Violence as a Tool of Oppression

What is violence? Violence is generally a word used to describe harmful acts of aggression. However did you once sit and think about a more expanded definition of the word 'violence'? Violence can also be used to describe any systems that maintains oppression or subordinate status of groups of people. A subordinate status may not be physically harmful however it is a type of harm or damage that may sometimes even outweigh any form of physical aggression (i.e. poverty - the act of the systems maintaining poverty and subordinate class structures could be seen as acts of violence). Maria Barile writes a fantastic article about how violence is experienced mostly focusing on women with disabilities, and due to social hierarchy their experiences have become near invisible. She makes a point to say that there are 3 ways that violence in society is applied to women with disabilities: 

   1) "Portraying them as helpless victims, which only encourages aggressors to take advantage of them without fear of consequences..."

   2) "Justifying violent treatment for medical purposes..." and 

   3) "Portraying people with disabilities as evil and deserving punishment."*

Maria also makes a point to say that The Dis-Abled Women Network (DAWN) - one of the first Canadian organizations to  "bring forth concerns expressed by the grassroot members of the organization"* - surveyed a total of 245 women with disabilities and found that 40% of them had been abused and 12% had been raped. Now I know I'm sitting here wondering who would abuse and/or rape a woman with disabilities? Well surprisingly, the main abusers were primarily spouses and ex-spouses taking up 37% and not to far behind that were strangers at 28%. Even more surprising, 15% of the abusers were their own parents. Shocking isn't it? Not only that, but the resources that are available for abused non-disabled women are not available for those women who are disabled and have been abused. Some feminist believe that women with disabilities are "powerless" and should not be included in the feminist movements. This is basically excluding a lot of women who also have been oppressed and discriminated against...does this make sense? NO. As Maria states "

Feminism needs to acknowledge the presence and issues of women with disabilities, as it is attempting to do with woman of colour, lesbians, and women from other ethnic backgrounds." *

*All quotes were taken from the article Individual-Systemic Violence: Disabled Women’s Standpoint written by Maria Barile and can be found at http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/DisabledWomenStandpoint.pdf

Turtle Island and the Colonization of First Nations Peoples

- Colonization: A political, economical, ideological, environmental and physical actions to subjugate and exploit Indigenous people, land and resources.

   * Formal and informal

   * Colonizers engage in this process for social, political and financial power

   * Results: loss identity, people/communities, lands and resources

   * Colonization legacy leads to violence, dysfunction, alcohol and drug use

   * Not just a historical narrative – current and ongoing through policy

 

- Turtle Island is the original name for North America and comes from a common indigenous creation story which can be seen in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTln59YZj8 

   * This video was commissioned for the 2008 First Nations Folklorama Pavilion, however it does only tell one version of the aboriginal story of creation

- The term "First Nations" is a Canadian reference and is not considered a homogeneous group as there happens to be 133 Nations in Canada

   * First Nations were considered as wards of the state

   * Reserves were federally owned (therefore they had to pay the state for the land because they did not own it)

- In 1632 was when the first Residential school opened in Canada

   * This video is a summary of what residential schools were and how they were run http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIKPE_urY8A

   * Many traditions  were lost upon entering Residential Schools

Residential School

* all images retrieved from Google Images

Matrix of Domination

Patricia Hill Collins if often associated with the idea of the “Matrix of Domination” – basically a triangle of oppression. 

 

Here she talks about three major systems: Colonialism, Capitalism and Patriarchy. Colonialism is one group or race of people ruling over another and replacing indigenous religion/social practices/government with their own. Capitalism is the idea that everything (resources – including people’s labour) on the planet can be owned and sold for individual profit. And finally, Patriarchy is a term used to describe “ruled by the father”. All three of these rely on each other and therefore you cannot just “take one out”. The matrix is the idea of a place where things intersect. Oppression comes from the combination of systems with institutions. For example, the table shows the possible outcomes of combining various institutions with two or three of the systems:

As you can see, most forms of oppression are caused by two or more of these systems in combination with the various institutions that we have. In order to eliminate oppression we need to either transform or reform society's institutions.