While I think the point of the article is extremely important to put in terms of interactions between men and women, I related to this as a dude who opts for more intense, emotional relationships.
Because my perspective on friendships and relationships is very unique, I actually choose my friends extremely carefully, and even in the friendships I am in, I tend to censor myself...
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I find it trashy at best. I agree the problem is real and I'd like to read a substantial article on it, but the way it's approached here strikes me as underhanded and unproductive at best.
The problem it's addressing, as I understand it, is that the casting of women (in life, not TV) as overly emotional, irrational, or some similar quality causes them to lose confidence and minimizes their views on life issues. So far I'm with the author: this does happen and it is an legitimate issue. I'm not sure if I agree on the scope the author gives to this issue but that's more of a sense of scale than a contradiction.
And to just take a private moment here, for purely selfish reasons I'd love to see this trend stopped as soon as possible. I can't count the number of times a female friend (romantic or otherwise) has responded to my arguments with something along the lines of: "I'm a woman, you just have to get used to the fact that we aren't logical". Ugh. Insulting to both of us and incredibly frustrating for me. Even if I didn't care about the equality of women in the world (and I like to think that I do) I'd still hate this idea.
Sadly we don't go from problem definition to rational and reasoned ways to deal with this issue, or discussion of the root causes. Rather the instant next step is: blame men. This is the kind of response that discredits the term 'feminism' to so many. I'll give an example:
quote: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.
Honestly, I doubt the story actually unfolded the way it's described here, but let's forget that and pretend it did. I think anyone reading that is on-board with the idea that the manager is a prick and this kind of behavior needs to be changed. Most of us can probably get on board with the next idea: that it's causing Abbie to lose confidence in her own, emotional response. Excellent: problem identified, good use of example. Now do we move on to how to address it? No, instead we get this:
quote:[...]the truth is, he is making those comments to manipulate her into thinking her reactions are out of whack.
I really doubt this. We're assigning motive (beyond general dickishness) to the manager now, along with fully-thought out psychological warfare moves? That's patently ridiculous, this is part of an actual plan of his? Well it turns out it's a general male plan. As the article continues we discover that men just want to manipulate and control women and will use any means necessary to do so.
The only 'solution' offered is that "we have to unlearn" many things we take for granted about gender relationships. Fine, but with no more details that's hardly an inspiring revelation. Honestly, the outline of this article is: 1) Casting women as being crazy or over emotional is real and a real problem (so far so good) 2) Men do it, knowing what the effects are and they do it to control women 3) We should all change (only less specific)
I'd love a discussion on the issue itself but I'm not at all impressed by the article.
posted
I'm with Hobbes on this article. I consider myself to be a pretty ardent feminist. I'm in favor of pointing out, criticizing, and hopefully dismantling the patriarchal norms within society. I would also agree that this article points out that there is a non-insignificant portion of men who use gaslighting to entrench feelings of inferiority in their female counterparts. I've seen it happen as well and if forced into an honest introspection have probably--if not definitely--done it myself.
But here's my issue with this article. The issue is not trying to highlight times when a person (whether male or female) is being irrational. The problem is when someone uses gaslighting as method of making someone feel inferior. This article casts the notion of calling someone out for being irrational as an inherently wrong thing to do. That's a step too far because it conflates patriarchal subjugation with trying to keep a level head about things. If I'm in a situation where I'm in a state of emotional duress (as can happen) I rely on the fact that I have friends and family that will tell me when I'm not thinking clearly. It's not them trying to make me feel inferior for having an emotional episode--all people have them. It's them trying to help me see things from their perspective as an objective, independent observer.
The namesake of gaslighting, as the article describes it, is a pretty despicable example of the issue. That was a person intentionally conditioning a person to question their own judgement. Do men use this to marginalize the views of women? Absolutely. And because that happens I'm glad this article brings attention to the issue. I just think that the author has gone a little too far.
Manipulating a person into feeling a false sense of inferiority is wrong. Telling a person their judgement is suspect when they're having a difficult time is not inherently wrong.
ETA: In the author's defense, though, I would say that because there is a significant (if not prevailing) attitude that women view things emotionally, even a well intentioned (that is to say, someone who is not trying to make their cohort feel inferior) attempt at making a plea for reason could still foster feelings of inferiority. That said, I still think that the criticism is misguided. We should be criticizing the false belief that women are inferior for thinking things through emotionally. We should also be criticizing the attitude that women are inferior at all. But that doesn't mean we should be casting the entire practice of saying a person isn't thinking clearly as an example of patriarchy gone wild.
posted
As I so often find myself saying after reading articles like this: I respect his intent. Full stop.
