I’m over non-violence, as a political philosophy. Advocating non-violent resistance to injustice is either a luxury or something that’s undertaken by those who have superhuman tolerance for violent oppression.
It is a crime in Saudi Arabia for unmarried men and women to mix. A Saudi religious policeman (representing the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) busted a 20-something couple for being together in a park in Al-Mubarraz recently, and got a righteous beat down in return–from the woman.
“For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop,” according to The Jerusalem Post. That strikes me as a little odd, and I suspect it could be code for “knocked out with a baton.” But anyway, the woman let it rip on the religious policeman, hitting him repeatedly and leaving him to be taken to the hospital for the resulting bruises. Should the woman be charged, she could face a lengthy prison term as well as lashings for assaulting a government representative.
Because crushing daily oppression is an abstraction rather than a reality for most of them, some feminists felt torn about this story. See: this comment thread on Jezebel. I’m annoyed Katy even used the words “While we don’t usually condone violence …” in her post. Over and over people whisper “Violence is always wrong, but …” before they dare express support for–or pride in–this brave woman.
IT’S OKAY! Depending on what really happened to her companion, this burst of oh-so-terrible violence could have been self-defense. I don’t particularly care, because I am not conflicted about the oppressed using violent force to overthrow their oppressors. More often than not, it is the only thing they understand. In the case of this woman, I am not conflicted about the oppressed exploding with violent rage at her oppressor after one too many boots have stepped on her neck. I don’t know if this woman’s actions will spark a rebellion or if it’s just an isolated incident I read about online. I do know not everyone is privileged enough to sit around quoting Gandhi at people in situations like the one women in Saudi are facing.
A few things that sound a lot like the militia people were:
“I am not conflicted about the oppressed using violent force to overthrow their oppressors,” “Self defense and provocation are valid uses of violence,” “Why can’t we organize our self defense so it actually works instead of making us martyrs?,” the TJ discussion about how sometimes burning down a post office (rather than voting) is the only way to get things accomplished, etc.
Again, I’m really not trying to be confrontational here (well, apparently I’m failing at that, but I just wanted to give a few examples of what sounded like the Tea Party, since you asked.
“Just because Tea Partiers believe they are freedom fighters doesn’t make it so.”
Yes. You’re absolutely right, and I agree 100%. But the fact remains that they DO believe they’re freedom fighters. However misguided their beliefs may be, they honestly think they’re oppressed, that Obama is a dictator bent on forcing his radical leftist dogma on the country at the expense of “real” Americans (with all the racism inherent in that belief), and that it’s not only acceptable, but courageous, to make a violent stand for their “rights.”
Maybe I’m just being oversensitive about the issue because of how downright terrifying they’re getting. Their terrorism is on the rise, and instead of recognizing it for what it is, they’re on the news and the internet (and, heck, my facebook newsfeed) going on about how gun control is just an attempt to disarm the people to keep them from resisting oppression and how threats against Obama’s life are a patriotic, even noble defense of liberty and the constitution. So yeah, I’m probably making a mountain out of a molehill here, but in the current political climate, I think it’s prudent to be extremely cautious about condoning any physical violence in the name of overthrowing oppressors.
This is a tough topic for me. I spent many years of my life in a pretty violent way; my family resorts to violence with little provocation, and getting hit by my parents was a regular feature in my home growing up. And fighting with my brother was just…nonstop and miserable. So it’s very easy for me to slip into a violent mindset, and I’ve spent the past 5 years or so working on stepping away from that mode of living.
And actually it’s worked out shockingly well, once I accepted that violence scares me and makes me feel sick, and now resorting to violence, or saying that it’s ok to resort to violence, makes me feel icky and worried and I don’t like it. But I also know that, to a certain extent, I agree with your sentiment, SarahMC.
I think for me the thing is that I’m ok with self-defense, and I’m ok with broadly defining self-defense. On the most immediate level, if someone attacks me, I’ll fight back until the danger is gone; on a wider scale, I’d say that a lot of oppressed groups (women in Saudi Arabia, for example) are essentially in a constant state of being-attacked, given their immediate social and political setting. So even if this woman wasn’t necessarily in immediate physical danger outside the normal physical constraints of having a vagina in Saudi Arabia, the general, average, and constant setting was enough to make her actions self-defense.
