Has gaslighting conditioned women into thinking they’re emotionally unstable? Yashar Ali thinks so.
You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!
Sound familiar?
If you’re a woman, it probably does.
Do you ever hear any of these comments from your spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or relatives after you have expressed frustration, sadness, or anger about something they have done or said?
When someone says these things to you, it’s not an example of inconsiderate behavior. When your spouse shows up half an hour late to dinner without calling—that’s inconsiderate behavior. 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.
And this is the sort of emotional manipulation that feeds an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as crazy, irrational, overly sensitive, unhinged. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that women need only the slightest provocation to unleash their (crazy) emotions. It’s patently false and unfair.
I think it’s time to separate inconsiderate behavior from emotional manipulation and we need to use a word not in our normal vocabulary.
I want to introduce a helpful term to identify these reactions: gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a term, often used by mental health professionals (I am not one), to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off base that they’re crazy.
The term comes from the 1944 MGM film, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s husband in the film, played by Charles Boyer, wants to get his hands on her jewelry. He realizes he can accomplish this by having her certified as insane and hauled off to a mental institution. To pull of this task, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker off and on, and every time Bergman’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things. In this setting, a gaslighter is someone who presents false information to alter the victim’s perception of him or herself.
Today, when the term is referenced, it’s usually because the perpetrator says things like, “You’re so stupid” or “No one will ever want you” to the victim. This is an intentional, pre-meditated form of gaslighting, much like the actions of Charles Boyer’s character in Gaslight, where he strategically plots to confuse Ingrid Bergman’s character into believing herself unhinged.
The form of gaslighting I’m addressing is not always pre-mediated or intentional, which makes it worse, because it means all of us, especially women, have dealt with it at one time or another.
Those who engage in gaslighting create a reaction—whether it’s anger, frustration, sadness—in the person they are dealing with. Then, when that person reacts, the gaslighter makes them feel uncomfortable and insecure by behaving as if their feelings aren’t rational or normal.
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My friend Anna (all names changed to protect privacy) is married to a man who feels it necessary to make random and unprompted comments about her weight. Whenever she gets upset or frustrated with his insensitive comments, he responds in the same, defeating way, “You’re so sensitive. I’m just joking.”
My friend Abbie works for a man who finds a way, almost daily, to unnecessarily shoot her down and her work product. Comments like, “Can’t you do something right?” or “Why did I hire you?” are regular occurrences for her. Her boss has no problem firing people (he does it regularly), so you wouldn’t know that based on these comments, Abbie has worked for him for six years. But every time she stands up for herself and says “It doesn’t help me when you say these things,” she gets the same reaction: “Relax; you’re overreacting.”
Abbie thinks her boss is just being a jerk in these moments, but the truth is, he is making those comments to manipulate her into thinking her reactions are out of whack. And it’s exactly that kind manipulation that has left her feeling guilty about being sensitive, and as a result, she has not left her job.
But gaslighting can be as simple as someone smiling and saying something like, “You’re so sensitive,” to somebody else. Such a comment may seem innocuous enough, but in that moment, that person is making a judgment about how someone else should feel.
While dealing with gaslighting isn’t a universal truth for women, we all certainly know plenty of women who encounter it at work, home, or in personal relationships.
And the act of gaslighting does not simply affect women who are not quite sure of themselves. Even vocal, confident, assertive women are vulnerable to gaslighting.
Why?
Because women bare the brunt of our neurosis. It is much easier for us to place our emotional burdens on the shoulders of our wives, our female friends, our girlfriends, our female employees, our female colleagues, than for us to impose them on the shoulders of men.
It’s a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they don’t refuse our burdens as easily. It’s the ultimate cowardice.
Whether gaslighting is conscious or not, it produces the same result: it renders some women emotionally mute.
These women aren’t able to clearly express to their spouses that what is said or done to them is hurtful. They can’t tell their boss that his behavior is disrespectful and prevents them from doing their best work. They can’t tell their parents that, when they are being critical, they are doing more harm than good.
When these women receive any sort of push back to their reactions, they often brush it off by saying, “Forget it, it’s okay.”
That “forget it” isn’t just about dismissing a thought, it is about self-dismissal. It’s heartbreaking.
No wonder some women are unconsciously passive aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or frustration. For years, they have been subjected to so much gaslighting that they can no longer express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them.
