Patterns [Content Warning: misogyny, white supremacism, CSA, transhate]

I have just watched the film “She  Said”, and have now started reading the  book. 

Some years ago, I watched the film “Spotlight”, about CSA, and then read the book. 

Starting from my teen years, I gradually became aware of racism, and the impact it has had and continues to have - in part through indirect experience/encounters. 

My life experience also included personal experience of being abused, and other people’s descriptions of being abused.

So ...

a film and a book about patterns of extreme sexist abuse (misogyny) - systemic sexism, complete with cover ups and protection of abusers;

a film and a book about patterns of CSA - systemic CSA, complete with cover ups and protection of abusers;

reading and life experience about white supremacist abuse - systemic white supremacism, endemic and thus often without concerns about covering that evil up, but also with a blindness to the systemic aspects shown in patterns of behaviour;

and now patterns of trans hate that have become severe enough to meet the criteria of genocide.

Patterns. 

The obvious questions are:

• can we break the pattern of abuse of power followed by misuse of power to cover up the abuse? 
• can we deal with the problems of misogyny, CSA, white supremacism, transhate and other bigotries that often manifest as abuse of power in the first place - and the underlying causes of those patterns of bigotry?

There are many other forms of abuse I haven’t mentioned (e.g., disability/ableism, neurodivergence - state  capture is a form of [political] abuse of power), but they all have the double problem of systemic abuse revealed by patterns of behaviour, and too frequent sabotage after discovery by misdirection into piecemeal responses to the basic problem. 

One of my next books to read will be “The Myth of Normal”, which I will do so aware of the work done to date on intergenerational trauma, military PTSD (including people I care about), and my personal experience with complex trauma. 

From a sample of that book: 

“If we could begin to see much illness itself not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related. The ailing bodies and minds among us would no longer be regarded as expressions of individual pathology but as living alarms directing our attention toward where our society has gone askew”
— The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté, Daniel Maté

I suspect the answer will be partly in that book, and what it shows about the need to acknowledge and address trauma, but the rest of the answer will be continued and better activism - shine a light on to problems, and pressure those in power to respect those without power by enacting realistic, comprehensive, sweeping, intersectional changes to our world. 

(At a personal level, some solutions can be found in “The Dreaming Path: Indigenous Thinking to Change Your Life” by Paul Callaghan and Uncle Paul Gordon [Pantera Press, Neutral Bay, NSW, 2022, ISBN 978-0-6487952-7-8; Amazon, Readings, Apple].)

 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.