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