How listening changes everything: Mark Greene seeks a non-gender binary discussion of gas lighting.
Yashar Ali’s explosively popular article “Why Women Aren’t Crazy” is out there racking up Facebook shares in the tens of thousands. This tells me its resonating with a lot of women AND men. But, Ali’s article, although valid on some very real levels, tells a limited narrative in a limiting way.
Ali’s central thesis is that men consistently seek to undermine and devalue women’s emotional responses. The process is called “gaslighting”, in reference to a 1940′s film where a husband tries to drive his wife crazy by purposely refusing to acknowledge her perception of events in the world. Ali warns us we have a “gaslighting epidemic in our country”, the result of “the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis” by men. He goes on to say “gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as ‘crazy’”.
I’d like to talk about a number of issues I have with Ali’s emotionally compelling but ultimately incomplete narrative.
#1 Women are not the only ones being “gaslighted”
Women are not the only ones who’s emotional responses are being invalidated or suppressed in our culture. For many men, the message we receive from our co-workers, friends, lovers and families is quite clear. Our acceptable range of emotional responses should be restricted to a very narrow set of traditional male responses (Typically macho-confidence or anger). We are not encouraged to express uncertainty, fear, sadness, discontent or panic. We are not encouraged to express things that may decrease the sense of security in our families or partnerships. The script we are handed is very clear: “Things are going to be fine. I’m going to make sure everything is okay.” Rinse and repeat. What’s ironic here is that expressing our more fragile emotions in a safe and receptive space is a powerful way to grow security and stability. Rest assured, men know what it feels like to be told to suppress our emotions of grief, melancholy or fear. And, sadly, when we do as we are told and hide these “unacceptable emotions,” they often reemerge as explosive anger, drug or alcohol abuse, or stress-related illnesses.
#2 Ali’s gaslighted women are powerless victims
Ali’s article drives a narrative that women are victims of damaging external influences over which they have little or no power. When you invite people to view themselves as victims of this kind, you leave out a very important participant in the narrative. Any of us, men or women, who view ourselves as victims must also take responsibility for the role we play in these processes, both in terms of how the events occur and in how we choose to interpret the events after the fact. Ali encourages women to view themselves as victims without asking of his readers the requisite self-examination that will empower breaking out of the victim cycle. In order for gaslighting to work, you have to allow it continue. Given the changes society has undergone, some substantial percentage of women (say 50%) don’t have to sit and take the kind of silencing Ali describes any more. So I would ask that gaslighting not be treated as a universal phenomenon, but instead as something we are, to some substantive degree, in transition away from.
#3 Ali’s article leverages dramatic language that blames and pathologizes
The language in Ali’s article, “emotional manipulation” “epidemic” “pre-meditated” “neurosis” is designed to encourage an adversarial and sometimes pathological diagnosis of a wide range of human interactions. If you say to someone, “you’re gaslighting me” the dialogue is taken down a path defined by pathological and abuse markers. Markers which should not be assigned or taken on lightly. Once we assign those kind of markers to ourselves or others close to us, we put in place abuse and victimhood frames which overshadow possibilities for flexibility, growth and mutual discovery. If you are being abused, by all means, bring in the calvary. But we must all be wary of the urge to drop the rhetorical A-bomb on our partner when a few months in therapy might put the two of you back on a track toward more honest and open emotional communication.
#4 Ali’s article encourages his readers to employ simplistic binary assumptions
For instance, Ali writes: “A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation—pure and simple.”
Ali encourages the recipient of this “gaslighting” statement to view it as intended to shut her down. In doing so, he encourages his female readers to assume a specific intent behind this kind of statement. Is it his intention that we should believe the recipient of this statement NEVER overreacts? That would be unusual. Most of us have overreacted at least once in our lives.
An example of this might be, “my boss hates me” or “I suck at relationships.” These kind of responses burst out in moments when our capacity is tapped out and we’re feeling like we’re failures. These kinds of statements and the emotions that accompany them are probably not the only way we can frame these situations. These are victim statements born out of frustration. And most of us have overreacted like this at one time or another.
When I overreact periodically, my wife often helps me out by suggesting that my reason for feeling reactive may be fear-based or seated in some perceptions that I might want to reconsider. Usually, the response I give after I cool down is much more balanced and productive. My point is this. We can’t remove the sentence “You’re overreacting” from our dialogues. We can’t stigmatize the use of that kind of suggestion. And we can’t assume its a negative. It can be a heartfelt attempt to be helpful. We can always add the word “maybe” in front of it, but ultimately, being willing to reflect on and reconsider our emotional responses is one of the most powerful gifts we can give our partners and ourselves.
#5 Ali provides examples that misidentify strengths as weaknesses
Ali uses the example of how women place a smiley face next to a serious question as evidence that women are “reducing the impact of having to express their true feelings.” How is it that expressing an issue or concern should not be done in a gentle way? If a woman or a man includes a smiley face next to a texted comment or concern, it indicates that they are not speaking from an entrenched reactive position but are instead receptive to dialogue.
Not only is this conducive to discussing the issue in a constructive way, it is the kind of skill set that can grow a more viable personal, business or social relationship. And it’s a skill set we should all be applying more often. It can be considered to be coming from a constructionist approach to communication. Ali’s use of this example as evidence of oppression is potentially chauvinistic in its way, because he privileges a style of communication that is blunt and unapologetic, a typically “male” style of communication.
#6 Ali’s article encourages counterproductive binary arguments
The men in his article are two dimensional bullies that show no capacity for compassion or empathy. It makes for heightened drama and a great third act, but Ali is not writing entertainment. He is attempting to address real and painful social ills. And he is doing so in a way that is ultimately not helpful to men and women alike. We know that men are not two dimensional villains from the silver screen. Men are highly emotional creatures with vast capacities to love and be loved. Men can be spiritual healers and primary parents. They can be loving partners and caring teachers. And in all these roles, they encourage men and women alike to explore and share their emotions, to communicate their challenges and air their grievances.