It makes me sort of weary-eyed and dead in the mind to sit and read this article after having gone through an ugly, ugly weekend of doing unpleasant things that I'm not sure the author would have been able to distinguish from real gaslighting, and I'm not sure I'm prepared to try to explain why it's a bit restless to read this article and conclude that he really doesn't understand gaslighting well enough to give me any faith in his patronizing (innocent, but still) missive about what we are inflicting on women so maliciously.
And that makes me want to read an article on the same subject by someone who can inspire more confidence in that field. A psychologist, perhaps? I dunno.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I think that generalizing is often a bad thing to do. However, in this article, I relate to a lot of what the author brings up through examples in my own life. I think men and women both share blame for sexism, but this article does a very good job of liberating women who feel this way, and opening up the eyes of men who didn't really understand what they were unconsciously doing.
Almost every woman I've showed this too is like "YES! That's EXACTLY how I feel" - Strong women, intellectual women, emotional women, PhDs and housewives. I think many of them feel abused, emotionally, and caged. This article is liberating for women and condemning for men.
It's natural for people to understand people according to the barometer of their own selves - people project their own internal workings on to others. For instance, I get cold more easily than most people, and when I raise the thermostat, many others insist that "you're crazy! It's boiling hot in here!"
When it comes to emotions, and no one else feels the way you do, you can't help but feel insecure, and that maybe you're the crazy one.
What this article does is raise awareness, and I think that's all that needed to be raised. There doesn't need to be a 12-step program. In all relationships, I find, that the cure is often a changing of perspective.
Also, I've seen this form of manipulation, whether or not the person understands or is conscious that they are manipulating. For many it's a tool to get what they want, and for others it is a defense mechanism - but the truth is, it happens, and it happens a lot.
Vadon - yea, that's a problem a friend of mine pointed out. But he is a married man who is on a very low emotional level and within his first year of marriage.
I think that calling someone out for being irrational when they have a lot of emotions is inherently wrong because it is hurtful, and because it is ineffective. If someone is being irrational, perhaps it is important to first validate the feelings and then point out another perspective. I think that would make a world of difference.
Posts: 1604 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: I recognize that I’ve been guilty of gaslighting my women friends in the past (but never my male friends—surprise, surprise).
Really? I'm nice to women, female friends in particular but the closer I am with males the more I mock and degrade them. I revel almost every opportunity to insult guy friends in any way I can.
Posts: 2302 | Registered: Aug 2008
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However, there is a big difference between mutually shared mock degradation -- understood to be jesting between people on pretty much the same level -- and belittling which could be believed or accepted as having elements of truth by at least one of the parties involved.
Context matters, and it is context that determines whether certain words are in the gaslighting style or not, at least as much (if not more) than the denotation of the words themselves.
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Edited to format and add:
I don't know what I think about the linked article itself. I think there is a kernal or more of some interesting analysis, but I have trouble following the argument to establish the points.
Posts: 831 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Here are a few of my thoughts on the article in no particular order.
As a professional woman working in a field dominated by men, I learned years ago that showing emotion would automatically undermine anything I was trying to accomplish. For men, being passionate can show determination and commitment. For women, it means you are irrational. Men can often add strength to their arguments by showing some anger or sorrow. If you do that as a women, you are unstable. And on the flip side, as a woman you are expected to be compassionate and caring. If you aren't, you're a bitch, but if you are, people think you are a push over who can't make hard choices.
While I think men commonly do a lot of the things described in the article, I think its very rarely done with the intent of marginalizing women. I think terms like "manipulate" and "gas lighting" are highly in unproductive because they imply ill-intent as well as a certain under handedness and unfairness". The author has a point when he says that intent doesn't matter because the effect on the woman is the same regardless. But understanding intent does matter if you are trying to persuade men to change their behavior or teach women how to better manage the problem.
A lot of men tend to panic when women cry or get angry. Their response isn't rational or intentional, its an instinctive response to discomfort. There isn't something insidious going on. Emotional women make men uncomfortable and their response is motivated by the need to relieve their own discomfort. Controlling the woman is a side effect not the central motivation. I'm not sure exactly why men panic when women get emotional but I've noticed that when I am around people who are legitimately mentally ill and behaving irrationally, I have to work hard suppress the urge to panic. Perhaps men respond this way to emotional women because they've learned to believe that emotional women are "crazy"?
