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.
♦◊♦
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.
♦◊♦
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
Wow, what a morass of victim-blaming and standard derailment techniques.
#1 http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Patriarchy_hurts_men_too
#2 This is total victim-blaming. Since women are not 100% powerless, they must share responsibility for when gaslighting is done to them. Yes, and I’m sure, since women have the power to dress themselves, that if a woman wears the “wrong thing” then she’s partially responsible for being raped. Oh, or she could have carried pepper spray! It’s totally her fault that she got raped, she could have fought back. Or… not.
#3 If your relationship is so fragile that your partner is likely to break it off based on Ali’s article, it’s probably better broken off. In our society, we have much more problems with women failing to break off bad relationships than the opposite. Hell, if your partner thinks you’re gaslighting her and you aren’t, maybe the relationship isn’t a good one for *you*.
#4 Yes, sometimes people actually over-react. All Ali does is call for re-evaluating how often one does this to women, rather than men. Just because some Afro-Americans actually like watermelon doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to keep perpetuating those racist sterotypes. And as for binary anti-male thinking, Ali even talks about the sad case of a women complicit in her own gaslighting, joking about how all women are crazy.
#5 Okay, what sort of verbal judo is this? You’ve never met anyone who undermines their own point while making it? How is this strength?
#6 When someone is talking about how an oppressed class of people are being oppressed, they are not required to bend over backward to talk about how not all the oppressors are bad people.
Imagine I wrote an article about how Japanese-Americans were put into interment camps by white Americans during WWII while its was still going on. Now, imagine this response:
“The white people 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 Kirt is not writing entertainment. He is attempting to address real and painful situation. And he is doing so in a way that is ultimately not helpful to white people and Japanese people alike. We know that white men are not two dimensional villains from the silver screen. White people are highly emotional creatures with vast capacities to love and be loved. Whites can be spiritual healers and primary parents. They can be loving partners and caring teachers. And in all these roles, they encourage all races alike to explore and share their emotions, to communicate their challenges and air their grievances.”
Why isn’t that ridiculous? Why, when reporting something bad, do you have to go out of your way to talk about the potential good as well? Why is the burden on Ali, here? The burden is on men (and women, as some women aid in the oppression of other women) to act better, rather than getting defensive and expecting people talking about a bad social situation to spend a paragraph waxing poetic about how awesome men are.
Dear Kirt,
Your post is a valuable addition to this dialogue because it shows what I would call a race to go binary. It’s these totally binary conversations that have bogged down much of our public discourse, forcing people to choose sides and encouraging people to generalize and blame.
In your case, you seem to need men to be the bad guys in order to support some specific world view. You seem to want every man in the world to be labeled “guilty until proven innocent.” Too bad, really. You’re missing out on a much more nuanced and rewarding conversation going on in the world between men and women of good will, who are sincerely seeking to find a path forward out of the quagmire of sexism, racism and all the other of the world’s ills. Which, by the way, is the conversation that is helping men grow and change. Women, too.
Um, you are aware I’m also a man, right? I guess I should applaud you for not assuming gender based on my name, from the cautious way you talk here.
I have to say I’m literally flabbergasted by this non-response and your refusal to engage with ANY of the points I made. For example, did you even read the link I posted for #1?
Maybe this will help more:
http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-03-08_146
Take particular note of the following points:
* Learn to Listen Rather Than Speak
* Criticism is Not Hatred
* Don’t Make It About You
* If You’re Not the Problem, Then You’re Not the Problem
Also, try this thought experiment: Replace the word “gaslighting” in your article with “punching” and tell me if it still sounds as reasonable as you think it is.
Um….
A punch is a punch. Gaslighting is gaslighting.
Your analogy is meaningless because unlike Japanese-American internment is a) not an institutional oppression and b) not exclusive to one gender. In the original article, one man described a situation in which his GF was clearly verbally abusing him and minimizing it.
Kirt.
Its interesting that you bring up punching. As if that is an example of an action that is somehow primarily the domain of men. I would not write an article about punching in any different way than I wrote this one. In part because assigning punching to men only would be wrong, just like assigned any form of abuse to men only would be wrong; gaslighting or otherwise. Look at the stats on physical violence in the CDC report.
As I wrote in my article: 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)
As for responding to all your other points. My response to your points are in the original article. I am content to let them stand as written.
“Um, you are aware I’m also a man, right?”
I see no-where where he made an assertion of what gender you were. I do see where he notes observations of your apparent hatred of men, and the reasonings for that observation. As a man, you are perfectly cappable of being self loathing, you are perfectly cappable of believing you are the rare exception to the evils of all other men. So his assertion of your attitudes towards men does not preclude you from being one.
