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When we examine workplace bullying in an extreme form, namely the punitive treatment of LGBT military personnel over the decades, targets of less systemic workplace abuse can gain valuable insights. In this post, the insights in the military examples are juxtaposed with four non-military, bullying workplaces described in The Gaslit Brain, in order to help targeted employees to identify when gaslighting is being used.
Instead of the more typical pathologizing of LGBT military personnel, Dr. Heliana Ramirez and Dr. Paul Sterzing, social work experts and researchers, focus on the “strength, resilience, and resistance” demonstrated by targeted service members and veterans. Valuable insights can be gained by their approach for all targets and survivors of systemic workplace bullying.
Gaslighting used in workplace abuse
The first insight emerges from examining the way perpetrators use gaslighting to fault those they target for maltreatment. Citing extensive research, Ramirez and Sterzing reveal “centuries of official and unofficial anti-LGBT military policies” that positioned victims as the ones doing wrong, being mentally ill, and unfit for work.
The textbook reversal of the bullying offender and the targeted victim has been normalized and systematized in the military. The gaslighting is clear in that the discriminatory, un-empathic, callous treatment of victims is justified by perpetrators who position their targets as mentally ill, morally corrupt, or mentally deficient.
Neuroscientific research documented in The Gaslit Brain provides evidence for mental illness residing in perpetrators of abuse, not the victims they target. Those who harm others in the workplace frequently have brain deficiencies and injuries that are visible on brain scans. The science reveals that not only are discriminatory, unempathic, callous individuals unfit for duty because of their mental dysfunction, but they are often outright destructive and dangerous.
Making the contributions of targets disappear
The second insight that emerges from Ramirez and Sterzing’s research centres on decades of erasing the “contributions” of targeted LGBT service members. Analyzing four non-military workplaces, The Gaslit Brain reveals this same pattern. Individuals put in the out-group for having too much talent, acting on too much integrity, having the courage to speak up about wrong-doing, all resulted in the erasure of their contributions to the workplace.
If LGBT service members, or the targets of bullying in The Gaslit Brain, were indeed causing workplace issues, problems, crises of one kind or another, their track records should be under scrutiny, not made to vanish. Their track records should provide a history of wrong-doing or weakness that justifies termination. What we find documented in Ramirez and Sterzing’s research is the opposite, and the same insight is seen in The Gaslit Brain. The contributions of targets are, in fact, valuable. In an abusive workplace, they must be erased as they risk exposing the gaslighting at work.
If you are being maltreated and gaslit, instead of your track record providing the evidence for an unfortunate work history, it will instead be erased. It is a red flag of maltreatment and manipulation. When you are being targeted, and a false narrative is being constructed around you, it’s hard to stay clear-sighted about the moral injustice that is occurring.
Maltreatment causes mental instability and suffering
The third insight comes from Ramirez and Sterzing recording the way LGBT service members were “banished through early discharges” or institutionalized in psychiatric facilities. In the case studies of The Gaslit Brain, a lesser version occurred whereby the targets of bullying and abuse left the workplace through constructive dismissal and sought out mental health counselling. Even beyond the oppressive military workplace, being targeted can lead to the loss of one’s position, livelihood, and a need for mental health support. You can see the way targets are gaslit into thinking their psychological suffering requires healing and repair, especially when they are not commended for their incredible courage and mental strength to resist intensive abuse.
Gaslighting Essential Reads
Whether being discharged or escaping the workplace abuse to save one’s health, targets can be left with a sense that they are the ones who are weak, unwell, or unstable, even though the kind of abuse they endured is well-documented in research to cause extreme mental distress. The great power of the abusive workplace is to terminate an employee. But Ramirez and Sterzing provide targets with a way to understand the injustice and wastefulness of their maltreatment.
How to resist the gaslighting and see clearly
Ramirez and Sterzing provide a final hard-hitting exposure of the gaslighting that surrounds the military’s maltreatment of sexual minority service members: “The costs of these anti-LGBT military policies are profound, with the U.S. military spending $193.3 million from 2004 to 2009 to train and replace LGBT military personnel” who had been discharged. In other words, the targets were contributing effectively. They were valuable and they were costly to replace. If they lacked contributions, had poor track records, were mentally weak or unstable, it should not have been so massively expensive to replace them.
Likewise, as outlined in The Gaslit Brain, it would have been costly to replace an award-winning teacher with a PhD, a top-tier Nike executive, a highly-promoted counter-terrorism expert, and an award-winning law professor, but all those workplaces chose to remove their talent and replace them at great cost. This final insight can help those targeted for workplace discrimination or abuse to see clearly that the way they are being spoken of, treated, and positioned is false.
Workplaces that have systemic abuse issues can make targets feel as if the discharge, firing, or constructive dismissal is their own fault and lead them to believe it’s due to their mental weakness. Ramirez and Sterzing’s research shows that not only are workers being bullied out of their positions and careers, they are being grossly misled to believe the problem lies with them. Their insights expose the gaslighting and show how great the abuse was that they endured.
Ramirez and Sterzing’s approach is strengths-based and commends the remarkable resilience and fortitude of the targets. Their work acts as a reminder that not only has appalling harm been done to targets by perpetrators, but these perpetrators use gaslighting to further abuse and manipulate. Most importantly, while perpetrators rarely if ever recover from the brain dysfunctions that make them harm others, targets – as shown by Ramirez and Sterzing – can recover effectively and repair the moral injuries done to them.