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Thank you, Yashar. I know your heart is in the right place
I want to say clearly that yes, there are far too many female victims of silencing and abuse in the world. One person dealing with abuse is too many. But it is crucial to our ongoing dialogues to understand that the victims of abuse are men and women alike. It’s a fact that women have the potential to be just as emotionally and physically abusive as men. For some insight, look at the CDC’s statistics on physical abuse in relationships by gender. The report states: “More than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.”(1)
Yashar Ali has tapped into a major issue in our culture. He’s right that many women feel suppressed and devalued by people they work and live with. All of this is true. Ali has managed to create some powerful emotional resonance with his article. But it is important that we talk about what is happening between men and women in a holistic way. It is also important that we stay current in how we frame societal ills, so that we don’t devalue the progress that men and woman have created in partnership up to this point. So that we don’t drop back twenty years and pick up a more combative dialogue and bring it forward to now.
What can be immensely helpful instead, is to view these issues through the lens of what is called Appreciative Inquiry. Simply stated, we look for what is working and grow that, versus only pointing out the negative and attempting to eliminate it. Real progress has been made in terms of how men and women address emotions in their relationships. If we fail to acknowledge that, our actions do little to engage and grow successful trending change. Furthermore, appreciative inquiry teaches us to look for common ground and to be curious about ways we can support each other as we go forward in conversations like this one.
I fully understand there is work to be done. Holding someone else’s emotions can be frightening and destabilizing. Especially if we have no models for doing it in our lives or our families of origin. But we can learn how. We and our partners have to help each other learn how.
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In my personal relationship, my wife and I are working to develop these kinds of emotion-holding skills. And top among them for me is the capacity to hear others’ emotions and not immediately try and “fix it” or in some way solve the problem. Instead, I’m learning to just listen and hear. For me, as a man, this is huge. The gift of the act of listening, decoupled from immediately REACTING can create a holding space for the emotions of others. Often, men like me will immediately focus on the source of the problem in an effort to eliminate the resulting uncomfortable emotions. There are times when focusing on fixing things is easier than experiencing our partner’s or our children’s pain or sadness. But the fact is, we human beings need to share our emotions. Fixing the problem can come later. When men (and women) learn to develop skills like this, it can go a long way to eliminating gaslighting. Because it creates the kind of emotional literacy that allows all of us to express ourselves more fully.
“Stop feeling that way” becomes “its okay that you feel that way”. And the oxygen of life and love reenters the room.
(1)National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey | 2010 Summary Report. page 2
Image of man holding red paper courtesy of Shutterstock
About Mark Greene
On point no. 4 Personally I’ve never liked the term “overreacting” used on anyone. Our experiences & perceptions of reality are subjective. Our reactions will be based on the subjective experience, & therefore may be perfectly appropriate based on that perception. I think it’s better to try understand that perception & help the person see things differently than simply label it “overreacting”. That label does more harm than good IMO
Anyway, Great Article! 
Great article! Frankly I’m sick and tired of people supposedly for gender equality and anti-discrimination telling me that I’m a violent, rapist, or abuser just because I was born with XY chromosomes! It seems like its too acceptable to hate on the people who are traditionally privileged.
Did you read the article? That’s not what it was about at all.
I really disagree that “one person suffering from abuse is too many.” I think society needs to accept that some amount of unpleasantness is unavoidable. Trying to stamp out ALL abuse is just going to cause problems.
How so?
Perhaps because the efforts to stamp out ALL abuse can themselves become abusive. To get to zero tolerance you have to go to absurd and totalitarian extremes, as we can see from …the zero tolerance policies at a lot of schools when it comes to weapons. Kids get punished in various ways for all sorts of things that only tangentially have to do with posing an actual threat to anyone.
That’s not an excuse to stop trying, just a warning about the problems.
Yes, I agree actually. Thanks for the response.
You’re welcome, of course. It’s a very importnat question and we see it come up in various forms all the time. Thanks for asking it.
I would say that trying to “stamp” out all abuse is going to cause problems only if you use power and control as a matter to fight the very foundation of abuse: power and control.
Right on the nose. The focus on the negative keeps the positive out of view. Abusive people lack empathy and real loving connection abilities. We need to show them empathy and love, … so they can learn empathy and ability to love. Not exclusively, not only this of course, but this is currently very lacking.
“Abusive people lack empathy and real loving connection abilities.”
I’m curious how education is going to change the fact they lack the ability to have real loving connections (your words)? There are some people who are just bad people. You can’t change that, meaning you can’t stamp out completely all the things those people will do without some kind of absolute thought control. If one focuses too much on absolute zero tolerance, instead of acknowledging the reality some people are just evil, you will cause damage to the innocents. We can already see it in so many area’s. A kid got expelled for having a lighter at school. He was on the lacross team and the entire team used it to melt the ends of the strings of their rackets when doing repairs. The kid with the pocket knife in his duffel bag, also used for the repairs, also got expelled. How many good, loving fathers must be torn from their children to stamp out child abuse (by men only. Nothing is done to address that done by mothers).
So when you overreact, does your wife shut you down by telling you to calm down, you are overreacting, or does she do this “When I overreact periodically, my wife often helps me out by suggesting that my reason for feeling reactive may be fear-based or seated in some perceptions that I might want to reconsider.” In a way that doesn’t shut you down.