“Learn to Listen Rather Than Speak”
Like you did with this article?
“Criticism is Not Hatred”
Have you not treated Mark’s criticism of Ali as hostile or hatred? Does Ali’s argument not imply criticism of women is hatred?
“Don’t Make It About You”
You mean like you are forcing it back into Alie’s original woman only binary? Or like Ali did in the first place by making it only women are victims?
“If You’re Not the Problem, Then You’re Not the Problem”
Ali’s injection of motive states men are the problem. Your post supports such an assertion.
Perhaps you should have listened more closely to the very article you linked, instead of just using it as talking points to silence others.
“The burden is on men (and women, as some women aid in the oppression of other women) to act better, rather than getting defensive and expecting people talking about a bad social situation to spend a paragraph waxing poetic about how awesome men are.”
I think Mark is trying to say basically that not all men do this, some women also do this to men, and portraying it in a stereotypical generalized view isn’t helpful. Isn’t the burden on both to be decent to both genders?
Generalizing about it all isn’t really helpful, it can sound like men as a group are bad, instead of individual men are bad.
Wow, what a horrible analogy. Erase male victims more, please.
” The burden is on men (and women, as some women aid in the oppression of other women) to act better, rather than getting defensive and expecting people talking about a bad social situation to spend a paragraph waxing poetic about how awesome men are.”
hmm, no I disagree.
The burden shouldn be on men and some women, but the burden is on both MEN and WOMEN. Practically the entire society. Not just a random faction of it. And the reason is because it is a generaliced pattern that manifest in each of us. Ali’s article failed, because he simply assembled stereotypes and facts from the society, witch he knew are popular between women and some men, reinforcing the binary conception of genders. But simply because its popular and based on modern memes doesent make it true.
Kirt-
From that “patriarchy hurts men too” link you posted. “Rather than derailing conversations about and between women, men who want to discuss male identity, masculinity and the patriarchy need to create new discussions in spaces that aren’t marked as women-centred.”
This is exactly that space, making you entirely wrong to import that dismissive phrase.
Kirt
FTW! Valid points, you summed up so nicely what I was thinking…..
Moderator Note: Edited to remove personal insult
“Imagine I wrote an article about how Japanese-Americans were put into interment camps by white Americans during WWII while its was still going on. Now, imagine this response:”
That’s not quite godwinning, but it’s close. The two aren’t comparable because the internment of japanese americans was an example of something very one sided. Gaslighting and sexism, as this article points out, is a two way street.
I think your first point is the crux of the problem. As a society, we lack a penchant for nuance. We like to appropriate all of a certain characteristic to one group and define that group (in part) by that characteristic and define the groups opposite by the opposite characteristic.
For example, men are generally taller than women. So we conclude that Tall = Man, and More Tall = More Man. Short men are weird because Men Are Tall. Tall women are weird because Women Are Short. We want to shift all the tallness to men and all the shortness to women, because “Men = Tall” is easier than “Men are, on average, generally taller than women, however, there are many short men and many tall women”.
We have, I believe, as a society, done this with emotional expression. Men are stoic, women are emotional. Men are, from a young age, socialized not to show certain emotions, while women, from a young age, are socialized to believe they are inherently emotional creatures. A crying man is weird because Stoic = Man and a woman who gets quiet when upset is weird because Emotional = Woman.
So we socialize one group to be unemotional and the other to be emotional. Then we’re shocked (?) when they unemotional group says to the emotional ones “You’re too emotional.” Or when the emotional ones say to the unemotional ones “You don’t have any emotional intelligence at all, do you?”
Men don’t dismiss womens emotions as an attempt to abuse or silence them. Men often consider women overemotional (IMO) for the same reason a person who is 5’2 considers a person who is 6’1 to be “tall”.
I thought the article was victimry porn. Over elaborate wallowing in self-congratulatory misery. Telling women that they are entitled to feel like they are victims because of something utterly normal and trivial that happens to everyone, men or women. And of course as ever men are the bogeymen.
Sorry, but I don’t think anyone should take it seriously any more than any kind of porn is intended to be taken seriously as an intellectual exercise. It was entertainment. You might as well analyze “Big Jugs Volume 127″ for it’s insights. I honestly don’t think this stuff is mentally healthy for women but apparently they love it. That’s why Lifetime has some many movies about women being attacked by men.
I mean that description (“porn”) as a metaphor obviously (like Saw being “horror porn” as someone said recently). But if you had to pick some sort of thing that really messes people up for consuming it then I think this sort of victimry porn would be way ahead. Anyone who was actually interested in women’s rights would be opposed to that sort of nonsense I would think.
