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Uphold

Gaslighting in a world of Submission

Updated: Aug 1, 2022


"It’s hard to know where to start. Gaslighting is like that.


There’s no one big thing—no particular blow up, no bruise on the face, no specific workplace incident or thing you can point to. It’s lots of little things over a long period of time.


It’s the subtle undermining of your self-confidence, the little indications that they think you can work harder, do more, be better. It’s the ignoring of your opinion in a staff meeting—until that opinion is repeated by a male colleague. It’s the not-so-subtle comments about how important it is for you to get along with his wife for you to keep your job. It’s giving you blank looks when you enthusiastically share an idea on how to improve something—then telling people you are undermining him (by having an idea of your own).


It’s being mocked when you try to get him to take major pastoral issues (like domestic violence) seriously. It’s telling you not to worry, because he asked the husband and he said he ‘just pushed his wife and she accidentally fell over’, and he believes him. It’s shutting you out of staff meeting and leaving you alone in your office while everyone else meets in another room.


It’s telling everyone of a minor conflict between you and a ministry trainee, while covering his own major conflicts with three others. It’s telling you, as the only women’s pastor, that you are not pastorally responsible for every woman at church—just the ones that he says have problems (i.e. 95% of the women who make up a majority of our very large church); the five men on staff will deal with all the men.


It’s letting you know of any time you have failed to be there for one of those hundreds of women.


And it’s a million other things besides…"


Published at Every Thought Captive geoffrobson.com




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