How Nonviolence Protects the State: Footnote 120 – about bell hooks #HNvPtS

bell hooks presents a more complex analysis, dealing also with the violence of women, in several books including The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (New York: Atria Books, 2004).

Dubious that it is “more complex,” as her work is largely polemic and without evidence. There are a lot of assumptions being made, and she doesn't even bother to provide references for us to look back at.

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 equally as problematic as bell hooks' work. First, the belief that the abuse that is engaged in by women isn't political is nonsense. Everything is political, even if the intent isn't to be; it's just not political in the way that Gelderloos wants it to be, which is towards some concept of revolution.

Second, the cycle of violence is bullshit, especially as Peter uses it here. People who are abused are not inherently likely to become abusers, which is what the “cycle of abuse” implies. It doesn't engage with what people are shown as socially possible. The actual cycle of child abuse is not that abused children become abusive adults; it's that people see that child abuse is acceptable (eg: “spanking children is fine”) and perpetuate that cultural norm. We also see this in white supremacist structures that believe certain races (eg: East Asians) to be inherently more abusive, which means that East Asian children are less likely to be taken seriously when they discuss the abuse of the family lives. It's normalised in the general population, and it's further normalised via racism that “East Asians just act this way to the extreme.” And while certain races of kids (eg: Indigenous, Black, and Latino kids—all of whom are over-represented in things like foster care) are likely to get yanked and put in foster care for much less⁎ (and then they're most often placed with white families), kids of other races usually have to endure far more extreme abuse before getting removed from their families because of how normalised abuse is towards children.

⁎Sometimes that “less” is actually “nothing at all except the assumptions of a white school teacher.”

That is what the “cycle of violence” should reflect. It should reflect the normalisation in society of people to behave a certain way, but here? Peter is using it as “abused women take out their abuse on their children,” and that's absurd. It's also polemicised in bell hooks' shit book that he references, too. And that's literally not what the “cycle” should mean.

People who are abused are more likely to continue to be abused (rather, find themselves in abusive relationships). You know why? Because they've been taught that abusive patterns are normal for their lives. They're not inherently more likely to abuse anyone.

I also don't care if an abuser has been abused, for the record. If you're abusing someone, you know what you're doing is wrong... because you've experienced it. Your abuse isn't an excuse to continue abusing someone... nor is it a valid reason. These are choices, and most people who are abuse choose not to. Many of us work against that. (You know who benefits from this kind of reading of the “cycle of violence?” Abusers.)

And while all traumatic forms of violence cycle (that is, have successive ramifications as people maladaptively react to the trauma of the initial violence), revolutionary activists argue that all violent hierarchies are held together by systematic deployments of downward violence, the originators of which should and must be incapacitated.

... Peter, could you make a more incoherent sentence. You've intentionally obscured the point of this one, and I know you have because the rest of your shit-eating book is written in clearer language than whatever this is.

What is the cycle of “traumatic forms of violence?” What counts as “traumatic forms of violence?” I think immigration processes are traumatic forms of violence. Does this cycle? Do immigrants seek to torture other immigrants because the state tortures them? You can't just say this like it's true when it isn't.

Most anti-abuse advocates are people who were abused themselves and work against abuse because of their experiences. Many parents who choose not to abuse their kids were abused themselves and have decided not to do it because they hated it.

Hell, even when I've met parents who've engaged in a singular act of physical abuse (eg: spanking or slapping), they have told me that they were so horrified by their own actions and have resolved to find healthier ways to work with their children. Some of them told me it was because “that was done when we were kids” (normalisation of a shared experience of a generation), but they were horrified after the fact by how easily it could be done and also by the looks of betrayal that their kids had (rightfully so). Were those parents abused? Probably. But they also realised how horrible doing it impacted everyone involved (including themselves).

Cycles aren't personal; cycles are social normalisation. This is why it requires people unlearn much of their prior knowledge.

Revolutionary activists aren't wrong about hierarchies being maintained via violence, though.

The world is not a level playing field on which violence rebounds consistently, evenly originating from and affecting people who are equal in power and responsibility. 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.

... Very weird to see this written down in a book by a guy who is so vehemently anti-KYLR and super pro sending abusers to therapy (to the point that he dogpiles anarchafeminists who correctly explain that therapy cannot change abusers who do not wish to change but can teach them skills to abuse differently).

Or, for another example, urban blacks and Latinos who carry out guerrilla attacks against police would not encourage a cycle of police violence. Police do not kill people of color because they have been traumatized by past violence; they do so because the white supremacist system requires it and because they are paid to. Revolutionary activity will, of course, result in increased state repression, but that is an obstacle that must be surpassed in the destruction of the state, which is the greatest purveyor of violence. After the destruction of the state, of capitalism, and of patriarchal structures, people will still be traumatized, will still have authoritarian and patriarchal viewpoints, but individual problems that are not structurally reinforced can be addressed in cooperative, nonviolent ways. Armies cannot be.

Can I just highlight the bizarre fact that the beginning of this footnote cited bell hooks, and her books (including The Will to Change) repeatedly admonish all violence. She does not make room for any strategic violence at all. So this part of this footnote is immediately confusing when you realise that Peter is pushing people to read someone who advocates for full anti-violence while also centering the needs of the oppressor, at least when it comes to men.

Also, that book is incredibly victim-blaming. But men with questionable histories seem to really like it for some reason.