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Original poster

Can we talk about violence and culture?

87 replies

JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 12:18

I've just been reading a conversation where someone used the term 'symbolic violence', and it's got me thinking about the cultural roles violence plays, and why it plays those roles. This isn't a terribly groundbreaking post, but I wondered what you reckoned to the subject.

I keep noticing that, when we talk about certain kinds of violence on here, they're valorized, almost celebrated, when they have to do with Things Men Did Far Back In History: so, people will say that men evolved to be testosterone-fuelled fighters because historically we 'needed' war. And, in our culture, we respond to certain kinds of violence (world war I, for example) as needing a huge amount of ceremony and ritual, which is intended to celebrate the sacrifices of men in a violent context. And in my teaching, I have to teach my students a paper on Greek tragedy, where they read all about how literature turns violence into an art form, and this is somehow culturally hugely important.

All of these are slightly different things - evopsych about war, and ceremonies about it, and literary depictions of violence - but they all seem to me to be seen as 'serious' ways of relating to violence, serious attempts to historicize it or memorialize it. Right?

There is nothing I can think of that treats violence against women like this, at all. It's almost entirely invisible. There are things like Karen Ingala Smith's 'Counting Dead Women' project, but nothing with the huge scale and cultural impact.

Am I wrong about this? I think we are being encouraged to use memory and emotion differently (less!) when we relate to violence and women, aren't we?

OP posts:
grimbletart · 21/03/2015 14:31

Professor Carol Black was making this point over a decade ago about the status of doctors declining as more women enter the profession.

/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3528786.stm

She got a lot of flak for it I believe as people were missing her point..

GibberingFlapdoodle · 21/03/2015 12:46

"What goes on between men has been traditionally valued. What women do has been devalued but enjoys a pat on the back"

Definitely agree with this. It isn't so much what women do that is devalued as the fact that women do it though. As soon as something can be viewed as women's work, it is dismissed. For as long as and to the extent that it is in the male domain, it is valuable. Think of the difference in the way female / male competitive sport is viewed.

messyisthenewtidy · 20/03/2015 19:23

Exactly Buffy. We are supposed to be grateful because we need men to protect us from ....other men.

BuffyEpistemiwhatsit · 20/03/2015 18:54

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messyisthenewtidy · 20/03/2015 18:40

"Bad men triumph when good men fail to act" is an interesting saying because it shows that we often only know who the good men are in times of conflict.

In order for men to be seen as heroes one needs conflict.

BuffyEpistemiwhatsit · 20/03/2015 18:33

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messyisthenewtidy · 20/03/2015 18:31

OP, your OP wasn't badly written at all!

You said "I was really trying to figure out why male violence is so much celebrated"

I feel like I've been trying to figure that out ever since I was old enough to have a thought in my head!!

There is something about having a slightly older brother that makes you aware very early on of just how much male culture is celebrated. I came to the conclusion a long while ago that what we live in is not so much a patriarchy but a "fratriarchy".

We celebrate all forms of male bonding: sport, war, politics and see the rivalry between men as almost noble whilst we see women together as a recipe for a bitch fest even though when men disagree it is far more fatal.

That is why female rape victims of male soldiers are glossed over in history. The fraternal nature of males uniting to fight means that war is glorified but the ugly presence of women raped by the winning side challenges that glorification and presents the possibility that these men weren't heroes.

Most men who die in war are victims just as the women are. But they are heroized in a way women are not. One man was good enough to explain to me that the rightful for men having the vote in the past (and not women) was that being a man meant you were prepared to give your life up for your country. What about women I asked? The prospect of dying in childbirth was one that faced all women in those days. He laughed. How can you compare childbirth to war?

There is your answer. What goes on between men has been traditionally valued. What women do has been devalued but enjoys a pat on the back every now and again when it looks like women are getting antsy. Angel of the House is a case in point.

GibberingFlapdoodle · 20/03/2015 18:14

Too thoughtful for me, but if it helps Buffy is reminding me of the Dresden fire bombings.

BuffyEpistemiwhatsit · 20/03/2015 18:03

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Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 17:57

I've not read that in so long ... I can't remember. Will dig it out.

buffy - ooh, yes. Damn, I wish I could write.

OP posts:
YonicScrewdriver · 20/03/2015 17:56

Can we pull The Handmaid's Tale in here? Offred's view of the violence against dissidents?

BuffyEpistemiwhatsit · 20/03/2015 17:53

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Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 17:42

Well, I don't know all of it, but I know bits about tragedy. They don't show violence onstage (I heard that's where the word 'obscene' comes from - something that can't be shown on stage). So you get these incredibly violent narratives, and then someone will wheel on a cart full of gory body-bits and describe what happened.

Violence is quite strongly gendered - you get very violent women, but they are unnatural and there's often an implication that violent women are anti-maternal too.

There's a theory that all of this ritualised violence is a way of sort of dissociating yourself from the emotions in you that want to be violent (this is just one of lots of theories). So you watch something appallingly violent, and it makes you a better person/a better citizen, because instead of going out and being violent, you experience it vicariously.

I actually find that really disturbing. And people have all these theories about how noble and important tragedy is, and how these are amazingly serious emotional/cognitive processes that we must all think hard about. I sometimes wonder if that would be the case if they hadn't originated in such a male-dominated society.

I don't know how literally violent they were (and I'm realizing I'm talking only about Athens here really. Sparta different, I think). They did celebrate the people who killed the 'tyrant' with one of those heroic-looking statutes. But I don't know much about what you might call routine violence - punishments for things.

