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.
♦◊♦
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.
♦◊♦
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?
—
|
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.
|
—
This post originally appeared on The Current Conscience.
—Photo lempicki.maciek/Flickr
***
Read Mark Greene’s response:
About Yashar Ali
Vocalyze
I appreciate your thoughts… and I agree with much of what you have to say here, having seen and experienced it myself firsthand.
But I think perhaps this goes even deeper – to the very nature of the person. Somehow we have managed to equate emotion as a negative quality, rather than part of what it means to be human. The “overreacting” or “just being emotional” arguments are designed to cut women off from their own genius- that ability to intuit the needs of others. And we women, afraid that our intuition and emotional aplomb will define us apart from any other gifts of intellect or ability, take the advice to grow thicker skins or be “less emotional” somehow, as the only way to be successful or have a voice. But in doing so, we ultimately are giving up our own womanhood, turning from it as if the only way to be human and have value is by becoming a less-than-woman, or heaven forbid, trading in our amazing womanhood for a virtual “xy”.
Well said Christine!
My boyfriend grew up with some awful women and recently my expressed concern over some misbehaviour was put into this bullshit category of ‘women are just bitchy’ and I was going to have to like it or lump it. Fortunately I was confident enough in myself to lump it. Most women are unwilling to walk away over something stupid… but if you have a good upbringing and friends and self-esteem you can smell the gas.
While I don’t disagree with very much of what was said, I think there’s another important point that is less intentionally malicious: If I don’t understand my wife’s feelings, they’re likely to sound crazy. I’m learning that she may act differently than I do (“overreact” is a false perception, but is still how I tend to see it), but that the “level” of her reaction does not negate its validity.
I think this difference between the genders is, however, largely societal. If men are taught to bottle feelings and women are taught that it’s crazy to have them, we create a rift. Men seem better at hiding feelings than women do, so women let theirs out and look crazy.
Having said all that, I’m just learning to not be a jerk, so none of it is set in stone. This was a good read and I plan to learn from it.
You’re unemotional, you’re closed up, you don’t express your emotions enough, you don’t understand me enough, what are you thinking, you’re such a neanderthal. Sound familiar? If you are a man, it probably does….
So what happens when the woman in this case decides to abuse you, you try to address their bad behaviour by telling them to calm down, don’t say that stuff, ask them to show some respect or at least stop the highly abusive speech? Is that gaslighting still or is it acceptable? If I do something wrong, fine, correct me on it but if they go “off” and abuse the hell out of me for it then they are performing a bad behaviour and need to be corrected.
I’ve noticed some people will hide behind various excuses, a license to be a b*tch, using a small incident as an excuse to really abuse the hell out of someone verbally or using PMS as an excuse to act like a realll *********naughtyperson*******. Then there is the gaslighting they do back, accusing you of being inconsiderate to their feelings, having low emotional intelligence, using those kinds of words in a negative way not to correct you on bad behaviour but to truly treat YOU like the bad person for their behaviour.
Gaslighting swings both ways people, it’s wrong to treat someones feelings like they are nothing but it’s also wrong to just abuse the hell out of someone for expressing their own. There are positive ways to express anger, showing negative behaviour towards someone that showed you the same can be quite manipulative. It’s important for people to try understand the other but remember, it’s a 2 way street.
Many of the descriptions I see of women being crazy by friends I’ve heard are more to do with strange behaviour, behaviour that to these men DOES appear crazy, stuff like getting yelled at over something they see as quite minor when really the gf is angry over something totally different, stuff where the one calling them crazy cops an earful over stuff he didn’t even do. Imagine seeing a woman yell, scream, and slap their bf over something small like spilling the milk, or making a silly joke. Basically behaviour that these guys wouldn’t tolerate from men, but they’ve been raised to believe it’s acceptable for these women to slap them, yell over small stuff, be emotionally manipulative, control where they go or use emotional manipulation to guilt them into avoiding a weekend with mates for instance (you don’t love me, you don’t spend enough time with me). Another common one is a woman all hot for a guy and then just suddenly goes ice cold, behaviour that varies wildly and flip-flops. It’s hella confusing and rightly so, especially without explanation.
