by Amy Reed
But I got older, I gained experience, I proved myself time and time again, and things didn’t change. I still tried to write off all of it as isolated incidents. One boss assigned me, the only woman on his staff, to clean the restrooms at work, despite some of the men in my same position being hired after me. He stood over me and nitpicked my work. He shouted at me for not working fast enough. I cried in my car every day at lunch until one of my coworkers pointed out that he was singling me out for this treatment. I left, but my next boss deliberately offered me a salary below the pay grade for the job. I worked weekends and holidays. I took a second job to make ends meet.
“Your husband works, doesn’t he?” my boss asked one time when I mentioned my second job.
I didn’t find out that I was being underpaid for two years, and by then there was nothing I could do about it. No one else did the same job as me, so I couldn’t prove they’d underpaid me because of my gender. Besides, this was the early 2000s. Sexism wasn’t a thing anymore, right?
The tipping point for me came when I entered my thirties, had several books published, was managing a public library branch, and yet still had men refer to me as “kiddo,” “that little black-haired girl,” and simply “girl.” When a pawnshop was selling DVDs stolen from the library, I had to threaten to have a male colleague come to the shop before they would take me seriously and return the disks. When a patron had a computer question, a male coworker had to repeat my advice verbatim before the man would take it. A tax clinic aide told me I couldn’t put my name first on my husband’s and my joint tax return, even though I was the primary breadwinner and had prepared the tax forms she was checking over. A police officer initially assumed I was at fault when a man rear-ended me and totaled my car at a stoplight. A doctor wouldn’t take the time to figure out why I was in excruciating abdominal pain; later I talked to some female friends and realized I’d probably had a burst ovarian cyst—a relatively common problem for women, but one that can lead to complications or be a sign of other, more serious conditions. And on and on. The catcalls. The condescension. Being told to smile when my grandmother had just died. All of those small things added up and up and up, and suddenly I realized: It wasn’t me. This was bullshit.
Sometimes it’s hard to maintain that clarity of vision. Living as a woman in our society is like living with an abuser, a Trunchbull. He tells you you’re overreacting. He tells you your memory of the way things happened can’t be trusted. He says you’re being hysterical, and this is proof that women are too unstable to be in charge of anything. Except housework. And childcare. Women are just naturally better at those things, after all. (Why can’t you take a compliment?) He makes you doubt yourself, police yourself, guard your anger. Because if you let a sliver of that rage show, even for a second, he’ll claim you’re the one abusing him. Feminazi! Misandrist! Take the red pill!
He pretends to side with the men in our lives, but in reality he’s abusing them, too. Don’t let anyone ever see you cry. Aren’t you man enough? You have to talk to your wife before you buy a car? Man, you’re pussy-whipped. And so he uses them, tries to convince them they won’t be mocked so long as they keep themselves at a distance from anything feminine. He sets us against each other so that we’ll be too blinded to see what he’s doing to us. And often our Trunchbull’s messages are so ingrained in our culture that we can’t recognize there’s anything wrong with them.
Of course men get paid more. They have families to support.
No one’s stopping women from doing whatever job they want. The only reason they get paid less than men is that they drop out of the workforce to have babies.
What are you bitching about? It’s not like you live in one of those countries where women can’t drive.
Women objectify men, too. Everyone does it. Stop acting like a victim.
If she wanted anyone to believe her, she wouldn’t have gotten drunk at that party.
You only dress like that if you want attention.
It can’t be rape if he’s your husband.
Why don’t you smile?
* * *
On most days I don’t think about my Trunchbull or the things he did. I cut off contact with him about five years ago, and so have many of the other people in my family. I have a PTSD and major depression diagnosis, but I keep up with my therapy and antidepressants. I have a wonderful husband, great friends, and a full life.
But like many women who suffered at the hands of an abuser, I was reminded of him again when Donald Trump became the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. I’ve heard that some women, seeing him lurking behind Hillary Clinton in the second debate as she answered questions from the audience, felt that old terror coming back. That cold, tight feeling that comes over you when you see your Trunchbull’s car in the driveway or hear him call your name. But for me, it was actually the third debate that made my stomach sink, because that’s when I realized everyone was falling for the same gaslighting techniques my Trunchbull had used against me, only on a national stage.
In the debate, Clinton pointed out Trump’s ties to Russia, calling him Russian president Vladimir Putin’s puppet.
Trump sputtered in response, “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”
I cheered for Clinton then. Yes, I thought. Finally someone is exposing him for what he is.
The CIA has since reported Russia interfered with our election to tip it in Trump’s favor and the Justice Department has assigned special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate. As of this writing, Trump’s national security advisor Michael Flynn has resigned and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from investigating the situation, both because of their Russian connections. Trump’s former campaign adviser Carter Page was put under surveillance by the FBI because of suspicions that he was an “agent of a foreign power.” The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. drew headlines when he revealed he had met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 because she claimed to have damaging information about the Clinton campaign. And this is only what’s happened by early 2018. Who knows what will be revealed by the time this book is released?
