Sex Gets Real 262: Samantha Manewitz on emotional abuse and gaslighting

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In a Sex Gets Real first, this episode is Part Two of a THREE part series featuring Eve Rickert, Samantha Manewitz, and Aida Manduley.

This episode is my conversation with therapist Samantha Manewitz. We build on the conversation I had with Eve Rickert in Episode 261, exploring emotional abuse and gaslighting in relationships.

One of the things Samantha stresses in this conversation is how normalized gaslighting is in the world right now. We have the highest levels of power (the U.S. President) gaslighting an entire nation, and none of us are immune.

We also explore some things that help reveal behaviors that might lead to emotional abuse and what one word can change the way we enter into relationships.

This is an important and powerful conversation about how subtle emotional abuse can be, and how to look out for DARVO which is how emotional abusers position themselves as the victim.

The survivor pod resources mentioned in this episode include:

1. Initial statement on February 11th
2. Update on March 25th
3. Tracking spreadsheet where you can find most of the documents, updates, and conversations happening
4. Survivor pod PayPal where you can donate some money (PLEASE DO THIS) to support the process

If you’ve been accused of consent violations or harm, this piece by Tamara Pincus is a good place to start.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

About Samantha Manewitz:

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Dawn Serra: Hey, you. Here we are with part two of our three part series surrounding Franklin Veaux, Eve Rickert, emotional abuse, and alternative justice practices. Last week, we started with a conversation with Eve Rickert, co-author of the More Than Two polyamory book about her experiences being in a relationship that involved emotional abuse and gaslighting, and what unfolded as she came to grips with that realization. We also talked about what’s happened since and engaging in a survivor/community accountability/transformative justice process.

This week, to build on that conversation, I am chatting with therapist and kink expert, Samantha Manewitz, who joins us to talk all about emotional abuse which is something that can be really difficult to identify and put our finger on especially when we’re experiencing it. We’ll talk a lot about that and gaslighting. One of the things that I just think is so important about this conversation and why I can’t wait for you to hear it is because we are inside of a culture that is culturally gaslighting us all the time. We have a president of the United States who has normalized gaslighting and even inside of our friendships and our most intimate relationships, it can be so easy to gaslight and be gaslit. We’re going to explore that with Samantha this week. 

Just a quick note, I recorded this episode while sitting in my childhood bedroom with a pair of earbuds and my laptop because I was home for a family funeral so this episode does sound just a little bit different from the other episodes but I had to work with what I had because I really wanted to have this conversation with Samantha.

Dawn Serra: Before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that the July cohort of my Power in Pleasure online course is now enrolling. I wanted to share a couple of things that people from the current cohort have been saying over the past couple of days about the course. 

This first one was someone emailing me and it says, “I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the spaces you’re creating and the conversations you are facilitating. Between the summit and the course, I am feeling all kinds of connection to you and to the communities of people you are bringing together. I feel really strongly connected to a lot of the things that you say in the group chats, and so much of the course contents so far is feeling like just exactly what I need. I am so grateful for the opportunity to participate in the amazing conversations that are taking place within these spaces. Enlightening and empowering, I’m feeling so much validation and solidarity here.”

Another person said, “I want to briefly express how much your love, compassion, and insight has allowed me to give myself permission to feel pleasure and to take responsibility for stepping away from dis ease.” Another person who has been unpacking some of the stories they carry around sex wrote, “Your words were incredibly freeing, Dawn. I love having satisfaction as the goal. It really feels clear and lighter. It feels real and really, really hits the mark for me. Each day, I am blown away by your depth and wisdom. Thank you.” 

Dawn Serra: I have been moved by the depth of the conversations and inquiry that we’ve been doing in this course. The things that are slowly being revealed is so powerful. And we just wrapped up week 3 of the 5 week course where we spent a whole week exploring our hungers and our desires, what it means to be satisfiable, and to center enoughness. We also explored our hunger around, not only food, but also sex, connection, touch, belonging. It was really rich. 

Last week, we spent the entire week connecting with our senses to practice small ways of being embodied and hearing our body and being sensual. If you would like to explore pleasure on your terms, if you’d like to release old stories about being worthy and deserving and who gets to feel good, or if pleasure feels really complicated for you, then you can go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse and check out all the details. Because the next group is enrolling now and we start July 22nd 2019, and I would love to see you there. 

Back to my conversation with Samantha, I just want to issue a reminder that this three part series is not about painting any one person as a monster or any other person as some perfect survivor. Instead, we’re really hoping to reveal things like power dynamics, celebrity culture, the ways we are all so easily complicit in harmful behaviors; while also exploring different ways that we can engage in community accountability and alternative justice practices that can really shift how we show up for each other and how we do community. 

Dawn Serra: I also want to note there has been so much labor on the part of the survivor pod to gather stories, to support the survivors, to engage in dialogue with the community, to track everything that’s unfolding, to craft really thoughtful and important messages and updates about the process they’re engaging in. I was wrong last week when I said that expenses have been estimated at $10,000. There are over $20,000 at this point because of all the people and the time. 