They say, “I’m sorry” before giving their opinion. In an email or text message, they place a smiley face next to a serious question or concern, thereby reducing the impact of having to express their true feelings.
You know how it looks: “You’re late 
”
These are the same women who stay in relationships they don’t belong in, who don’t follow their dreams, who withdraw from the kind of life they want to live.
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Since I have embarked on this feminist self-exploration in my life and in the lives of the women I know, this concept of women as “crazy” has really emerged as a major issue in society at large and an equally major frustration for the women in my life, in general.
From the way women are portrayed on reality shows, to how we condition boys and girls to see women, we have come to accept the idea that women are unbalanced, irrational individuals, especially in times of anger and frustration.
Just the other day, on a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a flight attendant who had come to recognize me from my many trips asked me what I did for a living. When I told her that I write mainly about women, she immediately laughed and asked, “Oh, about how crazy we are?”
Her gut reaction to my work made me really depressed. While she made her response in jest, her question nonetheless makes visible a pattern of sexist commentary that travels through all facets of society on how men view women, which also greatly impacts how women may view themselves.
As far as I am concerned, the epidemic of gaslighting is part of the struggle against the obstacles of inequality that women constantly face. Acts of gaslighting steal their most powerful tool: their voice. This is something we do to women every day, in many different ways.
I don’t think this idea that women are “crazy,” is based in some sort of massive conspiracy. Rather, I believe it’s connected to the slow and steady drumbeat of women being undermined and dismissed, on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of many reasons why we are dealing with this public construction of women as “crazy”
I recognize that I’ve been guilty of gaslighting my women friends in the past (but never my male friends—surprise, surprise). It’s shameful, but I’m glad I realized that I did it on occasion and put a stop to it.
While I take total responsibility for my actions, I do believe that I, along with many men, am a byproduct of our conditioning. It’s about the general insight our conditioning gives us into admitting fault and exposing any emotion.
When we are discouraged in our youth and early adulthood from expressing emotion, it causes many of us to remain steadfast in our refusal to express regret when we see someone in pain from our actions.
When I was writing this piece, I was reminded of one of my favorite Gloria Steinem quotes, “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.”
So for many of us, it’s first about unlearning how to flicker those gaslights and learning how to acknowledge and understand the feelings, opinions, and positions of the women in our lives.
But isn’t the issue of gaslighting ultimately about whether we are conditioned to believe that women’s opinions don’t hold as much weight as ours? That what women have to say, what they feel, isn’t quite as legitimate?
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Yashar will be soon releasing his first short e-book, entitled, A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not Crazy — How We Teach Men That Women Are Crazy and How We Convince Women To Ignore Their Instincts. If you are interested and want to be notified when the book is released, please click here to sign-up.
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This post originally appeared on The Current Conscience.
—Photo lempicki.maciek/Flickr
About Yashar Ali
Vocalyze
This article largely disproves itself right from the beginning. Not that there’s no truth to it (guys are of course very often inconsiderate of girls’ feelings), but the part regarding the manipulation cracks me up because it’s so incredibly off base. Are you serious about this? The fact is that our culture becomes more feminormative, if you will, with every passing year (with the giant exception of the business world, addressed at the bottom). This is particularly true in terms of which views are acceptable for discourse in the public sphere.
Flipping through the channels you see the sitcoms with the neanderthal “can’t do anything right” male at every corner. You see the main characters from family guy or american dad or king of queens or the idiots in the commercials who couldn’t sweep a floor or ask for directions if there was a gun to their head. And your argument here that it is we who need to shift over to the female POV in emotional disagreements, while framed as a minority view in your column, is anything but. With your presumptuous and heavy-handed essay, you’ve taken all circumstance out of the picture. If a guy tells a girl she’s overreacting, she can’t possibly be overreacting. It must be that he is being unreasonable and manipulative. It can’t be that we should meet in the middle, because clearly the woman is inherently more closely calibrated to the spot along the spectrum where genuine human emotion should lie.