Can you clarify, I’m not sure if you mean THIS article, or the original article this one is examining (or both)?
I was talking about the original article.
I think what we’re talking about here is how to develop helpful communication skills that support the person we are talking to feel valued and respected and cared for and confident to be themselves and express themselves in an open and safe way.
I think the suggestion that we stop gaslighting is valid… and I also agree that it applies to both genders – ie. its possible that women do this unhelpful communication to men sometimes too. AND its also possible that that women do it to other women – (friends or partners). ie. I’ve had female friends “gaslight” me too. And similarly men “gaslight” other men as well (friends or partners).
The point is that it feels bad to the person being “gaslighted”. It feels bad when we devalue or disallow people to feel what they are feeling. Instead a more enjoyable (but not always easy) task is to cultivate empathy and the ability to hear and “be with” emotion – our own and other peoples – and be ok with it. And learn how to respond and communicate well with each other so that we have intimacy, respect, love and appreciation present in our relationships and communication.
Just like cooking, lots of us can make meat and 3 veg, but if we want a gourmet meal it takes learning and practicing. The same goes for love, communication… and if I can be a bit cheeky… sex! So if we want beautiful, attractive, tasty relationships… it takes a bit of learning and practicing
That’s my 2cents xx
The whole “gaslighting” term seems to be a tool or a technique in which the party A with the illogical idea or comment can force another party B to not just only listen carefully & think about what party A said, but to agree with with A.
Another way of saying , A controls the narrative & the rules in which the discussion should be had.
Yes. well, I can imagine a circumstance where someone, male or female, might confuse listening or honoring what is being said with agreeing. In other words, If your not agreeing with me, you’re gaslighting me. The nuances of communication can be lost when someone is predisposed to see something like gaslighting at play. The conversation is, shall we say, guilty until proven innocent.
Really good article. It answered all of the “but what about…” questions I had while reading ‘Why Women Aren’t Crazy’. Ali’s is a great 101 article; yours is the perfect advanced class complement to thinking critically about the problem and how to solve it.
Also wanted to say – the two articles work so well together, my inner conspiracy theorist thinks you both collaborated on it.
Nice job, I feel informed.
while we’re on race to go….. Mr Greene you remind me of white south africans who love to say… we were also damaged by apartheid…..LOL LOL LOL
I hope you have enough humor to appreciate what I am saying to you. The gender inequalities in this world are staggering, even inside the good old US of A. But the minute anyone tries to adress a particular symptom, or form of oppression there come a flood of male geeks arguing that they too have experienced oppression…yet oddly, when I Iook around me, and at you, all I see is this dance of death, this gender farce, you mention that one in four men has been raped or abused or stalked… as if women were equally guilty of raping and stalking… very sly omissions there… do you cite the relative murder by spouse statistics…no… because they totally disprove your attempts to say there isn’t a gender problem. God bless you and your wife and I hope that “working on your relationship” isn’t done with the same gaslighting blindness you exhibit in your website…………
(If this had gotten stopped by moderation it would have been removed. However due to the rather fitting responses I’ll let it go. Mark, Mark, and Archy, thanks. – GMP Moderator)
“do you cite the relative murder by spouse statistics…no… because they totally disprove your attempts to say there isn’t a gender problem. ”
The only one denying there is a gender issue is you, by your denial that men could possibly have issues. Saying “hey, women aren’t the only victims here” is not the same as saying women aren’t victims.
Are you a feminist by chance?
(I was tempted to remove that last line but since I didn’t edit the comment you’re replying to it wouldn’t be right to edit yours here. By all means call them on the denial but please let the questions of identification go. Thanks. – GMP Moderator)
Hi Caroline,
If I understand correctly here, what you are saying is women never harm men? Or don’t harm enough of them for those who are hurt to matter? Wow. That’s an amazing thing to say.
Allow me to quote my article, since your “dance of death” seeming to be side stepping some of it.
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)
We’re talking violence and rape committed in relationships by men and women. Period.
So, your attempt at silencing male victims, your “LOL response” seems pretty crass and insensitive. Watch out. People will think you’re acting like a man.
Well if it helps, the cdc found 40% of rapists in 2010 were female, and equal numbers of men n women were raped. But hey, bury your head in the sand more if it makes you feel better.
“Well if it helps, the cdc found 40% of rapists in 2010 were female, and equal numbers of men n women were raped. But hey, bury your head in the sand more if it makes you feel better.” -
Do you have a source for that?
