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

by Sarah Schulman

Just as unresolved, formerly subordinated or traumatized individuals can collude with or identify with bullies, so can unresolved, formerly subordinated or traumatized groups of people identify with the supremacy of the state. In both cases, the lack of recognition that the past is not the present leads to the newly acquired power to punish rather than to the self-transformation necessary to resolve conflict and produce justice.

If you're going to state shit like this as fact, you need to provide sources and references.

This is why we (individuals, couples, cliques, families, communities, nations, peoples) often pretend, believe, or claim that Conflict is, instead, Abuse and therefore deserves punishment.

Please cite. Who has claimed that conflict is abuse?

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, people with HIV were among the most oppressed people on earth.

I have a feeling people in 3rd world countries and Holocaust survivors would disagree with you on this.

Experiencing anxiety does not mean that anyone is doing anything to us that is unjust.

Part of peace-making is acknowledging that we can’t know everything about ourselves, and sometimes we reveal things to others that we are not ready to accept.

So, the mere fact that we planned our get-together by email has set us up for failure.

How? That easily could have been mentioned in the email. You incorrectly stated your opinion as fact once again.

sometimes angry, supremacist, or traumatized people send emails commanding, “Do not contact me.” I want to state here, for the record, that no one is obligated to obey a unidirectional order that has not been discussed.

You clearly have no understanding of boundaries.

our heroine

I think you are projecting here. The "hero" here would be the abused woman who can overcome her insecurities and go on to lead an emotionally healthy life, with or without romantic relationships. There is nothing heroic about loving someone who is broken, thats just common decency.

Like when people say, “I feel like I’ve been raped,” to mean they are upset. In reality, what they feel is nothing like what they would feel if they’d been raped.

When has anyone ever said that?

absurdly, both men were arrested. Unfortunately one had a heart attack while in jail and died. As we learn over and over again from police violence in the United States, calling the police over Conflict can result in violence and death.

A heart attack is caused by blocked arteries. The police arresting him had nothing to do with that. This book really sucks.