Gaslighting by the State

by Tabitha Lean

CW: Discusses domestic violence, abuse and carceral violence

As conversations in white Australian feminist circles have centred on coercive control and the attempts to have it criminalised, I have been thinking a lot about gaslighting as a form of emotional abuse. The gaslighting I am familiar with (the type of abuse that was a hallmark of my past relationship), is the kind where the targeted person is made to question their own feelings, instincts and sanity. It is a form of abuse which gives the abusive partner an enormous amount of power.
I lived with a man who gaslit me. He did it for almost all of our relationship. He had me, a strong Black woman, believing I was useless, unlovable, and undesirable. He simultaneously withheld and employed sex as a punishment. When I would confront him on his affairs, which were paraded in front of me, he acted as if I had lost my mind. He manipulated my environment to make me think I was going crazy, and as I slowly descended into what I thought was irreversible madness, he convinced me that I couldn’t even care for my children, I was that far gone. I became a shadow of my former self. I was meek, mild, withdrawn and forlorn. I was no longer me. I no longer knew what was real anymore – at least not without him telling me so.
So, mark my words, I know what gaslighting is. I know what it feels like. I know what it looks like. And I sure as hell know what it smells like. It smells like a fucking sewer rat. And with every interaction I have with the (so called) correctional services system in this country, I smell a fucking rat!
We are gaslit from the moment we enter the corrections system. Usually in relationships, the gaslighting happens gradually, but for women entering the system they have usually been groomed from childhood or in previous abusive relationships, so we are very susceptible to this abusive behaviour. That’s not to say we are passive, but with the power imbalance inside, we are at their whim and resistance is mostly futile.
Over time, the women inside start relying on the system more and more to define their reality: what is good and right with the world. We lose all sense of what is happening, or who we really are. We become obsessed with who and what the system wants us to be – the good, contrite, and reformed little human beings – because let’s face it, the road to redemption and liberation is one they pave.
The messaging from the system is all the same, and it’s gaslighting 101. We hear lines like:
● ‘you need to get over it, it’s in the past’ (said before unacceptable behaviour has
been resolved and a sense of security has been re-established)
● ‘you’re the only person that thinks like that’ (creating fictitious allies to strengthen
their reality)
● ‘it sounds like a you problem’ (said while denying their role or the system’s
complicity in the problem)
● ‘you sound crazy, I don’t know what you are talking about’ (said to deny your reality is grounded in good reason)
● ‘you brought this on yourself’ (deflecting any blame or scrutiny)
And while women are everyday subjected to this level of abuse and assault inside, we hear barely a whisper let alone a roar from our feminist sisters. Does anyone care that women and girls are being coercively controlled everyday by the state? Does anyone care that we are being gaslighted by a system that has our life and liberty in their hands? Where are you all when the state is grooming us? Nowhere. You are nowhere. And all we hear are crickets.