"Behave rationally" generally means "behave like me". Its very ego centric. It's often an excuse to avoid dealing with the problem.
Maybe "trying to be rational about things" is exactly the wrong response when someone is feeling very strong emotions. Its been shown that almost all "reasoning" is a post hoc attempt to justify our initial emotional response. That process of rationalization makes it harder to modify the initial response not easier. Perhaps the most healthy and reasonable response is to wait until the emotions have died down before trying to rationally consider the issue.
[ October 09, 2011, 06:21 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I'm curious to know what you all think about the development of men and women's roles in relationships and in society over the years. Do you guys think women became subservient (originally) because they were physically weaker or because of their biochemical makeup, a mixture of the two, or something else entirely? Is it natural for men and women to go back to those roles (the roles that have always existed pre-1900s in most societies) when our modern society fails? I've heard about case studies which have shown that marriages last longer and involve more sex when the male is the dominant one in the relationship. Do you guys think that this is true, and if so do you believe it has something to do with our genetic makeup, or is it entirely social?
I ask these questions because until recently I never really gave it much thought. However, I find myself more and more intrigued with social evolution and its affects on the gender lines, the more I read about it. It's pretty interesting.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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posted
Well, it's certainly genetic in that for most of history, women were pregnant most of the time and likely to get kicked out of society or hit if they didn't do what they were told.
So that situation would make most people subservient. Is it a brain chemistry thing? I don't think so.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Wow, that is a great article. Thx for posting that link.
I personally am so sick of how women are viewed as.. as "irrational, emotional, crazy" etc.. it's always about control/power from the males.
And i personally think guys take advantage of women's.. kindness? Why do we have to feel like we need to look or act a certain way? We should be ourselves, and accept us.
Society has tricked us to look, act, speak, dress a certain way .. to be appealing. it's affected many self esteem's. no wonder guys can't understand women with their "behavior" and they end up calling women "crazy" or something.
women need to do that more so to men then.
Posts: 9 | Registered: Aug 2011
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posted
Interestingly, I feel gaslighted at work all the time, and it's by saying that I'm "overthinking it" and "being too logical" whenever I recommend something that a co-worker doesn't like.
(Sometimes I AM overthinking it, but most of the time the solution is obvious and he just doesn't feel like changing)
Posts: 4136 | Registered: Aug 2008
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posted
Well, I am not a psychologist, but I am a professional marriage and family therapist and in my private practice, I specialize in treating addictions. At the heart of any good addiction work is emotional mismanagement, and that is at the root of the problems discussed in this article. To be clear, I am not saying that addiction is at the root of the issue discussed here. Emotional mismanagement is, which just happens to always be present in addiction.
I agree that it is presumptive to say that men are gaslighting or being manipulative when they minimize or ignore a woman's emotions. Technically, it is manipulative, but it is usually not manipulative with intent. It is culturally inbred, and so if we start saying that men are all manipulative toward women, then we need to really blame the culture for being manipulative.
But how do we blame the culture, when we are all part of this culture? Well, we can't really, at least in the sense of blaming so we can avoid responsibility. When the culture is responsible, we are all responsible.
There are lots of cultural messages, obviously, and quite a few of them contradict one another. That being said, one of the prevailing cultural trends in our society is marginalizing our emotions. Both men and women are taught to ignore or minimize their emotions. We view emotions more as annoying obstacles that get in the way of getting the job done or being responsible, instead of viewing them as an inherent part of being human. Emotions are what make us human. Emotions make life worth living, they teach us, they heal us, and they help us learn that all choices in life have consequences that affect other people and the world around us.
Generally speaking in our culture, men are taught that anger is an acceptable emotion, but few other emotions are acceptable for men. Women are expected to be emotional, but again, only with certain emotions. When it comes to anger, we don't want women to have this emotion. They are allowed to be sad or scared, but even we don't really allow women to have these emotions in a safe way. When they do have them, we expect women to be victims to their emotions, instead of having the strength to feel their emotions without viewing them as weak for feeling them.
The large majority of our culture needs to start separating our emotions from our actions. If a man cries, there is no evidence to indicate he is now going to be weak and lose the strength to go to work the next day. See, we think that if we feel a certain thing, we are therefore required to act based on our emotions. But we have the ability, and the responsibility, to feel our emotions fully, without using them as excuses for behavior.