So in each of these three episodes, you’re going to hear people mentioning how much they would really love your financial support, even a dollar helps. So in the show notes for this episode and if you go to sexgetsreal.com/ep262/, you’ll find the link to the survivor pod’s Paypal. If community accountability and alternative justice are really important to you, like they are for me, this is a chance to actually really help by donating a couple of dollars or even one dollar to the survivor pod to ensure that this crucial work continues happening; and that we can have many more of these processes down the road. 

I also just want to note, Patreon supporters, you get an exclusive little behind the scenes clip of what unfolded after Samantha and I finished our main conversation for the show. Plus, I’ve made a little handout with some of the questions that Samantha offered that can help us spot some behaviors that might be problematic. If you go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast, you can get your goodies if you already support the show at $3 a month and above. Or if you aren’t a supporter yet, join us at $3 a month and above. You get weekly bonus content so that’s less than a dollar per week to get pdfs, guided meditations, extra bonus chats with interviewers, and all kinds of other stuff. And if you support at $5 a month and above, you can help me field listener questions. Again, that’s at patreon.com/sgrpodcast.

Dawn Serra: Next week, part three of our three part series is going to drop and it’s my incredible conversation with Aida Manduley about accountability and transformative justice. Tune in to that. Let me tell you a little bit about Samantha and then we will dive in.

Samantha Manewitz is an educator and a AASECT certified sex therapist. She has trained mental health professionals, sex educators, and alt sex communities on healthy communication, abuse prevention, mental health, and BDSM. Samantha was a featured presenter at multiple conferences including Catalyst Con, West American Association of Sexuality Educators, Councilors, and Therapists, also known as AASECT, The Community Academic Consortium for Research on Alternative Sexualities, and The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, one of my personal favorites. 

Among her therapeutic specialties are trauma, complex PTSD, sex therapy, couples therapy – she’s level two Gottman trained – and gender affirming care for transgender and nonbinary clients. Samantha is also the faculty of the Institute for Sexuality Education and Enlightenment where she has presented on sexual coercion and psychotherapy with kinky clients. Here is my chat with Samantha.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Samantha. I am very much looking forward to our rich discussion today.

Samantha Manewitz: Thank you, and likewise. Thank you for inviting me on.

Dawn Serra: Yes. We’re going to be talking about gaslighting and emotional abuse today, which for our listeners might sound heavy. But I promise, it’s going to be super fascinating and something that impacts all of us. Samantha, you do a lot of work around emotional abuse and manipulation and gaslighting. I’d love to start with a little bit about how you became experienced in this space and how you got started in this work.

Samantha Manewitz: Sure. I mean, my entire story of how I got to where I am is wibbly wobbly. It wasn’t really a straight path. But I guess just starting with my clinical career, I got my social work degree from University of Chicago in 2011. Before that, I was a Russian major. I got my degree 10 years too early and 10 years too late. But that’s a whole other story. Part of why I decided to go into therapy or something that informed my decision was I identify as poly and kinky myself. I had had some bad experiences with therapists and that’s like, “That sucks. I don’t want other people to experience this.” That very much informed what I wanted to do with my career when I ultimately decided to go into social work.

Right out of the gate, I was working with high trauma populations. My first field placement was at an LGBT health center in Chicago where we worked with LGBTQ, et cetera clients from all walks of life. But they also had a separate domestic violence program where LGBT survivors – or an anti-violence program – where LGBTQ survivors of relationship abuse, sexual trauma and hate crimes could receive free counseling. That was my very first foray into abuse work and where I learned the nuts and bolts of abuse and domestic violence response. Second year field placement was at a rape crisis center. And then my first job out of graduate school, I joke that I was hired to work with teens because I’m quote unquote young and relatable and ended up with a bunch of traumatized age 12 year olds. PTSD and trauma work were things that I fell into the deep end of when I started doing– training to be a clinician and a provider. It is something that has stuck with me. Also working with queer, poly, kinky, rainbow alphabet soup clients, these are experiences and identities that have a lot of varying degrees of trauma associated with them. It was a really important for me to really learn and know my stuff.

Dawn Serra: This episode is part of a multipart series that we’re doing, talking about alternative justice and emotional abuse and gaslighting, and then Eve Rickert’s experiences with Franklin Veaux. Eve had reached out to me because she was looking for a way that we could start having some bigger conversations about the ways that power and privilege impact so many of the communities that so many of us are in, the ways that abuse is really normalized in our culture. I’d love to start. We hear lots of people talking and writing about gaslighting these days. I think that some people kind of have an idea of what it is, but it’s a little bit elusive by nature. I love to hear how you define gaslighting. 

Samantha Manewitz: The way I define gaslighting is a pattern of repeated behavior and psychological techniques that are designed to undermine a target’s ability to gauge their own sense of self, trust their own brain, and feel safe in their ability to gauge reality. I think I had said this in a previous podcast, but have you ever been in a place where you lost your keys or your wallet and you had that moment of, “It’s right there, it was right there. I swear I left it right there and it’s gone. It’s not me.” I can’t be the only one who’s had this experience.

