double bind
nounEtymology Coined by English anthropologist, linguist, semiotician and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson.
1
A dilemma in which someone receives contradictory instructions and cannot act on either.
- She is deciding, right then and there, if she wants to be seen naked on the internet, forever, an object of desire as well as derision. […] In a sense, as Angel notes, the scene dramatizes “the double bind in which women exist: that saying no may be difficult, but so too is saying yes.”2021 September 3, Helen Lewis, “The Problem With Being Cool About Sex”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN: