‘Leave Those Terms for People Who Need Them to Heal’: The Problematic Misuse of the Word Gaslighting
By Alex Rix
There are words in the English language (and probably others, but sadly English is the only one I’ve mastered) that can end a debate, a disagreement, a quarrel. They are the kind of words that can’t be taken back, the kind that renders your opponent a villain.
These words are necessary, unfortunate as that is, for warning others of people who cannot be reasoned with, of those who are dangerous and of those who all too often do not meet the punishments or the social rejection that they deserve. People such as racists, misogynists, rapists, bigots, fatphobes, and abusers. Under each of these types of people are the identifiers, and the internet is rife with information about how to spot any one of these monsters. One of the most commonly occurring terms is gaslighting.
Since the rise of the #MeToo movement, spaces such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have become as much a safe haven for people as they have a minefield. It’s hard to navigate these platforms for long without stumbling across the word ‘gaslight’.
Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse in which a person manipulates another person into questioning their own perception of reality. See phrases such as: “I didn’t send an unsolicited dick pic to that girl. You’re crazy.” Denying facts when the other person has concrete evidence is gaslighting because the only way that person can be wrong is if the evidence was imagined. The manipulator plays on this by pushing them to believe that they are crazy and that they cannot trust what they have seen with their own eyes.
Gaslighting most often occurs in romantic relationships, but it can absolutely also appear in friendships, family relationships, and even within the dynamics between politician and citizen (that’s probably the most common, come to think of it. Politicians are trash goblins). In an article on Vox.com, Robin Stern (licensed psychoanalyst) says: “targets of gaslighting are manipulated into turning against their cognition, their emotions, and who they fundamentally are as people.”
The term goes back as far as 1980, but it’s unsurprising that it was unknown by the masses until recently, considering how young the sexual violence revolution is. To make it absolutely and undeniably clear, the sexual violence revolution is a very good thing; it has saved incalculable lives, and the information that is more readily available than ever before has allowed countless would-be victims of emotional or physical abuse to spot the signs and skedaddle, with communities on the internet there to offer support.
I have been gaslit; I have been in toxic and abusive friendships and relationships. I am a sexual assault survivor and the survivor of childhood trauma. The information I see available to people almost makes those experiences worth it because I know that we were pushed to this point because women (and people) like me were pushed to the point of revolt and a cultural rewrite. For every person saved someone has abused, that’s just maths. But for every hundred or thousand people saved, there is someone who is going to abuse the terminology that saved them. That doesn’t sit right with me.
Maybe it’s just the circle I’ve somehow found myself in on Twitter or the fact that I have a soft spot for following YouTube drama, but I can’t throw a digital stone without hitting some Twitter scrap where some anonymous account is calling someone a gaslighter for saying they actually really liked Twilight.
Gaslighting is a seriously harmful manipulation tactic. I can’t speak for anyone else, but one of my biggest fears is losing my mind, losing my grip on reality. And as someone with a modest array of mental health disorders, my perspective already has its shaky moments. I will become convinced that someone hates me despite no evidence. I will suddenly see flaws in myself that were never there or that never mattered to me before. I will quickly take on the fault when I am really the victim. I don’t need anyone else to do it for me, and I am desperately aware of how easily I could be manipulated in such a way. Gaslighting people and being gaslit is not a simple disagreement. It is abuse. It is emotional abuse; it is potentially irreversible damage to another human being’s psyche and their relationship with the world around them.
Yet all I see on Twitter is the term being flung around at one another when someone counters a point, offers alternate or conflicting evidence, or even when an expert offers an expert opinion that goes against the mindless tweet of someone who has no authority on the subject in question. We see oversimplified Instagram posts that tell us the phrase, “I’m sorry you’re upset, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings”, is a red flag, and we take it so literally and without any explanation as to how we should negotiate context that people can no longer apologise without being branded a gaslighter.
Terms like this end a conversation. When we accuse someone of emotional abuse there is no coming back from that, and rightly so, because if someone abuses us in any sense, then screw them. Cut them out and warn your friends. But if someone expresses themselves and we don’t like what they’ve said and they try to apologise, or to open a discourse about why we felt that way and how they can better themselves, but we shut them down by branding them as abusive, then we never get anywhere.
The queen of Twitter herself (if you know, you know) has become synonymous with the phrase “gatekeep, girl boss, gaslight”. That’s because some people don’t want to have a conversation. I’m not convinced that this person’s behaviour comes from a place of malice; it may very well come from hurt. But being a hurt person doesn’t give you the right to be a shitty one. Hurt people hurt people and all that, but we are all our own responsibility, and we all owe it to ourselves and to those we interact with to not take out our own pain on others. We also all have the responsibility to acknowledge and to aim to understand the intent of others, just as we would like others to do for us, and not to hop instantly on the defensive.
At the end of the day, there are 7.9 billion people navigating their way through the world. Most of those people are just trying their best. Some of those people aren’t and are letting themselves drag others down with them, whether it be to feel a sense of control where they otherwise feel none, whether they’re mirroring behaviours that they have suffered from at the hands of another, or whether they’re just evil.
The thing is, we’re engaging with so many more people every day than we ever have before. The internet has made the world a very, very small place. For all of the positives that come from that – the communities, the like-minded individuals, the support – there is always going to be a downside. There are going to be communities of people who have opposing ideals, people who disagree with you and people who will just be mean and try to make you feel bad. But context is everything – in daily life and in our philosophies.
The way the internet works, the algorithms that feed us what we want to see, the ease of seeking out those who share our moral and political alignments, the success of the controversial – all of this has amounted to creating a very black and white version of the world. Especially in the last year and a half, during which we have all existed, almost exclusively, in online spaces.
We exist in ecospheres where the majority of the people around us agree with the things we think and feel. Those who we are privy to that don’t are usually the more controversial because those like us are replying. It’s us and them, and them is the most extreme version of not us. People who feel indifferently about what we say probably won’t say much about it, so we are met with extreme disagreement that might feel like we’re being attacked at times (and sometimes we are!), but we need to learn to engage in discussions with people without resorting to such an extreme defence and diminishing what survivors of emotional abuse have gone through by throwing around terms like ‘gaslight’.
The internet has made us forget that we live in a world where billions of people are living entirely different existences, suffering and thriving through their own experiences, educated by the information they have had available to them. We have strayed so far from sharing those experiences that we have become obsessed with defending our own. One person’s experience does not always have to impact another’s. The two can simply coexist, they can agree to disagree, they can say “interesting point but enter counter-argument here”. They can say, “I disagree, but you do you”. They can respect the complexity and diversity of human existence without accusing strangers on the internet of one of the sickest and most harmful things one human being can do to another. They can leave those terms for those who need them to heal and understand what they have been through.
Sometimes people hurt my feelings, or they annoy me by disagreeing with me, or they tell me something that makes me see red. They’re entitled to those experiences; they’re entitled to say whatever they want in a public space like the internet. We’re entitled to argue with them, to disagree or to tell them that they are racist, transphobic, homophobic, fatphobic, ableist, misogynistic, or a prick.
Unless someone is acting harmfully towards you or others (I mean objectively awful or offensive, not just trying to express an opinion), then maybe we can try having a discussion. Because that’s the only way we’re ever going to convince people that the way we see things is the right way. So many people have become better and happier because others took the time to talk them through whatever abhorrent crap they were raised on and welcomed them over to the land of “bloody lefties”, as my great aunt likes to call it. Gaslighting is a very serious term. Let’s not misuse it.