Gender and Violence and Blame
POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 20:14
VIEWED: 35151
PAGE 23 of 31
Sometimes with the police it's more they just want you to stop complaining and go away, so they charge you with something out of spite, sometimes they're looking for a scapegoat for a crime, sometimes it's just malice.
Oh, and also:
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Because yon criminal is so flummoxed at this, so damn far behind the mental curve, they just lock up for seconds, in rare cases even minutes, during which you can act freely against them.
BECAUSE THEY DEPEND SO UTTERLY ON THE LACK OF RESISTANCE.
Yep, you especially see this with bullies. Although most everyone in Salt Lake City also does this because they are just so unchallenging. They're seriously laughable.
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TONY- Funny thing is, I never said that the same programming couldn't be produced and consumed via internet, so basically you're upset because you want your product delivered via cable? Is that the "freedom" that you're insisting on? Cable (and broadcast) media?
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FREM: I got as far as
Quote:and my reading came to a screeching halt. The vilification of self defense has been going on since governments were founded. There was a reason why weaponless fighting was developed in China. In Mayan cultures, one was expected to meekly give up one's child for sacrifice. During feudal Europe, weapons were restricted to knights; there was the droit de seigneur and other abuses which the peasants were to meekly comply with. There were exclusive warrior classes in many societies, restricted to the well-trained and fully propagandized.
The vilification of self-defense is quite possibly the most dire setback of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, in that as a natural consequence it creates uncountable other ills.
I think you're harkening back to a time and place that either never existed, or only existed very briefly in rare moments in history, so your post (this far) is based on a false premise.
Back to reading.
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Quote:Going back through history (until you get to matriarchy, of which there are no records) the higher the pyramid of power the more authoritarian the family, especially the male. Even paleoanthropology of Egyptian bones (showing systematic abuse of women) bears this out.
This starts in the family, parents, especially authoritarian and/or abusive ones, do NOT want their child defending themselves, cause if they stand up to others, that runs the risk of sooner or later them standing up to YOU.
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Well, um, perhaps not so much "false" as more far reaching than this conversation would indicate. One of Frem's favourite quotes is that one from the His Dark Materials series about how there's always been people out to oppress humanity.
Just because there's been worse acceptance of self-defense in other cultures doesn't mean there hasn't been a serious set back in ours.
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Okay, made it through the entire post. There are parts I agree with strongly
Quote:Let's start with that as a point of agreement. When you're lying in bed or taking the bus or stalled in traffic or just sitting and thinking, nobody can tell what's going on in your head, which is why thought-shackles are so important to TPTB. Endlessly watching TV, being on FB with friends, playing videogames... well, it's kinda hard to think when it's so noisy in there!
The first person you are ever taught to lie to, is yourself.
A while back, I said that violent media isn't about catharsis, it's about addiction. But I guess I could say the same for ALL media... nothing removes you from your real life, your real feelings, your real options, your real activities like your virtual life. Or booze, or other drugs.... But that's another story.
In any case, many people unconsciously limit their thoughts; certain thoughts would NEVER pop into their heads because it goes against the stories that they have been told their entire lives, whether those stories are about religion or economics or justice or human nature or "freedom" or self-defense.
OTOH, your post is focused on only one aspect of societal control, and that is violence: either imposing injustice or resisting it. However, there are many other forms of societal control... the stories we tell ourselves, the conveniences that are granted to us which make us dependent, the little bits of power we are handed. I think that your focus on individual self defense is biased by your personal history, and while it is important it not the full story, and in some instances may get in the way of recognizing a potentially better solution. There are societies today in which violence just doesn't occur: the matriarchies of today. What are they doing differently? Whatever it is, it's not self-defense.
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Video games are often addictive... but I'm kind of uncomfortable putting simple escapism on the same level as propaganda sources and control measures such as facebook or television. Escapism is what people also get out of books. I guess you can argue that all art can be used as opiates of the masses, bread and circuses like tactics, but I don't really want a world devoid of art.
I think it's important to separate from art what is actually dangerous. And what is actually dangerous is not necessarily the art. Good art makes people think instead of misleading or repressing thought. What's really dangerous is the consumerism. It's the gotta buy, gotta keep myself in debt, gotta work a job and be a wage slave to support that habit, gotta pay attention to the frivolous celebrity bullshit or competitive day to day drama with antagonistic friends instead of being involved with the community and cooperating. And it's in that buzz of gotta have that propaganda is introduced in the advertisements, that there's vested interest in introducing propaganda into the stories.
