walking in the opposite direction

saw this on =Anarcha='s tumblr:

"I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of White supremacy and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. Some of the bystanders may feel the motion of the conveyor belt, see the active racist ahead of them, and choose to turn around, unwilling to go to the same destination as the White supremacists. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt - unless they are actively antiracist - they will find themselves carried along with the others."

— Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race

 

standing still on the walkway: inaction/passivity in the face of racism and all abuse = being swept along with the momentum that is taking you to further success, acceptance, approval, social captial. these are a few of the priveleges we have to actively walk away from in order to fight against racism and other interlinked abuses. reminds me of the quote from mai'a that i put up before:

"stopping the abuse means stopping the abuser.  and the abuser is popular.  so you wont be." 

BFP on Wikileaks

BFP is on fire at the moment. i feel privileged to share a planet with her.

here:

"What’s important is what actions are being taken–not even so much against Assange–but against wikileaks. Against supporters of wikileaks. Even against those who have no idea who the fuck wikileaks is or what it’s done. 

Because indeed–those of us who care about gender liberation must, absolutely MUST, be aware of and understand that the nation/state that *F*eminists have entrusted to mete out “justice” for violated women–is using “justice” to criminalize all of us. It is up to us to understand that this isn’t a simple case of did he do it or didn’t he or “stand in solidarity with rape victims.” This is a case of our own tools being used against us. Not against Julian Assange. Against us. Because all of us who have been there understand on some gut level–how likely is it that these women will actually receive justice? What horrific price will they have to pay (in testifying, getting their names dragged through the mud, etc) to “get justice”? At the same time, how many of our lives will be dramatically affected by the “threat” we all now present to the nation/state?"

and here:

"it is the US government that seems to have perfected the role of patriarchal duality that we have all assigned to Assange. The advocate for the dispossessed rolled into a messy soup with dirty slimy scum bag that beats his girlfriend on the side.

It is the US government that is both rapist and activist. It is the US government that we all pretend not see hear the beating on the other side of the wall–because it’s doing such good for the community!

Just as we have to wonder why it makes sense to tell soldiers or policemen that it’s ok to kill when they have a certain uniform on, but not when they’re wearing clothes bought at Target–we have to wonder why it makes sense to condemn men who rape and abuse in private, while willfully and continuously ignoring the private rape and assaults of our government in the name of the “good” it does in public.

And that’s not to say that we let the man off scott free–but rather instead to question: if our goal is to stop rapes before they happen–how do we negotiate the dissonance of the “model” of public advocate/private rapist the US reinforces continuously with the idea of “anti-gender violence citizen”?

Specifically: how will gendered violence ever end when gendered violence remains, at the core, a esteemed value of the US government that we all live under?"

...and so much more in those posts. read them! 

the abuser is popular

"in order for you to support communities and individuals, you have to work to stop the abuse that is holding them under water.  and stopping the abuse means stopping the abuser.  and the abuser is popular.  so you wont be."

mai'a, at Outlaw Midwives, in a post called "you have to choose a side. its a war. either you are with life, or you are with the forces of genocide". please read the whole thing!

from correspondence

"i agree that anyone has the right to be defended against accusations, of course. but i think it's really important for both sides to be differentiating the naming/questionning of bad behaviour from an implication that someone is inherently racist, abusive, evil, etc. [...]

to state the obvious, it's important to be able to have ways of talking about perceived oppressive behaviour without a) it being a character assassination and/or b) people framing it as a character assassination in a way that can divert the conversation away from the questionable behaviour and on to a character defence."

a cultural issue

i find it difficult to explain how much it means to me to come across simple, accessible, heartfelt writing that explodes oppressive myths and lies and distractions and scapegoats and 'things that people say' and replaces them with articulate truths. i read this today...

"Still, we in the West too often find it easier to perceive rape as an accepted part of an unfamiliar culture rather than as a tool of war that we could help banish. Too often, the enemy becomes all Congolese men rather than men with guns terrorizing the Congolese people. By casting the chaos and violence as “men vs. women” or dismissing the crisis as “cultural,” we do a profound injustice to Congolese men. Rather than help, we send an implicit insult: It’s a pity, but, well…it’s just who you people are. [...]

Any Congolese will tell you rape is not “traditional.” It did occur in Congo before the war, as it does everywhere. But the proliferation of sexual violence came with the war. Militias and Congolese soldiers alike now use sexual violence as a weapon. Left unchecked, sexual violence has festered in Congo’s war-ravaged east. This does not make rape cultural. It makes it easy to commit. There is a difference. [...]

“Cultural relativism legitimizes the violence and discredits the victims, because when you accept rape as cultural, you make rape inevitable,” [...]

