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

by Sarah Schulman

Of course, some people just give up. They internalize a story about themselves that they are unlovable or incapable of loving an equal, or that they are perpetual victims, or that they “can’t do” long-term relationships, but thinking these things doesn’t make them true. In order to “protect” ourselves by keeping our lives small and shutting out intimacies, we could actually be hurting ourselves, missing out on a transformative experience of the heart, and sabotaging our small but crucial contribution to making peace. And the withholding also mis-trains those around us to not see us and others like us as sexual, loving adults who have the right to be in intimacy with equals. Relationships of all kinds, after all, are the centerpiece of healing. Some of the fear is based in earlier experience. If we were in a car accident, we can become afraid of cars. If someone close to us died, we could become terrified of normative loss. If we experience sexually alienating encounters, we could construct ourselves as not sexual. If we are physically violated, we could imagine that every person who reminds us of the assailant is going to assault and violate us. If we are socially oppressed or marginalized or punished, we could mistrust everyone from the category of the oppressor. But this fear of potential threat is not always based in actual experience. It can also be a political construction, one that is fabricated and then advertised through popular culture and entertainment, or enforc...