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
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Read Mark Greene’s response:
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?
You’re mistaking an article about how women are affected by gender essentialism for an article about how the problem affects everyone. What you’re talking about with the “male=brute” norm in things like advertising is true, but that’s something that happens on top of how women are being told they should act, not instead of it. The fact that as men we are expected to be aggressive and detatched doesn’t make how women are treated any less real – just take this advert for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLUkpyTUi5M
Who’s apparently NOT having a big day, because she’s a stay-at-home mum? In fact if you believed daytime advertising women can only possibly be fulfilled by a clean house and a well-fed baby. That doesn’t go away if you acknowledge that jokes are also made about men being incompetent in the home (which actually is also a reinforcer of gender binaries).
The key thing in what you write is the idea that men should feel guilty the whole time, which isn’t what this article is about at all and is entirely the wrong way of looking at things. We all (me included) act unconsciously in ways which reinforce gender stereotypes because we have grown up in a society which takes these stereotypes for granted, not because we’re bad people. You only become a bad person if you stick your fingers in your ears when presented with the evidence.
I believe that this issue is completely taken out of context when applied to gender. “Gaslighting” is a personal issue – a thing that needs to be taken on an individual basis and not applied stereotypically. Men do it, women do it; intentionally or unintentionally – it is a form of gender neutral manipulation. Turning a human problem into a gendered problem is simply asking for a new stereotype.
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
She is very lucky to have a husband like you!! So many of us suffer with men who are not tuned in. Many of us from the time we are little girls are told we are not good enough etc Keep up the good work…inform your men friends.
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.
Hey, it’s not like there is someone famous almost every month falsely accused of rape by a WOMAN in the news. That’s just your imagination. Now go back to sleep.
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. …
Esto: You must have contributed that section above to Wikipedia? Nice work!
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.
The only thing left out of this article is that, often, women are the worst gas-lighting offenders to other women. This is because we know how much of an impact a statement like, “You are just being dramatic” or “Wow, you are so sensitive” and much it can hurt–because we have experienced it ourselves, many, many, many, many times. Women need to step up and stop defining ourselves as crazy and stop gas-lighting each other before men will take notice and follow the trend. Being “sensitive” is an amazing tool to have, it helps us read a person, the situation, children, animals, etc better. We are better in tune with our surroundings, which ultimately should help us make much better decisions. From now on, if someone calls me sensitive I will simply say. “Thank you, that is a compliment”
The only this article is missing is that, often, women are the worst gas-lighting offenders towards other women. This is because we know of effective and how much of an impact a statement like “You are just being dramatic” or “Wow, you are so sensitive” is, and how much it can hurt and make you doubt yourself. We know this because we have gone through it many, many, many, many times ourselves. Being sensitive is a good thing, it helps us read people, children, animals and situations better, and helps us make better decisions. The next time someone calls me sensitive I am simply going to reply, “Thank you, that is a compliment.” Women will have to set the stage, we will need to stop calling ourselves crazy and stop gas-lighting each other and soon men will follow the trend.
The U.S. like many other countries, is sexist, and racist. it’s the truth, women are viewed as weaker, irrational, and they are conditioned to be that way. They are paid less, and put through the wringer. Being a woman in the military who works her butt off and never used my sexuality to get what I want, I have seen this first hand. While yes, women and men both “gaslight,” the subject here is how men use gaslighting to play down a womans rational thoughts and feelings.
yes women can be irrational, but so can men. men and women have temper tantrums. when a woman does it she is called crazy. when a man does it, he get’s catered to because women are natural caretakers. I imagine if a guy throws a fit and his significant other tells him to stop overreacting he will get even angrier and more adamant about his feelings. the woman, because she is conditioned to “not overreact” will concede to her mate’s demands.
I’ll tell you a little secret, stand your ground if you feel that adamant. if he downplays you and does not have consideration for your feelings, then leave him. A good man, will have some consideration. I suspect that the writer was saying women allow themselves to be sold short and not to let that happen by some cowardly, inconsiderate, hollow kind of man due to the very visible conditioning of society. Yay for good men! Yay!
Carla Theriault is on the dot!! I love what you said!! way better and shorter then this article!!
