Against Violence

AGAINST VIOLENCE

(inspired by my conference at the art exposition “Contraviolencias”, sponsored by Sa Nostra in Palma de Mallorca)

28 October 2011

Violence against women is a fashionable topic.  There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that it exists, that it spreads deeply and widely in our world, and that something needs to be done about it.  Unfortunately, other than eloquent lip service or dramatic artistic expression that often feeds the insatiable appetite for imbalanced sensationalism, the information that circulates about it, although useful to draw attention, revolves exclusively around its manifestation and effects.  We do not explore its innermost roots, the causes that stem from the inner world of women and men.

Supported by TV series and films, the public gorges on storylines that defend and perpetuate aggressive, psychotic masculine versions of life. Truth is that identity is constructed and imposed by the masculine mind, but it is women who sponsor, buy, and incorporate it.  As long as we, as women, continue to please the market and use its own male tactics to combat injustice and seek authenticity, we are doomed to failure.  Unless we discover, use, defend and implement our energy, our vision, our principles and our qualities.

We know how violence manifests and have mounted political, artistic, and social campaigns to expose it and point fingers.  We have revealed some of the subjective world of abused women.  But, as far as consciousness is concerned, there is overwhelming silence, even bafflement, regarding women’s true inner world and her potential. Isis remains heavily veiled and apparently nobody dares approach her. Nothing can shift until the fundamental beliefs that perpetuate the dynamics of our world are addressed.  In other words, until we pass through the shocking revelation of what we are and this is really all about.  For the first time in history the underbelly of gender dynamics is challenging us to claim it.

The problem is lack of reality and interest.  Concerning the immediate personal world, if it doesn’t appear to endanger the comfortable status quo, then it is not really important.  Many women of the upper and middle-upper classes of society who intellectually defend the rights of women, do not seem to notice how their absence of deeper involvement contributes to the continued debasement of women, and by extension men.  In their homes, in their families, in their intimate relationship with their husbands everything is fine. Most will point out to the husband’s submissiveness and to their own professional strengths.  To them it is irrelevant, and that seems to be enough. A problem is not a problem unless it concerns them directly. The thought of setting an example, deeply examining themselves and how they form part of a global consciousness, engaging themselves to help others, simply doesn’t arise.

The majority of middle-class women find themselves in limbo, between the determined insistence to realize the dreams programmed into them from childhood, and the simultaneous influence of the ideas planted by the feminist movement from the ‘70’s to present.  It is always the working-class that physically and emotionally bears the greater burden, destined to an oppressive, silent acceptance of the masculine world.

We understand and we know of the existence of gender abuse.  We see it and we may even feel moments of it.  What we don’t experience, and what we do not wish to recognize in ourselves, we ignore.  The little gestures, the unsaid things, the implied condemnations, humiliations, the expectations imposed upon women constantly, and the belittling beliefs about our gender… these do not seem to matter, although it is precisely these little things that precede outbursts of violence and abuse.

A modern woman has no genuine models to inspire and guide her.  She is no longer what she was or what she was supposed to be; she is not yet what she thinks she is, or ought to be. She appears one way, but is inwardly a mass of uncertainties and feelings as yet undefined.  She is a constant possibility, and this in a world of male definition means failure, unavowed, unacknowledged, covered up.

As ever, women’s only recourses are acceptance or denial.  She lacks the power of action, unless she acts like men themselves.  It is no surprise then that she will revert to her brand of anger and rebelliousness, internecine and oblique, soiling her inherent sense of embracing love with scorching hate.  Or, perhaps she chooses to persist in a simulacrum of conditions; suffering loudly or silently makes no difference.  Too many educated women today convince themselves they have arrived, intellectually rejoicing in the role of dominatrix without feeling, all the while drying up inside.

A woman hardly notices just how great and noble is the strength required of her in unrelenting avoidance and refusal to surrender.  It is equally foreign to her, how much we instinctively yearn to offer the qualities that only we may bring – intellect and feminine sensitivity combined.  That the world desperately needs it is even less evident.

Violence against women is not only physical.  It is important that we acknowledge that the slow, insidious poison from the emotional and mental kinds of violence as culpability induced by indoctrination is as lethal if not more difficult to eradicate than the butchery, exploitation and victimization of the obvious kind.

Violence heightens women’s sensitive mechanisms to a degree that is difficult to understand by men who posses a different structure.  Pain as sadness or madness, as resistance or manipulation; survival as denial, indifference, justification, or inertia… weaken the moral structure of humanity.

The secret truth of a continuously contracted body, mind and feeling network has woman tensed for torture as for sexual fulfilment.  She cannot possibly be herself or offer what she has to offer under the current scheme. The hungry, distant regard of the lioness, and in a woman her longing to be freed from hatred and social structures defines an all-too-fruitless rebellion against the ultimate image of social power, God as masculine authority.

Nobody seems to be pointing us to the real causes behind the dynamics of gender violence or to any real solution.  Beyond descriptions that deal with effects lies a shameful acceptance, reworded, remodelled, guilt-provoking and inducing further fear and anger.  We need to learn to think differently.  We need the female mind and spirit.

We cannot blame stereotypical romantic relationships that ultimately mark our own destruction, nor can we ridicule the fascination with the excitement of being in love.  We are built for danger, darkness and unknowingness.  We need to go deeper into the dynamics of perception: what makes a woman a woman and different from a man.  In our differences lie both the causes and the effects of violence, and the essence of what will lift the world.

Violence is the face of fear, supported by societal superficiality and masculinisation.  To consent to such a state requires belief, one that we, both women and men, grant all too easily.

We can’t wait for change, nor can we try to impose it from the outside by condemnation, force, or political action alone. It must be accompanied by the understanding of inner force, in this case the structural gender contrasts that shape the collective mind. For change to be real it has to embrace healthy and authentic attitudes towards self that come with the acknowledgement of unique perception and inner power.  Because awakening invariably leads to action and not the other way around.