Gaslighting would be if somebody saw my wallet and took it from me and I’m like, “Where the heck was it?” And the person who took my wallet would be like, “Well, you do have some severe executive dysfunction. Are you sure you left it on the table?” It takes that space of fog and that unsure and wobbly feeling, and expands that space and keeps you in it. When someone is being gaslit, imagine having that, “Oh shit, I lost my keys. I swear they were right there,” feeling 24/7. That’s…

Dawn Serra: …hard because you can’t put your finger on it. 

Samantha Manewitz: Exactly. Because, again, one of the things that we’re taught to do when we’re gaslight is the message that we get and the message we receive is that it is something wrong with us and we need to fix this thing. Sadly, one of the rules of thumb about abuse, especially emotional abuse and gaslighting, is if you think it can’t happen here and you think it can’t happen to you, think again. No matter where here is or who you are. Right now, going to get political, we cannot talk about gaslighting right now without talking about politics because right now it is in the air we breathe. 

Dawn Serra: Yes it is. 

Samantha Manewitz: Basically every time– I’m going to name this because… A lot of people will say, “How do you know? How dare you say these bad things about this other party?”

That in and of itself is a gaslight that we then internalized and repeat. Kellyanne Conway, alternative facts, that is gaslighting. When Donald Trump says, “The things that you see in here aren’t happening, the distrusting of news sources, that’s what scientology does,” that’s also a form of gaslighting. Every time Sarah Huckabee Sanders opens her mouth, she gaslights. Right now, it’s so ubiquitous that we’re getting fed gaslights all the time, and some of them may not even go– They’re happening so quickly and so hard and fast that we may not even realize they’re happening to us when they’re happening. I don’t know about you, but right now, I can’t turn on the news because whenever I watch any type of opinion piece, even though I can see the mechanisms, and I can see what’s going on, I still leave those conversations feeling foggy. And that’s by design.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And I think what’s so important, too, in naming this is there are so many things baked into every level of our culture that help to create this doubting of self. Even as kids, there are so many of us who had parents that would say, “You don’t really have to pee…”

Samantha Manewitz: “It’s not so bad. You’ll be fine. Stop complaining.”

Dawn Serra: Right. And then the ways our education system, in colonized North America, our education system teaches us that people outside of ourselves have the truth and that we should turn to them for answers, which teaches us to deny and ignore our emotions and our sensations. We’re all in a place that makes it very easy to manipulate and be manipulated because it’s culture..

Samantha Manewitz: Absolutely. It is, right now, baked into our culture. There are a lot of cultural norms right now that tend to lean very authoritarian and promote these silencing tactics without us even realizing that’s what’s happening. One that I’m seeing right now, and again, I know we’re getting political, but those are – It’s a low hanging fruit of gaslighting, to be honest. But a trope that I am seeing left, right and sideways, especially talking with more vocal and progressive candidates from folks on our on quote unquote my team, in bunny rabbit ears. Saying things like, “This is how you’re going to get Trump re-elected. Don’t make waves.” People don’t realize just how harmful that is. And how that mindset is actively dangerous and it can prevent people who are in genuine distress to stay silent.

Dawn Serra: Yes. When we’re talking about gaslighting and emotional abuse, what we’re really talking about is the attempt to remove power from someone and also an attempt to silence someone. So, of course, we see lots and lots of things happening right now that are attempting to silence certain people by telling them they’re too much. They’re too loud. That’s not the right way.

Samantha Manewitz: Yes. The double edged sword of respectability politics kind of thing. Sometimes we can repeat gas lights without even realizing we’re doing it. I initially called it the jacked effect and then a friend of mine was like, “You should call it the Mockingjay effect” like from hunger games. Have you’ve ever seen The Hunger Games or you know what I’m talking about? That one mockingjay makes a call and then it reverberates throughout the forest. That can happen with gaslights too. We can sometimes be mockingjays for gaslighting tropes and not even realizing that what we’re perpetuating is gaslight. So that’s fun.

Dawn Serra: It is. And I think part of what feels so slippery about it is that often, it’s just so hard to see because of that fog you mentioned. It’s this sense of, “Well, I guess that makes sense.” Like we can rationalize things. I think another really common phrase is, “Well, it’s not that bad. They’re not X, Y, Zeing me. It could be worse.” That downplaying of our experience is a way of silencing ourselves because of what’s around us. 

Samantha Manewitz: Yes. Our ability to downplay and minimize as a survival tactic is incredibly strong. I once worked with a woman who escaped a severely abusive family and an abusive marriage, had an immunodeficiency thing and a botched gastric bypass surgery and a special needs child. When I suggested maybe possibly going to a support group for help, she was like, “Yeah, but I am afraid I’ll be taking up too much space because people have it so much worse than I do.” Very few of us actually want to be the victim, although there are ways that that identity can definitely be weaponized. But for most of us, it’s amazing the mental gymnastics that we will do to protect our own sense of self and reality. It’s called the backfire effect. The Oatmeal has a fantastic webcomic on it. It’s basically how if there is a core belief we have, that is directly tied to some aspect of our identity, the more facts we are given about that thing, the more strongly or devoutly we adhere to that core belief. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Samantha Manewitz: So an example of that. Are you familiar with the Theranos debacle and the documentary on HBO?

Dawn Serra: I’m not.

