all violence is domestic violence

stencil graffiti showing a spray-painted fist with leaves, flowers, and roots going out of it, surrounded by the words (There’s language of domestic and racially-motivated violence in this post. Just be easy with you, ok?)

Good morning, good morning. What’s the sky like where you are today? Here it’s still grey with night fog. The sun’s coming though, I think. The sun’s coming.

October was Domestic Violence Awareness month, and just this week another man killed a lot of people out of what looks like domestic-vioence-related rage. That’s got me thinking about the larger systems at work in our country right now.  I’m trying to work something out in this post today, something that feels complicated, that has to do with what’s happening in our country to support the escalation in extreme violence that we’re seeing. Here goes:

Whenever an abuser thinks they’re beginning to lose control, they will often escalate their violence in an effort to keep their victim or victims in line. I don’t say last-ditch effort, because the abuser never believes it’s last-ditch — they don’t think the victim will ever get away from them, will ever leave. They believe they have the victim or victims so far under their control, so terrified, so manipulated, so brainwashed, so gaslit, so unable to think clearly or make decisions, and so isolated — and on top of that, so afraid of the physical manifestations of the abuse, the physical and sexual violences enacted on themselves and/or those they love — that the victim will never be able to go. The abuser will sometimes call this love or dependence. They could never leave — they need me too much. They love me too much. They’re mine. I own them. I control them. They’re mine.

And when the victim begins to show signs of slipping this grasp in spite of all the forms of violence marshaled around them, the noose will often tighten — by which I mean, to avoid using the passive voice, the abuser will often tighten the noose. Make scarier threats. Assault more violently, more brutally. Threaten to kill or actually kill. Most folks know (right?) that the most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is when they leave the relationship — move out, or otherwise escape. This is the time when most victims who are murdered by abusers are killed.

The abuser feels well within his (and sometimes her, and sometimes their) rights to do whatever he wants with what he believes is his to control, his property. He feels entitled. 

So I’ve been seeing this in our country for a while now when it comes to male supremacy and white supremacy: systems that experience themselves as losing control, and escalating their tactics in order to rein in those they would subjugate. When a perpetrator believes he is about to lose control of his victim, he will nearly always escalate; so what does male supremacy do when it feels its losing control of its victims, losing its rank at the top of the heap, losing access to what it was promised in the form of bodies and control? It escalates: it makes, let’s say, weapons of mass destruction of various forms available to those who would use them to kill, whether indiscriminately or targetedly.

There is nothing coincidental about the way our lawmakers, lobbyists, manufacturers, and citizenry are working together to desperately keep a hold on this male supremacist system. (I’m not speaking only of gun manufacturers; I’m also speaking of tech/online-systems developers, among others).

The system has been under attack for decades — women are working outside the home, women have more control over their reproductive systems than ever before in history, there are laws against most forms of rape (even if those laws don’t deter most rapists and would-be rapists, given the systems still in place to produce, encourage, protect, and replace them); women have access to some positions of power in this country, more women than men are receiving college educations, women are controlling some percentage of wealth and resources; there are powerful female leaders of governments and countries…

And so, at least in the US, what do we see? A steady increase in mass shootings; a nostalgia for the “good old days”; the development of online systems in which women are consistently harassed  or perceive the threat of harassment; among other escalations of violences toward women.

Many, many people who benefit from and support the ideas of white supremacy, whether intentionally or subconsciously, are doing the same thing. White folks feel that their control is slipping. And so what happens? How does white supremacy reassert its power and control, in a desperate attempt to keep its subjects under control? It fosters racial animus around the country, taps into the same old bullshit fear-mongering it’s used (and used effectively) since Reconstruction (or before) to whip up fear and hatred among white folks. Legislators work with manufacturers work with lobbyists to make their weapons of mass disruption and destruction available to a citizenry that will wield them in such a way as to terrorize and harass and threaten and even kill. To say that the escalation of murders of Black folks by the American police force isn’t a manifestation of white supremacy trying desperately to hold on to power is to be naive and willfully ignorant of the systems of control we live (and struggle) within. 

So where am I going with all of this? Folks called and continue to call Trump an abuser. And he is, of course, But he is also, further, a tool wielded by the larger structures of power and control, a form of violence thrust upon us, a threat made good — you think you’re going to get free? Just wait and see what I do to you next.

Male supremacy and white supremacy, in a frenzied and desperate attempt to hold on to control, play their constituencies like marionettes, creating frenzy, fomenting violence and assaults, increasing the violence among those meant to protect and serve, currying fear, depression, and hopelessness, fostering the conditions in which an obvious abuser like DT could be installed as president. DT is not the ultimate abuser; those who wield him are.

***

When you are working as a advocate with victims of domestic violence, you are trained to help folks develop safety plans, particularly when they are getting ready to leave, to escape their relationships. Do they know where their keys are, can they keep a bag of clothes in their car, make sure their car is tuned up and that the tank is always full, talk with a trusted friend to ask if you can come to their house to stay for a while, keep some of your kids’ things in the car, too, hidden, ready; have money there, your kids’ birth certificates, whatever documents you need, listen to your gut, because your gut will tell you when it’s time to go. 

So this morning I am wondering how we safety plan when living inside a country, a society, that is abusive and controlling? The vast majority of us aren’t planning to escape to another country. We plan to stay. (There are those in other countries who will look at us with astonishment — why are they staying? Don’t they know the danger they’re in? What’s wrong with them? How can they say they love that country? don’t they know that’s not what love is supposed to look like? Love is not supposed to be fearful or extracted with threats of violence…but remember that to shame the victim for staying is only to drive her further into the arms of the abuse, and there are many many victims who are simply unable to leave for financial reasons, or because they would lose access to family and other loved ones, or because they fear harm coming to those they’d leave, or because they don’t believe they deserve anything better–they have been brainwashed to believe that what they’re living in and through is the best possible option (no one will ever love you as much as I do, the country says) —  or they truly believe that things can change.

All violence is domestic violence. At a time when so many of us are triggered constantly by the news, are reminded of our own experiences of physical or sexual assault, harassment, the times we feared for our safety or the safety of those we loved at the hands of those who held some position of power or control over us — we remember that the seeds of violence are planted at home. Home is the place in which each citizen is trained into the systems we live within,  where we are trained into silence or self-protection. Home is where many of us are trained to understand that there is no safety if we do not follow the rules, and that those who harm and cause pain are lauded by others, and not expected to account for the harm they cause.

And we who stay resist in the ways we feel safe resisting. We mount small and large insurgencies, we speak up, we show that the emperor has no clothes, we hope that others are looking. We seek out large and small ways to protect ourselves and those we love. We cultivate strength and trust in our intuition, in our creativity, and we encourage those we love to do the same. We tell our true stories and listen to the true stories of others. We learn to hear what is painful to hear. We learn to hold and support one another on a battlefield, in the midst of a war that is not likely to end in our lifetimes — but we act anyway, to stand up for those who live now, and to plant new seeds, to create the possibility for new conditions for the next generation, or the next. We teach our children history, teach them how to navigate the maze of hostilities and violences out in the world, we teach our children how to stay safe and we teach our children how to resist. We create art, we write, we spray paint walls, we feed the hungry, we seek nourishment of our own hungers, physical and emotional and spiritual. We seek restorative justice, well-being for all, a fundamental change in the systems we live within and in which we participate. 

Be easy with yourselves today. Thank you for the safe space you help to hold for others; thanks for allowing others to help hold open safe space for you. Thank you for your stories today, your creative genius — thank you for your words.

 

 

Comments are closed.