the continuously fractured life

A Lack of Silence Elsewhere: Some Thoughts on Violence

I’ve been a lax blogger the past few months but it’s not for lack of things to write about – it’s more because the sheer amount of content in my brain hasn’t worked its way out onto paper very well. I’ve been taking a class on gender and war this quarter and I think sometimes sitting and being a witness to reports of violence might be just as important as writing about them. Maybe spending a long time considering the real consequence of rape or genocide on a person and/or their community and letting that inform my life is a form of activism. So, I’ve been sitting and thinking and going over a million learned incidents in my head. I’m trying to see their repercussions in the world. I’m trying to hear their manifestations at the bus stop and on the news and in my own language. I sit at my kitchen table and think, “Is the silence in my apartment available because there is a lack of silence, elsewhere?” 

 

So, as I slowly work these ideas out in my head, here are some thoughts on gender and violence, as of today.  If they seem disjointed but connected, it’s because topics of violence are often disjointed but connected.

 

I’m not sure how we end widespread violence. But I think the answer lies somewhere within creative, active nonviolence (VCNV, for example) and reserving seats at the proverbial table for people most afflicted by violence, thereby affirming that they are resisters and not just victims. I think the answer is somewhere between community conferencing and street-level conflict resolution, and gender, class, and race-informed government policy. But, I wonder – how do we get there? Where is the money to communally address class, race, and gender issues? Do we need funding for that? Community and household issues are one thing but, whom within the government brings up this dynamic? Are funding and creativity stunted in a system that devalues the power of agency? Further – is it devalued because those things are considered feminine, and we do not consider femininity powerful? Is it tied up in the same old ways of empowerment? Fund the same programs. Open the same schools. Give the same financial handouts to the same overworked, underfunded social services, so they can turn around and treat poverty with the same structure?

 

Is that a form of violence?

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about the popular call of giving voices to the voiceless. Like I might own someone else’s voice that I then so generously bestow upon them. This idea dominates NGOs and women’s empowerment groups all around the world. This one group of people will lend a hand and enable other people to speak. Standing up for someone is great – but why not ask why the “voiceless” aren’t listened to unless a gatekeeper stands up for them? 

 

Can good intentions be a form of violence?

 

When do we start talking about violence? Popular in pacifist, activist circles is the idea that public and private violence is interconnected. If untold numbers of children witness family violence every day, but it goes unreported and unaddressed, how can we ever expect a conflict-free nation? I can only speak from my specific American perspective so, from that place, I wholeheartedly believe that gender-based violence will not be curbed until we start introducing the topic at the elementary school level. When we talk about sex education, is it also not appropriate to talk about sex and gender-based violence? Is that happening in schools? I never remember being taught about rape. But I hear about new sexual assaults almost every day. I see posted warnings about it outside the library. Violence will shift around but largely remain the same until we let it seep into our everyday conversations and make room for it to be taken seriously.

 

Is not talking about violence a form of violence?

 

For example, I’m connected to several anti-trafficking organizations that are doing so much good work in Chicago. Still, I have trouble believing global, national, or local sex trafficking will ever be curbed until poverty is curbed. Or until policies like the Violence Against Women Act are taken seriously, passed, and instituted within communities. Currently, instead of unanimously taking violence against women seriously, we argue about its definition. Further again, I don’t think violence will decrease until whitewashed, heteronormative, societal-cultural norms are seen as the system that forwards such violence and keeps power-laden divisions between people very real and much concealed. 

 

Let me explain what I mean.

 

I get three responses when I tell people I’m getting a degree in Gender Studies. Some people think it’s great, some people immediately start asking/giving me sex advice (because what else is gender good for?), and the other third look at me like that’s not anything to study at all. Last week I read an article over at The Good Men Project about the gendering of the sex industry and how it tends to perpetuate the problems we talk about, when we talk about the sex industry (trafficking, prostitution). It argues, in part that the myth that the prostitution industry only victimizes women is literally continuing said victimization. That, and male prostitutes are completely ignored.

 

Is that a form of violence?

 

There is one organization in Chicago (and only two in the entire nation that I’ve heard about) working specifically with men in prostitution. There are scads of organizations working with women (I am not at all saying this is negative). Not publically or privately allowing that men and boys choose prostitution because of poverty is because we’ve gendered both trafficking and prostitution. Those things happen to women, right? Oh, and women don’t buy sex, that’s something men do (The article stated 11% of girls and 40% of boys in the study were bought by women). Women aren’t violent – violence just happens to them (Intimate partner violence between lesbians is basically denied in the contested version of VAMA. Then there’s the issue of women who are violent toward men). But that’s both incorrect and detrimental to peace, healing, and an end to trafficking systems. In fact, our gendered understanding of who buys who and who sells what and why is incomplete and the little funding that goes to alleviating the problems barely considers these possibilities.

