The police officer in question has since been charged with murder. After people watched the video of Floyd dying while a white police officer knelt on his neck, they were told one thing by officials (that his death was an accident) that contradicted their own interpretation of what they had seen, she says. The Black Lives Matter protests that came after the death of George Floyd in the United States show how racial and political gaslighting often go hand-in-hand, explains Williams. Imagine the toll it takes on you, to go through something and then be told it’s not true and having it dismissed. “It makes us seem like unreliable narrators of our own lives. Racial gaslighting is something that Williams experienced growing up, although she didn’t know the definition of it until this year. “Mental health is not something that is spoken about openly and honestly in the black community, which is changing, but there is this image of the strong black woman who can’t be broken and doesn’t need help.” She uses the example of women being treated for ‘hysteria’ in the 19th Century, adding that women’s emotions are still used as evidence for them being unwell in the stereotypes put on them today.īlack women also experience a stereotype where they are expected to be strong and unbreakable, and end up feeling like they can’t reach out for help because of it, says author and activist Sophie Williams in her upcoming book Millennial Black. “The assumption and stereotype that women are overly emotional, sensitive, irrational or fly off the handle easily is used to excuse the dismissal of their feelings and experiences,” says Sweet. Women are more likely to experience gaslighting both in professional environments and in their personal lives due to these inequalities, she says. Paige Sweet, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, studies domestic abuse and believes gaslighting is deeply rooted in societal structure and social inequalities. “That is a form of gaslighting, so from a young age if you’re not able to trust what your parents are saying, you go on to not be able to trust anyone else.” It has also been shown that denial is a common tactic of child abusers. Those parents might have the best intentions – to protect their child – but it actually come across as unreliable, she says. Muir noticed that children who witnessed alcoholism, domestic abuse or substance abuse in the home were often told it didn’t happen when they confronted their parents about it. What other cultures can teach us about forgiveness."Sometimes, people who gaslight you in life aren’t doing it out of malice or to deliberately harm you but rather due to a lack of self-awareness,” or perhaps even to protect you. “Gaslighting can happen in work, family or platonic relationships as well as romantic ones,” says Cheryl Muir, a relationship coach based in the UK. While the origin of the term gives the impression it's a tactic of the master manipulator, some of us might gaslight without ever realising. While you may have heard about gaslighting in this context of relationships, it’s actually present in many other aspects of day-to-day life. The word itself comes from the name of a 1944 movie in which the male protagonist convinces his wife she is losing her mind. It was used by the medical profession for decades before being named the buzzword of 2018. A form of emotional abuse, it can be used to make the victim question their own mental wellbeing. Gaslighting is defined as manipulating someone into thinking they’re wrong even when they’re right. While the word has been in our dictionaries for over half a century, its precipitous increase in usage began around 2013 and hasn’t slowed since. Over the past few years, the use of the term “gaslighting” to refer to this phenomenon has shot through the roof. Has someone ever told you something that made you doubt your own memory? And have you been convinced after the fact that they were doing so to manipulate you? This is what some experts call “structural gaslighting”. You might be familiar with gaslighting in the context of relationships, but this manipulative tactic also works en masse.
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