Can we talk about female violence? I need to get my response straight

[GrassIsSinging]

I know this is celeb rubbish, but am finding my blood boiling over comments from FB friends and the like over the Solange Knowles -punching-Jay Z debacle.

Lots of seemingly conscious, smart, reasonable people condemning violence of any sort (great, agreed), but then saying things like 'the double standards in society sicken me...Chris brown beats Rihanna and he is a monster...Solange attacks Jay Z and people dont respond in the same way'. Others (people I thought were decent) saying 'You couldnt have blamed him for hitting back...people have a right to defend themselves' etc.

This riles me massively. Am I a freak for thinking that male violence against women IS often (not always, but very often) much more devastating than vice versa? Because men are usually physically stronger...because male violence against women is a huge problem in this world...? And that a decent man will not hit a woman, even if provoked. Is this an 'old fashioned ' view now?

Feminism doesnt mean we now have to accept men punching us, ffs!

Depressed...

Do you think Solange exerts a coercive, controlling influence over Jay Z Ronald McDonald, that she has power over him and that her violence towards him happened in a context of that coercive relationship, backed by a social and economic framework that supports the habitual coercion she exerts against him?

I suppose it is quite hard to hear that your voice is heard and you are responded to with respect, and people are.polite when you interrupt, and defer to you and your position not because you're a good sort with reasonable things to say, but because the rest of us have been socialised to expect violence off you.

No I have no idea how Jay Z felt to be violently attacked by another human. I have no idea what the pattern is or if this is a one off or just a small aspect of what goes on

I think that when people say things along the lines of - well there is a height weight strength disparity it somehow makes it different or okay.
I am uncomfortable with that.

I know that we say that we think violence and abuse is wrong but there seems to be some extra aspect of needing to show it to be grave or very serious violence for us to take it seriously if it is directed toward men.
In some circumstances the first slap from a woman can start a pattern of domestic abuse and fear in the same way that it can from a man. I think that we rarely acknowledge that this can be the case.

For all we know Solange could be frequently violent toward JayZ
She could be frequently violent toward many people perhaps in an inter-familial context If this attack had occurred from a small man to a taller woman I think that we would never have questioned whether she was bothered by it.
That isn't because it is framed within a patriarchy. I think that there is a difficulty in generally acknowledging the very real problems of female violence and abuse within a domestic setting. I say this as someone who often struggles with the concept myself which given the nature of my work is very difficult.

I've been violent a few times in my life. Either via words or actions. Every time the over riding emotions are anger righteousness vengeance and power. No matter the size off the opponent. Women feel these too you know.

Dervel:

"Taking the view that violence is the unavoidable nature of man robs us of the will and the insight to evolve past it."

No, it merely acknowledges that through social means it can only be reduced or modified, and not eliminated. Because violence fundamentally stems from physiological organization, and violence between humans is a subset of all violence, we see that saying violence is not innate is like saying that human voice is not innate. Obviously, someone who has never learned language can still produce laryngeal sound unless there is some other deficit or impairment.

This might be easier to grasp if you distinguish social violence from physiological violence per se.

Ronald McDonald I think we've already been through all this further down the thread.

Human violence is a subset of all violence? What? Violence is a human concept, you can't talk about other species using "violence". I've just had a vision of a pig in a mediaeval dock being tried for a violent crime.

That's what comes of keeping your wits active.

But Basil you are one of the people asking if others think JayZ is devastated.

So you may feel you've covered it but I don't think it is covered and it repeatedly crops up for me.

Montmorency1 You are confusing human capacity with human nature. The former exists within all people (barring actual impediments for example a quadriplegic no longer has the capacity to dance), I wish I didn't have to get bogged down in minutiae like that, but you really are incapable of giving an inch are you? Human nature is something common to us all like breathing or a need to drink.

