#stopthegaslighting

Seen on Facebook: "Can we just take "not all....." out of our vocabulary for the time being?" There are two types of people in the world: The type who want to remove "not all..." from our vocabulary, and the type who want to remove the generalizations in our daily conversations that cause a person to use the phrase "not all...." If people as a group are being blamed for things shitty people in said group do, or even if it just comes off that way because of the generalizing language being used, those being blamed will have the very reasonable reaction of thinking they're being included and will get defensive. This is a normal, natural response, and fighting back against it like there's something wrong with the person for getting defensive will only prove they had reason to be defensive in the first place. It's gaslighting, plain and simple, and if you're talking about a subset of the group instead of the whole group, make that clear with what you say.