Cause when I see someone who appears to be overreacting, some of my first thoughts are usually, “Wow, something really important is going on for them. I should help them figure it out if they want.” Maybe they are overreacting, maybe what they are talking about is total projection and wound up in inner drama. But if I say flat out, “Maybe you are overreacting”, the first response back is usually not positive. I can point that out after I’ve listened and allowed for the space, but just to start with “Hey, I think you might be overreacting.” seems to me to be a shutdown and not a listening response.
Women have, for quite some time, been told they are being “hysterical.” Sometimes I”m sure they’ve been overreacting, but it’s a common trope to dismiss the emotional calibration of the other person in a relationship.
I’m not entirely sure that being asked to suppress emotions (in and of itself a very bad, mean thing to do to a person and I”m against it, totally) is gaslighting. It’s kind of the reverse. Any feelings you might have have to be hidden, as men, yes? You must only show rationality, logic, surety. Your the voice of reason and authority etc etc. That is limiting, I’ll agree, but it’s a sight different than being made to feel crazy for expressing emotions.
So while I’d agree that men are made to feel inauthentic, you are rarely accused of being hysterical.
As for the
in texts or emails, I think that’s less important (because, yes it does show tone) as for the types of vocal tendancies women fall into when it comes to making a point. Women often say things like “I”m not an expert but (insert actual opinion).” When they could just say what they think without any qualifiers. Women also tend to upspeak more than men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal) .
It’s important for authorities to be authoritative. I see women cutting their authority off at the knees all the time. I don’t blame men for this, but I do think our society values authority differently in men than in women.
Women respond to Ali’s article because it describes situations which apparently many women find to be familiar. This article, while containing many points I find valuable for men and women, seems to discount what women are saying is happening to them. I’m not going to tell you that the things you experience are unreal, or not important enough to talk about. I think that if women are connecting to Ali’s words, there is something there.
“I’m not entirely sure that being asked to suppress emotions…is gaslighting….That is limiting, I’ll agree, but it’s a sight different than being made to feel crazy for expressing emotions.”
There’s no need to start a pissing contest about whose emotional expression is under greater attack by society. It seems to me their just two sides of the same coin. A boy cries about something and gets told to Man The Fuck Up and shut his trap. A girl cries, and hears “you’re being hysterical”. Both messages invalidate their feelings and restrict their range of expression. We should work to eradicate both statements.
As far as vocal tendencies and conversational habits go, I notice no more of less of my female peers undercutting their opinions than my male ones. In my experience, some people assert their opinions with more confidence and others don’t. The most blunt person I know happens to be female. While I do notice more female friends practicing HRT – although this might be confirmation bias – seems to me it has more to do with the social inclusiveness it provides. (Ps, you might want to re-read that Wikipedia article on upspeak. The “misconceptions” section directly contradicts the point you make while citing it)
I don’t think Mark tries to undermine the concept of “gaslighting” at all with his points. What I took away (and heartily agree with) was that Yashar pitched this concept in a needlessly binary and confrontational way. Gaslighting exists, but the conversation surrounding it must continue, especially since the most popular article addressing it suffers from fundamental flaws in its presentation. Frankly, I was insulted by some of the generalization in the original gaslighting article as well. But that doesn’t mean I disagree with Yashar’s core concept, just the way he wrote about it. I think Mark just wants to have this conversation without some of Yashar’s more glaring simplifications or vilifications.
Not pissing at all. Just opening the door to some conversations. I admitted as much that suppression of men’s emotions is outright wrong. We limit each other in so many ways.
I agree, Julie, and didn’t see that as a “pissing contest” at all. You did nothing of the sort. Just drawing a distinction between the act of limiting emotions and gaslighting somebody so they’re labelled irrational/hysterical/not-taken-seriously.
And as pointed out, there are studies demonstrating this disproportionately happens to women as I’m sure there are studies demonstrating the limiting of men’s more vulnerable emotions.
“That is limiting, I’ll agree, but it’s a sight different than being made to feel crazy for expressing emotions.”
But you’re made to feel inferior because you aren’t showing ENOUGH emotion, or when you do you step outside your gender role and are told to hide them. Why is the females emotional level automatically the better one? or the males? Is it better to have a high level of emotional outburst or a low amount? Better to be openly emotional to the extreme or closed up?
I’ve been gaslit by women before telling me I have overreacted to a situation, it was crazy or negative behaviour. But are there ever times when the behaviour truly is crazy? Spill milk, put a fist through a wall or something? Is that really rational and acceptable or is it a crazy outburst? Of course there is usually a logical explanation, the answer for my own overreactions was due to depression, an extremely quick temper, low impulse control, and the need to break shit when I am in hulk-mode (luckily that’s all lowered massively).
I’ve called a woman crazy before, told her to calm down etc. She was annoyed at something I did but it was extremely minor, just saying HI at the wrong time, I copped a lot of verbal abuse and told her it wasn’t acceptable to just abuse me like that, said to calm down, said she was ACTING crazy and it was giving me the heebyjeebies. I tried my best to actually empathize with this woman but I believe she had major issues resulting from abuse and it was impossible to continue a friendship with her, her attitude flipflopped dramatically, one day fine, next day monster, day after that fine, it was hella confusing and just totally impossible to have a decent friendship as she also refused to see help. I won’t put up with behaviour like that, it IS over-reacting regardless if there is a reason, it IS crazy compared to the vast majority of the population, it ISN’T acceptable to just verbally abuse the shit out of me cuz I said HI when she felt like shit. Rude is rude, calling it out is neccessary, but was it gaslighting? I dunno, I’d do the same to a man, it wasn’t about her being a woman, it was about her being Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde whilst being extremely rude, verbally abusive, etc. It’s not fun being called a fat loser because you don’t have ESP and know when a person is going to flip personalities.
