In the coming months, I highly recommend folks to become ever more vigilant and attuned to when you are being gaslit. Gaslighting is of course a form of psychological abuse where someone intentionally invalidates you and makes you question your own reality.
It will happen in small and large situations and can take on many forms. Gaslighting will soar even more in this administration because oppression itself is a form of gaslighting.
It will be the resurgence of laughing openly at racist jokes, the emboldened white man making more comments about others’ bodies. It will be a surge in abuse, assault, and violence. It will show up as contempt and glares. It will be cis people gawking, it will be white women insisting on their version of feminism. It will be white people and cis people getting more roles, awards, and accolades. It will be a shift in school admissions, job offers, incarceration, and art. It will be Empiresplaining, a worship of colonial “traditional values,” and jingoistic “all-Americanism.”
Oppressors have for hundreds of years tried to get us to abandon and doubt our instincts. Now is the time to diligently hone them, for your instincts are what save, guide, and protect you.
Sharpen and solidify your core truths and internal compass. Learn your boundaries and how to hold them. Call gaslighting out when it is happening, get people around you to support.
Learn impulse from instinct.
Our instincts truly want us to be free. Let them show you how to get there.
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