 

Is that a form of violence?

 

A few months ago I heard someone suggest that we’re not actually doing work if we’re not considering complexity. She suggested it’s a myth that simplifying an issue makes it manageable. Women do this, men do this. This is who speaks. This is who needs protection. Have we made violence manageable? Theorist Michel Foucault wrote, “Invisibility is a guarantee of order.” If we don’t talk about the overwhelming complexities, they don’t exist. Children don’t witness real cruelty, governmental programs seeking to do good aren’t complicit in violence, and men and boys don’t prostitute (or they’re not victims, because that would make them too much like women). Except all these things happen.

 

Is that a form of violence? Is the silence here because there is a lack of silence, elsewhere?

 

Sometimes when I am disenfranchised by the church, I just listen to what NT Wright has to say.

Your Very Own Gender Studies Degree: Dolores Mission Peace Walks

But first, how can I get my Very Own Gender Studies Degree?

Dolores Mission, a Jesuit Catholic Parish in East LA was established in 1980 to serve a neighborhood hindered by poverty and the effects of active gangs within the two-square-mile parish. In the early 1990s, a group of women in the parish met in search of a solution to the issue of gang violence in the neighborhood citing that gang-related killings and injuries were an almost daily occurrence.

One night, after a long discussion, seventy women (and a few men), began walking the streets, from one gang turf to the next, throughout theneighborhood. They met with gang members and offered them food and a listening ear. Throughout the night, neighborhood conflicts were directly interrupted.

From that night forward, the members of the newly formed Comite Pro Paz En El Barrio (Committee for Peace in the Neighborhood) walked throughout the neighborhood and within a week there was a remarkable drop in gang-related violence due to the nonviolent intervention. They had challenged the traditional, circular script of violence and retaliation and created, for a time, a new and more creative movement. By entering into danger, the group created a transitory space for peace where all parties witnessed each other as human. The gang-members were able to see, many for the first time that other members of the community were interested in them. At the same time, the women were able to address and confront their fear and anger and see the human face of gang members.

The women listened to the pain of the gang-members about the lack of jobs and police brutality, conversations which led them to develop a tortilla factory, bakery, and child-care center, creating jobs and giving people in the neighborhood opportunities to acquire job skills and conflict resolution techniques as people from different gangs worked together. Eventually, the women opened a school and moved from being the eyes and ears of the police to being trained to monitor and report abusive police behavior. This redefined the relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and the neighborhood.

Poverty, racism, and violence still exist in East LA, however, the peace walks served as a trigger point and a huge step toward creating a restorative environment.

 —

Information from:

http://www.dolores-mission.org/parish.php

http://www.thirdside.org/stories_01.cfm

Various class notes.

 

Things to Think About

1. What does this say about “bad neighborhoods”?

2. What does this say about women in those neighborhoods?

3. How does the role of confronting our own fear play into such situations?

"My love for East Garfield Park has grown the more I have come to know the people here. Today I saw Ed from Breakthrough who had not been around since the first few months I was here. I was smiling from ear to ear as he grabbed my hand and pulled me in for a man-hug. I cannot describe the joy it was to see him and find out that the man who came out of prison with nothing now had a job, a place of his own, a church home, and had re-connected with his children and the rest of his family. God is so good, and I love when I get to see him working his goodness in people’s lives. I pray that you too are loving your way through the struggle by seeking God in the place you are and the people you are with. As different as our world’s may look (especially this year), may we walk together with the purpose of loving God and people wherever He has us."

—

Carter Sapp, Mission Year Chicago, Team EGP 2010-2011  (via talithakum)

Sometimes I doubt the importance and work of year-long projects (even though I was part of one) in light of the big picture. Is a year of humanitarian work and community development really that much longer than two-weeks? Is moving into an under-resourced community for good really the only way solidarity is accomplished? Maybe. Probably. But, I think the small picture should get a say too. I think I need a constant reminder that short-term solidarity is just as important to the people I met and still know in East Garfield.

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If you’re interested in community development, racial reconciliation, the search for truth and justice, and how young people in the city of Chicago are intentionally living out their beliefs, check us out on April 8th. All proceeds go directly to sustainable work being done with reputable organizations in Chicago’s inner city neighborhoods.

Plus, free desserts.