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf
On page 24 it describes that virtually all women reported their rapists were male, and 79.2% of men who were forced to penetrate described their attackers were female. Do note that the very definition of rape used by the CDC made “forced to penetrate” a non-rape crime, so that factor needs to be taken into account. Based on Tables 2.1 and 2.2, the 12 month figures for female rape victims and male “forced to penetrate” victims were both 1.1%, while male rape and female forced to penetrate were so insignificant as to be unusable.
Thanks, I need to make a macro, I post them so often, I’m getting sick n tired of it and sad that it wasn’t big news. It’s one of the most important findings for sexual assault in the last decade and didn’t get a mention in the news….how depressing.
One thing I noticed when going over it again that is really bothering me is, even in the assessments, it looks like male victimization was attempted to be minimalized. On page 18-19, while discussing the prevalence, it goes over the details of rape, giving all numbers found. It made sure to note that in the 12 month figures, rape was not significant enough among men to give usable numbers. But when discussing the prevalence of “forced to penetrate” it doesn’t even bother to mention the 12 month figures, only mentioning the lifetime values.
Exactly, They buried the stats. From what I see bias against males in stats on abuse is very common. Hell take a look at the duluth model of domestic violence n how it ignores female perpetrated violence.
That source gives this right up front:
“Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives…” so I’m not sure where the commenter who said equal numbers of men and women were raped gets it from.
Good idea Archy….the ignorance around this issue is baffling.
This article also has its heart in the right place. However, I believe the way you worded your idea about victimization might be triggering. While I personally see your point, I am also an unapologetically loud woman. I believe I can empower myself. But from a lot of women’s point of view it does feel helpless when they are gaslighted. And I don’t think you’d argue that the way we socialize women is significantly different than men, in terms of public spaces even today. So rather than brushing off Ali’s article as simply victimizing, I read it as an appeal to men to recognize it when thy do this. I know it’s seems like the article is addressed to women but the content feels like an appeal to meb’s common sense. Yes I agree that male victims are too often seen as “nonexistent,” but on the other hand women (especially adult women) victims are often judged or derided for not simply “empowering themselves” and “standing up to their advisers.” these cries often come from wry privileged people of all genders who never stop for one second to recognize the cycle of abuse and how difficult it is to get out of.
(Edited to remove mention of an off topic question. – GMP Moderator)
This is not about sexual differences. This is acting as if the most important thing about your loved ones’ emotions is that they be convenient for you. Everybody does this to everybody. Women to men, men to women, parents to children, adult children to parents. And we all do it more when we’re stressed.
Here’s an example of the other way. My husband gets angry at things. When I was younger, it used to make me very uncomfortable. I hated his anger. He was too angry for me, but not too angry for him. So I learned not to try to soothe him right away because making him less angry was what I needed. He needed to get whatever out.
Now he’ll blow up in a game he’s playing when I’m a spectator and instead of feeling sick inside, I sit back and enjoy the show. He’ll feel a little sheepish later, but he doesn’t feel ashamed and I certainly don’t make him feel that way. Can I tell you how much better this makes life? He’s my man, and I love him as he is.
I believe (when we were younger) he actually said to me when I was sobbing over something, “You are being too emotional.” Literally. A direct quote. But I was being too emotional for him, not for me. I was being just the right amount of emotional for me given the circumstances. All his statement did was make me feel shitty for crying over something that was important to me. He doesn’t do this anymore. He reacts with concern. He assumes my level of emotion is correct for me and responds to it. “Wow, this sounds big. Are you going to be okay?” I fall into his arms, he holds me, and I say, “Yes.”
Susan’s is the most helpful comment here for my money.
She’s realistic about the emotions at play, she gives a real life example – where Ali’s sound hypothetical – and her story inspires readers to change for the benefits changing offers instead of seeking to paralyze them with guilt and shame.
The contrast between the helpfulness of Susan’s comment and the futility of the identity politics and victim worship going on around it suggest to me that the latter are pretty bankrupt as a force for social change.
As I’m guessing Green already knows, # 1 is just another expression of patriarchy. We all need more feminism. However, a man feeling trapped in this system is not in the same position as a women trapped, who is repeatedly being told that she is not trapped, that she is ‘imagining things’ and she is just being too emotional/crazy/sentimental/a shrew/a sourpuss (find other maddening adjectives).
Just for belonging to the group of privilege, the man is in many ways in a less frustrating position. What you are saying is along the line of ‘Oh, the elites also suffer you know. They have to keep up the appearance! They have to meet these impossible expectations!’ etc etc. Of course the very class position can entrap a person in a position of power. That doesn’t mean that he/she can compare notes with those being systematically disadvantaged.
