ARE WE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR GOVERNMENT

In recent years, a growing unease has been rising to the surface; an unease once spoken only in private, behind closed doors, at kitchen tables or in encrypted messages between friends. In the aftermath of the pandemic, the climate of public discourse has shifted radically. People have begun to ask the unthinkable: are #wethepeople of supposedly free societies, trapped in a domestic violence relationship with our own governments?

At first, the very comparison seems hyperbolic, insulting even, to those who have endured the private hell of intimate partner violence. Yet upon deeper reflection, the disturbing parallels emerge with chilling clarity. Coercion, gaslighting, manipulation, threats, surveillance, isolation, punishment for dissent, the slow erosion of bodily autonomy and individual sovereignty are not merely abstract concepts or accidental policy blunders. They are the telltale marks of an abusive dynamic.

To understand how this comparison might hold true, one must first understand the anatomy of domestic abuse. It is not merely about physical violence; at its core, domestic abuse is about power and control. The abuser seeks to dominate the victim’s body, mind, and spirit to instill dependency and fear, to break down their sense of self and replace it with loyalty to the abuser’s reality.

Gaslighting: The Manipulation of Truth

One of the primary tools of an abuser is gaslighting, a term derived from the 1944 film Gaslight, in which a husband manipulates his wife into doubting her own sanity. Gaslighting is the systematic distortion of reality. It erodes a victim’s trust in their own perceptions, memories and instincts.

During the pandemic, many people experienced a collective form of gaslighting. We were told that draconian lockdowns, intrusive surveillance and forced medical interventions were for our own good. We were told to “trust the science,” even when the science was filtered through political agendas, big pharmaceutical interests and opaque bureaucratic decision-making.

When inconsistencies emerged, changing definitions of immunity, shifting mask mandates, contradictory statements by officials, those who noticed were derided, silenced, or branded conspiracy theorists. Questions about the origin of the virus, the effectiveness of the vaccines or the hidden costs of lockdowns were often met with censorship and ridicule. In a healthy relationship, transparency and accountability thrive. In an abusive one, the truth is whatever the abuser says it is.

Coercion and Bodily Autonomy

Another hallmark of abuse is the violation of bodily autonomy. In intimate partner violence, this might be forced sex, pregnancy coercion, or control over contraception and reproductive decisions. On a societal scale, we witnessed governments, corporations, and institutions coercing citizens into medical interventions under threat of losing employment, education, freedom of movement or social participation.

It did not matter that the interventions were new, rapidly developed, and deployed under emergency use authorisations. It did not matter that long-term data was incomplete. Consent became conditional, not free, not informed but extracted under duress.

This is not to diminish the reality of COVID-19 as a serious public health challenge, but to highlight that in many places, coercion replaced trust and paternalism replaced individual sovereignty. We were not treated as equals in a dialogue of shared risk and responsibility but as subjects to be disciplined and controlled.

Isolation and Dependency

Abusers isolate their victims from friends, family and any source of independent perspective that might break the spell of control. During the pandemic, lockdowns and social distancing severed countless people from their support networks. Many died alone. Many more suffered in silence, their mental health deteriorating behind closed doors.

Dependency deepened. Small businesses closed, local economies withered and large corporations and tech giants consolidated power and profit. Social media companies became both town square and censor, deciding which narratives were acceptable and which must be buried.

Australia’s Coercive Control Laws: A Stark Irony

This brings us to a striking irony that many Australians feel in their bones. In the years leading up to the pandemic, Australia emerged as a leader in recognising and criminalising coercive control within domestic relationships. Long understood by survivors and feminists but only recently named in law, coercive control refers to the non-physical patterns of domination; surveillance, isolation, micromanagement, financial control, and psychological abuse that trap victims in invisible chains.

In 2022, New South Wales passed landmark legislation to criminalise coercive control, while other states like Queensland and Tasmania began developing their own frameworks. These reforms were hailed as a watershed moment for protecting mostly women and children from the hidden cruelties of intimate partner abuse.

These laws recognised that freedom is not simply the absence of bruises but the presence of true agency: the power to think, choose and live free from manipulation and threats. They declared in principle, no one owns the mind, body or life of another human being.

Yet, just as these measures were taking shape, millions of Australians were subjected to the very dynamics these laws condemn when they happen behind closed doors. Contact tracing, digital surveillance, mandatory check-ins and vaccine passports created a culture of constant monitoring. Harsh lockdowns cut people off from family, friends, and community support. Financial coercion stripped the livelihoods of thousands who refused medical interventions that conflicted with their convictions. Constant fear messaging and contradictory rules kept the population in a permanent state of anxiety, the very “walking on eggshells” that defines coercive control in the home.

In homes, we criminalised coercive control. In public life, we normalised it.

This bitter irony should trouble us all. If coercive control is so destructive that it deserves its own criminal category, how can we justify it when enacted at scale by the state? How can we celebrate protections for women and children while tolerating the same patterns of manipulation and punishment for the general population?