I think there are times where people try to treat the other as crazy unfairly, but there are times when the other persons behaviour is fucked up and NOT acceptable, and quite frankly far from normal. How do you call them out on that? How do you tell them that their behaviour is all kinds of strange and extremely confusing?
That pattern of behavior (and the abuse you believe she suffered) correlates highly with the behaviour/symptoms/causes of Borderline Personality Disorder: http://www.toddlertime.com/dx/borderline/bpd-traits.htm
Obviously a qualified psych professional would only be able to diagnose the disorder after consulting with her. Which is often very difficult to guide someone who will almost always reject your help through denial, a diagnosis and treatment will improve the lives of everyone in the relationship.
‘Women respond to Ali’s article because it describes situations which apparently many women find to be familiar. This article, while containing many points I find valuable for men and women, seems to discount what women are saying is happening to them. I’m not going to tell you that the things you experience are unreal, or not important enough to talk about. I think that if women are connecting to Ali’s words, there is something there.”
I disagree with this.
Does Ali’s article confirm what women want to believe? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it’s anything more than confirmation bias, or it’s equally problematic cousin, self-serving bias.
The fact of the matter is, human beings want to believe that their own problems are not their own fault. This is confirmed repeatedly in multiple experiments across multiple fields of inquiry (psychology, economics, and sociology have all found these biases to exist). Ali’s article hands women an argument in favor of this: “Men are terrible, blame every negative experience you have on them.”
So when you say “women are connecting to Ali’s words” that may be true. But it may also just indicate that women are human and looking for someone else to blame for their own shortcomings.
For the record, men also do this: this is not a gendered problem, it is a human problem. This is why Ali’s article is so disastrous. It perfectly molds itself to biases that people are predisposed to believe in: that all of their problems are the fault of someone else.
“So when you say “women are connecting to Ali’s words” that may be true. But it may also just indicate that women are human and looking for someone else to blame for their own shortcomings.”
So what you’re suggesting is that the reason so many women are connecting with Ali’s article, is because they’re letting their emotions overrule their ability to think about the issue logically? Wait a second…
Heather, I think you’re overreac….umm, wrong. For two reasons:
1. Mike L. clearly and explicitly suggested that confirmation bias, an ungendered phenomenon, is responsible for why Ali’s article resonated with so many women. Your paraphrase doesn’t sound anything like what his comment said.
2. *Even if* he had suggested that (which he didn’t), it still wouldn’t be gaslighting, because simply believing women let emotions overrule their ability to think logically is different from manipulating someone who isn’t crazy into thinking they are. For his comment to qualify as gaslighting, he would have to be doing something like randomly coloring some words red and swearing all he saw was the usual black text.
Thanks Marcus, I appreciate it.
I agree Mike.
The point it is people can better internalize a experience if it hits them personally. Like every woman had a bad experience with a men or men in her life, and all women had a man telling her : you are over reacting or calm down. Even if it wasnt said in the contex of the article. The situation still rings true in many people ears. So a person can simply pull out from his/her personal lifebag alot of analogous situations and then be easely be manipulated in the direction wanted by the articulist. Simply because what he write, feels true and close to his audience. Practically telling people what they want to hear and not only also re-interpreting the situations but this time from the readers side. And that is a winning formula and it applyes to everybody, men women ect. Politicans do that all the time.
Like if Ali (or somebody else) wrote a article on mysandry and other issues men face in the society. Many men would have applauded him, even if it contained all the faults and mistakes of the original article. I dont say everybody (not all women agree on Alis article BTW), but alot would. Simply because the writhing confirm some of the experiences of the group the writher is aming at.
Why want a writer manipulate his readers? for getting notoriety. Just like like politicans try to manipulate the voters to vote him/her. Do the writer do that consciusly? I dont think so. He is simply applying the traditional program that the culture has installed on him. Thus the critics he fails to break the actual gender binary enviroment.
Julie speaks my mind! I think, the basis for the difference between “gaslighting” when it happens to women vs. when it happens to men, is that women’s emotions are representational of an overall weakness, a hysteria, an imbalance. Whereas, men are automatically considered strong, logical and just. The default, therefore, for women is crazy and the default for men is leadership and security. Thus the scale is imbalanced from the start – when women diverge by stepping back from their assertions they are rewarded for being logical, and when men diverge they are chided for losing their way. But, we can’t, as a society, continuing viewing women as naturally inferior as a default setting, this, I believe, is the argument the other article was trying to get at. That men can be gaslighted too is certainly true, but it doesn’t happen on the level of discrimination or societal detriment that it does for women.
Thank you! I think the article brings up some very valid critiques of the “Gaslighting” article, and I especially agree with posters here that both men and women are forced/manipulated into narrow straightjackets of emotional expression.
But the original article on Gaslighting of women isn’t just some made-up excuse that women cling to out of confirmation bias. Many studies have shown that in interpersonal conversations, women get interrupted more, that women who state their opinions more forcefully get negative labels (i.e., bitchy)…and that works right up the ladder of power…look how Hillary Clinton was treated by the press. Look at the dearth of women experts used as sources on the news, or the number of women opinion writers in the big media vs. the number of men (at best, women make up only a third).
From personal experience, I had this done to me throughout my childhood, so I internalized the belief that any emotional feeling or reaction was “overreaction.” I still see it all the time, eavesdropping on conversations in grocery stores, coffeeshops, etc. And let’s not forget Hollywood, that creator of pop culture: the archetype of the crazy gf/wife is still going strong. It is a real phenomenon and deserves to be revealed, so it can be reversed!
SOME of the cases of women stating their opinions being seen as bitchy is because of the ATTITUDE they use with it I have found in my own experiences. But same can be said for some of the guys I know, there is a certain way to state an opinion and generally avoiding the condescending tones helps. Not sure if you meant to say it the way it sounds but I extremely disagree with the notion only females receive negativity for stating their opinions more forcefully.
