Gaslighting & Victim Blaming on a Global Scale
How Society is Complicit in Sexual Violence
By Dr. Shobana Powell, LCSW, DSW
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is the act of manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, sense of reality, or experiences. It is a psychological coercion tactic that abusers often use to keep victims of sexual violence under their control. They make a survivor believe they cannot trust their own mind, that they are imagining things, that the abuse wasn’t that bad, all as a means of minimizing the harm they’ve caused. It is a means to debase the survivor’s credibility, even to the survivor themself. This is a deeply traumatizing experience because it can feel like being coerced into betraying yourself and not believing yourself. Society perpetuates gaslighting when we fail to believe survivors, minimizing abuse with statements like “boys will be boys” when sexual assault occurs or excuses like “sex addiction” when sexual exploitation, femicide, or hate crimes like the Atlanta shootings occur, rather than holding accountable those who cause harm.
Victim Blaming
Victim blaming or survivor blaming is another common psychological coercion technique; it is utilized to shift the focus from the harm caused to what the survivor could have done to prevent their own abuse or to the ways the survivor “deserved” or “asked for” the harm they experienced. The survivor often begins to believe this narrative they are hearing from those who have caused them harm. What’s worse, the more society blames survivors, the more survivors blame themselves.
Systemic Gaslighting & Victim Blaming
Abusers often use a combination of victim blaming and gaslighting to perpetuate the notion that it is not only the survivor’s fault but that they are “crazy” for thinking their abuse was in fact abuse. In the end, society plays into the hands of the abuser, perpetrating the psychological harm of both gaslighting and victim blaming on a global and systemic level, not only in how we treat survivors but also in how we legislate around survivors’ rights.
What was once clearly violence against one’s soul and body becomes blurrier and blurrier each time society reiterates what the abuser said — that it wasn’t that big of a deal, it was your fault, you’re being dramatic, you’re blowing things out of proportion, hurt people hurt people, they were just drunk, you were just drunk, you should have fought back, you shouldn’t have fought back, you should have screamed, you shouldn’t have screamed, you should’ve asked for help, you should’ve kept asking for help when they didn’t believe you and when they blamed you, that you should’ve stayed so it didn’t get worse, you should’ve left even though you had nowhere to go. The moment you blame a survivor is the moment you prove their abuser right.
This sounds exhausting because it is. After cycles of this individual and societal gaslighting and victim blaming, survivors begin to believe what everyone around them is saying in person and in policy — that it was their fault, it was their choice. This is only heightened for survivors who are BIPOC, LGBTQ+, nonnative English speakers, and immigrants. For each marginalized identity you have, a survivor is blamed even further and believed even less.
Systemic Harm in Action: Criminalization of Survivors
One extreme form of systemic gaslighting and victim blaming is the criminalization of survivors, in essence arresting them for their own exploitation, self-defense, crimes related to their abuse, and crimes committed while under coercive control and extreme duress. We see this in cases like Cyntoia Brown, who was incarcerated as a child for 15 years for killing a sex buyer who was purchasing her, even though she was a victim of pimp-controlled domestic child sex trafficking and acting in self-defense against a sex buyer. We see this again in the case of Zephaniah “Zephi” Trevino, a 16-year old who is facing capital murder charges because her trafficker killed her sex buyer, and she is being framed as the “mastermind” behind it all. Both Cyntoia and Zephi are survivors of color, and the blatant discrimination against them by the criminal justice system and by society are no coincidence.
It sounds incredulous, but this happens for survivors every day, adults and children, survivors of all types of gender-based violence, and most commonly for survivors of color, LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants — those with the least social power. The common narrative behind this systemic victim blaming and gaslighting is that survivors like Cynotia and Zephi chose a life of prostitution, they chose the sex trade, they chose their own exploitation, and they should be held accountable for the consequences. And just like that, ideas like individual choice, consent, and sex-positivity, concepts meant to uplift the rights of the most marginalized, are weaponized against them. Just like that, society leaves the abusers, the sex buyers, the pimps, out of the discussion and the focus comes back to victim blaming and gaslighting, all under the guise of respecting “individual choice”, and yet so deeply failing to acknowledge the power, privilege, misogyny, and racism that underlie all sexual violence. These types of systemic gaslighting and victim blaming are rampant in our culture and policies and are just some of the many reasons it is so hard for survivors to leave, let alone ask for help. We need to stop asking why a survivor didn’t leave and start asking what we as a society did to make it feel impossible to do so. We need to start taking accountability for how our policies and beliefs have contributed to the psychological harm against survivors of sexual violence.
Healing from Systemic Harm
Surviving does not end after leaving. In my years working as a therapist and advocate with survivors of all forms of complex trauma and sexual violence, I have seen that one of the most difficult things to heal from for survivors is the feeling that the world saw your abuse and ignored it. How can you ever trust or love or feel safe again when every day in the news you read another story about a survivor whose exploitation, abuse, and pain are depicted as “choice” or “consent”?
We see this time and time again in cases like the Minnesota Supreme Court ruling last month where a woman who was raped while intoxicated and unconscious was not considered a victim of sexual assault because the perpetrator did not provide the alcohol to the victim himself. In essence, the unanimous ruling suggests that because she chose to get intoxicated with her friends, she “chose” or “allowed” herself to get raped by a stranger. It is a loophole in the law, but a dangerous one that is rooted in centuries of patriarchy and victim blaming. Imagine the level of retraumatization this survivor — and thousands like her — are enduring when they are continuously publicly debased and blamed by the legal system for their own sexual assault.
It is the trauma of a survivor’s experiences with their abusers, compounded by the trauma of their experiences with society that make it so difficult to recover, reintegrate, or recognize their own resilience. Healing is possible, but it requires the fostering of a world in which sexual violence is not perpetuated, a world where instead, survivors of all races, genders, and identities are heard and believed.
A Comprehensive Solution
This is why we need community education on trauma and gender-based violence, increased access to comprehensive, trauma-informed services for healing, and survivor-centered policies that challenge the systems of patriarchy that hold victim blaming and gaslighting in place. Until we change things, it will always be easier to silence victims than it is to hold abusers accountable.
It is time to support policies written and led by survivors that take these depths of power, control, psychological coercion and systemic oppression into account. We must support legislation like the New York State Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act (S6040), which increases access to services for survivors of the sex trade, decriminalizes survivors so they are no longer blamed for their exploitation and abuse, and holds accountable their exploiters (pimps, sex buyers, and brothel owners). This is a bill that was created with and by survivors. It moves our communities away from victim blaming and gaslighting towards truly listening to and believing survivors. This is just one example of how we can shift the culture around sexual violence. To learn more visit equalitymodelny.org.
