With regard to tin foil hat territory, I have long thought the current situation and sheer regulatory capture that periodically gets discussed on here, are so extreme that anyone describing it to anyone who is new to all this risks being dismissed as having gone a bit crazy.
Telling people on Twix, years ago, that there were men in women’s prisons was often met with disbelief, as was the fact that medics were cutting breasts off teenage girls and giving drugs to children that cause sterility, for a mental health problem.
Those things are now well established, but the sheer gaslighting of these terrifying bullies is also appalling to watch. These are grown sociopathic men, who are wielding the police and manipulating the law, as well as turning up at women’s houses, attacking them on social media, while broadly staying out of the spotlight.
Having experienced this kind of bullying as a young woman, I know the only way to escape the grips of these men, once they have you in their sights, is grey rock, but then we see this new tactic, throwing a trained youngster into the ring to get into people’s faces, driving them to the point where it’s impossible to achieve grey rock, other than by withdrawing from any kind of activism.
And, of course, that is a sideline to their sheer enjoyment at seeing their victims panic, suffer, get angry and realize how powerless they are to do anything about the monster who is tormented them, but has convinced the world he’s the victim.
I despise these men with every fibre of my being, but have never found any way to defeat them as they always have support from the power structures in society.
If Graham Linehan can finally make others see this struggle, he will have achieved something. I feel for him though as, even in a much smaller scale, gaslighting was the worst thing that ever happened to me. It broke my mind and I’ve never really fully recovered.