The whole crazy stereotype though is pretty pervasive in regards to women but as women are seen more as crazy, the flipside is men are seen more as emotionless which is brought up to shame them into acting a certain way at times. “You don’t care about me” “You’re heartless” “You’re so closed up” are words used at times to force men to share their feelings even well past their personal boundaries, I wonder if anyone has done an article on this yet?
Hilary Clinton was “treated that way by the media” because she went extremely negative towards Obama. In fact, the origin of most of the abuse that the Republicans throw towards Obama comes straight from the Clinton campaign.
Thank you, Max! I feel like the point of the original article completely slipped this author. He chose instead to isolate certain elements from the larger point to expound about how men, too, are discouraged from expressing certain emotions (in the case of men, “vulnerable” emotions) when that wasn’t even the original piece’s point WRT women in the first place. Being able to gaslight a woman into thinking she’s crazy/hysterical rests on the the existing cultural notion that women are “that way” to begin with. Whereas men face suppression of certain emotions and pressure about how they’re “supposed to be” as well, it just doesn’t fit this narrative. Why couldn’t this author just submit a piece about what men face that women don’t to perhaps accompany the original? I don’t understand, but oh, well.
Mark, this is brilliant! I think you can help save the human race….!
I grew up in a stereotypically emotionally repressed WASP family and to be honest, I’m often very uncomfortable around people who express strong emotions, male or female. If a friend or co-worker is very agitated or emotional about something, my first response is to try to calm them down. This has caused friction at times in my relationships with other women who feel I am devaluing their emotional experience. In a way I think I’m more like a typical man than a woman in that respect. So I sympathize with men on this issue. Not everyone is comfortable with intense emotional displays. Not everyone came from families where people argue loudly, get upset, yell, and make up again. In my family, nothing clears a room faster than one person getting upset. Telling someone they are overreacting is a way to defuse the situation and restore calm. Some cultural backgrounds value restraint and helping a person calm down is viewed as useful and appropriate, not as manipulative and invalidating. To be clear , I’m not saying it’s healthy to be repressed, and I’m not denying that some people manipulate others by being jerks (or jerk-ettes) and then accusing others of being too sensitive or over-reacting. But it could also be a sign of discomfort with emotion.
Up until very recently everytime an adult male yelled I immediately got flashbacks to a teacher who physically assaulted me multiple times in primary school. I’d get very nervous, shy away from confrontation from that expression of anger.
Whilst it’s important to value and respect their feelings, it’s also important that they respect and value your own, what right do either have at controlling the others feelings? It’s just decency to not yell and abuse someone regardless of if they hurt you, annoyed you, or whatever. There are those who will literally overreact, abuse someone and then when someone asks them to calm down they can cop accusations of gaslighting. So do you allow them to verbally abuse you, or can you tell them to calm down?
If you believe you are being verbally abused or manipulated, I’d take a huge time out and get away from that person physically if possible.
Move into a conversation via email perhaps. Get things in writing you can parse. Calling someone crazy who is acting in a truly manipulative manner isn’t gonna help is it? Only make them more aggressive in their attempts to manipulate.
Depends I guess if you can “wake them up” to their behaviour, maybe they don’t see it as bad as it is. Is it possible to let them know the behaviour is extreme, and appears to be crazy with the hope that they realize and change their behaviour even slightly? Still be mad, still be able to express feelings etc but do so in a better way?
I agree with most of this article’s criticism of Ali’s article, but one thing that Ali got right that this article erred on was summarizing the movie from which the term “Gaslighting” is drawn:
From Ali’s article:
From this article:
The key component of gaslighting that Ali correctly noted was that it involved intentionally manipulating the victim’s environment, and denying that anything was going on, with the intention of making her think she was going crazy. This article’s summary (Greene’s) leaves out the deliberate manipulation to make someone who isn’t crazy think she is.
The irony is that even though Ali got the etymology right, what his very popular article goes on to describe and criticize is a more mundane emotional insensitivity. If a man tells a woman she’s over-reacting, when he believes she’s over-reacting, that’s not gaslighting. It doesn’t mean he’s right, and his empathy and communication skills could probably be better, but it’s not gaslighting unless he deliberately screwed with her environment to disorient her, with the intent of making her think she’s crazy when he knows she’s not.
I think there is validity to the points that women are perceived as “hysterical” or “over-reacting” more often than they deserve (as Ali said), and that men are confined to a narrow range of acceptable emotion (as Greene says). I think both are issues worth trying to address and improve on, but neither one is a form of gaslighting. In my opinion, calling such things “gaslighting” is…an over-reaction. It turns an emotional misunderstanding into a conspiracy theory that whoever hurt your feelings (by thinking you over-reacted or suppressing your feelings) is intentionally invalidating you in an attempt to get you to doubt your own sanity. That’s just crazy.
Wow, this actually makes a lot of sense, thank-you! I always wondered why it seemed strange to hear his term being used when calling a woman crazy in an argument is probably done because the person actually believes they’re acting crazy.
And if they believe they are acting crazy, what better way to clear things up than to call the woman crazy! That’ll fix it.
Difference in male/female communication Julie. I’ve found after 50 years (and it’s taken me all of that long) that with men I can often use a type of speech shorthand. With women it’s communication long hand. Otherwise I find myself saying things like, “What ARE you talking about”. “I never said THAT”. “That’s NOT what I meant.”
