Looks like my feminist brow is knit in a furrow once again. This time, oddly enough, it's not Disney! This time I want to talk about gaslighting. What is gaslighting? When used specifically in relation to women it is a form of emotional abuse where people (often men) convince women that their very legitimate and real emotions are so far off that said women think they're crazy. An excellent article on the subject hit the Internet a few years back and I swear, the moment it did every single woman/girl/girl-identifier heaved a sigh of relief or at the very least did a double take, credulous that maybe they're not crazy after all.
I know. I'm one of those girls. If nothing else, I feel like I've been gaslighted most of my life. I actually spoke about it in an article for Geeked Magazine on yaoi. You have to buy a copy to read the full article and you can get your hands on a PDF here. In the article I discussed how I was subjected to a mild form of gaslighting: my dad won't talk to me or take me seriously if I was crying or flustered or angry; my one guy friend has always called me "dramatic", "too sensitive", or simply "loony" for one reason or another; when my woman's college went co-ed we were urged to be "rational" and "collected" otherwise our adversaries (our own school board who we entrusted to protect the institution and who ultimately betrayed us) wouldn't listen. Heck, when I was 20 and studying abroad for the first time, I confessed to an old guy friend that I cried when I left my hometown because I wouldn't see it again for a full year. I kid you not, he called me the "Führer of Drama" and told me to get over it - because expressing anxiety and sadness over leaving the comfort of your home and living in a foreign country for more than a month is totally like setting up a destructive dictatorship that wipes out six million people and invades Poland. The real kicker to this story is I'm pretty sure he was just trying to cover the fact that he was going to miss me and that he'd feel the same way were he in my shoes.
I won't say that all of this stacked up to leave me emotionally battered or bruised or crippled in the same sense as a mistreated wife or girlfriend, but I'm aware of the effects. Too often I ask myself: am I wrong? Am I nuts for feeling this way? Are my ideas legitimate? Are my feelings legitimate? I think I've started gaslighting myself, to be honest, because even now I feel like an insane, lunatic moron for claiming that I've dealt with gaslighting at all. I don't have any real emotional damage, I'm fine, I'm being too sensitive, I'm not being rational enough, he was just kidding, I can't take a joke...
So given all that, you can understand the rumbles in my stomach when this appeared in my Facebook news feed:
I give you the Illogical Girlfriend meme. I couldn't believe it then and I can't believe it now. Do girls like this exist? I mean, honestly? Because most of the ladies I know are clever, thoughtful, sweet, silly, amazing human beings. We have our tougher moments ("So...is there something about her you like that I lack?" "You know, you talking to your ex every night makes me uncomfortable.") but this meme seems to imply that only women have these moments. Why isn't there an Illogical Boyfriend meme?
(No, seriously can someone PLEASE make me an Illogical Boyfriend meme?! It could have awesome captions like, "Spends every weekend with his bros - wonders why you're upset" or "Catcalls every girl on the street - wonders why you're jealous". Okay, so clearly I'm no good at these, but you get my idea.) What really got to me was when the guy who posted this image said, "This is why I'm glad I don't have a girlfriend" as if one absurd meme represented the entire female gender. But I know this guy and I know this is exactly how he thinks. The Illogical Girlfriend meme is how he sees women (I should know, I dated him).
I know this isn't really an "official" meme (and by "official" I mean I can't find it on Know Your Meme) but that doesn't mean this sort of gaslighting doesn't exist in Internet culture. Overly Attached Girlfriend, Scene Wolf, College Liberal (aka Female College Liberal or Bad Argument Hippie), Liberal Douche Garofalo (College Liberal's forerunner), Idiot Nerd Girl, Annoying Facebook Girl, and Musically Oblivious 8th Grader are all very popular memes that generally depict young women as being irrational or outright stupid and thus invalid. I tried looking for Irrational Boyfriend memes, actually, and came up with the Hopeless Boyfriend Meme (a meme where a girlfriend talks smack about her boyfriend every time he tries to do something nice) and Obsessive Boyfriend (there is a spin off of Overly Attached Girlfriend called Overly Attached Boyfriend, but it's not nearly as popular and isn't a confirmed meme). I don't know about you, but I find it rather telling (and a little frustrating) that both memes are dead/inactive.
(Girls do this? I've heard of it happening, but really??)
Silly feminist, you're just overreacting and you can't take a joke. Idiot Nerd Girl has been redeemed and Overly Attached Girlfriend has evolved into Misunderstood Girlfriend. Yeah, but doesn't it bug you that they exist in the first place and their male counterparts aren't very popular, if they exist at all? It seems to me that guys got the better end of the meme stick with Good Guy Greg, Success Kid, and Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. There are dozens more, but I think my point is pretty clear when the guys have "altruistic", "successful", and "so insanely good-looking the world stops turning on its axis" in their meme arsenal and girls get "stupid", "irrational", and "insane".
I mean, yes, there are memes where guys are portrayed as complete morons (Scumbag Steve for starters) but this doesn't seem to reflect poorly on their gender. I don't see girls crying "This is why I don't date men!" on their Facebook pages over said memes.
It...it doesn't sit right with me. As human beings men and women are capable of their petty, insane, ridiculous, illogical, stupid, dramatic moments. Men don't have a rational cortex in their brains that automatically overrides their emotions and allows them to pass up those moments, thus making them more fit to function in society (sometimes they're more dramatic and irrational than the ladies I know!). I wish they'd stop acting like it.
Right, night my loves.
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