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It is time for an edutainment type quiz. I’m going to show you a 41 second clip from a movie called The Public Enemy. In this scene, James Cagney and Mae Clarke are at the breakfast table. It starts with a question.
Here are your questions:
- Who did you focus on, the man or the woman?
- Who did you identify with, the man or the woman?
- Was this an act of violence or of restraint by the man?
- Did you connect with the woman and her concerns?
- Did you think it was funny or did you have a pang of recognition?
You might have to watch the video again to catch everything that happened at that breakfast table. Violence is hard to write about. If you have experienced it or witnessed it is even more difficult. It is ok if you don’t want to read any further.
Violence is the use of physical force to injure somebody or damage something. Violence does not have to be physical; you can verbally or emotionally damage a person. You can kill a person’s spirit by word or deed. It is about power and control. It has always been about power and control.
I have got stacks of paper on the mind numbing ways women are assaulted, children are sexually abused and yes, men are victims of domestic and community supported violence. Sadly, women are not exempt from displaying violent behavior. Men can be emotionally, financially and physically assaulted by women as well.
I do believe that women are the overwhelming recipients of violent actions. However it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that there are a percentage of women who are abusers to both men and women. It is the behaviors, embedded permissions and beliefs that need to be recognized and understood before any change can take place.
You see, when a woman who wants an education get hydrochloric acid thrown in her face by a man and that action is supported by a culture, religion or governmental laws there is a deeply ingrained permission to control and assault another human being, if that person is considered human being.
Understanding that violence is the use of force to injure somebody or damage something is important. A segment of the world’s population of women are considered things or property. In other countries many women do not have the right of self-determination and autonomy. There are men in villages, tribes and communities that do not have that equal rights as well.
Before The Wheel – Violence As A Survival Tool
Dr. Gerda Lerner is a historian. She was one of the first people to begin the documentation of the history of women. Dr. Lerner is the author of The Creation of Patriarchy. Learner does point out that there were communities that did have cooperative non-violence existence. However if there was a hungry alpha male in the neighborhood there was probably trouble. Some of my understandings of her findings are:
- Rape was used to build or destroy communities. Men and women initially were cooperative with each other. Women knew how to find food, shelter and could reproduce. If you were a man that did not have a woman or access to one your survival was in question. What to do? Take a woman, rape her and force her dependency on you for survival.
- Women as property or vessels of commerce. Love had nothing to do with it. It was a mater of supply, demand and allocation of resources. If you had too many mouths to feed, unproductive members (children) along with limited resources it might be decided that there would be an exchange with other groups to rid yourself of surplus women and children for goods and services. Or you might just get rid of the excess by killing them.
- Pre-religious codification of quality. As time moved forward and the concept of ownership was developed there had to be a way to control who had access to the woman and the children she could birth. Long before organized religion the control over which man could impregnate a woman first was an issue that had to be resolved. For some communities there were ceremonies that permitted the men in the village to sexually dominate over a group of women. Later it evolves in to the concept of property and slavery.
Property can
