Gaslighting is an abusive process of psychological manipulating a person into doubting self-worth, sensory knowing, and perceptions (Jackson, 2011). Once aware of gaslighting, you can extinguish its harmful psychological impact, although it is much more difficult to change the gaslighter. Artists, such as Linda Stein, in her sexism series, help us recognize gaslighting. Once recognized there are steps to extinguish. Begin by looking for gaslighting phrases in the tapestries of Stein’s sexism series.
Since the 1944 film Gas Light, based on Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, the term and awareness of gaslighting entered popular culture (Tripney, 2019), such as the Dixie Chicks’s 2020 song “Gaslighter.” While the phrase gaslighting is not always used, once you know how to recognize gaslighting you will see how it is used in tweets that belittle, and explored in films and literature, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 long-standing popular short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.
References
Dixie Chicks (2020). Gaslighter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbVPcPL30xc
Jackson, T. A. (2011). Which interests are served by the principle of interest convergence? Whiteness, collective trauma, and the case for anti-racism. Race Ethnicity and Education, 14(4), 435–459.
Perkins Gilman, C. (1892). The yellow wallpaper. The New England Magazine. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf
Tripney, N. (2019, October 8). Gaslight: the return of the play that defined toxic masculinity. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/oct/08/victorian-melodrama-gaslight-love-island-psychological-abuse-patrick-hamilton-play-buzzword