The other issue here is parameters–how does one define oppression, or a self-defense-worthy attack? It’s entirely logical, in a certain way, for the privileged group to see to the oppressed group’s gains (attempted gains) at social and political equality as an attack on them. I mean, with each step that women take toward liberation from male oppression, men lose control over women–so responding to that loss of control/privilege/power is basically responding in self defense. If someone steals my wallet (which gives me an amount of economic privilege, in that I have money in my wallet (ha! not. sigh.)) then they’re putting me in a position to defend myself and my wallet from theft–this is true even if the person stealing my wallet is significantly less economically privileged than I am. So if I say that self-defense is a valid use of violence, I have to more clearly define self-defense, because I don’t think that rich white dudes whose privileges are eroding have the same right to use violence to defend their position as women in Saudi Arabia have to chip away at their oppressors’ privilege.
I’m not sure if I’m making sense. But at any rate, the other big thing about violence is collateral damage–I think it’s one thing to directly attack the system, but how one defines the system can be difficult, not to mention the problems of a public attack that hurts those who are not part of the system–like trashcan bombs or something. But if one was going to utilize violence against an oppressive system as a measure of self-defense against untenable oppression, how does one actually define “the system” in practice? Punching a virtue cop who’s being everything shitty about the oppressor is one thing, and I agree that it’s a valid use of violence. But what about a more organized, less reactive form of violent self-defense? How does one determine whether the guy working at the Virtue Cop Headquarters is the asshole oppressor who needs to be removed from power, or a low-level employee who just needs money to pay for his mother’s back surgery (or something)?
I like the idea of articulating a clear feminist ethics of violence.
PS. I’m about to fall asleep: requite apologies for typos or minor incoherence. Or any mixed metaphors.
@Melissa – It seems like what you’re suggesting is that we shouldn’t have a discussion about whether or not violence can be a form of legitimate activism because if the teabaggers hear us, they will use it to justify themselves. I reject this idea for the following reason: Fundamentalists twist legitimate ideas into justifications for terrible actions. That is part of the nature of fundamentalism. There is no philosophical idea that is safe from being abused by fundamentalists.
With regards to the teabaggers specifically, I think it’s worth pointing out that my problem with them, personally, is with their actual message (and the lies they tell about their actual message). I do not like their tactics for getting across their message, nor do I approve of them. But, as Becky says, context matters. The tactics that are used by the teabaggers are, in my opinion, only a subsidiary problem of their actual beliefs, and I don’t consider it to be unproductive to talk about how those tactics might be used responsibly as part of the same conversation as criticizing their beliefs. I don’t think the same sort of thinking applies in the case of intimate partner violence, but then again I think that saying that a discussion of violence as political activism could be taken to be a justification of IPV is a stretch.
Full disclosure, I am a pacifist. But that does not mean that an immediate display of physical force is never justified. In this woman’s case, I think she had every moral right to respond with physical force to physical force (I am taking the official report of her partner collapsing for no reason as a fairly clear cover-up of the “morality cop” using violent and unnecessary force against him). She was in a situation where physical force had clearly been introduced. That gives her, I believe, the moral right to use force to defend herself. (I’d just say “the right” but she clearly didn’t have that right under her country’s law, which is all kinds of messed up).
I also believe, however, in allowing your opponent in any conflict to back down a level, and to repeatedly give them that opportunity. That’s what I think pacifism is- it’s never escalating a situation and always trying to defuse it, to bring it down to a reasonable level where both parties are capable of talking to each other.
I’m finding it difficult to make a coherent point here, sorry. I guess what I wanted to say is that I support this woman’s action in the situation she found herself in, fully, but I cannot ever understand an argument for meeting physical force with non-immediate physical force or an escalation of physical force. I’m not sure if people here are cool with that either; I’ve read the thread but there are a ton of semantics in the area of vilence and force that are always a bit of a bugger to untangle.
Also: ruddy time zones. I miss all the good discussions!
Eh, I don’t know. Obviously self-defense is necessary sometimes, but I also think that violence only leads to more violence.
In the little activism I do, I’ve met a lot of Palestinian peace activists who used to plan violent attacks against Israel and now believe non-violence is the answer to the conflict. I’ve also met ex-soldier Israelis who believe the same. (BTW many of the activists I meet are through an organization called Combatants for Peace.) They realize that non-violent activism does not meet sitting back and letting the oppressor do whatever he wants to you. It means fighting back in a way that doesn’t allow your oppressor to rationalize attacks against you–after all, YOU didn’t start it. YOU weren’t violent. At least in the case of my country (Israel, obvs), I’d say violence is NOT the answer, and while yes, it’s easy to quote Gandhi and tell people not to be violent, it’s amazing how effective non-violence can be.