It’s worked sometimes, the other realizes their actions might be extreme. Hell I’ve had people say it to me. I think it varies though, a difference between acting crazy, and calling someone plain old crazy. Saying they’re acting crazy would probably mean they are quite different to how they are normally, but for the woman I knew she was just completely n utterly confusing to me, very unique. One day nice, next day complete n utter bitch and I’ve racked my mind trying to figure out why, I could guess maybe mental illness or just extreme stress. I’ve known others who get angry when you do something wrong, but this woman was being triggered into a ball of hate for saying hello to her at the wrong time for instance. Maybe Volatile is a better word?
I have discussed with her that her behaviour seems strange, she’s even agreed with me and apparently she hears it a lot from others, I tried to offer advice on how to deal with stress etc and she seemed appreciative of it. I tried quite hard in fact to make her actually understand she wasn’t crazy, but her actions were confusing as hell to me and tried hard to help her reduce stress, love herself more but in the end it was just too much. I can deal with anger but I can’t deal with people being extremely abusive with words and using very personal attacks.
Quite right Marcus. The original article was 95% fabrication and 5% pulp. It was fabricated top down – starting with a concept called gas lighting and shaping a grave story around it, hitting key points of exaggeration for crowd affirmation. The analysis should have been written for Yahoo news. I’ve noticed this phenomenon grow with the Internet – good writers and story tellers, who pen electronic stories, have become a substitute for good thinkers. The two are not interchangeable.
This happens a lot in the process of demonizing men.
Take some gender difference, and polarize it as women are righteous victims, and men are fully knowing, intentionally causing harm to women in order to reap rewards…. ABUSE!!!!!
Male privilege, man-splaining, sexual consent, etc.
A lot of people don’t seem to know what the “oxygen of life and love” even is, much less how to seek and find it. Let’s see if this article gets 10,000 facebook “likes” by tomorrow.
I think this comment deserved to be dredged back up.
Yes, some women are genuinely hateful and abusive towards men. Just like some men are genuinely hateful and abusive towards women.
Are you trying to imply that male privilege, man-splaining, and sexual consent consent are either the fiction of delusional women or a calculated manipulation on their part?
Because I’m having a hard time seeing how THAT isn’t sexist.
Yes, man-splaining is BS. All it means in practice is ‘OMG, this man had the temerity to disagree with me, and there he goes explaining his opinions!’.
The term is in, in and of itself, a sexist attempt to shut people up.
Do you really think that nobody ever uses these terms as a sword instead of a shield?
Thank you for this much needed response article.
It’s true, our culture passionately suppresses emotional, intuitive, feeling states… But that’s not just something that happens to women. To assert otherwise doesn’t make sense, unless one assumes that men are without the capacity for emotion, intuition, and feeling.
We’re all the same deep down, with the same capacities, and at the receiving end of the same suppression. It’s the times we’re in.
Thanks again for being as curious about, and well informed about, the male and female experience of gaslighting, not just the female experience.
Having not read the Ali article, I’m taking all of this in for the first time. The only thing with which I take issue is the statistic comparing instances of physical abuse among male and female populations, claiming that women are more often the aggressor than is acknowledged. The writer failed to mention how many instances of abuse were perpetuated by an aggressor of the victims’ own gender, as in homosexual cases. I consider that relevant information.
Hi Redrider
You can see a breakdown on how often the female is the aggressor in this CDC data.
Results. Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases. Reciprocity was associated with more frequent violence among women (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.9, 2.8), but not men (AOR=1.26; 95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was nonreciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5).
Read More: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020
“The gift of the act of listening, decoupled from immediately REACTING can create a holding space for the emotions of others. ”
This is beautifully stated. When I express sadness, frustration, fear or disappointment, it does not mean that there is anything ‘wrong’ with me or ‘broken’ that need fixing. Often, I am expressing my need to be ‘held’ emotionally. I want to be heard. I want to be respected. I want to be free to be entirely intimate. To allow my partner and for my partner to allow me this grace of personhood, is the greatest of pleasures and opens the door to many earthly delights.
Peace on your journey, Mr. Greene
~Lezlie
According to the CDC 2010 report 12 month data, men are significantly more likely to experience psychological abuse – 13.9 women / 18.1 men (gaslighting would fall under psychological abuse).
The original gaslighting article was enormously irresponsible.
“When you invite people to view themselves as victims of this kind, you leave out a very important participant in the narrative.’
Mark, this is a very important point. You didn’t go deeper into it because you were dealing with other aspects of the article, but what Ali is doing is actually quite misogynst. It is a form of male supremacy to frame the problem like this.
His heart may or may not be in the right place, frankly. He may just think it is. Assuming women are helpless is the first step to making them that way.
This is probably one of the best and most well balanced article on GMP that I’ve read. I’ve seen a lot of bad articles on here that lack critical thinking and tend toward a sexist bias against men (and unconsciously women) but every once in a while a gem turns up and this is one of them.
There is an amazing lack of genuine dialogue between the sexes and I find it happens very often when I do talk about gender or sexuality with women that the women I am conversing with wants to turn the issue into what other men think or say rather than listening to what I think or feel. It is a pattern that becomes exasperating.
“A remark intended to shut you down like, “Calm down, you’re overreacting,” after you just addressed someone else’s bad behavior, is emotional manipulation—pure and simple.” – This is so transparently wrong that I am amazed that anyone can take it seriously and yet it illustrates a pattern which is so common in mainstream feminist discourse. Consider the following definition of mansplaining which has become so popular many feminists in the internet community.
“Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.”
http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2010/01/you_may_be_a_mansplainer_if.php
Of course if this is taken literally it means that if you say something a woman already know then your a condescending patriarchal jerk. Yet feminist rhetoric is often written in a way that taken literally would mean something that the creator of the rhetoric would probably deny. (but maybe not in a literal way!)
Why is this? I think it reveals how their unconscious tendency to assume that anything and everything is misogynistic.
