"Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But they invariably want it back in such very small change."(O. Wilde)
The women of today may be professionals and wage earners but their self esteem has never been worse. They tolerate all the gender based criticism and stereotyping, because they are afraid of not finding that one thing they really need even with full knowledge, that deep down it will never change, I mean once a person goes through the hurt of betrayal the idea almost seems too foolish to think a man will change. The age of the woman is a big factor in this. If she is 40 and younger, she stays because she feels she cannot do better and she is probably right, there are a handful of woman on every corner waiting for an eligible man. If she is over 40 she has made peace with staying and most likely lives her life and he lives his. Not willing to start over only to most likely end up in the same boat again.
Emotional manipulation is rampantly feeding a plague in our country, a plague that defines women as mad, absurd, overly sensitive, and unbalanced. This outbreak helps stimulate the idea that even the slightest irritation can trigger a women’s rage of emotions. In the movie “Insiang” this was absolutely significant for the lives of the main characters because it basically evolved the whole plot and made it holistic. We should already be able to separate the correlating ideas of insensitive behavior and emotional manipulation, but even now the lines separating them remains unclear. So in order to thoroughly separate their clutches on eachother we need to find a word that isn’t normally seen in our vocabulary. This will be sufficed by a helpful word that I came across during research to identification of the stimulation of these ideas: gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a commonly used term by mental health professionals, to describe manipulative behavior used to confuse people into thinking their reactions are so far off the pedestal that they’re off to the extremes. Based on further investigation on this term, it actually comes from a 1944 MGM film, called Gaslight. a Woman’s husband in the film, wants to get his hands on her trinkets. He reckons that the only way to get them is by having her certified as insane and admitted to a mental institution. To pull of his mission, he intentionally sets the gaslights in their home to flicker off and on, and every time the wife’s character reacts to it, he tells her she’s just seeing things. In this setting, a gaslighter is someone who presents false information to alter the victim’s perception of him or herself.
Today, when the term is used, it’s usually because the perpetrator says things like, “I cheated on you because you made me feel incompetent and unloved”, or maybe tell them that the other party seduced them and they are simply human they have their limits as well or even go to the extremes like “No one else will ever love you like I do,” to the victim. This is an intentional, intended form of gaslighting, much like the actions of the Husband’s character in Gaslight, where he makes sure to scare the wife into believing she has gone insane. The form of gaslighting I’m addressing is not always deliberate, which makes it alot worse, because it gives a lot of room for us , especially women to be “deceived”.
Those who engage in gaslighting create a reaction—whether it’s anger, frustration, sadness. They trigger that part of the brain that releases the nerves of feeling lonely and having self-pity making them think that maybe it was their fault and basically making them ask for forgiveness about something that wasn’t even their fault to start with. Altering their perceptions and ideas of themselves and the gaslighter, changing the roles and making the gaslighter the saint in the situation.
While gaslighting doesn’t affect all women, we should still recognize that an abundance of women do suffer from it and encounter it on a daily basis. Not all women affected are unsure of themselves either, even the vocal, secure and aggressive women are assailable.
Why, you may ask?
Because women pose to the burden of the men’s psychosis. We can all admit that it is more basic for us to place our emotional baggage’s on the shoulders of wives, female friends, girlfriends and female colleagues, saying they are more understanding, caring, compassionate and whatever else word you may point through, but we all know it’s basically because it’s just not right for us to impose them on the shoulders of men.
Come on, It is a whole lot easier to emotionally manipulate someone who has been conditioned by our society to accept it. We continue to burden women because they think they have to carry it for us whether they are aware or not. Whether gaslighting is conscious or not, it produces the same result: it renders some women emotionally mute.
It is already no small wonder women become passive aggressive when expressing themselves. These women tend to dismiss any hurtful comments or actions done to them and are unable to express that it is hurtful to them because they have been subjected to so much gaslighting. For example, a woman’s husband may be over critical of her and as such hurt her feelings, she may just say "it's okay, forget it, maybe he is right." They are self dismissal and even could have self doubt so much so that they may no longer be able to express themselves properly again or be too afraid to express themselves.
Thought women in this century has come a long way , we still face the facts that there are certain ideologies or conditioning that can never be thoroughly changed. We still face the challenge of being underweighted by the oppression of opion, position and thoughts by the men though done deliberately or unawarely.
May it be your favorite supermarket, convenience store or even mere a mere gas station’s magazine rack already show you that women are the frequent focus of sexual objectification. Women are more likely to be picked apart by the brain and seen as parts rather than a whole, according to research published online June 29 in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Men, on the other hand, are processed as a whole rather than the sum of their part.
The objectification of women involves the act of disregarding the personal and intellectual abilities and capabilities of a female as a human being; and reducing their worth or role in society to that of an instrument for the sexual pleasure that she can produce in the mind of another. It isn’t right to correlate biological parts to the extent of proficiency and position a woman can have in the society. Even if we may have different opinions on the extent, mentality and motive of this matter, we face the fact that women still continue to be belittled by this objectification. We see women criticized for their beauty rather than their intellect and their ideas.
Men seen to have been almost conditioned by the society to objectify women, in the media today, you see women used solely for their body parts and looks in film, magazines, and video games. Men may see most of us as just another pretty face or a something to show off to their friends like a “trophy”.(Men being naturally competitive wants the best of everything).Women are thought off as very materialistic and men think that since they are this way they can get any women they want just by giving them gifts and providing for them, since women wants to feel secure (and that means financially too).
There is a growing idea in men saying that they can survive without women. That women are there for reproduction and that’s it. Easily replaced and they come and go. I think that men are too blinded with their prides and egos to see that women do matter. I mean, is a man a man, without a wife in that society? Is a man a man, without children in that society? Women might give their gold to men, but the men need it to have the small change, because without gold, there is no small change and no money.
So without women, there will be no “real” men.