Cimorene’s flexible self-defense position here was good for serious thought and a good laugh too – suddenly I could see my violent ex-husband’s point of view. I do believe we have the right to self defense, using whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the patriarchy has seen to it that women using violence are punished ever more severely than equally or more violent men. With men – it’s expected. With women – it’s “unnatural”. While we have a moral right to self defense, I would not want to check it out in real life after seeing what has happened to women who’ve successfully defended themselves against violent men. The entire weight of the legal system (I won’t call it justice) came crushing down on them.
I think that the normal parameters of how we define violence as moral or immoral continue to be useful — violence is acceptable, sometimes useful and even on occasion noble when it is used in self defence or when provoked. However, the violence used in those situations must also be proportional, and must keep in mind relative strength of each party and not abuse one’s position. Of course there is an element of subjectivity, and one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, but isn’t that always the case with ethical questions? Myself, I am not categorically against militias, and support the use of violence by some militias some of the time. I realize it’s an unpopular position but it’s mine. What I object to in the Tea Party is not their use of violence but their ideology.
I don’t think violence can ever be considered noble. I think part of the difference here is that America’s history is sort of defined by the media that we all grow up in as courageous dudes who took guns and shot dastardly dudes while shouting about freedom. In the UK, the second world war was, like, right here: there are places all over the country where you can see much newer houses in the middle of old terraces, and that’s because they got bombed. I was taught about the second world war as this thing that was shitty for everyone, not as a victory.
Aims can be noble- I cannot think of a single act of violence that can be witnessed by someone and called noble. Necessary, maybe. But never to be idealised.
I feel like this discussion is all over the place because everyone clearly has some form of strong opinion about violence in general. SarahMC’s original post was about violent self-defense being understandable in some situations, and we are pretty far afield from that topic. I do think everyone has made good points — some of which I had not previously considered.
So far, though, most of the discussion has been pretty academic, which (as a very early poster noted) is a privilege for those of us who don’t have to deal with oppression every day. I am wondering what everyone thinks would have been the best course of action in the particular situation SarahMC wrote about. Pacifists, in your view, what should the Saudi woman have done? As a practical matter, what is the answer in this narrow example?
Only in self-defence. Any other time, NO.
A bunch of people are saying “only in self-defense,” which, obviously? But “self-defense” can be defined more broadly than “when someone else is in the process of attacking you.”
I agree with Cimorene that “a lot of oppressed groups (women in Saudi Arabia, for example) are essentially in a constant state of being-attacked, given their immediate social and political setting.”
I didn’t say violence for shits and giggles is OK and I resent that people are attacking that straw-argument.
In this instance I think the Saudi woman in question had every right to use physical force as a means of defending herself, assuming the “cop” had struck her companion.
I think in the larger context, it’s very true that there are a lot of oppressed groups that are essentially being attacked by the societal and political system, but I don’t think that a physical response is appropriate; rather, a societal and political response is appropriate. This is all just me, though.
To clarify on the self-defense thing, I think it can only be claimed in response to an immediate, physical threat. That’s my understanding of pacifism; that there is never any reason to escalate a situation into the realms of physical violence.
When are otherwise intelligent people going to get it that oppression is what is creating the violence in the first place?! As a survivor of early-childhood incest [paternal 'grandfather' who'd abused others in the family both male & female - who had more MONEY than the rest of us & used it to CONTROL and BULLY]; a survivor of date-rate [necessitating repairative surgery of the same kind as 'Third World' women too often need: repair of a recto-vaginal fistula thanks to a psychotic anal-rapist]; and of battering and near-murder [he ran to get his gun, me & my son whom I'd had to protect, while myself being brutalized, by making myself into a 'human shield'] – I can tell you readers that socalled ‘nonviolence’ in the face of violence against women and children is in fact COWARDICE AND COMPLICITY, AIDING-AND-ABETTING, AND POTENTIALLY VICARIOUS VIOLENCE.
Stand up to violence against women and children – HELP TO FIGHT BACK!!!!!
Typo in my posting: “date-rate” of course = date rape.
Magpie_Seven said, “I don’t think that a physical response is appropriate; rather, a societal and political response is appropriate. This is all just me, though.”
A lot of people have made this sort of comment (M_S) just being the most recent, and I don’t think anyone, especially SarahMC, would disagree. I think the specific problem with our discussion here is that of course, society in the Middle East should change so women have basic human rights. OF COURSE. Now that we agree on that, though, what do we do now? That is the more challenging and more interesting question. It is unproductive to just sit around and agree about how right we all are.
It is completely unfair to characterize SarahMC’s original posting as saying, “Yay violence, it’s a free for all!” Just sitting quietly and taking it has not worked so far for Middle Eastern women — not for the last few centuries, anyway. I do not blame the woman in the story one bit. Everyone has her breaking point…I would bet even the pacifists posting here have one.