The art is innocent. The art is that little twelve year old on the street, trying to get her message across even with the restrictions imposed on her. It's her pimps that are the problem, they make her say stuff.
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Quote:Well, when you get to posting them, put them in big bold letters. I would hate to miss them.
I've got some ideas, but I'll leave them for now.
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BYTE- You're right. Art is important, but it's been perverted by the need to sell products. (BTW- the whole corporate drive to reducing your online privacy is to SELL YOU STUFF. That's why google/FB etc track your every goddamn online move. The government doesn't mind, of course, because it has it's own agenda for tracking you.) Consumerism is a huge problem. I heard a speech by a long-ago black comedian and activist... someone you'd never think of whose name escapes me right now, and he said something funny (of course). He said he was as careful of the media he watched as the food that he put into his body (He was a vegetarian IIRC). He never watched TV or listened to the radio when he was tired or distracted because he felt it deserved his full alertness, and he avoided commercials whenever possible. And despite all that, on his way back to LA from a stint Vegas, driving alone on I15 in the dead of night with nothing to distract him, the first thing that popped into his head was You deserve a break today, so get up and get away to MacDonalds!
ETA: Dick Gregory. I had to look it up.
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Consumerism is a big problem.
Yeah. There wouldn't be effort to subvert art for ulterior motives if there weren't consumerism, which props up the power structures.
And that's the other thing, the subversion of art. I think that might be what offends you, as we get down to the meats here. Art is great, tells stories, passes down information and ideas, causes humanity to lift it's eyes to the skies and wonder. The problem is when they take those stories and twist them to fit an agenda, especially one that supports the establishment and supports consumerism.
Same thing with sex and violence in a story, sex and violence can actually be an important part of a story, necessary for the plot, but there's ways to have sex and violence in a story that doesn't glorify them, doesn't titilate and turn off the mind and stunt the person. You don't have to "sex up" a story to sell it if it's good in the first place. I think maybe that's what offends you, and I'd be the first to say, I think that offends everybody. We know what a story needs and what it doesn't, and unnecessary sex and violence in a story for most people is as unwelcome as an unnecessary lesson on horticulture.
Like I said before, I think it's about finding what is actually the problem before you can tailor a solution - and the answer, for me at least, is usually society. People consume tasteless explosions of unnecessary depictions of sex and violence, then maybe it's up to us to counter that with good taste depictions of both, or at least choose to support that. Give the people a better alternative and a stage for that alternative to speak from, and I think gradually people will start to chose that.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
OTOH, your post is focused on only one aspect of societal control, and that is violence: either imposing injustice or resisting it. However, there are many other forms of societal control... the stories we tell ourselves, the conveniences that are granted to us which make us dependent, the little bits of power we are handed. I think that your focus on individual self defense is biased by your personal history, and while it is important it not the full story, and in some instances may get in the way of recognizing a potentially better solution. There are societies today in which violence just doesn't occur: the matriarchies of today. What are they doing differently? Whatever it is, it's not self-defense.
In a way, it is - by putting themselves at the top of the power structure and then NOT abusing it.
If you took the message that self-defense = violence from that post, you seriously misread it, cause I rather explicitly pointed out this isn't the case, that it encompasses a vast range of things.
Nor am I offering it as sole cause or solution, it's a facet, but one of many - as you say economics are another form of control, as is popular consciousness (which does tie in), and control of media/message.
I just wanted to show that facet, in detail, from a perspective folks hadn't really thought about due to the psychological blind spots you describe, which I admittedly have a habit of exploiting myself, sure.
Media and message is another facet, and one part of that which sets my teeth on edge is how popular consciousness stories always seem to point out ruthless sociopathy as strength, while holding up altruism as naive or weak, I could prolly sit here and throw twenty examples right off the top of my head - but those messages only work of folks pre-conditioned to accept them, which is why I consider a strong sense of self, personhood, and critical thinking dire important to bring to our children as soon as they can possibly adapt them - which is, itself, a form of self-defense.
-Frem
PS - While I have no explicit beef with the notion of a matriarchal society, it does concern me that once again that seems a method of changing which hand holds the leash, rather than cutting it entire, and thus as an Anarchist I must reject it as a solution.
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