That’s not far off from the widely held feminist view that every single “stereotypically masculine” opinion or attribute that can be exhibited by a male is a learned behavior completely disconnected from the gender-neutral truths espoused by themselves and their self-affirming female peer groups. They tend to ignore the parts of their biology textbooks that describe differences in brain composition (such as percentage of white vs. grey matter in men vs women) and often won’t even admit to size/speed/strength differences, which really hints to how far they are off their rockers. Basically, women and men are exactly the same physiologically, and if I like football, heavy metal, or performance autombiles, it’s because I’ve been indoctrinated by the patriarchy, and if I were born in a neutral, healthy environment, I’d be drinking kombucha and dressed like an extra from “Portlandia” just like them. Please. Think about how infuriating that would be to the progressive crowd if the same sentiment was aimed at any other group.. that the things they tend to like and value are inherently “less natural” than the interests of others. Oh wait.. it has happened and continues to happen, and the outcry has been deafening.. right up until now. These are the kind of people who share your view.
Women still need support while making their way up. They need to be protected against domestic violence, to be given fair wages for their work, and they should receive their fair share of opportunities for promotion, amongst many other things. It does them a great disservice when these reasonable goals are packaged with an ideology that’s founded on a vindictive attitude that seeks to extract feelings of guilt from all (not just actively oppressive) members of the perceived party in power (always males, usually white ones). That guilt (experienced vicariously by reasonable men on behalf of dirtbag men due to stereotyping by the anti-stereotype crowd) has been successfully imposed upon many of the writers on this site, and pervades through most of the columns I’ve read. The way to combat one double standard is not to institute a different one in the other direction. Relationships between people often require meeting in the middle and this is no different. Women are awesome, but so are men.
I think it’s important to remember that Yashar doesn’t suggest that the manipulation he describes is intentional. Most of it probably isn’t. So for example, a man, who is traditionally taught not to deal with emotions is confronted with someone who is emotional, and so he does what he can to shut it down. It’s not malicious, it’s both people trying to deal with a situation.
Also, this article isn’t saying that masculine or feminine behavior is better. I too believe a lot of our behavior is learned, both masculine and feminine, but I try not to value one above the other. The point is that neither masculine or feminine behavior is inherent to being male or female.
It is true that our culture devalues emotions, full stop. Men are taught to ignore them, and women are taught that if they express them they will be ridiculed for it. It’s also true that the majority of the times I have encountered this form of emotional gaslighting it has been from a man. However, women also do this to each other. It’s unfortunate, because it really does lead to qualifying every emotional response I express. I might know that my emotional response is valid, but I also know that it will likely be criticized.
what about the menz?
A fair bit of gaslighting going on in the comments itself I see.
+1!
It’s a shame so many people feel the need to react angrily against a such great article. Surely anything that encourages us to reassess our approach to other human beings in order to communicate better with one another is a good thing? It’s true that in relationships, when I have become upset by certain things a boyfriend has done, I have been told all those things – you’re overreacting, you’re oversensitive, you aren’t thinking rationally. I NEVER accept these comments as I’m not prepared to have my feelings disregarded or invalidated by such a simplistic argument, designed to shut me up and close the subject. It’s true that men and women do think differently – and some things that upset women don’t upset men, but that doesn’t absolve men from trying not to do those things – not if they are in a relationship where they genuinely care about the women and want it to last. A good relationship is built on compromise, and it is both sides’ responsibility to work out how to behave with one another so that neither feels resentful, frustrated or angry.
I have never heard the term before, but I have observed other men treat their spouses or GFs this way. It is awful to constantly put someone down and intentionally lower their self-esteem. This is nothing less than emotional and psychological abuse. It is certainly not a loving thing to do.
I tell me wife I love her several times a day. I complement her on how good she looks, smells, or whatever. I try to be encouraging in everything she does and never criticize her or put her down. If she does something that annoys or bothers me, I try to find a loving and tactful way to deal with it. If she needs a shoulder to cry or or just a hug, I am there. I want to spend the rest of my life with this wonderful woman; I try to treat her like the most precious thing in the world because she is (to me).
Histrionics met with calming language is not a bad thing.
You are a perfect white knight sir, she is lucky to have you.
Hush Hush sweet Charlotte is gas lighting
Boring article with the same ole sht… women are perfect, and any fault on their part is because men make them do it.
Somehow women aren’t manipulative, never throw tantrums, never get emotional, never act crazy, never go psycho, never lie, never have hormonal flunctions, and if they do any of that it is because men are just inconsiderate.
Right. *yawn*
Could not agree with this statement more.