When we blame all Congolese men for sexual violence, not only do we imply that rape is inherent to the African landscape, we avoid critical questions, particularly regarding the role that we in the West play.[...]

When we label rape in Congo “cultural,” we let ourselves off the hook. And that is a cultural issue. Ours." 

 Lisa Shannon, in the New York Times*, via the beautifully-named A Life Well Loved blog.

*dammit, i wanted to provide a link for you to read the whole thing but now it says subscribers only. 

mai'a on safer spaces

many things that mai'a writes float around my head and become such important reference points for me, and i want to find ways to share my thoughts about them, link to them here and talk with my friends about them, but mostly their significance and relevance is still filtering slowly through my brain.

i love nothing better than a systematic analysis of what needs to happen for abuse not to happen, and i'll be coming back to this one. here are some snippets:

"life is not safe.  people hurt each other.  we have a choice. to either support our own and others’ abusive behaviour or words, or to nurture respectful relations.

safety is an illusion.  what is real is what we do.  do we act out fear?  or do we act out respect?

[...] 

4. intentions. your intentions matter. yes. to you.  and they should. to you. the rest of us. dont give a fuck.

[...]

if you are fucking up a lot, like over and over again, and hurting people, then i got to wonder:

a. either you really do intend to hurt people or,

b. dont care if you hurt people or,

c. are not able to see that your intentions and your effects are not lining up very well..."

read the whole thing, really, you should

football

from a press-release thing to do with the White Ribbon Campaign (UK group trying to get men to take responsibility for stopping DV):

"Home Office figures show that in the World Cup in 2006, domestic violence cases reported to the police increased by up to 31 percent. These figures revealed a surge of reported cases on each of England's five games in the tournament."

i was working the local helpline back in 2006 and it was unbelievable. sooo busy. overexcitable, pissed-up men feeling entitled to... it doesn't bear thinking about.

anyhow, i much enjoyed this, from the same press release:

"To pin the White ribbon on the chest is like taking on the responsibility of captain, but in the more important game, that of life." Paulo Maldini (former Italy and AC Milan captain).

caffeinated rant about forgiveness and sanctions

i was thinking about this last night and got into a bit of a dark place(!) so i'm trying to write about it on a sunny morning in the hope this will bring out a more balanced result.

i was thinking about forgiveness, and how i don't understand it.

a wonderful witchy woman once told me that cancerians like me carry the stories, and with them the grudges, of the community, and never forgive. at the risk of losing any fragile credibility by confessing my weakness for astrology, this made a lot of sense to me, and i wonder if that's what i'm doing here, and in my work - carrying, trying to release and honour, remember and link together, the secret stories of my community. i don't feel that i choose not to forgive: i just don't understand the concept.

someone once asked me if this means i think people are as bad as their worst actions, and this threw me. i think i do think that, and i'm not sure why i think it, rather than that people are, for instance, as good as their best actions. really, am i just talking nonsense? am i just incredibly judgemental? i think i really need to explore what i think about forgiveness in order to get anywhere in terms of understanding what i think about sanctions, or 'punishment' against abusive behaviour. here goes.

if someone is mean to me or someone else, i try to put myself in their shoes and think about why they did that. and of course there are a million reasons why people are sometimes mean but not in a way where they are systematically putting their own interests first; they've been mean but they weren't trying to get ahead by trampling on others. in this case, to me there is nothing to forgive: they just made a mistake, did something mean, and hopefully understand why they should try not to do it again.

but then there are a lot of times when people are mean in ways that constitute systematically putting their own interests first, trying to get ahead by trampling on others. if someone screws someone else over in this way they are acting as if they believe, consciously or otherwise, that they are entitled to do so. therefore they believe on some level that the other person is less human. to me, this attitude is intolerable. just entirely unacceptable. again, there's nothing to forgive: either someone, when challenged, starts to do the hard work of uprooting their sense of entitlement (as Bancroft would say) and learning not to oppress others, or they don't - because they don't wish to give up the benefits of oppressing, including the comfort of that elevated position.

so i fervently believe that communities need to come up with sanctions that strongly persuade people to do that uprooting.

which reminds me of a quote i've been meaning to link to here for ages, from Mai'a, again, in this post about communities supporting abusers, at Flip Flopping Joy:

"society tells us that being called a rapist or an abuser is like one of the worst things to be called. that it is a stigma that would haunt a man for the rest of his life. but for the most part. it doesnt. men shrug off that label, like a silk scarf slipping off the shoulders."

and the same, so often, if someone is called out for trying to get ahead using racism, for example, in a community. the manipulator may feel uncomfortable for a while as they are challenged and shunned perhaps, but in time things get back to normal. water under the bridge. no one wants to carry on being hostile for too long. i mean, great, if someone has put the work into the uprooting and is no longer prepared to act that way. but if not: no. i have no compassion for someone who would continue, is continuing, to do that (though most likely in more subtle ways so as not to get called out again). and yes, weirdly, i feel some kind of personal responsibility for remembering, carrying that story. why would we forgive that? it makes no sense to me.