Interesting about protests against violence. I need to think about that.

OP posts:
Yops · 20/03/2015 17:35

Jeanne, it is a thought-provoking OP. I have a question re you referring to the ancient Greeks and their portrayal of violence. Here was an incredibly advanced civilisation - democracy, law, medicine, mathematics, science, art, philosophy. How did their portrayal differ from ours?

Also, there are movements against violence, aren't there? Protests against conflicts carried out in our name. Concern about no-combatants being injured by drone strikes for example, and the march against the second Gulf war. Going back to the 60's there was the protest movement against the Viet Nam conflict, and people calling for peace and an end to hostilities. Do we as a society still have a tacit acceptance that it's okay for civilians to be blown to bits, or has that changed since WWII?

Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 17:34

Yes, it would be interesting.

But, I bet you if it has been done before, it hasn't been done with a gender-flip. I can believe people have written or imagined 'what if ...' stories though I can't think of one right now. But I would love to read about a woman in history seeing these men as violent and awful, and then revealing that he's someone considered heroic.

Actually, I wish Hilary Mantel had done that, instead of showing us the world through Cromwell's eyes. I'd love to see Alice More's story.

OP posts:
BuffyEpistemiwhatsit · 20/03/2015 17:26

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Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 17:17

So, a sort of psychological coping mechanism? I wonder if that means lots of women through history have been existing in a sort of semi-traumatized state because there was nothing like that for them? I could find that very plausible, actually.

You are not at all talking crap. The problem is that I am really bad at writing clear OPs. I get so much out of talking to people on here (and yes, I think I am still thinking about the same thing as with the cognitive dissonance), but I find it really hard to ask the right questions. I am really impressed by people who can start threads that make everyone think 'ooh ... yes, good question'. Grin

OP posts:
ChopperGordino · 20/03/2015 17:14

When I say benefit I mean on a wide (national) scale - it benefits those in power

ChopperGordino · 20/03/2015 17:13

I think we have to give it a reason don't we? We (generally) struggle to cope what we see as "senseless" violence, so perhaps when it is done by people we love or identify with as "one of us", or violence is done in a way that benefits us (generally), we have to frame it as something bein done for good reason. Like excusing a man one loved for raping a woman - he wouldn't have done it without a good reason, ergo there must be a good reason.

Am I talking crap here? I expect I'm a few paces behind you still. But it seems to relate in some way to the cogitive dissonance we were talking about a few weeks ago

Violence is bad
These men are good
So their violence must be justified before, during and after

Um so... We are uncomfortable with bad things happening to others that benefit us and we have to justify it?

Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 16:44

Yes, I think it is partly that, chopper ... but then, I also think, we're living in a world where it's already known that the 'victors' will be men. So when men write as if women don't matter, while male violence has to be celebrated, it's not an 'after the fact' narrative like 'history written by the victors'.

I think?

This is sort of what I am getting at - that people act as if the narratives that celebrate or memorialize male violence must have happened after the specific incident of violence and they must be, in some sense, coincidental, dependent on that violence for their form and character. So, we had WWI then we developed a cultural way of coming to terms with it, by memorializing. And you can't take issue with that cultural way of coming to terms, because while it's imperfect, it's also a product of grief and shock and a specific historical time.

But, looking at it, I think actually, we keep on making up the same narratives that oh-so coincidentally memorialize male violence in this serious, important way. I don't think they do just spring up after the fact, do they? So what is the relationship between the violence, and the way our culture relates to it?

OP posts:
ChopperGordino · 20/03/2015 16:28

(I often find with such threads that I am many steps behind the thought process that got the OP to their own opening post, and it takes me a while to catch up(

ChopperGordino · 20/03/2015 16:27

Is it part of the whole "history is written by the victors" thing, where the victors will excuse>justify>glorify their means of achieving that victory (and silence anything that detracts from it)? Or is that over-simplistic?

cailindana · 20/03/2015 15:50

It seems to me that they're normalised as what's known now as "collateral damage" - the unfortunate consequences of war. Men die doing important, glorious man-things, while women die just doing the taken-for-granted shitwork of keeping the entire world in tact while men are trying to destroy it.

Original poster
JeanneDeMontbaston · 20/03/2015 15:46

I think it depends on the context. Some romantic heroes don't discriminate very well, or very obviously; others do.

I know what you mean about the 'good men only hurt baddies' thing. But I think it slips at times. There's that really disturbing 'I don't want to hurt you but I am so dangerous and passionate' guff that comes over with teen fiction - Twilight, Buffy, etc. And I do know teenagers who buy that, and buy into the whole 'he loses his temper because he loves me' thing.

I think what we're seeing isn't that the violence is discriminate and kept to 'appropriate' targets, but something more like what cailin is talking about, that we simply blank out those bits of violence that are directed at women. We don't even really see them as violent because they're normalized as romantic.

OP posts:
Yops · 20/03/2015 15:40

Does the romantic hero use violence indiscriminately, though? Isn't it reserved for someone who 'deserves it'? I know the alpha-male characters you are referring to.

We were watching some Hollywood trash the other day - Die Hard 33 I think - and the trail of destruction the hero left through the city as he carved through traffic and pavement was incredible. And yet - no dead bodies, no broken bones, no blood even. Because the big action hero doesn't impact upon the lives of innocent bystanders. He only gets the bad guys. It was preposterous, and yet it's repeated in every Hollywood blockbuster.