#2 Ali didn’t portray gaslighted women as powerless. On the contrary. The less-aware gaslighted women become passive agressive. Even when they cannot properly grasp the whole structure, they do identify the outlines and contours of the double edged sword and they can/do figure out ways to navigate the possible traps set on their horizon. The fact that they don’t often manage to see the whole picture (from inside the picture) and don’t call BS on it in so many words is not their fault at all. As a woman, let me assure you, NOT ALLOWING each instance of gaslighting is not one of the options. If it were, it wouldn’t have existed as long as it did. The fact that we are speaking up against it now (after AGES of careful self-reflection to see if the fault lied with ourselves) is a form of non-allowance, OK?
The truth is that both genders do this. And it depends on the individual. Women, who generally are more skilled psychologically, are often better than men at it. I think the issue is really “How free is an individual to dump someone who is doing this?” Because the behavior is extremely deep rooted, and no doubt comes from parental modeling. Or, in rare cases, one partner could be a sociopath.
In Ali’s article, the women are probably less free (economically) to leave relationships, and that’s where I think it becomes poignant. It’s similar to spousal abuse in that case.
If you are seriously using CDC as a valid source of insightful data, consider this – 76% of female rapes go unreported. The CDC does not tend to include data pertaining to reported rapes of women where rape kits were not processed, the backlog of rape kits unprocessed in many municipalites go back THREE years. Rape kits are rarely if ever collected on men, most rape reports reported by men are not required to be upheld to the same standards of rape reports in women, its laregely heresay. CDC underreports rapes of women whereby no rape kit had been processed. If you are seriously going to attempt to justify an article on systemic social subjugation of women in any context, get your facts straight and use valid sources of data.
The entire tone of this article was patently biased, and demonstrated with an unusual level of clarity the extremism patriarchy goes to defend itself. The tone was highly judgemental, the language filled with examples of invalidation, evaluation, judgement, coercion, and manipulation, as were the continued defensive commentary.
The CDC’s rape statistics are renowned for being skewed and inherently useless for any serious researcher. They rarely include women as victims of coerced oral sex (underreported due to inadequate education and training – most women don’t know they can report coerced oral sex as rape, and most police officers are not trained to handle such a report), sexual enslavement (rarely reported by victim for fear of prosecution for prostitution as well as fear of retribution), enforced impregnation (underreported for fear of retribution), or forced marriages – all highly women-centric issues, and all underreported by victims.
Gaslighting is merely the introduction to socially accepted coercion tactics forcing many women into unwanted relations daily. The more recent statistics say three in four women endure some form of unwanted, forced physical, often sexually explicit contact from a man.
WHO and IWE would be only incrementally more reiable data collectors on rape statistics. I do not dispute that rape and emotional victimization occurs among men, but I will continue to emphasize that it is well known by investigators and therapists alike that rape or other forms of abuse are systemically underreported in female victims.
systemic sexual oppression should be likened to racial prejudice. Women continue to be objectified in nearly every country. Social systemic oppression of women has programmed the reactivity Inherent throughout this poorly researched article, as well as the feedback throughout.
I am here to tell you these practices are alive and well, as a survivor of such brutality. The goal of any society should be to make slavery, objectification, rape, emotional abuse and physical abuse as distasteful and shocking to its people as cannibalism.
I can tell you sir, given your language throughout this article it is unlikely you have experienced isolation, oppression, gaslighting, rape, or coercion in your relationship, to the extent the average female has, as your tangled logic and your manner of communication clearly demonstrates you are the manipulator and the power holder in your personal relationship. To the editors of this blog and the author of this article,I would endeavor to suggest a course on NVC prior to subjugating your readers to any further biased, ill-informed, inflammatory articles.
Isis, do WHO and IWE do any data collection on men forced to penetrate? I collect links to studies to try get an understanding of how much abuse goes on by type, gender, age, etc. CDC’s NISVS 2010 is the only one I’ve seen so far address males forced to penetrate.
Isis,
Yes, many instances in which women are raped go unreported. I agree 100%. But your comments say nothing to suggest that the rape of men also goes underreported. It is a startling omission. Men do not report violent abuse by their partners nor do they report being victims of rape for a myriad of reasons. Not the least of which is being laughed at by the men and women police officers who are to investigate such claims. If you are demanding that others rely on unbiased assumptions then please do so yourself. Otherwise, you’re not in dialogue, you’re just shouting other voices down.
“If you are seriously using CDC as a valid source of insightful data, consider this – 76% of female rapes go unreported.”