But as the debate continued that night, my stomach sank. No one believes her, I realized. I could feel it in the room. Like Miss Trunchbull picking up children by their braids, the things Trump had done were so outlandish, the accusations bounced right off of him and reflected on Clinton instead, playing into the tired old stereotype of the “hysterical woman” who is too crazy and emotional to be taken seriously.
It almost feels silly to call this tactic gaslighting, because any reasonable human should be able to see this sort of I know you are, but what am I routine for what it is, and yet . . .
And yet the country still elected Trump. And yet I still second-guess myself when I tell the story of what happened to me as a child and young woman. One of a gaslighter’s favorite cards to play is I’m the real victim here! which goes right along with a related technique, accusing the actual victim of being the perpetrator.
“I never abused the kids,” the everyday gaslighter says. “You just manipulated them into hating me.”
“Calm down,” he says when you’re angry or crying. “We can discuss this when you’re less emotional.”
“You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history,” tweets the president.
In politics or daily life, the recipe is the same—denial plus switching the role of the victim and the perpetrator. The accusation does damage all on its own, by making us question reality and distracting us from the actual issue, whether it’s domestic abuse or Trump’s Russian connections. We watch the news and read history books with the same skewed vision that let us say, That’s not me.
How could the people there let this happen? we think. I would have tried to stop it.
But would we? What makes some people push back against their histories of abuse, break the cycle, and try to become the sort of person who protects others rather than abuses them? It would be so easy to decide the o
nly way not to be a victim is to become an abuser. The Trumps and Trunchbulls of the world have the power, after all. So many people who are abused as children grow up to become abusers themselves.
I understand how it happens. I wish I didn’t. When my husband and I first got married, we fought about the dumb, everyday things couples do, like the grocery bill and who was spending too much time on the computer. But when I opened my mouth, the words that came out were my Trunchbull’s. I thought I had escaped him, but there was a part of him lodged in me, waiting there. All that rage bottled up inside me couldn’t be unleashed on the person who deserved it, so it flew out at the wrong moment, at the wrong person. I was horrified. I had promised myself I would never be like my Trunchbull, that if I saw anyone being hurt the way I had been, I would do what no one did for me and speak up.
For a while I did an exceptionally good job of bottling up that rage, turning it inward and unleashing it only on myself, but that simply hurt my husband and the other people I loved in a different way. After it got bad enough that I stopped eating and started thinking I should drive into a tree because everyone in my life would be better off without me, I finally went to see a therapist. I had fought against taking antidepressants for years out of some misguided notion that they would turn me into a zombie. Instead, they literally saved my life.
In therapy, I learned to take care of myself. I learned that my anger wasn’t fundamentally bad. Some of it was justified; I just had to learn how to channel it. One of the forces that has always driven me is the desire to protect people, especially other people vulnerable to the bullies and Trunchbulls of the world. So, I learned I could turn my anger into fierce love, a longer-burning fuel than rage.
So many people are gaslit and abused on a societal level, not only because of their gender, but because of their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, et cetera. Look at the Black Lives Matter movement, for example. Its goal is simply to convince the world that African-Americans’ lives have the same fundamental value as people of other races, and that police and government officials should recognize that value. Yet BLM’s detractors shout that the movement is a terrorist organization, that any crime committed by an African-American person was motivated by BLM, and that saying “Black Lives Matter” somehow means others’ lives don’t. It’s classic gaslighting. The abuser shouts that they are the victim, feeding into the same lie that made Black Lives Matter necessary in the first place—that African-Americans are dangerous, subhuman criminals—in an attempt to muddy the waters and obscure the truth. If people hear it enough times, maybe they’ll start to believe it, or at least think it’s a reasonable opinion that deserves consideration. Don’t you care about free speech?
This societal gaslighting becomes only more intense as people’s identities overlap and combine. Being a white woman can be hard. Being a woman of color, harder still. Being a trans or lesbian woman of color, even more difficult. Add poverty, religious restrictions or prejudices, and access (or lack thereof) to education, and that matrix of pain and manipulation grows yet more complex. We can’t know exactly what other people’s pain is like, but we can listen and believe them when they say it hurts. We can try to stop whatever is causing it.
I wrote earlier that my family was religious and dedicated to our church. I don’t call myself a Christian anymore. I can never trust a religious community after what my church allowed to happen under its nose and how they responded when someone finally told them about it. I suppose I’m agnostic, though when people hear that, they assume I’m a wishy-washy nihilist who sees no meaning in the world. But for me, agnosticism is a kind of faith. So many Christians I knew as a child and teenager were content to fold their hands and disengage from the world. God has a plan, they would say. What happens in this life doesn’t matter anyway. It will all be made right in the next.