Samantha Manewitz: It’s based on a reporting by this guy, John Carreyrou, who is a Wall Street Journal reporter. Theranos was this biotech startup in Silicon Valley run by this woman, Elizabeth Holmes. There’s also a really great podcast called The Inventor – No, The Dropout. The documentary is called The Inventor. And the whole thing was a scam and the technology didn’t work, but she was selling it to Walgreens. She had Henry Kissinger on her board of directors and Charles Schultz, who is credited with ending the cold war in the United States. His grandson, Tyler Schultz was a major whistleblower for Theranos. When Tyler Schultz’s grandfather found out, Tyler was like, “Grandpa, this is a scam. It doesn’t work.” The more his grandson tried to protest, the more deeply he stuck to his resolve. That Theranos was changing the world.

Dawn Serra: Yes. Because we need to keep that identity.

Samantha Manewitz: Yeah. And it wasn’t until she was convicted by, I think, the centers for Medicaid and Medicare, that he realized just how brief his grandson was. It’s that strong where it can rip families apart. 

Dawn Serra: So inside of our intimate relationships, what are some of the things that maybe would be clues that we’re being gaslit or manipulated?

Samantha Manewitz: Well, it is very much a death by a thousand paper cuts. It tends to start very, very small. There are these little small negations that people will do where I’ll say… It’s like, “Are you really going to eat that? Do you really feel this?” There are these little micro testing of, “Well, are you sure?” And an inability to accept influence. There is a fantastic podcast called the IndoctriNation podcast by this woman, Rachel Bernstein. She’s an excellent resource on cults and systems of control. And at the end of each of her podcast, she’ll have a thing called “Before you go,” which is basically a pro-tip for her audience. One of the things that she’ll say is with people who are enthusiastic, who are narcissistic, who are cult leaders, who would engage in these behaviors their goal is to get control over you. They will be the most wonderful partners or mentors ever for as long as you’re on their team. But the second that you require time or effort, that adoration and that love bombing can get really quickly switched off. So one of her recommendations is to say no early and often, and see what happens. 

Dawn Serra: Oh, I like that. 

Samantha Manewitz: Yeah. I know she’s real smart. You all should listen to her podcast. Add it to your favorite. She’s great. So what happens when this person hears no, which also ties into a concept that I learned when I was getting trained in Gottman method couples work. I’m level two trained, it goes up to level four and certification, which I don’t have money to do at this point. But that’s another story. One of the skills that Gottman teaches and other couples modalities teach, as well, is that when it comes to negotiation with an intimate partner or a family member or anyone, one of the things we forget is you have to accept influence to have influence.

One of the things that I recommend someone do because it’s the most liberating thing ever, is to try to admit that you’re wrong on Facebook. No one ever does it. I went to Bryn Mawr as an undergrad– I’m kind of bopping all over the place, so hopefully you can turn this into a coherent narrative. And there was an issue over one of our libraries that was named after a big founder who, like sadly many women of her time, were big into eugenics. I made some sort of comment, there was a back and forth and a debate. One of the commenters said, “That sounds really condescending.” And I realized that I had screwed up. My response was, “It wasn’t my intention to come across as condescending. I can totally see how it came across that way. I’m going to stop now before my foot goes any further into my mouth.” And by admitting my mistake, it completely changed the tenor of that conversation. All of a sudden, it went from a really tense conversation to a conversation where we were actually hearing each other and we forget the importance of accepting influence. 

That said, the Gottman’s also talk about two different types of needs like inner circle needs, which are your core needs and then your outer needs. Your core needs are like the load bearing walls of your soul. If you compromise on these things, bad stuff happens. But there’s also an outer ring of needs that are important but there are areas of flexibility. In a non monogamous situation, let’s say I am having an issue with my partner where I don’t feel like we are spending enough time or I’m feeling taken for granted. If I communicate to this partner, my core need is, “I would like to spend more time with you and I would like to have that time prioritized.” What I can be flexible about is what that looks like or how it manifests, right? Do we schedule a date night? What are ways that we can help work out our schedules to make sure that this time happens? That kind of thing. According to the Gottman’s, you want to strike this balance between having your inner circle as small as possible without being artificially small, and the flexible needs as large as possible without being artificially big. Because if you’re like “Needs? What needs? I don’t have needs. Your face has needs.” Next thing you know, instead of your house of identity, you have a pile of rubble because things got knocked down you didn’t realize were core. When you are too rigid and unable to accept influence, every time your partner has a need, it comes across as an attack. And that’s just not sustainable. Does that answer that question? 

Dawn Serra: It does. I just really love the simplicity of say no early and often. I think that it’s so hard for so many of us, especially those of us who have been socialized as female to say no. But the things that no reveals about how much our needs are being considered and how much our autonomy is being respected is huge. 

Samantha Manewitz: One of the cultural things that I’ve seen both in my personal life and in my practice is I think the way that we socialize cis het men in our culture does not help.

Dawn Serra: Nope. 

Samantha Manewitz: I think that we prioritize individuality and the narrative of specialness and expertise while also de-valuing all of the steps you have to take to become an expert.