Ginko wrote: “but what Ali is doing is actually quite misogynst. It is a form of male supremacy to frame the problem like this.” – What Ali was doing was paternalistic and possibly chauvinistic but to call him misogynistic is to miss a significant point of the article.
Treating women like children who need the protection of a man, Ali in this case, is misogyny. Full stop. White knighting is misogyny. Ali is misogynist.
If you look at a lot of oppressions that women face, they have their roots in this insistence on treating women like fragile little treasures who have to be protected.
Treating women like “fragile little treasures” is not displaying a hatred of women. You can say it is bad for women, or oppressive to women. (I would say it depends on the particular circumstances.) But it is not misogyny.
The original article would not have gendered this form of psychological abuse were in not for a politically motivated misinformation and cover up campaign about abuse that’s been running since the 1970s.
Which comment?
Here’s what I find interesting; the technique of “calming down” is something big part of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. In some ways, anger isn’t a productive way of dealing with a situation. Everyone – whether or not they have a psychological issue. – is subject to cognitive distortions (which, needless to say, are not the same things as delusions) I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with trying to calm someone down.
In fact, many of the coh motive distortions – especially all-or-nothing thinking and mind reading – are on display in your average online discussion.
I think it’s meant to be bad when you tell someone to calm down and don’t allow them ever to express their anger. I do think there are times that people need to tell others to calm down, take a break, leave for a minute or 2 and let that initial anger and adrenaline rush to drop down a bit. That adrenaline can push people into action too quickly without thinking, I’ve done it plenty of times myself before when I was depressed where I am caught in the moment, get the urge to put a fist into the wall just from sheer anger n frustration. Thing is if I wait a minute that anger usually has dropped quite a bit, people say and do things in the heat of the moment that they may later regret. Telling people to cool off is not bad in my books if they are really peaking in anger levels, it doesn’t mean the person is trying to stop the other expressing their emotion, but simply they want them to do so with a clearer head.
It’s far easier to communicate with someone when they are much calmer, can speak without yelling (a common trigger for peoples defensiveness), can refrain from saying hurtful things, and other actions which can quickly close a person off to communication. I’d like to ask the women here how beneficial it’d be to communicate your grievances whilst being extremely angry? Do you think people will take it in the way you want or do you think it’ll probably trigger defensiveness, start an argument, etc? If I was yelling in your face, being aggressive, what would you do? Allow it to happen because I am expressing my emotions? Or would you be telling me to back off, calm down, talk to you when I am calmer?
This piece and the comments on it would be so much more compelling if they hadn’t missed the point so completely. Really, if this piece were not meant to address Yashar’s piece, it would be a nice thoughtful meditation on respect and healthy communication. However, as it is, it does more to illustrate the precise problem that Yashar points out. The problem is not telling a woman that she’s being emotional, when she’s being emotional, or even dismissing her for being emotional when she’s being emotional (although, yes indeed, dismissing people’s emotions is all-too-common in our society but that’s *not* the point of Yashar’s piece). Gaslighting, as Yashar defines it, is telling someone she (or possibly he but it is, indeed, usually women) is being unreasonable or irrational when she is not. To use one of Yashar’s example, teasing someone about her weight, and then telling her she’s overly sensitive when she gets annoyed, is not dismissing her for being emotional, it’s dismissing her perfectly reasonable reaction as irrational. There is a difference. Nor does Yashar imply that men are all evil, evil beings, or that women are all victims of gaslighting; indeed, he explicitly states that they are not.
To miss the point like this is it’s very own intellectual form of gaslighting, known as the straw-man argument. You can’t refute the argument that someone actually made, so you offer a weaker misrepresentation of that argument in order to knock it down. Fine, you don’t like Yashar’s piece. It makes you uncomfortable, it holds up a mirror whose reflection you’d rather not see, be honest about that. Yesh.
“To miss the point like this is it’s very own intellectual form of gaslighting, known as the straw-man argument. ”
I don’t know whether to take this seriously or as a joke. A strawman argument is not a form of gaslighting.
I also don’t think that anyone thinks that it isn’t appropriate to get upset when someone teases a woman about their weight. Men are taught from a young age that that sort of thing will make a woman upset.
There is something very over the top about much of internet feminist discourse. Are you for real? Or do you call yourself “Miss Information” because you are deliberately trolling?
MOD EDIT: Please avoid personal attacks on other commentators.
First, Yashar did not coin the term “gaslighting”, so he doesn’t get to re-define it as “telling someone she…is being unreasonable or irrational when she is not”. Feel free to come up with some other word that means that, and call it rude or insensitive or whatever, but it’s not gaslighting, for reasons I’ve already elaborated in earlier comments.
Second, a straw-man argument is not in any way an “intellectual form of gaslighting”. You come close to giving an accurate definition of what a straw-man argument is, but there’s nothing remotely gaslighting about it. It’s not just a word for being mean to a woman or arguing badly. The fact that the word denotes a very deliberate maliciousness is why it shouldn’t be thrown around so carelessly to describe people who often genuinely believe that someone else is overreacting.
Finally, it’s wishful thinking to conclude that if someone disagrees with an argument that resonated with you, it must be because deep down, they’re really just uncomfortable at the truths it exposed about themselves that they’d rather not face. I probably don’t have to tell you that, though, because I can tell that deep down, you already agree with Greene and just can’t be honest with yourself so you’re grasping at straws to hang on to the gaslighting you though you knew.
The humor in both of the replies ignoring her original point and holding on to what she defines as gas lighting and straw manning is almost unbearable. I think what the op was trying to say is that they’re both forms of derailing. In any case I agree that this article reads better as a sharing of men’s experiences instead of as a critique of Ali’s article because that was NOT an article written to belittle men’s experiences or to demonize all men It was meant as a way to address A LOT of women’s experiences. This is more of a “part 2″ in a series of articles on gender troubles.
