Book: How Nonviolence Protects the State Chapter: Nonviolence is Patriarchal Author: Peter Gelderloos Published: 2007 / South End Press personal tags: #HNvPtS
I don't know how much to expect out of a chapter that opens like this:
Patriarchy is a form of social organization that produces what we commonly recognize as sexism. But it goes well beyond individual or systemic prejudice against women.
Thanks. Didn't know that at all. (I know I'm being snarky on this, but it's just frustratingly obvious, and it was in the late 2000s. I would've felt the same reading it then, as a person who is more overtly and recognisably impacted by patriarchy.)
(Many perfectly healthy people do not fit into either of these physiological categories, and many non-Western cultures recognized — and still do, if they haven’t been destroyed — more than two sexes and genders.)
This is a weird ass way to talk about this. “If they haven't been destroyed” doesn't even make sense, even for cultures that historically would have recognised more than two genders but no longer do. Is it a form of destruction? Yeah, but I think being more explicit so that it doesn't sound like these cultures ceased existing would be more beneficial. “Forcibly altered by colonialism” is right there, for example.
After all, in wars, in social revolutions, and in daily life, women and transgender people are the primary recipients of violence in patriarchal society.
How I just want to hold up a mirror. As a note: It's interesting that Peter says this, but he's very well-known for fighting against KYLR and saying that abusers deserve therapy. I wonder why that is...
If we take this philosophy out of the impersonal political arena and put it in a more real context, nonviolence implies that it is immoral for a woman to fight off an attacker or study self-defense.
I guess those are the two options. Study self-defense or fight off an attacker (but anything outside of that is inappropriate).
From another angle, nonviolence seems well-suited to dealing with patriarchy. After all, the abolition of patriarchy in particular requires forms of resistance that emphasize healing and reconciliation.
Huh.
Valuing healthy relationships is complemented by militantly opposing institutions that propagate exploitive and violent relationships, and striking out against the most egregious and probably incorrigible examples of patriarchy is one way to educate others about the need for an alternative. Most of the work needed to overcome patriarchy will probably be peaceful, focused on healing and building alternatives. But a pacifist practice that forbids the use of any other tactics leaves no option for people who need to protect themselves from violence now.
It's very interesting how the prior chapters incorporated a lot more of the violent machismo, and this one is suddenly... “Well, some violence is necessary in these very specific cases, but actually? This one will probably be peaceful.”
Peter, your book sucks.
In the case of rape and other forms of violence against women, nonviolence implies the same lessons that patriarchy has taught for millennia. It glorifies passivity, “turning the other cheek,” and “dignified suffering” among the oppressed. In one of the most lucid texts defining the preservation and implementation of patriarchy — the Old Testament — story upon commandment upon parable upon law counsel women to suffer injustice patiently and pray for the divine Authority to intervene. (This prescription is remarkably similar to pacifists’ faith in the corporate media to disseminate images of dignified suffering and motivate the “decision-making authority” to implement justice).
This prescription is remarkably similar to all state institutions, you absolute doofus. A person takes a rape case to the police, and they are harassed and told they must have misunderstood. A person tells their university about being raped, and the university frequently works to obfuscate that rape. This is not a fucking pacifist problem; it's a problem with the whole fucking apparatus, and it doesn't help because you're not pointing at any pacifist examples of this shit.
Are they out there? Yeah. But you've got to stop pretending that they're explicitly the problems here because it is not a problem of pacifists (though pacifists exacerbate the problem); it is a problem of the whole goddamned system.
However, the women’s violence that hooks discusses is not a political, conscious violence directed against the agents of patriarchy, but, rather, an impulsive displacement of abuse aimed at children and others lower in the social hierarchy. This is one example of a true cycle of violence, which pacifists assume to be the only form of violence.
THIS IS A SYSTEMIC VIEW, NOT A PACIFIST-SPECIFIC VIEW. How did people read this book and think he was some brilliant anarchogod, I swear.
Also, I do not subscribe to the view that “hurt people hurt people.” Can they? Yes. But it is not because of their abuse. How often do we hear people try to explain away the abuse they commit with the abuse that they endured? As a person who was abused, I know better than to abuse someone else... So I don't. “Hurt people hurt people” supports patriarchy, and that is why it is so commonly brought up by men who are accused of being abusers.
To be more specific, if women organized collectively to forcefully attack and oppose rapists, specific rapes would be prevented, the trauma of past rapes would be exorcised in a constructive and empowering way, men would be denied the option of raping with impunity, and future rapes would be discouraged.
We can collectively organise to forcefully attack and oppose rapists? So KYLR, right? (Except no. Peter says no and has done so many times, attacking anarchafeminists who even so much as breathe those letters.)
Pacifists and reformist feminists have often charged that it is militant activists who are sexist. In many specific cases, the accusation has been valid.
See things Peter can't be: Specific. There are criticisms of both pacifists and reformists of all kinds, but you don't get there by grabbing a social generalisation and pretending those groups are the dominant groups who started it.
Whether militant or pacifist, nearly every tactical or strategic discussion I have participated in was attended and dominated overwhelmingly by men. Rather than claim that women and transgender people are somehow unable to participate in a broad spectrum of tactical options (or even discuss them), we would do well to recall the voices of those who have fought-violently, defiantly, effectively — as revolutionaries.
How about all the people who aren't perceived or acknowledge as being men that were literally run out of many of these organisations? Want to consider that?
He puts up examples of groups of women who literally... left other movements because those movements didn't give a shit. Doesn't seem to try to explore why they might have left those movements, and it's not because they were pacifist. But it is largely because they would not deal with their misogyny and sexism. It's the same story for the history of Mujeres Libres (as problematic as they could be).
There is, however, a great deal of feminist literature that denies the empowering (and historically important) effects of militant struggle on women’s and other movements, offering instead a pacifist feminism. Pacifist feminists point to the sexism and machismo of certain militant liberation organizations, which we should all acknowledge and address. Arguing against nonviolence and in favor of a diversity of tactics should not at all imply a satisfaction with the strategies or cultures of past militant groups (for example, the macho posturing of the Weather Underground or the anti-feminism of the Red Brigades).
While I'm sure there are feminists pushing a pacifist-only agenda, have we considered that part of the “violence = machismo” is because the kinds of people pushing violence constantly (especially cis men) don't often stop and consider all the nonviolent work that needs to happen to support movements? That's literally part of the criticism, not that violence is inherently masculine.
Now I feel like I have a shit-ton of resources to read to contextualise this nonsense because I'm willing to bet some of those “pacifist feminists” were being read in bad faith because it looked like they supported a pure nonviolence.
As for one resource, it's Carol Flinders... promoting a lot of popular bullshit evolution stuff. It's cute that he takes Flinders to task (which people should) and leaves the more popular purveyors of this rubbish alone (and the most popular purveyors? are predominantly men). Following this is a short focus on Patrizia Longo.
Both probably should be critiqued, but I find it interesting to ignore the ways in which varying movements continually uplift men and shut out everyone else, using them more as examples of bad beliefs when necessary... and as examples of sacrifice and care work if they're not negative examples.
Short chapter, says little. Disappointing but not surprising.