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Samantha Manewitz: People will assume that they are great at X, Y, and Z because they’re really talented at Y unrelated topic over here. When you’re like, “Well, actually friend, that’s not true. Here’s what you missed.” That goes back to that backfire effect where if your identity is centered on being a go-to expert about all things at all times, you’re going to take it more personally than it was probably intended. This is going back to gaslighting. One of the ways that it’s classified is as a form of narcissistic abuse. Even though that might be technically true, I find that very problematic because if you say, “This is narcissistic abuse,” and someone says, “I’m feeling gaslit or I’m feeling unheard,” it’s like, “Are you saying I’m a narcissist then?” No, not necessarily. It could be that there are gaslighting tropes that you are inadvertently replicating which often makes that very hard. Because sometimes it can be hard to tell what is legitimately patterned or what the Gottman’s would call “characterological abuse” versus what the Gottman’s would call “situational abuse.” But the way you treat those two things, in any community, are very different. 

Dawn Serra: I think it was important to name there that within pop culture, gaslighting has been romanticized. 

Samantha Manewitz: Yes. 

Dawn Serra: We see it as romantic when typically men or boys convince girls that they know better than themselves. And that there is something romantic in continuing to pursue and persuade, and to push and look how dedicated they are to you. They don’t give up. That sets us up for these patterns of abuse down the road because now we’ve seen this attention as something really romantic rather than something really potentially harmful and problematic. Then that just sets us up for all kinds of messy, foggy bullshit down the road. 

Samantha Manewitz: Exactly. Thinking about alternative justice, thinking about this process and the processes that have come before us, we are well aware that the things that we’re asking of ourselves and our communities is really fricking hard. Because we’re asking people to examine and unwire concepts that may be very, very core to people’s identity. That’s never easy and never comfortable, and I’m able to have empathy for it. But having empathy is not the same as a get out of jail free card. You still need to do the work. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something else that is very common specifically around gaslighting manipulation and emotional abuse. And that also makes it really, really confusing for people who aren’t experts and even confusing for experts, is that often abusers, not only positioned themselves as a victim, but truly believed themselves to be the victim.

Samantha Manewitz: Yes. Otherwise known as DARVO, which stands for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. Jennifer Freyd, FREYD, I believe is the person who coined the phrase. If you Google, “What is DARVO?” Her research comes up. Now, what’s interesting is– I’m not sure if this can be aired, so I will say it and then I will leave it to your discretion as to whether this is appropriate. 

My episode on the Unpopular Culture podcast garnered them their very first one star review because somebody was like, “How dare she say all of these bad things about Brett Cavanaugh? This is called slander.” And the host’s response was, “This is why we don’t talk about politics. We need to approach this in a way that doesn’t alienate or offend anybody.” And I was like, “Buddy, it just offended me.” 

We had also talked about Bessel Vanderkolk who wrote The Body Keeps Score, which relates to the issue with Franklin because Vanderkolk wrote one of the foundational texts of trauma and trauma recovery. His research is foundational and fundamental to this field. And he was fired from the center he founded in Brookline, not Watertown. I messed that up in that podcast, for promoting a toxic work environment. His co-author CEO was fired for being severely abusive to his female employees. The response that Bessel Vanderkolk released was full of gaslighting and DARVO. One of his comments was, “Why didn’t the subordinates come to me and ask me?” And I’m like, “Dude, you literally wrote the book on this and published a paper on all of the reasons why survivors can’t come forward. And that’s the line you’re taking? Really, dude?” When I posted, “Hey, for those of you who listened to the episode, here’s this Boston Globe article on Vanderkolk.” The podcast host went right to, “I need to see the investigation. Innocent until proven guilty. Due process.” I was like, “If any survivors are reading this, I don’t know what to do.” I had explained in that podcast all of the reasons why I did what I had done. I don’t know if that’s an appropriate tangent to put in this, but… 

Dawn Serra: I think it highlights some really important things. It highlights power and whether its real power or perceived power, the ways that survivors survive is often by playing along, being nice, appeasing. That’s a very wise survival response that then often gets weaponized and helps the DARVO effect, right? “They didn’t say anything so clearly I’m the one that’s actually the victim.” I think it also really points out the discomfort that comes up even for professionals when some of our core stories or the people we look up to, whether that’s Brett Kavanaugh or it’s a Bessel Vanderkolk or it’s a Bill Cosby or it’s a R.Kelly. It brings up those feelings of, “This can’t be true so now I’m going to deflect and minimize.” 

Samantha Manewitz: Yeah. And I don’t want to cast aspersions on this podcast. It is a great podcast and he knows his shit on other things. But this is just very disappointing. Another thing that I realized because I think that that conversation was a situational example. One of the things that I was realizing as I was having that interaction is one of the reasons why transformative justice to me is so important is that a lot of us, the only frame of reference we have for justice is our legal system. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but our legal system is not really well equipped to serve justice for large swathes of the population. The bar of due process gets misapplied all the time, especially when we are in heavy backfire effect mode. Especially when our ontological security is being challenged because here is somebody who identifies as intelligent, as open minded, as an ally and as impartial, and here I am being like nobody. There is no impartiality. There is no neutrality. Of course, he’s going to disagree. 

