What's wrong with sowing seeds of doubt? Was it "gaslighting" to challenge the accepted view that the Earth is flat? Is it "gaslighting" to challenge the current belief that "voter fraud" threw the 2020 Election? I say that some beliefs should indeed be "delegitimized."
You may say that you are only talking about the "bad" gaslighting, for a manipulative or nefarious purpose. But isn't that, in itself, subjective?
Take your example (from where the term originated) in gaslighting as a form of domestic abuse. Could not the victim there use some "seeds of doubt" that their abuser really has their interest at heart? The abuser would probably call that itself "gaslighting."
I go to the other extreme. I question everybody and everything, especially myself. That is how I learn, and how I check others trying to manipulate me. I guess I am "gaslighting" myself.
