bidirectional abuse’, whereas both partners are abusive to each other (being mainly targeted to men, they even go as far as asking men readers if their own behaviour doesn’t contribute to the problem). It also ends on a positive note which must be nailed: if your wife/girlfriend is abusive, assuming you’re not in one of these relationship where ‘mutual combat’ takes place, then it’s not your fault, and it doesn’t reflect on you. It’s for her to acknowledge the problem, and, if she doesn’t, then she won’t change and you would be better off, for your own safety and wellbeing, to leave her. A female abuser is no different than a male abuser, but how things could end up, simply because you are a man in a society which still has its head buried in the sand when it comes to violence perpetrated by women, can be radically different for you -and not in your best interest! The authors, in fact, give a few advice of what to do if children are involved, something we men are still clueless about and with high consequences when it comes to custody…
An helpful eye-opener.
We live strange time. Anyone knows perfectly well that women can be as aggressive, toxic, manipulative, jealous, angry, controlling, vindictive and lying as men, yet, when men open up and talk about being in abusive relationships with just such women, they get dismissed, mocked, mistrusted, and ridiculed. Worse: they might even get blamed, as if being abused by a woman was somehow their fault!
Sexism and prejudice come under weird clothing indeed: on the one hand, due to misandry-that-dares-not-speaking-its-name we deny men the status of victims no matter what, while, on the other hand, in an unconscious misogynist mindset still highly prevalent we keep reducing women to poor little emotional creatures, so supposedly disempowered, in fact, that they are nothing but uncapable of controlling behaviours, let alone violence.
Addressing violence perpetrated by women is important, though, for without doing so we are letting down not only their victims, but also these women who are perpetrators too (abusers might not get sympathy, but they surely need help to solve their toxic behaviours). Here’s a necessary book, then, co-authored by Roy Sheppard, a journalist, and Mary T. Clearly, a nurse and founder of Amen, a charity helping men victims of domestic abuse in Ireland.
Focused mainly on what happen behind closed doors, it’s a stark reminder of what men go through when it comes to physical, emotional, and financial abuse from female partners. It also is a stark reminder of what happen when such men are out of such relationships, with chapters dedicated to acrimonious divorces, false and traumatic accusations of abuse, and, even, parental alienation (for let’s not forget that the victims of such women are not only their male partners, but their children too).
The book has its imperfection. It starts quite strongly (some may find with an angry tone) and I confess I was a bit afraid it would turn out to be a rant (fortunately it’s not; as it become less and less passionate as we go along). Trying to explain why such women behave the way they do it also focuses a great deal on mental health issues. Mental health surely is a factor, but it’s not the only one, and so I found it dedicated too many pages to the topic (e.g. when it comes to psychopaths -psychopaths constitute less than 4% of the population, wouldn’t it have been more relevant to focus more on narcissistic, way more common?).
Having said that, it has its core strength too; for instance, in reminding that, if we are addressing women’s behaviours, we are certainly not denying nor minimising the pleas of women being abused at the hands of men (a silly yet very a common fallacy when bringing such topic up!). In fact, the authors remind us that, contrary to a naïve yet popular view domestic abuse are not only about a clear-cut dynamic abuser vs victim (read: a man vs a woman). Half of such toxic relationships involve in fact what experts call ‘bidirectional abuse’, whereas both partners are abusive to each other (being mainly targeted to men, they even go as far as asking men readers if their own behaviour doesn’t contribute to the problem). It also ends on a positive note which must be nailed: if your wife/girlfriend is abusive, assuming you’re not in one of these relationship where ‘mutual combat’ takes place, then it’s not your fault, and it doesn’t reflect on you. It’s for her to acknowledge the problem, and, if she doesn’t, then she won’t change and you would be better off, for your own safety and wellbeing, to leave her. A female abuser is no different than a male abuser, but how things could end up, simply because you are a man in a society which still has its head buried in the sand when it comes to violence perpetrated by women, can be radically different for you -and not in your best interest! The authors, in fact, give a few advice of what to do if children are involved, something we men are still clueless about and with high consequences when it comes to custody…
An helpful eye-opener.
Displaying 1 of 1 review