Part of what I feel like transformative justice does and alternative justice does is it expands our vocabulary and it gives a far more nuanced way of approaching harm. Because one of the fears that came across very much is the, “This is going to turn into a witch hunt. This is a McCarthy era type thing,” “I hear this from my mom. I hear this all of the time.” But the thing that I don’t see happening is a commitment to change by the people who commit these transgressions. Because if all you know is a punitive model and the only justice we talk about is cancel culture, of course, you’re going to get defensive. Of course, you’re not going to want to speak out. Why the hell would you put yourself in that position? It’s incredibly counterintuitive because the thing that is most effective is the thing that is the least viscerally gratifying in the moment. 

When we talk about finding place for empathy for people who have caused harm, that doesn’t mean we let them off the hook. It also does not mean that the people that they have harmed have to have empathy for them. If you want a person who severely abused you to die in a fire, that’s valid. That anger, those feelings, it might not be anger. That’s an assumption. You are allowed to feel however you want about your experience and the people who have harmed you 

Samantha Manewitz: However, if we are going to invest in the overall safety and security of ourselves and our communities, we cannot have cancel culture as as our only recourse. We can’t. Because again, this is super counterintuitive. The more firm we are in cancel culture, the more abuses are going to get stuffed under the rug. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. Which we had been seeing for so long already in so many kink communities and polyamory communities and queer communities because we’re terrified of saying something bad happened, because we’re already marginalized. And then the silence just gets perpetuated. 

Samantha Manewitz: Also, we tend to have very complicated relationships with the people who have caused us harm. It is very, very rare actually to see somebody who has unambiguously bad feelings about someone who’s caused them harm. When we say, “Why were you still so nice to this person after they did all of these horrible things as X,Y, and Z?” We are effectively re-invalidating and re-victimizing. If our only recourse is that punitive justice and somebody I deeply respect or love or care about did something terrible to me and I don’t want them to go to jail. What recourse do I have? 

It’s that space that we’re trying to cultivate so that if somebody was harmed but you don’t necessarily want revenge on your assailant or you want to be able to heal and have your story told, there are other options. If you have caused harm, you can come forward and work on it and get better and change your behavior without it being this mark of Cain that follows you for the rest of your life. Again, this is only when we’re talking about situational violence. But transformative justice is also designed to help us differentiate between, what is situational? What is this person is effectively like a great dane and that thinks it’s a puppy? What is more calculated and methodical? By giving somebody an opportunity to work on their stuff, if they don’t or lash out, this gives us data. It becomes about if we can’t necessarily change this person’s behavior, what do we do to make sure that they don’t have access to platforms where they have an opportunity to cause harm? 

Dawn Serra: Yes. I’d love to talk about that just a little bit. The reason we’re having this conversation, beyond your work is super important, is also because of my conversation with Eve and the survivor pod that’s been formed, the alternative justice conversation I’ll be having with Aida Manduley.

One of the things that I’ll be sharing with listeners is access to a lot of the posts that have been coming out that are going to help us to see some things that might be hard to see. Some of the things that have been gathered and that are starting to come to light are some patterns of behavior that are chronic and abusive. Can you talk a little bit about some of the patterns you’ve noticed? Because it’s not just this one particular relationship. We know that this is rather common. I’d love to just highlight it a little bit.

Samantha Manewitz: There are a couple of things– A couple little “blink and you miss it” things that if you don’t know what to look for, seems super inconsequential. Some of the things that raised my red flags and that cemented my decision to do this work were some of the ways that Franklin was publicly responding to accusations that, “I have been abused,” became an identity shield. For me, that’s a red flag. I don’t know if you ever watched– I think I talked about this in the Unpopular Culture podcast. Again, please do listen to it. It really is a good podcast and he really is a good person. It is a blind spot. I do not mean to disparage anyone. Cannot stress that enough. Really. 

One of the things I talked about in the podcast is I’m a huge, old school Buffy and Angel fan. There was an early Angel episode where one of the partners at this demonic law firm had his hand cut off and he got a hand of a serial killer, and then the hand went around and forced him to do things he didn’t want to do. At the very end of the episode, the hand is neutralized but his firm doesn’t know that. The way that he quits, he’s like, “You see, I have these evil hand issues. I don’t know when it’s going to act up. I’m super…” Whenever anyone raised an objection, he’s like, “Nope. Evil hand. Hand, evil, evil hand.” Whenever I see people using their stories of trauma and an evil hand capacity of, “I am above reproach because victim evil hand,” that is a red flag. 

Samantha Manewitz: Also, the way that he responded to our initial message to him, that call-in letter we sent. He posted on Quora like, “What made you angry today?” The way that Franklin in that post categorized us was very interesting to me. One person was, “Oh, former hairdresser.” Not mentioning that this is a person with a social work degree and activism and transformative justice. I was characterized as somebody, he and Eve had met at a convention one time and I was like, “Okay, yes. that’s like talking about the fan of the opera and saying that this is like a guy who wears a black cape.” Technically true, but not the relevant piece of data there. Also in a post on Facebook that I think that has since then deleted when he put the pod together, somebody else had pointed this out to me and I was like, “Oh crap, you’re right.” He said, “I agreed to be held accountable to my standards.” I’m like, “That’s an interesting little turn of phrase.”