100% agree, ausgezeichnet.
Sometimes violence is the ONLY thing abusers can understand. But commenters may be reacting to the Jez culture when they qualify their responses of support. I’m pretty notorious for filterless expression and am frequently disemvowelled when I say someone should get fired (YES!) for being biased or an ass in the workplace. Or when I say bigots shouldn’t have children (!).
You know we are constantly reminded we have to be sweetness and light or we’ll be dealt with harshly. Bit of a dicotomy, no?
One very powerful reason King and Ghandi were successful is that those in power knew quite well what the alternative was. In India, freedom fighters were blowing up trains and rioting in the streets; in the US, white kids who could get away with it more easily were also demonstrating and rioting. It’s easier to be effective with non-violent techniques when you know that someone is going to make you look like the better alternative.
I don’t believe in seeking or provoking violence. But we libs act like it’s just words with the right, and it isn’t. They are willing to do what they say they want to do. They will forcefully hinder our access to abortion, voting, public assembly, free speech-you name it. They would be perfectly happy to throw us all in jail or revoke our citizenship. And our being too fastidious and pure to admit it doesn’t make it not true.
Our first resort should always be to use all the legal, peaceful means in our power to protect ourselves and our rights-absolutely. But be aware that the wing nuts know how reluctant we are to back up our words. The best thing we can do to protect the things we value is to let the right know that we are not just pious sentiment. No, we shouldn’t provoke violence. But we should damn well let everyone know that we’re not too good to fight if we must.
I would like to use this post to condone violence if the end justifies the means. forces of oppression are causing virtually all of the worlds violence either directly or indirectly. To violently overthrow these people and make a more peaceful world would indeed be noble. It may be possible to reshape the world after a violent revolution, in such a way that violence would be almost nonexistent. Anyone with a slim amount of knowledge of world history would have to admit that violent revolution is much more effective than nonviolent revolution. I guess I’m trying to say that violence is evil but it can be the only way that greater evils can be stopped.
I hope that the woman in Saudi Arabia doesn’t end up spending years in jail. But I have to wonder, what was she thinking? I mean, last I heard, she lives in a country where women aren’t permitted to drive! …where two single people, being perfectly heterosexual even, aren’t allowed to be alone together, hardly a place of lax social laws. What would possess her to hit an officer in such a country?
I’m not sure I understand things clearly. Are we getting the whole story? Her boyfriend must have had the shit kicked out of him.
As for the bigger question of violence to achieve liberation. It’s hard to wean off of violence as a tool, once it has worked. So, violence begets more violence… only non-violence can stop it.
What you’re looking for is called the Principle of Non- Agression. From Wikipedia: “It holds that “aggression”, which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. In contrast to pacifism, the non-aggression principle does not preclude defense.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
If this woman felt threatened (and, who are we kidding, when you’re powerless, you’re always threatened), it is morally legitimate for her to protect herself
Actually, Gandhi would probably agree with you:
“I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done had he been present when I was almost fatally
assaulted in 1908 [by an Indian extremist opposed to Gandhi's agreement with Smuts], whether he should have run away and seen me
killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defend me, I told him it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so-called Zulu Rebellion and [World War I]. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.”
M. K. Gandhi, Young India, August 11, 1920 from Fischer, Louis ed.,The Essential Gandhi, 1962. pp. 156-57.
Great quote danz and I totally agree that violence begets violence and nonviolence is the answer but i think that idea is a little oversimplified. I feel that oppression is at the root of virtually all violence and wealth disparity is at the root of oppression. Sure nonviolence is the answer but can you convince a person who is oppressed and angry about it that nonviolence is the answer? The sad part is that if I’m correct about violence being related to income disparity, we can expect our children to grow up in the most violent era of history.
[...] Violence is sometimes the answer (The Pursuit of Harpyness) “I don’t know if this woman’s actions will spark a rebellion or if it’s just an isolated incident I read about online. I do know not everyone is privileged enough to sit around quoting Gandhi at people in situations like the one women in Saudi are facing.” [...]
I’m one of those people who will never sit still for a beat down of any sort under color of “authority”. Cops have turned into thugs, and do the bidding of sadists and totalitarians instead of protecting and serving as we were once led to believe was their primary function.
When it gets right down to it, folks, YOU are responsible for how much sh*t you let someone dump all over you, cop or not.
I’ve seen enough, personally – it’s all over the internet thanks to citizen journalism – and I WILL protect myself from these b*stards. No doubt, no question, no hesitation any more.