Can the high level of violence in patriarchal cultures be attributed to people's chronic, if largely unconscious, rage over the denial of their freedom and pleasure? To what extent is sanctioned or officially condoned violence — from war and capital punishment to lynching, wife-beating and the rape of "bad" women to harsh penalties for "immoral" activities like drug-taking and nonmarital sex to the religious and ideological persecution of totalitarian states — in effect a socially approved outlet for expressing that rage, as well as a way of relieving guilt by projecting one's own unacceptable desires onto scapegoats?
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"The Mass Psychology of Terrorism" from Implicating Empire, edited by Stanley Aronowitz, Heather Gautney and Clyde W. Barrow (2003)Ellen Willis
I understand when men complain about women giving mixed messages, because women have given me a lot of mixed messages. I understand the rage that this can cause. ... A woman I'm talking with at some event says, "Let's leave here and go to this bar," which is a lesbian bar. We go to the bar and we're talking and then she says, "Let's go have coffee," and we go to this coffee shop and end up, at three in the morning, half a block from her apartment. Finally, she says, "All right, well, goodnight." She's ready to go home alone and I look at her, like, "What do you mean? Aren't we going to go back to your apartment?" "No." "What?" And she says, "Do you think I was leading you on?" Un-f**king-believable. I can't tell you the rage. I am, at that point, looking at her and.... All I can say is, if I had been an 18-year-old street kid instead of a 45-year-old woman, I would have stabbed her. I was completely humiliated and furious. If I had been a guy with a hard-on, I would have hit her.
Camille Paglia
The fact is we are all, no matter where we live, surrounded constantly by stories, whether they are literal, oral or visual...the benign story I'm really growing tired of is the "humorous" story of the blonde woman who is either injured or humiliated all in order to sell beer. Not funny. I am tired of these stories. I am angered by these stories. There are other stories far more wondrous — stories of women claiming and reclaiming power, stories of rage and resistance and indefatigable courage, and stories of women and some men — reaching across great divides and into the most treacherous places on Earth where turmoil reigns and violence against women is unchecked, taking the hands of those women, helping to lift them up and leading them toward safety and sanctuary and self-determination.
Jennifer Beals
The adversities that we have had to face together have taught all of us involved in the struggle to build a truly democratic political system in Burma that there are no gender barriers that cannot be overcome. The relationship between men and women should, and can be, characterized not by patronizing behavior or exploitation, but by METTA (that is to say loving kindness), partnership and trust. We need mutual respect and understanding between men and women, instead of patriarchal domination and degradation, which are expressions of violence and engender counter-violence. We can learn from each other and help one another to moderate the "gender weaknesses" imposed upon us by traditional or biological factors.
Aung San Suu Kyi
To imply by the word "terrorism" that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of "terrorists" is misleading. The "legitimate" warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents. The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in "terrorism," and the willingness to do so, as in "war," is not a source of comfort.
Wendell Berry
"Does my hon. Friend agree that when millions of parents and others in Britain are wrestling with the problems of drug abuse among young people, and when the Government are trying to do their level best to tackle those problems, it is a sad state of affairs that the Tory Opposition receive ?1 million a year from one of the biggest drug runners in the west?" [Members of the House: "Oh."] Is it not high time that the Leader of the Opposition had the guts to get rid of him?"
Dennis Skinner
Willis, Ellen
Willis, Nathaniel Parker
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