Avoiding complicity with oppression
(Nimue)
Sometimes, in order to survive, your best hope is not to resist. Where there is tyranny, resistance can prove fatal. That may mean having to pretend to be someone you are not, hiding truths that would invite harm. Many people in America are preparing to do this at the moment, removing their online presence, camouflaging who they are and aiming to survive the coming administration.
This is often the wisest choice. The people who are most vulnerable are not the ones we should be put on the front lines when it comes to dealing with oppressors.
Where this gets difficult is around the issue of how much you have to join in to feel safe. When you are persuaded that the only way to be safe is to comply, you can end up becoming someone who supports and enables the very system that is harming you. Women are often quick to police other women’s clothing choices and to agree that some women are ‘asking for it’ based on their clothes and this is a case in point. Sexual violence does not vanish when women are swathed in fabric, adhering to dress codes does not keep you safe, and this approach actually makes the problems worse.
Keeping your head down as a survival tactic is a good and honourable choice. But, when we become participants in order to hide more effectively, a line has been crossed. We can think here about people historically denouncing others as witches in the hopes of evading punishment themselves.
Intense and ongoing fear makes good choices difficult. You can’t make good choices when you don’t have good options. The more frightened you are, the more readily you can be manipulated – I’ve been there. The responsibility for this always lies with those who oppress and abuse. At the same time it is vitally important not to be frightened into complicity, and into harming others. Abusive regimes depend on getting people onboard – either through fear or through the belief that they can get ahead in this system.
It is better to focus on small, barely visible acts of resistance that keep your heart and soul alive. Keeping your faith, your integrity and sense of self whole isn’t easy when you cannot safely be yourself. Now is a good time to read up on radical history, and how people kept going in other difficult periods. The more we can do to keep each other brave and hopeful, the fewer people will be persuaded that the only way to stay safe is by becoming an oppressor too.
Crushing other people is not a good answer to being crushed – but this is what colonial and patriarchal structures have taught us all to do. We’re told we can have power by punching down. This is a system in which most of us lose. The less we play along with it, the less harm everyone experiences. Not joining in is itself a form of resistance.