There is so much wrong with that one sentence, it’s mind boggling. For starters, how can you get such an accurate account of how many rapes go unreported if they are UNREPORTED? Next, what percentage of male rape goes unreported? Are you honestly going to suggest that men are more likely to report being raped than women? How can you pretend this claim says anything about the validity of the CDC’s statistics when what you say here doesn’t disprove the CDC, and furthermore, your figures ignore men’s rape, and so you can’t speak one way or the other regarding it? So attempting to deflect the findings of the CDC with regard to male victims by giving statistics that 1: couldn’t possibly be factual (can’t report on the unreported), and 2: utterly ignores men as victims, is actually quite offensive.
It should also be noted the author wasn’t restricting his discussion to only rape. In fact, he cited the 1in3 and 1in4 numbers as rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime, yet that CDC study actually excludes men from being raped by definition. So that 1in3 includes rape, but the 1in4 does not. So yes, the CDC figures are skewed, but they are skewed in favour of women. But this is rreevant, because the point wasn’t who has it worst, it was “men are abused too”, and that seems to be a problem for you… why?
“Rape kits are rarely if ever collected on men, most rape reports reported by men are not required to be upheld to the same standards of rape reports in women, its laregely heresay”
Care to back that up with some evidence? Furthermore, care to demonstrate that it isn’t also the case for women? Rape kits help synch a case, but there have been many men convicted on false accusations, meaning no rape kit, only heresay.
“The CDC’s rape statistics are renowned for being skewed and inherently useless for any serious researcher.”
Care to back that claim up as well? Who DO you see as a reliable source? RAINN?
I find your dismissal, your attempt to marginalize, even hide male victims, and attempt at oneupsmanship to be very offensive. Why does it irk you so to acknowledge male victims exist, at least in greater numbers than the nonexistent you would have people believe? What do you have against men?
Mark, For the first 3/4s of your article, your criticisms of the original article come across to me as simply more elaborate versions of the same objections that seem to be made almost whenever some discussion of feminism is made. The last 1/4 is not enough to convince me otherwise. If you want to make a positive contribution, you really need to re-examine your views and/or recraft what you are saying.
1) “Men are gaslighted too”. So what? Is your point that if men are treated badly too, we are at some equality of being treated badly and so nothing is wrong and no one should be pointing it out? I don’t understand the point of this reason if not to simply shut down the conversation. I can not think of a reasonable person who would, after reading Ali’s article, think “oh but it’s ok to gaslight men, because the article doesn’t mention that.” It’s wrong to gaslight anyone man or women. There’s no other conclusion to reach from that article. Stating men are gaslighted too is not a good criticism.
2)”Women are potrayed as powerless victims” To me, this argument boils down to “well if you didn’t act like a victim, no one would pick on you…”. Responsibility for their role? In the example of a boss calling an employee “stupid” once a day, and when the employee protests, says ‘you’re over reacting” what is the responsibility of that employee? Are they supposed to console themselves saying ‘ the boss didn’t mean it’, that’s a decent short term thing, but it doesn’t excuse the behavior. Are they supposed to have some supernatural power over the boss’s actions ? Are they simply supposed to not be stupid? I’m sure the employee is not doing that intentionally, and the proper response on the part of the boss is to either correct them or fire them.
You say ” In order for gaslighting to work, you have to allow it continue.” That’s called ‘blaming the victim’. If only the person being gaslighted had behaved differently, the boss wouldn’t have been compelled to gaslight them. That’s not true, In this specific example, the employee can quit, but in real life, the need for and rent sometimes prevent that (this can apply to relationships as well), and even if they did quit, it would not make gaslighting any more ok.
3) ‘Ali blames and pathologizes’. The point of Ali’s article was to point out responses and comments that hurt and were manipulative by denying that hurt. In a situation where someone is being manipulative, there is going to be blame and a pathological situation. If someone says ‘you’re hurting me’, the immediate response can not be ‘well let’s be careful because that takes us ” down a path defined by pathological and abuse markers”. If someone is doing something blameworthy, it’s best to assign blame. With regards to the suggestion that 3 months of therapy might be helpful, I think you are trying to shift the context of the situation. You can’t bring your boss into three months of couple’s therapy. You can’t bring the multitude of anonymous internet commenters into 3 months of therapy. And for partners that you could possiibly do so, the worse offenders would simply repeat that therapy isn’t needed because the person was simply being overly sensitive or dramatic
4) ” encourages his readers to employ simplistic binary assumptions”.
No, I don’t think he does. I think you are overgeneralizing and misinterpeting what he means.
” 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.” … Is it his intention that we should believe the recipient of this statement NEVER overreacts?”
