Are You Normal? YOU ARE NORMAL !!! Gaslighting

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

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You are so impressionable. So emotional. Are you always defending yourself? You overreact. Calm down. Relax. Stop going crazy! You're crazy! You are sick! I was just kidding you don't have a sense of humor at all? What are these dramas for? Just forget

Sounds familiar ?

Of course, especially if you are a woman.

Have you ever heard such comments from a spouse, partner, boss, friends, colleagues, or family members after expressing upset, sadness, or anger about something they did or said? When someone says these things to you, it is not an example of inattentive behavior. When your spouse comes to dinner half an hour late without calling, this is inattentive behavior. A remark that is intended to shut you up, such as “take it easy, you're overreacting,” after you just allude to someone’s bad behavior is pure emotional manipulation. And this kind of emotional manipulation turns into an epidemic in our country, an epidemic that defines women as abnormal, irrational, overly sensitive, insane. This epidemic helps fuel the idea that the slightest provocation is enough for women to give free rein to their (insane) emotions. This is obviously wrong and unfair. I think it's time to separate inattentive behavior from emotional manipulation, and we need to use a word that is not in our everyday vocabulary. I want to provide a useful term for these reactions: gaslighting.

Gaslighting Is a term often used by mental health professionals (I'm not one of them) to describe manipulative behaviors used to make people think their reactions are far from normal, that they are crazy. The term comes from the 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman. In the film, Bergman's husband, played by Charles Boyer, wants to lay his hands on her jewelry. He realizes that he can accomplish this if she is declared insane and taken to a psychiatric hospital. To achieve this, he deliberately makes the gas lamps (Gaslight) in their house flash and then go out, and every time Bergman's heroine reacts to this, he tells her that she has hallucinations. In this production, a gaslighter is someone who provides false information in order to change the victim's perception of himself or herself. Nowadays, the term is usually referred to when someone says things like "you are so dumb" or "no one will ever want you" to the victim. This is a deliberate, premeditated form of gaslighting, similar to Charles Boyer's character when he thinks about how to make Ingrid Bergman's character believe she is crazy.

The form of gaslighting I'm talking about is not always thoughtful or intentional, which only makes it worse as it means that everyone, especially women, has ever encountered it. Gaslighting people create a reaction - anger, frustration, sadness - in the person they are dealing with. Then, when the person reacts, the gaslighter makes him feel uncomfortable and dangerous, acting as if his feelings are not rational and abnormal. My friend Anna (all names have been changed to maintain confidentiality) is married to a man who sees fit to make sudden and unexpected comments about her weight. Every time she gets upset about his unresponsive comments, he responds in the same victorious manner: “You're so sensitive. I'm just kidding."

My friend Abby works for a man who finds a way almost daily without having to criticize her and her work. Comments like "can you do anything right at all?" or "why did I hire you?" - a common thing for her. Her boss sees no problem firing people (he does it regularly), so it’s impossible to figure out what is behind these comments. Abby worked for him for six years. But every time she tries to stand up for herself and says "what you say these things won't help me," she stumbles upon the same reaction: "Relax, you overreact." Abby thinks her boss is just acting like a bastard during these moments, but the truth is, he makes these comments to make her think her reactions are abnormal. And this is exactly the type of manipulation that makes her feel guilty about her sensitivity, and as a result, she doesn't quit. But gaslighting can be as simple as when someone smiles and says something like "you are so sensitive" to someone else. Such a comment may seem harmless enough, but at that moment this person makes a decision on how the other should feel. While gaslighting is not a universal reality for women, we all know many women who encounter gaslighting at work, at home or in personal relationships. And the act of gaslighting doesn't just affect not-so-confident women. Even prominent, confident, assertive women are prone to gaslighting. Why? Because women are hit by our neurosis. It is much easier for us to shift our emotional burdens onto the shoulders of our wives, female friends, our girls, women workers, female colleagues, than to shift them onto the shoulders of men. It is much easier to emotionally manipulate those who are forced by society to accept it. We continue to burden women, because it is not so easy for them to give up this burden. This is elementary cowardice.

Conscious gaslighting or not, it has the same result: it causes some women to be emotionally mute.

These women are not able to make it clear to their spouses that what is said or done to them will hurt them. They cannot tell their boss that his behavior is disrespectful and prevents them from performing better. They cannot tell their parents that when they criticize them, they are doing more harm than good. When these women are faced with any opposition to their reactions, they often brush them off, saying, "forget it, it's okay."

This "forget" is not just an attempt to drive the thought away, it is a rejection of oneself. It's heartbreaking. Unsurprisingly, some women are unconsciously passively aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or upset. For a long time, they have been exposed to gaslighting so often that they can no longer express themselves in a way that seems right to them.

They say “sorry” before giving their opinion. By email or text message, they place an emoji next to a serious question or concern, thus reducing the impact of having to express their real feelings.

Do you know what it looks like: "You are late:)"

These are the same women who continue relationships that they do not need, who do not follow their dreams, who give up the life they would like to live. Ever since I embarked on this feminist self-exploration in my own life and the lives of women I know, this concept of "abnormal" women has indeed emerged as a major problem in society at large and as a major disappointment of women in my life in general. Because of the way women are portrayed on reality TV, how we have taught boys and girls to see women, we come to accept the idea that women are unbalanced, irrational people, especially in times of anger and frustration. Just the other day, on a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a flight attendant who recognized me from my many trips asked me what I do for a living. When I told her that I write mainly about women, she immediately laughed and asked: "Oh, how crazy are we?"

Her instinctive reaction to my work really made me depressed. Although she answered jokingly, her question nevertheless exposes the pattern of sexist commentary that travels across all facets of society about how men view women, which also significantly influences how women can view themselves.

As far as I know, the gaslighting epidemic is part of the fight against the inequality barriers women constantly face. Gaslighting acts steal their most powerful tool: their voice. This is what we do to women every day, in many ways. I don't think the idea of "abnormal" women is based on any big conspiracy. Rather, I believe it has to do with a slow and steady rhythm in which women are ignored and drowned out on a daily basis. And gaslighting is one of the many reasons why we have to deal with the public perception of women as "abnormal." I realize that I was to blame for the gaslighting of familiar women in the past (but never familiar men - that's a surprise). For this I am ashamed, but I am glad that I understood how I did it on occasion and put an end to it. While I take full responsibility for my actions, I believe that I, along with many other men, are a by-product of our society. This is about the common understanding that our society gives us about admitting guilt and showing any kind of emotion. When we are discouraged from expressing emotions in youth and early adulthood, many of us remain steadfast in our refusal to express regret when we see other people's pain from our actions. As I wrote this piece, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Gloria Stein: “The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn”. So for many of us, first of all, it is important to unlearn how to blink these gas lamps and learn to recognize and understand the feelings, opinions and positions of women in our lives. But isn't the problem related gaslighting 'aultimately because we’ve been taught to believe that women's opinions are not as important as ours? That what women want to say, what they feel, is not so reasonable.