Women Beaters.

I apologize from the start, for my niece, Kat, who committed suicide recently, will pop up a lot in these posts from now on. Gender and Conflict itself makes me think of her, so I can't help but include her in my discussions of readings. Just understand it's helping me cope with the trauma. 

So, as you may have noticed from previous blog posts, the social/patriarchal construction of violence stating that men inflict many different forms of violence against women is an important subject to me. Hooks does a great job with explaining the roots to this manmade creation (no pun intended). She makes it simple for anyone to comprehend what the core beliefs are by stating, "The social hierarchy in white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy is one in which theoretically men are the powerful, women the powerless; adults the powerful, children the powerless; white people the powerful, black people and other nonwhite peoples the powerless." She then uses this backbone to branch out into her own (and many others') frameworks/theories in a sensible manner that definitely has great capability to get the reader agreeing with her. For example, "battery is caused by the belief permeating this culture that hierarchical rule and coercive authority are natural, then all our relationships tend to be based on power and domination, and thus all forms of battery are linked."

She also goes a lot into what I like to refer to as the "capitalist machine" by hinting about it throughout the article, "The entry of women into the work force, which also serves the interests of capitalism..." yadda yadda. I personally like her ideas. They make the extreme liberal come out of me.

And then she goes into the part that hits home for me: the parental enforcement of normalizing violence to children at a young age. "By saying things like 'I’m only doing this because I love you' while they are using physical abuse to control children, parents are not only equating violence with love, they are also offering a notion of love synonymous with passive acceptance, the absence of explanation and discussions." This definitely happened to me and Kat, only on a greater scale. I'm going to focus more on Kat because she's the one on my mind more than anything else. Not only did her parents use this tactic for correcting silly wrongdoings Kat has done as a child, but it was also done to try to stop Kat from wearing masculine clothes. Of course they failed...but this is one reason she's not here anymore. It breaks my heart just typing that. The wound is still open. More about the tactics Kat's parents used in the next post.

In all, Hooks is someone in which I agree wholeheartedly with. To sum it all up, "As women we must assume responsibility for the role women play in condoning violence."