I don’t believe that. I believe we have a responsibility to make things right in this life—right here, right now. I don’t know if there is a heaven or if we get more than this life on earth. If there isn’t an afterlife, if there isn’t divine justice, that makes what happens here and now all the more critical. I think if we want to end the suffering in the world, we have to do it ourselves. We have to fight hate in all its forms—racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, religious prejudice and extremism—tooth and nail, with fierce and lasting love. We have to stand up and use whatever energy and privilege we have to fight the Trumps and the Trunchbulls, especially now that we have a gaslighter in chief making people’s lives even more difficult and frightening. We have to clear our eyes and speak the truth.
So here is what I promise, and what I hope you’ll promise, too: I will do my part. I will work quietly and steadily, taking every opportunity I reasonably can to mitigate the enormous hurt in the world. I will speak up when need be. I will listen when others are talking about their pain, and I will believe them. I will pitch in and volunteer. I will take care of myself so I can keep going. I will probably mess up, but when I do, I will get back up and try again. No single one of us is going to save the world. But all of us might.
TINY BATTLES
Maurene Goo
I.
When I was little, I kept a diary with holes ripped through the pages from all the times I scratched so hard the pen poked through—a small angry fist clutching my Keroppi pen because all my friends had ditched me. Because they said “loser” under their breaths when I walked by their desks to do a math problem on the board. Later, in high school, my anger was fueled by the injustice that the boys I loved with the heat of a thousand suns didn’t know I existed, by the delirious all-nighters I pulled so that I could get into a respectable college like the good Korean daughter I was, by the intense frustrations with my parents who just didn’t understand any of it.
Anger coursed through me like water in a burst pipe—the rage spewing everywhere, uncontrolled and unfocused. Hitting everything in its path.
How many times did I regret, the second after I did it, throwing a desk lamp onto the floor? How many pillowcases were left moldering under the constant assault of tears and saliva from my openmouthed screams?
I am an angry person and have always been this way. My Facebook profile used to say, “I never take the high road.” What was the point? Passivity was almost offensive to me. I didn’t understand people who just “let things go.” Let it go? What the actual fuck does that mean?
II.
My high school was the school that you never saw in movies or on TV: a mix of immigrants and children of immigrants from all over the globe—Armenia, Mexico, El Salvador, Iran, Taiwan, the Philippines, Korea, et cetera. I could count the number of white kids at my entire school on one hand.
In this Benetton ad of a high school, my best girl friends were on the volleyball team. They wore tight little shorts and had sturdy legs while I sat in the bleachers wearing oversized sweatshirts to cover up my skeletal frame. It didn’t matter—what I lacked in body mass I made up for with my huge mouth. I cheered aggressively for my friends and my school, like a girl possessed. I loved picking fights with fans from the opposing team, loved slinging insults at their players. It was the perfect pastime for someone who was competitive but had zero athletic ability.
One day we played against a high school that I shall charitably call Homogenous High. It was a team of blond ponytails and last names that were easy for American mouths to pronounce.
So there we were at this game—a pretty run-of-the-mill game since Homogenous High was in our school district and we played them often—when the kid next to me on the bleachers starts rummaging through his duffel bag. I glance over at him: blond water-polo-player-looking fool. Whatever. I feel mild irritation at all the rummaging noises but nothing worse than that. But before I can focus back on the game, I see him pull out an American flag.
I get that prickly feeling on the back of my neck, that instant temperature rise. My heart starts beating just a bit quicker. Even before he speaks a word, I know why that flag i
s there.
He unfurls it, and it’s as wide as his arm span. Then he, and the kids next to him, start chanting, “USA! USA!” People look over, confused and annoyed. But then they turn back to the game.
I stare. I stare so hard.
Finally, I say to him, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” The words come out fast. I’m not thinking of their consequences.
He won’t even look at me, but he cracks this shit-eating grin as he keeps his eyes straight ahead. “We’re cheering for America.”
“Stop it.”
“Why? If you’re American, you shouldn’t mind. Don’t you like America?”
By this point, people are looking at us, and I know that I’m red-faced and my voice is raised while his cronies laugh. An emotional teenage girl surrounded by chill dudes laughing. He keeps that flag waving. Absolutely shameless. So assured of his place in this gym, this city, this country.
I want to rip it out of his hands and make him eat it. I want to throw myself into his body so that we both go crashing down the bleachers. I want to scream, YOU ARE BEING RACIST. But the words needed to connect this act with racism are hard for me to find; I don’t have the vocabulary nor the map for that yet.
Instead, I just hurl impotent obscenities at him that make him laugh. The game goes on and no one else speaks up. I feel completely alone in my rage.
III.
I’m in a parking lot with my Asian-American girlfriends. We’re giggling because I accidentally drove into the parking lot the wrong way and had to do some clunky maneuvering to get into a spot. We’re walking toward a Mexican restaurant when we hear a male voice say, “I guess it’s true that Asians can’t drive.” It’s a middle-aged white man sitting in his car, watching us, a smile under his greasy mustache.
Screaming ensues. He continues to smile. Our dinner is ruined.