Also I believe for this conversation we need to lock in the accepted definition of violence within the context of this thread as I suspect if we don't you are going to railroad discussion into semantics. Let's use Oxford and consider this is what we are talking about:

"Behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something"

Now of course I could accidentally cause a violent injury or death to someone because the word can be used in many contexts, but the salient definition up for this particular discussion I give you above. This definition and context requires intent for the violence we are discussing. Now I am of course aware that something like a storm can be violent and of course there is no intent, but again that is not what we are discussing. We are in the first instance debating human violence committed on one another and as such intent is crucial. Intent speaks to choice and choices are optional. One chooses to flight or fly after all, now this maybe where you get lost in thinking that basic response is out of our control well with training and discipline one can choose.

Which brings me to my final point I will actually show you violence to our fellow humans is in fact contrary to our nature. In their first few engagements the majority of US soldiers in the Vietnam war would fire above the heads of their enemy, It is only through the context of threat and the hellish nature of war that this inevitably changes. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that male violence towards women for example is merely the result of social conditioning involving the "othering" and objectification of women coupled with the emotional retardation that men are encouraged to endure in order to appear masculine that leaves us with the status quo.

Encourage and nurture emotional intelligence, strength and empathy and you will see a dramatic reversal of current trends.

Montmorency1 You are confusing human capacity with human nature. The former exists within all people (barring actual impediments for example a quadriplegic no longer has the capacity to dance), I wish I didn't have to get bogged down in minutiae like that, but you really are incapable of giving an inch are you? Human nature is something common to us all like breathing or a need to drink.

Also I believe for this conversation we need to lock in the accepted definition of violence within the context of this thread as I suspect if we don't you are going to railroad discussion into semantics. Let's use Oxford and consider this is what we are talking about:

"Behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something"

Now of course I could accidentally cause a violent injury or death to someone because the word can be used in many contexts, but the salient definition up for this particular discussion I give you above. This definition and context requires intent for the violence we are discussing. Now I am of course aware that something like a storm can be violent and of course there is no intent, but again that is not what we are discussing. We are in the first instance debating human violence committed on one another and as such intent is crucial. Intent speaks to choice and choices are optional. One chooses to flight or fly after all, now this maybe where you get lost in thinking that basic response is out of our control well with training and discipline one can choose.

Which brings me to my final point I will actually show you violence to our fellow humans is in fact contrary to our nature. In their first few engagements the majority of US soldiers in the Vietnam war would fire above the heads of their enemy, It is only through the context of threat and the hellish nature of war that this inevitably changes. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that male violence towards women for example is merely the result of social conditioning involving the "othering" and objectification of women coupled with the emotional retardation that men are encouraged to endure in order to appear masculine that leaves us with the status quo.

Encourage and nurture emotional intelligence, strength and empathy and you will see a dramatic reversal of current trends.

"But Basil you are one of the people asking if others think JayZ is devastated."

Actually that was in response to a specific post where I used the word the poster used, which once again went for the simplistic "violence is violence is violence" angle.

After many, many posts discussing social, psychological, economic, emotional, cultural factors which surround violence, can I be forgiven for being just a smidgeon impatient to come across a post which looked as though the poster had simply not read the thread or if she had, had simply ignored all the posts people had bothered to spend time thinking about and posting?

I have posted quite a bit about why I believe the context in which violence takes place is important and why I give short shrift to arguments pretending that all violence everywhere is the same in terms of how society works. Here's a list of posts where I've mentioned it.

Tue 13-May-14 23:19:39
Wed 14-May-14 20:43:52
Wed 14-May-14 20:48:18
Wed 14-May-14 21:43:14
Wed 14-May-14 21:48:32
Wed 14-May-14 22:07:29
Thu 22-May-14 12:07:38

Lots of other posters have also posted thoughtful, well-considered posts about violence and context so I'm not sure what you feel hasn't been covered. In response to your post of 1939 yesterday (much of which I agreed with) I asked you this:

"Do you think Solange exerts a coercive, controlling influence over Jay Z Ronald McDonald, that she has power over him and that her violence towards him happened in a context of that coercive relationship, backed by a social and economic framework that supports the habitual coercion she exerts against him?"

What do you think?

Basil:

I feel like your post is directed at me, but "Ronald Mcdonald" and the semi-quote make me unsure.

