This article begins with a definition—because precision is the enemy of denial.

Clinical psychologist Christine DiBlasio defines gaslighting as a severe form of emotional abuse characterized by intentional manipulation, denial of reality, seizure of narrative control, and the systematic erosion of a victim’s trust in their own perceptions, memories, and sanity. Unlike ordinary deflection—which may be unconscious or self-protective—gaslighting is deliberate, strategic, and aimed at power and control. It isolates, destabilizes, and disempowers.

Gaslighting operates through recognizable tactics: minimizing harm, denying evidence, reversing blame, pathologizing perception, projecting responsibility, isolating victims from support, and reframing coercion as care or concern. It is not misunderstanding. It is not mutual conflict. It is abuse.

Dr. DiBlasio’s work focuses primarily on gaslighting in interpersonal, familial, institutional, and political contexts. This article accepts her definition fully—and then asks the next unavoidable question:

What happens when these same tactics are not confined to individual relationships, but embedded into an entire social system?

Gaslighting Does Not Stop at the Household Door

Every tactic identified at the interpersonal level appears—nearly verbatim—at the level of patriarchy as a system:

• Denial of reality: Women name exploitation; society responds, “That’s not happening.”
• Minimization: “It’s not that bad.” “You’re exaggerating.”
• Pathologizing perception: “You’re emotional.” “You’re unstable.” “You’re bitter.”
• Reversal of harm: “Men are the real victims now.”
• Narrative seizure: Men define what sexism is, when it exists, and when it’s over.
• Projection: Feminism is framed as abusive for naming abuse.
• Isolation: Women who speak collectively are punished socially, economically, and professionally.
• Reframing coercion as love or choice: Care labor becomes “instinct.” Reproductive labor becomes “biology.” Submission becomes “preference.”

At scale, these are not accidents.

They are maintenance behaviors—the predictable actions of a system protecting itself.

The Labor Question Patriarchy Cannot Answer Honestly

Patriarchal societies depend on women’s labor—specifically:

• Reproductive labor
• Caregiving and elder care
• Domestic labor
• Emotional regulation
• Sexual availability
• Social cohesion
• Risk absorption (violence, pregnancy, poverty, precarity)

Much of this labor is unpaid, underpaid, or economically unavoidable. Refusal is penalized—through poverty, social stigma, violence, loss of children, loss of safety, or exclusion from basic social and economic survival.

Under established international legal frameworks—including the International Labour Organization Forced Labour Convention (No. 29) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights interpretations of structural coercion—slavery is not limited to chattel ownership. It includes labor that is:

• Extracted without genuine consent
• Structurally coerced
• Penalized upon refusal
• Appropriated for the benefit of others
• Prohibitively costly or dangerous to exit

These frameworks recognize that coercion can be psychological, economic, or social—not only physical.

This argument asserts that when labor is systematically extracted under conditions where refusal triggers predictable and severe penalties, the structure meets the criteria of forced labor as defined in international law.

Why Gaslighting Is Required to Sustain Forced Labor

Forced labor is illegal. It is morally indefensible. It cannot survive transparency.

Therefore, any system that relies on structurally coerced labor must deny that the labor is coerced.

Gaslighting becomes the enforcement mechanism:

• Redefining coercion as “choice”
• Reframing obligation as “love,” “nature,” or “biology”
• Insisting equality already exists
• Labeling women who name exploitation as unstable, hateful, or irrational
• Socially or economically punishing women who refuse the narrative

When women say, “This system depends on our exhaustion,” the response is not engagement—it is diagnosis.

Deny reality. Destabilize the speaker. Preserve power.

Intent Is Not Required. Benefit Is Sufficient.

This argument does not depend on the claim that all men consciously intend harm.

It asserts instead that structural benefit—not individual cruelty—is the operative fact.

In gender-stratified systems, men as a class disproportionately benefit from women’s undercompensated and unrecognized labor, including:

• Care work they are less socially expected to perform
• Emotional labor that stabilizes their lives and institutions
• Reproductive labor that sustains populations and family structures
• Domestic labor that subsidizes wages and careers
• Social arrangements that reduce their personal survival costs

Advantage accrues whether or not it is consciously sought.

In systems built on extraction, innocence does not negate benefit.

“Not All Men” Is a Deflection, Not a Rebuttal

Saying “not all men” redirects attention from structural analysis to individual character defense. It recenters the comfort of beneficiaries rather than addressing the mechanics of the system.

The claim here is structural:

Patriarchal systems—historically constructed and disproportionately enforced by men—require the destabilization of women’s perception in order to obscure the coerced dimensions of the labor on which those systems depend.

Individual virtue does not dissolve structural design.

Survivors Already Know

Gaslighting is difficult to identify because it is cumulative, socially reinforced, and often invisible until profound harm has occurred. That difficulty intensifies when the destabilizing force is not a single abuser—but a culture.

Across centuries and borders, women have articulated variations of the same recognition:

• Something is wrong.
• We are exhausted.
• We are not imagining this.
• The cost of refusal is real.
• We are punished for noticing.

The cultural response has often been: You’re crazy.

That response is not neutral.

It is not accidental.

It is destabilization in defense of hierarchy.

Naming Is the First Rupture

Gaslighting depends on confusion.

Clarity interrupts it.

This analysis is not an accusation against individual men. It is an examination of systemic arrangements that normalize extraction while denying that extraction exists.

A system that depends on coerced labor cannot afford sustained scrutiny. Exposure threatens continuity.

Naming is not hatred.

It is illumination.

And systems built on denial do not remain stable when the lights are on.

Notes & Legal Framework

• League of Nations – 1926 Slavery Convention
  Defines slavery as the exercise of powers attaching to the right of ownership over a person. Subsequent interpretations clarify that ownership may include control over labor, movement, and exit under coercive conditions.
• International Labour Organization – Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29)
  Defines forced or compulsory labor as work exacted under the menace of penalty for which a person has not offered themselves voluntarily. “Penalty” includes economic deprivation, social exclusion, and loss of security.
• International Labour Organization – Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105)
  Prohibits forced labor used for social control, discipline, or economic exploitation.
• United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
  Recognizes that forced labor may exist where consent is undermined by structural inequality, dependency, or lack of viable alternatives.
• United States Department of State – Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Reports
  Acknowledge that coercion may be psychological, economic, or social—not solely physical force.
• Feminist political economy scholarship, including work by Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser, documents how unpaid reproductive, domestic, and care labor functions as a subsidy to waged labor markets and national economies while remaining largely unrecognized and uncompensated.
• Legal scholarship on structural coercion across labor and human rights law recognizes that voluntariness is compromised when refusal carries predictable and severe penalties—even absent explicit physical force.