So to us, those felt like really blatant mischaracterizations of us and the work. In terms of what that indicates with his ability or desire to actually be held accountable for these behaviors, doesn’t bode well. I don’t want to make any guaranteed or any firms suggestions. But those are the types of things that we need his people and the people who care about him to name and hold his feet to the fire on. But again, this isn’t about Franklin. This isn’t about just this one thing. Our goal for that part of the work is to prevent future harm and to give templates for other people to work from if they feel like they have harmed or they have experienced harm. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And I think that’s something that’s so important about not only this particular instance of alternative justice, but several others that I’m seeing unfold is we’re trying to remember that this isn’t about vilifying a victim. We’re trying to help mitigate harm, help create space for healing and also help to give people language, tools, experiences for things that can be really difficult to name, to put our finger on. And then to know how to move forward in a way that doesn’t cause further harm. 

Samantha Manewitz: Exactly. Because none of the survivors, at least not to my knowledge, I think we had started with six women. The last I heard, we’re up to 12. Louisa Leontiades is the one who’s responsible for collecting and collating the stories that we have received. There’s some of that information that not even the other pod members have access to because we’re a survivor centered process and she only releases that information with the survivors consent on a need to know basis, which of course, people who are looking at this process from afar because of internet culture and how that works; everyone wants receipts. We want documented proof up the wazoo even though, again, if you’re deep in backfire effect, all of the data in the world will not convince you if part of your identity is based around Franklin being a good person or a kind person or a guru, right? That’s a hard thing to wrap your head around. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something that you mentioned in your other podcast interview that I do hope people will hear is, and I think that this is super important for us to all hold really tenderly, is you said, bones heal faster than psyches. I think it’s so important for us to just really hold how while all abuse is unacceptable and terrible and causes harm, as someone who is a survivor, I can say for myself that there is something really important about having physical evidence that can be seen and…

Samantha Manewitz: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: When we’re talking about gaslighting and manipulation, coercion, emotional abuse, part of the reason why it feels so slippery is because we don’t have something to see and to hold. So it feels like it’s not quite real.

Samantha Manewitz: Yeah. Which is also why, quite frankly, our criminal justice system is not equipped to handle allegations of an emotional abuse. Because how do you prove something like that? Especially when the perpetrators of it or many of the perpetrators deliberately violate in such a way that they know there will be no evidence and it will be a “My word against theirs.” It is also why in cases like this, when you do say things like, “I need to see the investigation. Innocent until proven guilty.” In cases like that, the benefit of the doubt always leans towards power. So the way that I look at it, and this is something that is only recently coalescing into a full form thought for me, is that when people say, “How can you tell the difference? How do you know for sure?” People think about this as a litigator or an investigator, collecting information and evidence, whereas it’s a closer analog as a doctor identifying and diagnosing symptoms. Does that make sense? 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Samantha Manewitz: For example, if somebody comes into my office and lays out certain symptoms like, “I’m having trouble getting out of bed in the morning and I have been feeling really depressed and the things that I used to do aren’t as enjoyable anymore.” These are symptoms that can correspond with some form of depression, right? I don’t necessarily have to go and do a brain scan and get absolutely everything related to this person’s history of all things ever to make a diagnostic impression. When it comes to identifying abuse and gaslighting, that’s the way that we need to take the tack of know what to look for, what tropes to look for. Understand that it’s never bulletproof just as sometimes doctors can misdiagnose. But that’s a closer analog of how to look at it because usually we have to look for smoke well after the fire has been extinguished. Does that make sense? 

Dawn Serra: Yes, totally. Yeah. I have two closing questions for you before we wrap up and that is, one, what can we do if we suspect we’re being gaslit and, two, what do we do if we see someone in our life is being gaslit in their relationship? 

Samantha Manewitz: One of the things that I can say about most people I’ve met in the non monogamy community and kink communities is we tend to be fairly – this is a broad generalization – we tend to be fairly intellectual and analytical and cognitive types. We like to think about stuff. We like to pontificate and intellectualize stuff. I definitely know that for me, my intellect can be something of a safe space. The problem is in cases of gaslighting, our intellect can actively work against us because we can talk ourselves in and out of just about anything. Our bodies, however, are a little bit less easy to fool and emotions are stored in our body. Sorry, this is a much longer answer to a much shorter question. 

Learning how to calibrate your embodied experience can help you get an idea. Think about a time where there’s something that you felt really confident in, that you know about. And somebody on the Internet was getting it wrong and you’re like, “No, just stop. Stop talking.” We’ve all had that. Whatever your expertise is, you’re just like, “You’re doing it wrong.” Conjure that moment and remember what that felt like. Because when we have an area of expertise and somebody is getting it wrong, there’s a certain feeling when we say, “No. Just no.” Versus have you ever had a friend or someone you care about tell you a hard truth that you didn’t want to admit was true to yourself, but you knew it was true? For me, it’s kind of a sinking pit feeling. Think about what that feels like instead, where does that live in your body? And then think about going back to the, “Oh shit, where are my keys? I knew I left them somewhere.” How does that feel? When somebody is saying something with you, check in with your body. What are the sensations and the emotions that your body is trying to communicate to you? Because they tend to know better than you do. 