Dervel:

But human capacity is inextricable from human nature. How could it be otherwise? "breathing, need to drink": one of those is an action, the other is a need. Humans have a capacity to drink, and they use this capacity to sate thirst. Humans have a capacity for violence, and this is often expressed in stressful situations of various sorts. Violence merely describes a style of action - it is action. Again, violence is modulated by social conditioning. Just as a soldier's training incites them to a certain kind of violence and inhibits the sensation of and the expression of the sensation of thirst.Just as being in an establishment of fine dining inhibits most any violent impulse as well as the need to shit. Just as being home alone releases inhibitions upon, or even incites, each of the above.

Violence is inherent to the sort of organism that humans are. This is not to say that every human will commit shooting sprees, or attack its mate. Just because violence is natural does not mean to be violent to others is common or inevitable. For instance, the outline of human language is innate, but it is not part of human nature to either speak or learn English.

Next: There is no such thing as "intention" or "choice", so you will have to rethink that.

Next: That is one really bizarre paragraph. Violence between humans is socially-conditioned, but non-violence between humans is innate? Why would you not assume that it's both? I hate this sort of anthropic exceptionalism that asserts that humans are somehow radically different in kind to other organisms.

"It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that male violence towards women for example is merely the result of social conditioning involving the "othering" and objectification of women coupled with the emotional retardation that men are encouraged to endure in order to appear masculine that leaves us with the status quo."

How would you explain the First Cause? How did these social norms arise? A much more reasonable account acknowledges that early social norms would have in large part been elaborated from the carry-over conditions of pre-human hominid life, which may have either been patriarchal, as with chimpanzees, or matriarchal, as with bonobos. Either way, and whatever the cases (between groups) in the interim, the crux is the Agricultural Revolution. As agriculture came onto the scene women simply would have become less valuable, and so exploitable, to the community. This would have come about because women were less able to use a plough than men, and were less able to fight with hand-arms than men (to defend both land and women, mind you).

I understand a little better now Basil

I have no idea about Solange/JayZ.
He could be genuinely frightened or her and controlled by fear of her reactions and outbursts. Walking on eggshells around his wife's sister?

I have wondered how fame might be a fertile ground for dysfunctional behaviour in more ways than are immediately apparent.
Say for instance Solange was abusive in an interfamilial context. Would fame end that? We imagine people would 'handle' it but abusive relationships are hugely complicated and those being abused are usually experiencing many things including shame and guilt. I wonder might Beyonce's fame have been used as a long term excuse for Solange's abusive behaviour?
I wonder if that level of fame and protecting a brand could almost be a maintainence behaviour? ( weird beside the point hypothesising )

Montmorency1 You are wrong.

Montmorency I think you are (willfully) conflating violence as a specific kind of social interaction with violence as mode of bodily movement. This is misleading. Humans as a kind of animal with a kind of bodily configuration are able to do movements which are violent in the context that they strike or injure others but would not be violent in the case that they were done alone. Insisting that violence is a style of movement you might as well describe hammering a nail as violent, (or to use a much early example of mine, standing up) because if someone was in the way of that movement they would be injured. However, it would be pointless to do so and render the word violence as incapable of distinguishing anything except powerful physical movement. In the context of this and other discussions, violence is a relational mode and the relational mode is what specifies that movement as violence.

Your language is so imprecise here as to be twisted. Thirst is a perception of relative dehydration in the organism. Violence is an act willfully committed. Drinking is undertaken to meet a need though a certain amount of choice is exercised (over the liquid and timing of the drinking); if that need is not met the organism dies. Violence is usually a means of managing emotion, usually anger, but there are other strategies available and not choosing violence does not produce the death of the organism. Drinking satisfies an actual need in the individual. Violence does not.

