As mentioned in my previous post, the term coercive control was coined in 1982 by Susan Schecter, and popularized by Evan Stark in his ground-breaking book Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, where he recommended it as a new framework, or lens, through which to view domestic abuse. However, research on coercive control began long before Schecter coined the term or Stark developed it into a framework.
In the 1950s, thirty years before Schecter about fifty years before Stark, researchers were already studying coercive control, they just weren't calling it coercive control at the time. Terms like brainwashing, thought reform, thought control, undue influence, and coercion have led to our current understanding of how coercive control functions as a pattern of behavior used by one person to dominate another.
Brainwashing isn't used much anymore, because it implies that a person's mind can be completely taken over by another. Ethical research standards today would make it difficult, if not impossible, to study this possibility, so more nuanced terms like undue influence and coercive control have replaced it. The truth is, a complete takeover of another's mind is not necessary to cause extreme harm to an individual, their well-being and their relationships. Exploitation and trauma can occur using very subtle means of coercion and control and the erosion of a person's autonomy and identity can occur very slowly over time using barely perceptible, even imperceptible, means.
The PsychoSocial Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control is a synthesis of research and theory on the above terms, as well as influence, neuro-magic, mind control, and presuasion into an easy to understand visual, metaphorical model, using alliteration (The 5 Doubles & DARVO) to train professionals on how coercive control works, and how to detect it. The metaphor of quicksand provides the learner with a visceral and visual reference for how coercive control feels to a person when a strategic campaign of psychological and social tactics are used by a coercive controller to entrap them.
The PsychoSocial Quicksand Model™ of Coercive Control is made up of The 5 Doubles & DARVO: #DoubleStandards, #DoubleBinds, #DoubleSpeak, #DoubleThink, #DoubleVision and #DARVO. The alliteration of the 5 Doubles and #DARVO encompass the tactics and strategies of undue influence, persuasion, coercion, pre-suasion etc, making them easy to remember, and illuminating previously invisible coercive control so that it becomes visible.
Beginning with #DoubleStandards, let's look at the definition and purpose of this type of tactic, and then explore some examples.
What is a #DoubleStandard? #DoubleStandards are rules, rights or privileges that are unfairly applied to different people in different ways. For example, men in a patriarchal society, tend to be provided more privileges than women. Therefore, a male coercive controller can avail himself of these advantages when dominating a female with his coercive and controlling behavior much more easily than a woman could dominate a man (this does not mean that women cannot be coercive controllers, it is just much more difficult for them to do so, because they don't have direct access to male privilege).
#DoubleStandards can be overt, or they can be much more subtle and covert. Overt #DoubleStandards are often obvious in domestic abuse within a heterosexual "relationship" (I put relationship in quotes when discussing coercive control, because if coercive control is present as a pattern, then it's not a relationship built on love and trust it's a fraud built on exploitation and control).
Evan Stark, for instance, views inequality between the sexes as the primary way coercive control functions within domestic abuse by an intimate partner. In his coercive control framework, the most well-known worldwide, coercive control is defined as "an ongoing and gender-specific pattern of coercive and controlling behaviors that cause a range of harms."
Gender norms within society make it easier for a coercive controller to hide his #DoubleStandards in plain sight, while escaping accountability and exploiting his female partner. I consider this use of #DoubleStandards to be overt. By overt I mean that if you examine gendered #DoubleStandards directly the inequality becomes obvious. However, if you have beliefs and biases that prevent unbaised observation, they may still be invisible. If you subscribe to gender norms, these #DoubleStandards will seem "normal" or "just the way men and women are". If you look at them objectively, however, these overt #DoubleStandards can be revealed.
Examples of gendered overt #DoubleStandards that exploit females can include: housework, cooking, cleaning, childcare, emotional labor etc. On the flip side, the privileges of #DoubleStandards for men can look like: making the important decisions, more leisure activities, final authority, not being accountable to anyone for bad behavior, dominating disagreements, never being required to apologize etc. These #DoubleStandards can be perpetuated within religions that proclaim that women must "submit" to their husbands and anywhere else that male power dominates (although this is changing, males still dominate pretty much everywhere).
If your husband insists that you do all (or most) the cooking, cleaning and childcare, because you are "the woman", while he gets to sit on his butt watching football all weekend because he is "the man"... that is an overt #DoubleStandard. His buddies may think it's perfectly normal for you to wait on your husband and his friends hand and foot, but that's not because it's fair, it's because society has subtle patriarchal messages than make (some) males feel justified and entitled to women's unpaid labor for their benefit.
The person being exploited by these #DoubleStandards will often start to see how unfair this arrangement is, and they may begin to call out the coercive controller and demand more equal treatment. As women have gained more equality, it has become more difficult for male coercive controllers to use overt #DoubleStandards to exploit women and girls. And eventually, most women being exploited in these ways refuse to tolerate the unfair treatment any longer.