As an example of that, I was recently working with a client who was stuck in an unhealthy dynamic that on some level he knew was unhealthy but was terrified to leave. And he was like, “Yeah, but what if things change and get better? What if I am giving up this amazing opportunity?” And I was like, “What is your gut telling you?” He’s like, “My gut is telling me to run screaming.” I was like, “You know what to do. You just really don’t want to do it.” Which is valid because that’s hard. But when we ignore that embodied knowledge, we do ourselves a disservice. So that’s question number one. 

Samantha Manewitz: Question number two, when somebody you feel is being gaslit, the best thing you can do as reality test. Both siderism or, “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” Do not do because you’re feeding into the gaslight. If somebody said, “And then he said this, this and the other thing to me,” or “Then she said this, this and the other thing to me.” I’ll be like, “That sounds like a whole bunch of nonsense. That’s ridiculous. No.” By validating their internal experience, you’re keeping their ability to gauge how things work. 

Non-monogamy, in my experience, depending on the dynamic can be a protective factor or it can be an exacerbating factor depending on if you’re in an echo chamber polycule or if you have partners or satellites who aren’t necessarily in there who can give fresh eyes on the experience. There was somebody who I met who didn’t realize the severity of the gaslighting and the abuse she was experiencing until she met a partner who, when she was talking about the rules and expectations and fights that she had had. The partner was like, “That’s messed up. You deserve better than that.” And that helps her heal. 

In my own experience with gaslighting, there is a relationship I was in. It was my first poly relationship. Something happened where basically this guy had convinced me that I was being such a drain on him and his polycule. When I apologized, his response was, “If a dog has rabies, Samantha, is it the dog’s fault?”

Dawn Serra: Oh…

Samantha Manewitz: Oh, no. It gets better. Just wait. I said, “No.” He said, “Yeah. But you still have to shoot the dog, right?” 

Dawn Serra: Oh Shit. 

Samantha Manewitz: This is over a decade ago. I was not nearly as resourced or educated or anything. 15 years ago? Holy crap. How long ago was 2005? This is wild. Right after that, I was a mess. I had some friends who came and consoled me and I was like, “This is what he did. I screwed up everything and I was such a burden on him and his partner.” And my friends were like, “Sam, no. He was an asshole to you.” That was the only reason why I was able to get out of that relationship earlier than I may otherwise have done. There’s a personal example.

Dawn Serra: I know we could go much deeper into all of this, but I want to respect your time and everyone else’s. So for people who want to stay in touch and see what kind of cool work you’re doing in the world, where can they find you online?

Samantha Manewitz: I have a Facebook page. It is Beyond Safe Words Not to be confused with Beyonce words, which everyone hears. It’s Beyond, with the D, Safe Words. I have a blog that I do sometimes remember exists called beyondsafewords.com I also want to plug a Paypal pool (.paypal.com/pools/c/8cEq8gX1q1)that we have set up for our pod. What people do not realize about the work we’re doing is it takes a lot of time and a lot of money. In our most recent update, we put a crowdfunding Paypal pool together to help some of us get paid for the work that we’re doing, to pay for things like Aida’s consulting because they are not part of the pod. They are consultants. There’s a certain pieces of work that I need to do that I can’t do unpaid. 

Please help us and support us financially. If there’s something simple that you want to know what you can do to help invest in our future. We would hope you consider investing in us. I can send you a link to the pool that if you want to post it with this. If you can post it with all of our podcasts, including Aida.

Dawn Serra: Yes, 100% I will list it on every single episode in the show notes for everyone listening.

Samantha Manewitz: Cool.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Great. I will have links to your Facebook and your blog and then, of course, to the Paypal. Because for everyone listening, I know everyone who listens to the show, or I’ll say 99% of the people who listened to the show are really interested in alternative justice practices and finding new ways forward. So let’s all throw a couple bucks into the pot because a couple of bucks from lots of us adds up to lots of bucks that help people. 

Samantha Manewitz: Please do. There is a slew of people, not just me. I’m working with such amazing folks and they’re all busting their keisters in ways. The amount of work that we’re doing is primarily invisible to the public by design. But there are a whole lot of people who are working their asses off right now who should be paid for their labor. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. For everyone listening, I will be doing an embodiment exercise that helps us to learn how to tune into our bodies with the Patreon bonus to company this week. 

Samantha Manewitz: That’s awesome. That’s so cool.

Dawn Serra: I know. I’m excited. I love doing stuff like that. 

Samantha Manewitz: That’s great. I love it I’m here for it.

Dawn Serra: Good. Me too. I just want to thank you for giving so much of your time to us and sharing your knowledge. This has been a wonder.

Samantha Manewitz: Likewise. I hope you all find my insight, if not helpful, at least interesting. 

Dawn Serra: Yes, for sure. To everybody who listened, thank you so much for being here with us. Don’t forget to head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast for the bonus and to click through to the Paypal and to check out Samantha’s links. Thank you so much to you, Samantha and I will be back next week. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured and this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?