I think you are all overreacting. Women are physiologically more prone to emotional responses. Where the heck do you think pms comes from? Its like people of certain ethnicity finding things offensive when they are not. For instance, I have a non-white friend with children in spanish class. When the kids were practicing their colors she freaked out because they shouldn’t say negro. An overly emotional reaction to something if I ever heard one.
#Idiots
Great article, thank you so much for writing it. It’s really true that this is something women get a lot. I used to get in fights with my husband where he would be really snide and nasty to me, talking down to me, treating me like I was stupid, then when I got mad he’d tell me I was too sensitive, he didn’t know what I was talking about, that wasn’t how he meant it. He’d get mad at ME for objecting, so I had to defend myself. And even though it was clear as day, his response was enough to make me worry that I was just being over-sensitive.
Then one day I walked away realizing that in a harmless conversation about some academic topic, he’d just literally screamed the same sentence, at the top of his lungs, into my ear, every time I tried to say a word, over and over again, so that I couldn’t speak. So eventually I gave up and walked away, and he never seemed to think he’d done anything wrong. And I realized that the only “crazy” thing I’d done was in ever worrying that maybe his disrespect for me was all just in my head!
look, women are crazy sometimes… men do not manipulate you into thinking that you are crazy… we say you are acting crazy because thats what we literally think… there is nothing manipulative about that, it is just like the women saying your behaviour is inconsiderate… like the woman saying that isn’t trying to manipulate you into thinking your inconsiderate… she’s just telling you that is what she literally thinks
Those who say it isn’t happening, aren’t paying attention and are likely perpetuating the problem; they’ve been conditioned so long to stifle their own emotions they can’t even recognize when they do it to someone else. This is true for men and women.
Women do it to women, men do it to women. The tolerance for real display of emotion in our society can be exceedingly low. I can’t count how many times I felt like crying that I “sucked it up” and carried on. I can’t count how many times I was given tissues as a child and told to stop crying: by both parents. It took me years to unlearn that crappy conditioning so that I could say to male coworkers “No, I won’t do your job for you,” instead of just being upset, saying nothing, and letting them heap their work on me.
One of the absolute most powerful things we can do in this life is learn to express our emotions authentically and to allow other people to have their own emotions; unlearning the desire to stifle our own and another person’s process. If your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/partner/child is upset, let them be upset. If you’re upset, BE upset, don’t stifle how you feel to make -other people- comfortable. Don’t try to stop another person’s emotional release because it makes -you- uncomfortable. Someone expressing emotions in present moment will not kill anyone, but someone bottling them up for a long time… might.
Women aren’t crazy society makes them that way lol you’re so funny. Are you gay? Is you’re boy friend mean to you making you feel crazy with the things he says? Or is it you’re biological make up? When you attend your feminine activist groups do they tell you what to say? Or did you feminine boy friend wisper this in you’re ear. Ok sorry had to say it im a mean man lol. Jkwo should of wrote you’re blog well done bro couldn’t agree more with that dude. Ok yasher explain my story to me please and why women aren’t crazy please my mum is the only women that i know that’s sane!!!! And she would put you in you’re place to. I respect women and always have. Ok hears my story i was 20 got married ya i know i was young but whatever so i married my ex wife mistake she was crazy like all women. Introduce me to a sane women and i’ll pull rambows and unicorns out of my ass!!!!!!!! So i married her treated her good great actully. I. was there for her emotional needs and worked cleaned every thing you know what she dose ahe cheats on me divorces me takes every thing. And guess what she dose realizes she was wrong a. nd trys to come back. Like most women out there insane. So tell me the logic of that please ok after that got with another girl treated her like a queen never disrespected her or made crazy comments shur as shit she did the same thing even her dad was in shock told me i was the best man she’d had in her life. Thats 2 women there not to mention all the others. Most older women will agree that womens morel and mentel well being have decreased sence women activities have started all this. Dont get me wrong treat women right and with respect with out judgment or degrading remarks. But seriously women are crazy cuz they are biological it’s. In there dna and not cuz of men. Are you religous there a our rib and god is a man or we would all have boobs. Duh i hate women activest and black activest fuck the world is pretty fucking even now people and gay activist are the worst ugh gross. Should you be abel to cross dress at you’re job you’d probly say yes to that to. To sum this up my thought are women are crazy cuz they want to be!! Don’t hit a women ever or diss on crazy chicks cuz there crazy. Peace out my beautiful people much love
Your superlatively bad grammar is offensive.