except it does. to me, it's forgiveness that keeps the entire kyriarchy turning. we get screwed over, and it's easier to believe that someone did not, or did not intend to, dehumanise us - too frightening and overwhelming to think that that person was systematically trying to get ahead and was prepared to trample us in doing so.

for example, very few fathers end up alone in old age, no matter what they have put the family through. do i want people who've been oppressive all their lives to end up abandoned at the end of their lives? not necessarily. but where is the sanction? how do we, as communities, condemn that behaviour and give abusers something to lose?

i am fully aware that carrying around resentment (meaning, literally, re-feeling) is not at all healthy. i'm glad that forgiveness can be such a powerful way for many survivors of abuse to find freedom. it's not up to me if individual abusers are forgiven by those they have abused, and it is so often a positive thing for the survivor. i mean that as communities, to forgive is to miss the point entirely, and to forget is to collude.

people who oppress operate on the understanding that, at the end of the day, the community will absorb it, work around it. artists and writers who are known to have been abusive in their personal lives are loved and celebrated. overlooking abuse is collusion. 'forgetting' is collusion. forgiveness is a complex distraction and, i believe, colludes. 

ah, got it. i feel much better for working that out!

relapse and rewards

i have been very skeptical about ideas that say abuse is an addiction. you can find a lot of 'science' that will tell you that abused women are 'addicted' to the violent relationship, to the abuser, even to endorphins or something, that are released after a beating. this is all, in my opinion, total bience (my friend's term for the application of bollocks to science). not least because domestic violence has precious little to do with beatings anyway, for goodness sake, physical violence being an optional extra following psychological abuse and control that form the basis.

there are also lots of ideas to do with an abuser being 'addicted' to his own endorphin rush, or to the thrill of power, or to his negative behaviours in some other way. i am very suspicious of these explanations as they serve to take away responsibility for his actions. most explanations of domestic abuse are desperate to look for any reason to avoid making men responsible for their own actions.

however, recently i was describing a case that i found particularly upsetting to a counsellor. in this case a perpetrator had gone further towards 'Changing' than anyone else i've ever known through work. he said all the right things and was on best behaviour for months. then it got too hard and he gave it up. for some reason i'd got emotionally involved in this case and felt devastated, as, of course, did his partner. anyhow the counsellor said something about how his abusive behaviour was like an addiction and his return to it was like a relapse.

at first i cringed, thinking stop talking in cliches, DV is not addiction. but then that started to make a bit of sense. how we are 'addicted' to behaviours that we know are bad for us, they can be comforting when we start to feel too much out on a limb.

there's no point pretending that giving up abusive behaviour, its rewards and its habits, is not an intensely challenging and scary thing to do. you are also going against a culture that supports and rewards male entitlement and that denies and minimises abuse. i do not for one minute condone or excuse his return to abuse. he had all the resources this culture can throw at a perpetrator who is trying to change, supporting him in his effort. but in some ways, he was on his own. i watched him challenge social workers who placed blame on other factors, saying "no, no, you have to remember, i chose to abuse her, it wasn't the fault of anything else".

and at some point it felt too hard. he gave up, 'relapsed', perhaps. i'm sure there are loads of theories around this in terms of substance use, i don't know much about it. he retreated into behaviours that he knew were bad for him and those around him because it felt easier, familiar, comforting.

i retreat to certain behaviours that i know are bad for me: smoking, drinking, overeating, when i can't face the hard work of dealing responsibly with my feelings. it feels comforting and familiar. it makes sense to me that if you are used to being in control and abusing then this behaviour will feel good to retreat to when not-doing it gets too hard.

but. in the past those behaviours were not bad for him. they used to get him exactly what he wanted, at the expense of his partner. and it was worth seeing if that could happen again. there are so many more rewards to abusing than to purely self-destructive bad behaviours. my misuse of alcohol, cigarettes and food only makes me ill. if i was prepared to bully other people instead or as well when i was feeling rubbish then i might get some results that i experience as positive. such as people doing what i want and not challenging me because they're scared to. so part of the decision to 'relapse' into abusive behaviour involves wanting to see whether you can get away with that old behaviour - maybe it might get some of the same results as before. i wish i had been able to articulate to the counsellor how abuse is functional to the perpetrator, how oppressing others makes your life easier. there are short and long-term gains far exceeding, for example, the relief of having a cigarette.

right? i'm aware that i'm rambling away with next to no knowledge of substance use and models used to explain it. if anyone knows that stuff i'd be really interested to hear.