The answer to your question is No, Ali is assuming his readers are intelligent adults and discern the difference between different situations and understand nuance without him having to cover every possible exception to the detriment of the article. He presents a rather specific scenario. He presents a rather specific scenario. If you are addressing someone’s bad behavior and that same person tells you to ‘Calm down’, that is manipulative. That’s different from say a 3rd person makes that statement. One can’t come up every exception and expect to have a readable article of decent length.
The advice ‘when someone comes at you with a knife, run away’ does not cover the knife salesman sells you one or your aunt bring you the carving knife at Thanksgiving. It’s still good advice. The person is supposed to recognize that. Ali isn’t encouraging binary assumptions, he’s expecting his audience to be able to see the distinction.
I am glad you have the relationship you do with your partner, but unless your over-reaction is when you call out your partner’s bad behavior, then I think it’s not an applicable example. A boss patronizing you, a stranger catcalling and then saying “Calm down”, is not an unclear situation. Stating that doesn’t state that there are no gray situations.
5) ” misidentify strengths as weaknesses”. Again context matters in this situation and stating exceptions doesn’t invalidate a general statement. You ask ” How is it that expressing an issue or concern should not be done in a gentle way?” When the gentle way is not done out of a friendly concern, but out of a fear of being told that you’re too sensitive or too dramatic. That’s when. That sense of being told you’re too sensitive by someone when you point something out about their behavior towards you is the main point of the article and statements within it should be viewed in terms of that and not as a general commentary on behavior, which is what you are seeming to do.
6) ” encourages counterproductive binary arguments”. There’s not much here except that statement, so I can’t say much more than no it doesn’t. If you read into the examples that all men are awful and constantly gaslighting women, then I think you’re the one that is encouraging conterrpoductive arguments.
The Ending
“Thank you, Yashar. I know your heart is in the right place” after having read 6 criticisms written over 2 pages, this phrase “Thank you, Yashar. I know your heart is in the right place” comes with an implied “but you are over reacting” attached to it. You spend the rest of the article saying how men are just as vunerable as women, but as I said at the start, that’s simply a non argument.. Proposing the need for appreciative inquiry seems to either undermine or at least miss the point. There are plenty of situations where it’s clear that when you point out someone’s bad behavior and they respond by telling you that you are too sensitive, that it was not coming out of a desire for appreciative inquiry.
I hope you do mean for people to get into a better place and respect each other and communicate better. However if you do, I think you need to recraft that message. A response of
but
but
but
doesn’t convey that to me.
1) If both sexes are being treated equally bad, then there is a level of equality there. That doesn’t mean the issues don’t need to be fixed (although, it also doesn’t mean there is an issue that needs fixing ether), but it DOES mean the blame and the solutions can’t be one sided. The fact Ali’s article DID present the issues as one sided does demonstrate a view that it’s only a problem when it happens to women. The outcome of 40 years of one-sided domestic abuse awareness demonstrates that quite well. If you believe it affects both men and women, and is as equally bad when done to both, why do you support an article, written on a mens site, that completely ignores the effect on men, and seems to entirely lay the blame at men’s feet? Is your ideal of equality to reverse to oppression roles you believe exist? When a gender neutral problem is presented in a one-sided, gendered way, it needs to be called out. See how the predominantly male wartime death rate gets glossed over in a gender neutral brush for an example of the same thing in reverse.
2) Ironically, you further perpetuate the idea of “treating women as victims”. At no point do you demonstrate he’s wrong. You call an expectation that women should be willing to stand up for themselves “blaming the victim (there’s that victim portrayal again)”, as if one has a right to be treated nicely and respected, without ever needing to earn it. In you hypothetical, a simple, “Hey, you’re out of line calling me stupid. Stop it” Is not to much to ask. If the boss continues, report them. Both actions are “the victim” taking responsibility FOR THEIR OWN FEELINGS. Both actions should be expected of anyone who feels they are being treated unfairly. Whinging about gaslighting is just coddling people, treating them like children who can’t manage to speak up for themselves. How weak, pathetic and meek do you think women are? It’s not “blaming the victim”, it’s expecting women to act like an adult, and tend to their own feelings instead of expecting the world to shift to make her happy.
