Gendered Violence is Large Scale Violence

By Harsha Walia (November 9, 2017)

In the wake of the latest news, Ive been meditating a lot the past day about this suggestion of “domestic violence leads to more serious mass violence” and that we need to see domestic violence as a “warning sign” or “gateway” to “public violence”.

Yes, the violences are correlated, but to relegate gendered violence to the intimate, the interpersonal, the individual – and hence disconnected from macro-spheres of power – is the functioning of patriarchy.

What do we perpetuate when we dont name gendered violence as itself mass-based violence impacting masses of people? Who benefits from the distinction between the so-called public and private spheres (whether sexualized violence or gendered labour)?

Our bodies are not gateways and we are not guinea pigs; gendered violence is mass structured violence.

harsha

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