Not all women are like this of course, it’s just SOME can be like that, and some women really do appear crazy. There are plenty of men who also appear crazy. We all need to find acceptable ways of expressing our emotions, but our need for expressing them shouldn’t override respect for others. It all needs to co-exist or you end up with imbalance, guys being slapped around thinking that is what women are like and just accepting it as a fact of life for instance. Women aren’t crazy, SOME HUMANS are “crazy”, although their behaviours are probably just foreign to what we know or expect.
I have been following this post as well as had been a commentator on the subject. This really has gotten intense thus I think it deserves attention not only of a professional but as a spectator seeing what it has done to the PEOPLE involved with such dire situations. The gaslighters I have observed are normal people that use people that are low self-esteem or at least look like they have low self-esteem. By using these people then no one can suspect that they are actually gaslighting another individual. Yes it happens to male and female; and here is an even bigger surprise; it happens to children. This is a present phenomenan because there are so many adult children; these are children that have to fend for themselves because of various reasons. Children are babysitting before they are even twelve years old. They are models before they are three; adults mold these children into adult mini’s in order to supplement incomes leaving the adult with more “play money”–money for socializing, drugs, alcohol, new toys (cars, motorcycles, gym memberships other various “stress alleviators”. With the new IRS refund laws parents want their children because a net refund could equal as much as an $8,000+ income tax refund at the end of the year. (yes I have/had three children, so I know; one deceased daughter). A true gaslighter can not be spotted unless you pay attention to the partner being gaslit. If they look ragged and you think they could look better; if they act irrational and you think there is no apparent reason for their irrationality; if they are dirty and you want to tell them to shower; then someone in their life is messing with them. Human nature is not to be any of the above, dirty, ragged and irrational. So stop and think better yet stop and talk and LISTEN to them you just might learn something—I did…As far as the answer; I do not know; but I am working on it….
I want to point out the danger to this thinking. Just having the word ‘gaslight’ on hand sets up women to participate in reverse-gaslighting by *saying* that you’re gaslighting them. I say this because it of course happened to me. I was trying to clear up a situation with a girl and I told her what I thought happened, and she immediately reverted to the word ‘gaslighting’. I effectively couldn’t say anything back . . . because she was the victim, and I was the perpetrator. In reality, I was giving the issue a lot of thought and was not telling her that she couldn’t say what she wanted about the situation. But she thought I was trying to trick her into thinking that something that was true was false.
My general view is that you shouldn’t turn people into systematic victims. You could do it with anyone if you wanted to. I’m a victim of the suburbs/overzealous high school athletic coaching/America’s public schools/images of unemotional men/the media…and blah blah blah. You should talk about moral issues without branding the world into boolean types of perpetrators and victims….because that is not how the real world works. It is a lot more complicated than that. You take out that complication by stating the issue without making it seems like all men everywhere are doing it to all women everywhere. Then that might make people more discriminating about whether it is actually present in a situation, and people wouldn’t whip it out simply because of the genders cast in a given situation. To figure out what is happening in the real world, you need a lot more information than that.
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.
so true
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….
My husband was refrring to the USA. I hope he’s wrong, but my instincts say something else.
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.
LMAO …seriously… You talk about democracy but you tell someone who expresses an opinion you don’t like that they waste oxygen, and to gtfo?
Seriously, chill out dude, and go buy yourself some self-esteem because if you need to spit your hatred on anyone who says something even slightly idiotic on the internet then you really have issues in the confidence department…
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!
-ahem-Your secretary of state-ahem-
There are what, 8 million more female voters vs male? Why aren’t women supporting the female candidates? Are these candidates in particular just terrible vs the males in this current run? Are the women supporting and funding these women?
No, a woman can never be president because they cannot be held ACCOUNTABLE. Legally they are treated like children. If a woman drinks and has sex with a man, that man is instantly guilty of rape. And basically they can murder anyone they want and get away with it. Well, if they’re white anyway.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Mod note; Edited for personal attack on the commenter. Can’t be held accountable, kind of like the shitheads that dumped our economy in the toilet? Were those all women? When are they going to jail for that again?
I can understand your comment, but I do disagree with it. Women are accountable as men are, there are potential issues with the alcohol + sex if the law is gendered. There are women who do get convicted with murder, there might be the odd one that slips away but you’ll probably find men who get off too. If you can provide stats and info though to backup your claims, I’d like to see them.
HAHAHA! I don’t usually laugh out loud but I laughed out loud when I read your comment. Yea, when are all those people going to jail, I forget!