First, gas lighting occurs by both sexes, and shaming tactics for expression of facts or opinions are often viewed as more prevalent by females.
Gas lighting is not telling someone that they are “over reacting”, or to “calm down”.. that’s ridiculous, you’re really reaching on this one! Are you now going to accuse law enforcement or medical staff of gas lighting when they encourage people to “Calm Down” or “Relax”? Come on..really? Deal with the pattern of abuse not some simplistic phrases that may be used in a larger and more complex pattern of deception. That gives an unrealistic explanation of what gas lighting actually is.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making them doubt their own memory and perception. An example is the denial by an abuser to a victim that previous abusive incidents ever occurred. …
thnk goodness, this article has been renamed.
although, i preferred the ‘popular posts’ to be numerated, and the larger number (12/13 versus the current 7 posts)
I absolutely LOVED this article! Glad I stumbled on this site, it should be interesting exploring!
Yashar Ali,
So young man, sit back get comfortable
and let’s talk about your father.
Hmm, I see.
This really touched a nerve in me…in a sort of painful but good way. I recognized myself in it and discovered a way to verbalize what I have been feeling. I am not sure how just yet, but I think I will be able to use this for my own healing and becoming a stronger and more authentic me. Thank you for this. You are an unusually gifted person (and esp. for a man) to be able to see so clearly. I hope others will learn from you. Blessings.
The man who wrote this lives in a cave and has not ever had to deal with females of the human species.
Great article. As a man, I have ABSOLUTELY said things like this to my (now ex) girlfriend. Almost word-for-word sometimes, and so this really struck a nerve. It is true that when gaslighting occurs, it is usually unintentional, but the effect, nevertheless, is the same. shot down, ignored… Whether or not people agree with what you say in this article, it is never a bad thing to question what our instincts are, because at this point in time, our instincts come not from nature, but from our parents and television, which are all products of other people.
Thank you! My own mother was a huge gaslighter, so was my father, so of course I married one and that has kept me single for 16 years after I unloaded him in a divorce. Tired of being diminished because I have feelings, I morphed into a being without feelings, at least not outwardly…and have tried not to repeat this error in raising my sons or my daughters. My sons are feminists, great communicators and they don’t engage in gaslighting. My daughters are confident and capable. Now…to change myself and swing my pendulum back toward the center.
My husband said that a woman will never be President because of the way MEN think.
So you’re saying that it’s all men’s fault no woman is president. gotcha. ok. well then i guess women simply aren’t allowed to vote. Or, if they are, then quite obviously men must outnumber women 457 to 1 at the polls…
GTFO with your senseless, useless, worthless, baseless broad-sweeping generalizations. you are doing nothing but taking up space and wasting oxygen.
Your husband is wrong. Women have been voted into the top political leadership position in India, Pakistan, Great Britain, Israel, Germany, Philippines,…
BTW, it was the women’s vote that brought the German Nazis and Italian Fascist into power resulting in the world’s most destructive war.
Sadly, I knew a girl in high school who said a woman could never be president because women are too emotional.
The only reason a woman would never become president is because she never tried hard enough to be president.
Any evidence in favor of your last statement? What was the percentage of wome who voted for them? What was the percentage of men? Was that difference – if it existed – enough to bring them into power?
The U.S. has already had de facto women presidents anyway. Certainly women who were major decisionmakers and presidential powerbrokers in their own right. John Adams and James Madison didn’t make any big decisions without talking to Abigail and Dolley first. When Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke, his wife was for all intents and purposes in charge of the White House in 1920. In the 80′s, when the cameras left the room, the first thing Ronald Reagan usually said was “Where’s Nancy?” Not to mention the fact that there are White House insiders who joke half-seriously that Hillary already has been President, in the 1990’s….
Right, because female candidates TOTALLY just have people lining up like crazy to fund their campaigns. Definitely.
Wow, I can see here that you are an experienced gaslighter yourself. Congratulations.
Your entire comment is over-emotional, openly aggressive, attacking, and massively projects your own assumptions onto a single sentence comment that was not even an expression of the commenter’s own opinion. There is not a shred of logical discussion in your attack. Try again.
Poor Hillary. No money, no funding. The first REAL shot at a woman President and what happened? That big old bad Obama just privileged himself right over her head!