3) The point of Ali’s article was the same as most, to portray women as victims of the big bad man, in order to socially engineer (through guilt and shame, as has always been the case) male behavior into something more to women’s liking. You say “If someone is doing something blameworthy, it’s best to assign blame.”, and that blame is clearly being assigned to men (despite your admitting it isn’t a gendered issue in point one)… but what if the blame IS only the person being accused of overreacting? Are you familiar with the recent donglegate fiasco? The woman there overheard a dongle joke (AKA a dick joke) and took great offense, and instead of asking the guys to stop (you know, that reasonable expectation that you call blaming the victim), or discreetly informing a staff member of the conference, she blew it up by posting her complaint to her 13,000 twitter subscribers and demanding the pycon management do something, via twitter. That exposure cost a man his job, because she can’t handle a simple dick joke told in her general vicinity… Is it unreasonable to call that an overreaction, overly sensitive or dramatic? Is it victim blaming to suggest, maybe, instead of whinging about it to the world, she could have simply confronted the guys and asked them to stop? Ali (and yourself) seem to presenting any accusation of a woman acting overly sensitive or dramatic as being completely unfounded, as if women (or men) CAN’T act irrational, or overreact.
4) “No, I don’t think he does.” But he does. You can not accuse someone of being irrational or suggest they deal with their own feelings without being accused of gaslighting or victim blaming. You guys have left no way in which to criticize people, at least women, without meeting YOUR standards of what’s reasonable. But I don’t know you from Adam. If you want to argue common sense, then I need to point out, if common sense was a factor, people wouldn’t be losing their jobs over a dongle joke, and the tech and feminist media wouldn’t be in an uproar over it, now would they? Common sense isn’t very common these days, and where that line stands is different for different people and different agenda’s… So common sense is not a sufficient answer for where to draw the line, because it is entirely subjective.
5) “When the gentle way is not done out of a friendly concern, but out of a fear of being told that you’re too sensitive or too dramatic.” It could be argued that if you’re coming to the realization, on your own, that you may be deemed “too sensitive or too dramatic”, you may actually be doing so. Remember your claims in number 4, about nuance or grey situations? It could also be argued that doing so undermines your efforts to be taken seriously, and will, in turn receive a likewise non-serious response.
” That sense of being told you’re too sensitive by someone when you point something out about their behavior towards you is the main point of the article and statements within it should be viewed in terms of that and not as a general commentary on behavior, which is what you are seeming to do.”
And again, we return to having no way to tell someone who IS being unreasonable they are being so. And I’m not exactly sure where someone feels they have the right to judge and criticize others behavior without having their own behavior judged and criticized in return?
6)”There’s not much here except that statement, so I can’t say much more than no it doesn’t.”
He says as he enacts a counterproductive binary argument.
” I know your heart is in the right place” comes with an implied “but you are over reacting” attached to it. ”
The attachment couldn’t possibly be “but you’re doing more harm than good”, or far more likely, given the articles content “but your views are incomplete, and sexist against men”… I also find your own arguments, such as ” I think you are overgeneralizing and misinterpreting what he means.” that likewise can be said to have the implied “you’re over-reacting” attachments to them, to be amusingly ironic.
“You spend the rest of the article saying how men are just as vulnerable as women, but as I said at the start, that’s simply a non argument..”
Then why is it so hard to get acknowledgement… ON A MENS SITE? Why does the original article have to be gendered? What benefit comes from gendering it, when the issue applies to both, except to include that oh so common implication that it is only women who are affected by it, and only men who need to modify their behavior? You’ll need to explain this, above all else, to even have a chance at justifying it as anything but encouraging counterproductive binary arguments, like the one you are engaged in right here.
“Proposing the need for appreciative inquiry seems to either undermine or at least miss the point.”
AKA you’re overreacting, Mark. And how is it undermining the discussion to point out it’s not a gendered issue, when it has become so very common to only discuss one side of non-gendered issues, and in turn, see only one-sided responses, such as in Domestic Violence (if I have to explain this, well, the term ideological blinders come to mind, and explains why the “but but but” doesn’t work on you), education (Title IX implementation, or 60% female attendance rate and politicians concern is getting more women in STEM fields to widen the gap further) , family courts (reasons for no-fault, or how alimony is now a problem because women don’t like it when they have to pay), etc.
Love this. You nailed it.
I found this article very condescending and convoluted.
Someone is addressing an issue in a very straightforward way, and someone else needs to fill in the gaps with academic prowess. I’ve experienced this backlash when I published an article discussing ‘enlightened’ men and their methods of pursuing women. Not discounting queers and the plights of men, not claiming to be a feminist – just a direct commentary on an issue I had personal experience with and had witnessed happening to the women in my life. Needless to say there was considerable ostentatious jargon flaring up in defense from leftrightandcenter.
At least we can extract that if an article is triggering elaborate mental responses, it is touching on something worth considering; defensive, critical dialogue is a step up from complete ignorance.