This isn't violence

In one workshop a participant suggested I add the "this isn't violence" discourse. She felt that attempts to take up the issue in the labour movement were often blocked with the argument that "this isn't violence," so stop making a fuss. In a later conversation she spoke more about her sense of the extent of violence in organizational life in most workplaces that leaves workers so steeped in a culture of violence that it can simply seem "normal" - just the way it is. While enduring violence themselves it may also be difficult for anyone to take on addressing violence issues for others as there may be a tendency to feel "if I can put up with it why can't you."

This sense of "normalcy" reminded me of having heard many times from literacy workers a sense of "this is just the way it is," suggesting that violence had to be accepted. In many workshops where I introduced issues of violence I was told there was little literacy workers could do, because the people they were working with were of a different ethnicity and didn't perceive violence in the experiences the workers identified as violent. Some told me that a particular ethnic group accepted more violence against women than other groups. I have noticed that talk about violence can easily slide into talk about "them" as if "they" are not also us. It seems so much easier to talk about the problems "they" have rather than our own - whether the "they" refers to learners or another class or culture. I've tended to find it useful to name that most cultures seem to have accepted some aspect of violence against women and children, but at the same time activists in each culture struggle to make change. I have suggested that literacy workers find activists from within the religious, cultural or ethnic group and invite them into the classroom to talk about the struggle they are engaged in and open up the possibility of changing conceptions. Often violence is excused with the explanation that the person is only violent when he is drunk and so is not responsible, perhaps "it doesn't count." Kate Nonesuch suggested:

Working with learners in Western Canada, I too find alcohol often involved when men beat up women. However, I think they know that if they drink, they may beat their partner, and they get drunk anyway--or maybe they get drunk so that they will be able to beat her up and then have an excuse for doing it.