The Australian Women’s Forum and the New Gaslighting

This tension also cuts to the heart of a question posed recently by Rachael Wong of the Australian Women’s Forum: are women now being gaslit by parts of the trans rights movement? Many women, and men, have felt silenced in raising questions about the erosion of sex-based language, protections and spaces hard-won over decades of feminist struggle.

This is not a denial of transgender people’s dignity or human rights. It is an insistence that gaslighting must not be used as a tool to erase biological realities that directly shape women’s safety, privacy, sports and health. When women are told they are hateful for asking whether biological males should share rape crisis centres, domestic violence shelters, or sports categories, the dynamic again echoes the tactics of coercive control: denying the victim’s reality, turning their legitimate concerns into moral failings and threatening social punishment for non-compliance.

Gaslighting is gaslighting whether in a relationship, in a pandemic or in a movement that refuses respectful dialogue.

Radical Violations of Human Rights

The parallels extend further. In abusive relationships, the abuser justifies their violence and control as being for the victim’s own good. Governments worldwide justified extreme measures as necessary to “keep us safe.” Dissent was framed as selfishness even when it raised valid questions about bodily autonomy, human rights and long-term social harm.

Emergency powers suspended freedoms that took generations to secure. Mass surveillance and censorship crept in under the radar of crisis. Society split into the “clean” and “unclean,” the compliant and the rebellious scapegoating dissenters to strengthen loyalty among the obedient.

How easily freedom became conditional; an abusive pattern disguised as protection.

The Deep Cost of Silence

What makes abusive relationships so insidious is not just the abuser’s behaviour but the victim’s learned helplessness. Over time, victims may come to believe they deserve the mistreatment, that escape is impossible, that it is safer to stay silent than to speak.

When I spoke up to share my story to open the #metoo movement (I was the only person to take action at the time of the event), my abuser took aim at me dismissing me as “mad” on another television network, despite the overwhelming evidence against him. Nobody was there for me. No woman or man stood up for me including the women who were charged with the telling of the women’s sensitive stories of that movement. When I went to speak up 20 years earlier I was labelled a ‘thief’ and I was shocked and frightened. When the paedophile warned me to keep quiet with threats to my family I stayed quiet. When the ‘charming’ partner ripped my world apart friends sided with him and I have remained in abject poverty and homelessness in the subsequent years.

This is the danger we face now. We have been conditioned to fear questioning, to shrink from honest debate, to accept the gaslight as reality. Many know, deep in their bones, that something is wrong but look around and see few willing to say so aloud. Fear of social reprisal, job loss, or ostracism keeps the hush intact.

Like an abuser, the system, enabled by the men and women who operate within it, punishes dissent to maintain control.

Breaking the Cycle

Yet, just as in personal abuse, awareness is the first step to freedom. To name the dynamic is to disrupt it. It is to turn on the light and see the gaslamp for what it is. It is to remember that the power we grant to those who govern us is not absolute. It is conditional on their service to our wellbeing and our rights.

It is not treason to question authority; it is the very essence of democracy. It is not hateful to insist on clear, respectful language about sex and gender; it is the foundation of human rights. It is not selfish to say no to coercion; it is the bedrock of bodily sovereignty and human dignity.

What Comes Next?

If we accept this dynamic resembles domestic abuse, we must ask: how does a victim leave? How does a people reclaim their power?

In abusive relationships, leaving is dangerous. The abuser escalates. The threats grow more severe. Survivors know the risk is worth the chance at freedom. They gather allies, build support networks, find safe places to speak and rebuild their sense of self. They remember who they were before the manipulation and who they can become again.

As everyday people, our tools are different but rooted in the same principles. We must talk openly, bravely and refusing to be silenced by shame or fear. We must build communities of trust outside the surveillance state and the corporate platforms that profit from our compliance. We must insist on bodily autonomy, medical freedom, freedom of speech and the right to protect sex-based rights and language without being demonised.

We must also look deeper at the structures that have enabled this dynamic; the corporate capture of media, the revolving door between government and industry, the erosion of local community and self-reliance. We must become harder to manipulate by becoming more self-sufficient, more connected to one another, more anchored in truth than in curated illusions.

Toward True Liberation

It is not too late to remember that governments are not our masters. They are our servants. They do not grant us our rights. They are meant to protect rights that are inherent and inalienable. If they do not, they lose their legitimacy.

This is not the fever dream of conspiracy theorists but the living heart of any free society: a government by the people, for the people and accountable to the people.

In the final analysis, the question is not whether we are in a domestic violence relationship with our governments. The evidence suggests overwhelmingly many of us are. The question is whether we will remain in it. Whether we will accept the gaslight or relight the torch of sovereignty and truth.

The choice, as always, is ours. And the first step is to speak, to refuse the hush, to break the spell, to remember who we are when we stand in the light.

In light of the recent Substack articles of Professor Ian Brighthope, Phillip Altman and the work of Josephine Cashman the time for us to make our decision is now.

In Christ

Lady Saffire BoVardia