Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

by Sarah Schulman

looked at normative, everyday conflict, and responded with extreme cruelty. He looked at the regular, even banal, expression of difference and saw threat.

Normative Conflict, and Resistance and misrepresented these reasonable stances of difference as Abuse.

My thesis is that at many levels of human interaction there is the opportunity to conflate discomfort with threat, to mistake internal anxiety for exterior danger, and in turn to escalate rather than resolve.

historical analysis of power, rooted generationally in Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, in which sexual, racial, material, emotional, colonial, and gender dynamics were seen as continuous and interrelated.

And that this overstatement of harm is often expressed in “shunning,” a literal refusal to speak in person with another human being, or group of people, an exclusion of their information, the active obstruction to a person being heard and the pretense that they do not exist.

recommends mutual accountability in a culture of underreaction to abuse and overreaction to conflict.

dehumanize the other whom they misrepresent as “a threat”

Of course intrinsic to white Supremacy is the internal fantasy and external projection that Black people want what white people have.

So sending a person an email that says, “I don’t want to talk to you” and then refusing to discuss the problem at hand, or even to interact at all, resolves nothing. In fact, it creates anxieties, fears, antagonisms, and pain that can be long-lasting.

I recite those few words: “I was abused” or “she was abusive” or “it was an abusive relationship” and it is immediately understood that I am right, and I am violated, and I am in danger and therefore deserving of group acclaim. While the other s/he is wrong, a harasser, s/he had desire and I didn’t, so I am clean and s/he is abusive.

Many, many times a day we could say yes instead of saying no, or find something interesting or revelatory or enlightening instead of offensive.

in the United States, every year 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by a male partner at a rate that is higher than “automobile accidents, muggings and stranger rape” combined.

Becoming a social worker is often a first step by new immigrants into the professional class,

The expectation that we will never feel badly or anxious or confused is an unreasonable expectation and doesn’t automatically mean that someone else is abusing us. These emotions are part of the human experience.

Social workers can influence immigration, incarceration, custody, benefits, health care, housing, food, education, and other services.

Shallow engagement

we could have honest relationships of depth. We could be truly “supportive.”

any normative challenge is perceived of as an assault or threat?

Of course, conflicted people can mutually agree that limiting contact between them is best. Or someone in Conflict (not Abuse) may not have the skills or sense of self to be able to communicate productively for some period of time, and can responsibly and kindly request a limit with terms.

There is often a “cadre” of bad friends around a person encouraging them to do things that are morally wrong, unjustified, and unethical, because endorsing each other’s negative actions is built into the group relationship.

my goal was mutual resolution, not punishment, dominance, or assertion of either my victimhood or Supremacy.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs’ 2014 report on LGBTQI Intimate Partner Abuse noted that “in 2013 the police mis-arrested the survivor as the perpetrator of violence” in over half of all queer domestic abuse arrests. There are particular dangers in misidentifying the perpetrator in same-sex relationships. The one who is butch, of color, not a mother, not a citizen, is from another culture, or HIV-positive can be falsely construed as the assailant.

understood these actions of overstating harm as consequences of “trauma.”

The separation of the home from the society, the isolation of the family, and male prerogative were the dominant factors in determining right from wrong.

Anti-violence politics, along with other revolutionary impulses, changed from a focus on working to transform patriarchy, racism, and poverty to cooperation and integration with the police. This has proven to be a significant turn because the police are, ironically, the embodiment of patriarchy, racism, and the enforcement of the US class system.

And the police enforce the laws of the United States of America, which is one of the greatest sources of violence in the world. US foreign policy is enforced by the military who are a global police, and domestic order is enforced by the federal, state, and city structures of policing. The law is designed to protect the state, not the people who are victimized by the state.

the role of the police in enforcing inequality and unjust social order

putting the police in charge of both domestic Abuse and domestic Conflict creates a punitive response as the primary, and sometimes only, response.

they get mischaracterized as harm. For this reason I propose that as part of an evolved consciousness about not exploiting the rhetoric of victimization, the word “violence” should be used to describe physical violence.

rhetorical devices that hide details keep truth from being known and faced.

As it stands, being dishonest, callous, and cruel are not illegal,

believe that what these couples went through was mutual and therefore Conflict, not Abuse.

anti-violence activists were responding to a very different kind of violence, a violence of “Power Over,” a violence that was designed to control behavior and was sustained, not incidental, as a response to cruelty.

“Being ‘abused’ is currently what makes you ‘eligible’” for compassion. Even though everyone deserves help and compassion.

She then organized a widespread group shunning of Kelly, including an email and whisper campaign that carried on for years.

friends fueled the runaway train instead of helping her to calm down.

The National Center for Women & Policing noted in its “Police and Family Violence Fact Sheet” that “at least forty percent of police officer families experience domestic violence.” This is a rate higher than even that of National Football League players.

Black men make up fifty-two percent of the heterosexual males who have been charged but only six percent of HIV-infected men in Canada. The overrepresentation of Black male defendants is significant in a country where only 2.5 percent of its population is Black.

“Canada is definitely a world leader in terms of the police and the media collaborating to ensure that every arrest is covered in the media as a public health warning, especially because it also does double duty as a fishing expedition for further potential complainants to come forward.” It is a nation mired in overstating harm in a manner in which people are isolated and punished for no reason, and the power of the state is enhanced.

For example, in the US, the racist assumption for years has been that the reasons for such astronomically high rates of HIV infection among men who have sex with men is because Black men don’t have safe sex. A great deal of theorizing and planning has been done rooted in this assumption. There was an assumed lack of information, an assumed lack of self-esteem, clichés about Black masculinity, and an assumed impact of alcoholism and substance abuse, all leading to the presumption of unsafe sex. However, Greg Millett, the White House’s senior policy advisor on AIDS, released a report in 2015 revealing that, in fact, Black gay men have safe sex three times as often as white gay men. In other words, Black gay men are three times more accountable, aware, and proactive around safe sex than white gay men. So why the high rates? Because Black men are much more likely to have HIV

the risks for men contracting HIV through vaginal penetration is only 1 in 2,500.

Any thoughtful person can understand that at least a large percentage of these men are falsely reporting in order to cover up gay sex and drug use.

If women could sexually transmit HIV, wouldn’t there be an epidemic for heterosexual men and lesbians as well?

While men or women who are anally receptive run a 1-in-122 risk of infection, men who are penetrators in anal sex run only a 1-in-1,666 risk of transmission.

Canada is among the most punitive countries in the world for HIV-positive people,

Today some enjoy special social approval and recognition for being in traditional family structures that straight people can understand and identify with. Not only does this make them more comfortable, but it can also make them feel superior.

Implied in the public’s support for same-sex marriage is a fantasy that gay marriage is a mirror of straight marriage. And even though we don’t really know what the reality of straight marriage is, there is an ideal that involves an aspiration towards monogamy or some kind of sexual constraint. It’s fair to say that many straight people support gay marriage because they see it as normalizing, and do so with an undercurrent of expectation that gay marriage will tame gay male sexual culture and produce

Just as a group of bad friends reinforces unilateral supremacist thinking by encouraging group punishment and shunning of the conflicted other, good friends insist that people think twice, to look to their own participation in conflict instead of calling the police. Good groups help their family, friends, and community members recognize and dissipate anxiety rather than joining them in acting out cruelly against others.

Why does one group of people need to turn against another in order to feel good about themselves?

As Bertolt Brecht said, “As crimes pile up, they become invisible.”