I do think Mark has his heart in the right place because some of his points argue against femme-phobia.
This was a really great article. It’s kind of a shame that it doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention as the article it is in response to. You make some really great points. It always upsets me when people make sweeping statements about how men treat women or how women treat men. It’s sad when people take such a serious issue and run with it, painting a large group of people as the perpetrators.
Everything is case by case. The fact is, some women act crazy. Some men act crazy as well. Some men gaslight women. Some women gaslight men. All of us can be confused by our emotions or other’s emotions. We are human beings. Sometimes people do over react and sometimes we perceive them to be overreacting even when they might not be. That doesn’t mean people have the intention of doing everything that gas-lighting claims to be.
I think something that the entire concept of accusing people of gas lighting misses is this. Why do the people who are “gas lighting” feel that the person is over reacting? Aren’t we gas-lighting those people by simply accusing them of gas-lighting instead of wondering why they feel the way they feel? Am I now talking in circles?
You slightly touched on this by talking about how people could throw “maybe” in there but I think it’s possible most people over react at many points in their lives. I agree with you that sometimes people need to hear that they are being reactionary. People need to be talked down from extreme emotions and sometimes need the help looking at why they feel the way they feel instead of making brash statements like “Everybody hates me” or “My boss is the meanest person ever”. There is always a kernel of truth in everything but it’s not always out of line to tell someone they are blowing the situation out of proportion.
And let’s not forget that not that long ago, women were frequently sent away to horrifying sanitariums on the basis of being “overly emotional” or “hysterical.” The movie Changeling shows a little bit of this.
Thankfully it is harder to commit adult women involuntarily, but for young (minor) women, it does still happen…
D.R. I was just wondering if that happened to men as well. I don’t have any like horse int he race per say but I’m pretty sure not that long ago a lot of people were getting sent away to horrifying sanitariums for a lot of reasons back in the day. Was/is there a disproportionate amount of females to males being sent away for the wrong reasons and if so do you have some data to back that up?
Given how frequent emotional and psychological problems are used to excuse women’s dangerous, violent and criminal behaviors (and get them out of jail), perhaps it isn’t such a good thing it’s become so much harder?
I agree that we all (both sexes) need to liberate ourselves from “ought to/should” standards that are imposed on us by the many so-called authorities in our lives. Not to do so is certain misery. I take issue with the author’s declaration of men facing the same social repression as women face, however. It’s hard for me to remember a time when a man was called hysterical, over emotional, over-reactive or irrational, yet one only need look to any paper, movie or television show, or listen to men complain, and you can hardly escape hearing those adjectives applied to women. I do believe that expressing a wide range of emotion evokes discomfort in many men, and rather than face culpability for their discomfort, they find it easier to make the expressive person wrong in some way. I do think it’s good to have this conversation, whether in this article or any other, as that’s the first step for gaining and spreading awareness, and there is much to contemplate around this topic.
I’ve had people tell me I am crazy, irrational, telling me to calm down when I have shown my anger. Men have often recieved the crazy label, over-reacting, etc especially after showing anger. Male anger is often suppressed and thought of as dangerous, violent, abusive. The other may say they are fearful, when the guy is angry at nothing to do with her/him, then treated like he is a caveman with limited emotions, that he is just a brute, a meathead, a neanderthal. Some men will be seen as psycho, creepy, weird, have anger issues, irrational, etc.
Maybe it’s society hasn’t taught us how to deal with someone else’s expression of emotion, someone might feel scared at anger, someone might feel overloaded by someone else expressing emotion. Quite a lot of men when given a problem want to FIX it, and they may not know how to so they might say calm down in an attempt to soothe the other person but this could come across as condescending or dismissive of that persons emotions. When someone is upset, I try to calm them down, make them happier, take their pain away, if I can’t at times I will feel like I have failed and it’s a horrible feeling.
I think these issues are far more complex than simply women are seen as crazy/hysterical, the majority of the criminally insane society thinks of are MEN. It’s not just women who are seen as crazy.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Archy. I’ve worked most of my life in the field of communications. After 3- years, it has become blatantly obvious that people are generally lousy at communicating to each other what they want and how they feel. Always, we perceive “the other” through the veil of our own beliefs, attitudes and experiences, which can throw slants on our assumptions and reactions. Adding to this challenge is what you say: men spontaneously go into a mode of wanting to “fix” whatever is presented as upsetting or not right. As a woman, I can’t tell you how many times this particular male trait has made me feel crazy! In the movie “White Men Can’t Jump,” there’s a great and hilarious scene wherein the starring couple discuss this very clash between the sexes in relating and communicating. The woman just wants to share her experience to create bonding; the man wants to fix what he thinks she is presenting as a need.
But a bottom line in all of this is that it’s 2012, and everyone is either a little crazy or totally numb.
Thanks for the conversation.
No probs, I’ve noticed a few women doign the fix it stuff now too, it’s interesting. I have expressed a concern, an emotion, and the other person has said “Well, I dunno what I can do to fix it” as if they expected me to fix it, when simply I am venting. Mostly it’s men I notice doing this, I use to do it but now I’ve learned to stop assuming they want help and treat it as venting, just wanting to express themselves. If they want help they need to specifically tell me and I’ll gladly help, otherwise I’ll try empathize and accept what they have to say. Before I learned this I use to feel like a failure a lot if I couldn’t fix it, it was sooo frustrating. Being raised to want to fix stuff, protect, help, make sadness n pain go away can get annoying at times.
I think from birth, and primary school we all need to learn more effective communication skills, get rid of the gendered language and simply allow individuals to be themselves and communicate how they are with guidance on how to better communicate in a way others can understand.
Thanks as well for the conversation.