We especially do this to our children. We stifle their emotions, because we think that we can control their behaviors by first controlling their emotions. If we don't want a child to hit someone, then we think preventing them from feeling anger will be a good way to do this. If we want to make sure a child goes to school the next day, we try to get him to stop crying ASAP about his fear of going to school. We do this to kids the most, but we also do it to each other as adults.
This line of thinking is backwards and it is not how emotional development works. The best way to improve our behavior is to allow each other to feel our emotions safely, while simultaneously expecting each other to still be accountable for our choices and the consequences of our choices.
let a man be emotional because he is stressed about work, but don't let his emotion be used as an excuse to stop going to work. Let a woman be angry about her man's poor behavior, but don't let her emotion be used as an excuse to make cruel choices. Let a child be emotionally sensitive, but teach the child that she must still make good choices, even when she is feeling sensitive.
When we are fully emotionally expressed, we actually have MORE, not less, power over our choices. When we repress our emotions, we turn to other methods to cover our emotions and meet our needs. This is why addiction is spreading like wildfire in our culture. It is not because everything around us is addictive, but because we are emotionally repressed, and emotions that are ignored always have negative side effects.
Now, again, I am speaking in generalities. Obviously, not everyone is emotionally repressed. But I can't tell you how many times I have had a client in my office, on the verge of tears, and they say, "I need to be strong," meaning that if they actually let go and cry, they believe they are being weak. Or how many times do we hear someone apologize for crying? Excuse me, did your tears hurt me or something? We apologize because we are afraid we are embarrassing others. You probably are, but that does not mean it was wrong of you to cry. It means everyone in the room needs to start getting comfortable with yours and their emotions.
Emotions do not kill. They do not permanently disable people. They do not make us weaker. Both men and women are capable of a full range of enjoyable and difficult emotions, and we need to give each other the freedom and safety to start feeling them without shame and guilt.
Choices can kill, though. Choices can disable. Choices can make people weaker. That is why we need to be accountable for our choices, so that we can get better at making choices that reap positive consequences. But our culture needs to stop treating emotions like they are choices.
Once you have a feeling, you have two choices: repress it or feel it and let it out. There is no option 3 to hit the delete button and make it vanish without facing it. Feelings are not good or bad. They just are. Choices are good or bad.
I work with a lot of women to help them feel free to be an individual, separate from their roles. I help them learn to recognize and feel the full spectrum of their emotions, and to break from from the unhealthy expectations that our culture places on them. I do the same thing for men in addressing their emotions and the cultural messages that are placed upon them.
This is not a gender war. All of us are victims to cultural pressures. We need to work together to be aware of them and work on them, instead of trying decide whether men are worse or women are worse. I am not saying that is what is being said on Hatrack, but on a larger level, I think so much attention is placed on pitting men versus women that it prevents us from working together. The same dynamic happens in politics, where we spend so much time arguing democrat versus republican that neither side is willing to listen to the fact that both sides probably have some good points at least some of the time.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Excuse me, did your tears hurt me or something?
Well, in a sense, yes. Tears are a powerful signal, the ALL CAPS of body language. If someone shouts at you in a quiet room, even if they have good reason to be distressed, they may well apologise for shouting once whatever issue they had is addressed. Tears are similar to raised voices, they signal "I have an issue that needs to be looked at RIGHT NOW; STOP what you are doing and PAY SOME ATTENTION". Such a signal can of course be perfectly legitimate, but it can also be abused. In ordinary social contexts we do not make such demands of strangers; a therapist is of course rather different, but socialisation goes deep and so does instinct. Notice that the skill of calling up tears on demand is pretty rare; those of our ancestors who cried too easily, perhaps, did not have their needs attended to as fully as those who signalled distress only in extremity.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by endersbooch: Wow, that is a great article. Thx for posting that link.
I personally am so sick of how women are viewed as.. as "irrational, emotional, crazy" etc.. it's always about control/power from the males.
And i personally think guys take advantage of women's.. kindness? Why do we have to feel like we need to look or act a certain way? We should be ourselves, and accept us.
Society has tricked us to look, act, speak, dress a certain way .. to be appealing. it's affected many self esteem's. no wonder guys can't understand women with their "behavior" and they end up calling women "crazy" or something.
women need to do that more so to men then.
You're being ridiculous. Go sit down for a minute and try again later.
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