At this point, if you are with a non-abusive man, he might be willing to work out a more equitable arrangement. However, if you are with a coercive controller, he may escalate to more aggressive forms of coercive control, like physical violence, or he may choose instead to adjust to covert #DoubleStandards, which can be much more insidious and difficult to detect. (It's also possible that the coercive controller will do both, for example, by violently attacking the target, and then claiming it was she that was somehow at fault for his attack).
Covert #DoubleStandards often include something called a false equivalency.
"A false equivalency is an informal fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning".... AKA... comparing "apples and oranges". The more covert a coercive controller (or the more aware the target is of abusive tactics) the more likely it is that they will use a false equivalence to enforce their #DoubleStandards, rather than being directly unfair. False equivalencies are just as unfair as overt #DoubleStandards, they are just harder to detect, because they involve manipulation and/or deception, so they can often do more damage.
For instance, a male coercive controller may try to convince his female target that his use of the family car to drive to golf games, bowling league and guy's nights out is fair, because she "uses the car all the time". But if we examine the full context, what the coercive controller is obscuring is the fact that the woman's use of the car is exclusively driving children to and from school, getting groceries, and running errands for the entire household. She DOES drive more than he does, but her driving is focused on everyone else and his is focused only on himself, and therefore, this comparison is a false equivalency.
If a conflict arises when she wants the car to go to the salon to have her hair and nails done, when he wants to go play golf, the coercive controller will claim it's "unfair", because she has had the car all week long, and he had to miss his bowling game this week (when she drove the kids to attend an event they were participating in at school). A really savvy coercive controller can use false equivalencies like this one to manipulate their target into giving up their rights and autonomy over time, by causing them to feel guilty for having "unfair" expectations for exercising perfectly reasonable human rights to make decisions in their lives.
The #DoubleStandards that include false equivalencies can also go hand-in-hand with a covert coercive controller's favorite tactic to escape accountability, plausible deniability. Simply put, Plausible Deniability is the ability for a manipulative person to excuse everything they do by questioning the validity of the evidence presented.
"Plausible deniability is what makes us look the other way, give this person another chance, give the benefit of the doubt. With just enough plausible deniability in a story, a narcissist (coercive controller) can get away with murder while holding the bloody knife!"
Let's take a look at how a coercive controller can use false equivalency and plausible deniability together to gaslight the target into a state of disoriented confusion or cognitive dissonance where the target may even take responsibility for the coercive controller's harmful behaviors, without understanding that their autonomy and identity are being eroded.
Back to our previous example of the family vehicle. Let's add another element. So, the coercive controller tells the target that she cannot use the car to go to the salon, because it isn't "fair" that she always uses the car. He guilts the target into giving up her infrequent trip to the salon, and the coercive controller is free to attend his "golf game".
However, he has no intention of going to the golf course. He is having an affair. After guilting his partner into letting him have the car, he proceeds to meet, and have sex with, another woman. His partner knows something is wrong when he returns, because he smells of perfume. She confronts him. He feigns shock at her accusation. He begins to cry and says he can't believe she doesn't "trust" him. Then he offers up the name and phone number of his golf partner for her to call and check, and when she calls, the man confirms her husband was with him the whole time.
What remains invisible, and provides plausible deniability is that the coercive controller carefully arranged the entire previous scenario for the purpose of entrapping his wife in #PsychoSocialQuicksand. He's been telling his friend for months now how controlling his "nagging" and "paranoid" wife is. He has fabricated stories to paint her as abusive and uncaring (by leaving out critical details to the context of the situations), and he has asked him to cover for him if she ever called looking for him. This divisive strategic pattern of coercive control tactics, designed to isolate the target and exacerbate the gaslighting, forges a closer bond with his friend, who now believes his friend is the victim and his friend's wife, the perpetrator.
In the meantime, the wife starts to become the very things he is accusing her of, "nagging" and "paranoid". "Nagging", because her husband is failing to fulfill his responsibilities, and "paranoid" because he is lying to her. Her intuition is telling her something is very wrong, but she can't put her finger on it. The plausible deniability the coercive controller established in advance, makes her gut feelings that he is being unfaithful appear unreasonable and lacking proof, further entrapping her in #PsychoSocial Quicksand.
As the coercive controller uses this and other coercive control tactics over time, his partner's cognitive dissonance will inevitably worsen, and she will likely begin to show signs of mental and emotional distress, making it easier and easier for her coercive controller to exploit her in the future. The more paranoid and controlling she appears, the easier it is for him to recruit supporters to abuse her by proxy. Many of these people won't even know they are enabling the coercive controller's abuse, because, just like his friend, they have been convinced (presuaded) in advance that SHE is the problem, and they will voraciously defend him and attack her (ex. the way Depp fans attacked Heard during the "defamation" case).
Have you experienced #DoubleStandards yourself? Please feel free to leave an anonymous comment.
In my next post I will discuss the next double of the #PsychoSocialQuicksand Model™, #DoubleBinds.
Stay tuned...