Emotions like anger are (possibly) part of 'the human condition' if you absolutely must insist on your 1970s high modernist terminology. But our strategies for managing them are choices not needs. Moreover, they actually require no management except in the case that the individual believes themselves incapable to tolerate intense feelings and therefore must do something about them. Violence is a strategy which individuals sometimes choose to manage their emotional state. It is not fundamental to that state though, violent urges are the results of thoughts and beliefs about emotions and others' responsibilities to them and in the case that individuals do not believe others to be responsible for their own emotional states, violent urges do not emerge.

You seem to have mistaken a management strategy for intense emotion, which violence is, for the intense emotion.

"Montmorency I think you are (willfully) conflating violence as a specific kind of social interaction with violence as mode of bodily movement. This is misleading."

Which is why I specifically cautioned that we make a distinction between social and physiological violence.

In the context of this and other discussions, violence is a relational mode and the relational mode is what specifies that movement as violence.

And my simple point is that since physiological violence is innate, it is strange to claim that social (or "relational" vis-a-vis humans) violence is not innate. It's like saying that though human voice is innate, the ability to articulate vowels is not innate.

If terminology is your quibble, then let us include "aggression" in the discussion. Aggression is basically the display or priming of coercive resources as a threat to another entity. Aggression is an affective behavior, closely linked to and often presaging violence. In fact, violence is essentially the actualization of the threat communicated by aggression. Do you agree that aggression is innate? If so, then point out a creature that displays aggression but never treats any other organism or object violently; aggression and violence go hand-in-hand, in fact. If you claim that aggression is not innate, then you construct some sort of fantasy creature that somehow became 'corrupted' in the distant past through unelaborated causes. Indeed, if humans had no capacity for aggression as a direct consequence of the structure and development of the neuromuscular system, then it's left to us to imagine that humans 'happened upon' violence in the environment and analogized it to their inter-relations. Of course, that route again ignores the eons-old phylogenetic endowment which humans inherited from their ancestors down to the sub-cellular organism, and so is absurd on its face - unless one is a young-earth creationist or the like.

"Emotions like anger"

I'm not sure whether I've made it clear, so I'll say it for our benefit: Emotions do not cause behavior. They are the phenomenological correlate of underlying processes that cause behavior, but the emotion itself, as component of those underlying processes, carries causal effect that is as-of-yet unknown.

"the individual believes themselves incapable to tolerate intense feelings and therefore must do something about them. Violence is a strategy which individuals sometimes choose to manage their emotional state."

This is "premeditated" and cyclic violence that you refer to, a subset of violence. That humans can make plans does in no way address the assertion that violence is innate in humans, nor support the negation.

"in the case that individuals do not believe others to be responsible for their own emotional states, violent urges do not emerge."

Again, do not conflate confabulation with cause. Humans confabulate all sorts of things, such as emotions, explanations for emotions, volition, etc...

Again, I have said that (social) violence is modulated by social conditioning. Social conditioning can not eliminate social violence, however, precisely because physiological violence and aggression responses are innate.

It's like saying that though human voice is innate, the ability to articulate vowels is not innate.

Well, it's certainly true that human voice is innate but language isn't. Individuals who for whatever reason have not been exposed to language in their formative years never develop language.

I just think you are making so many unhelpful and strange distinctions that you have got yourself into a tiny little thought knot. I see from upthread that you don't believe in 'choice' or 'intention' and for that reason don't see our discussion going anywhere. I'm as Foucaultian as the next European liberal arts academic but I think if you just denounce any notion of agency (which includes the choice not to act) then you are not talking about societal relations in any way that I can recognise them.

I was not talking about 'premeditated' - if we take the legal definition - violence, but the kind of violence that errupts in an unplanned way, i.e. in the context of a loss of temper. I think it most pertinent to this kind of social situation.

Social conditioning actively does eliminate in some individuals all acts of willful violence. Since you don't see any reason to believe in will I'm sure you can't really notice this. I don't see the remaining individuals who employ violence as doing anything as unconscious as breathing or feeling thirst like you want to assert.

I'm not sure I'd be any more clear about your definition of aggression. Again, I'd see aggression as a strategy (for self protection, for ego protection, against perceived threats) but all of those things are related to the social world and our belief systems. Insofar as belief systems are the architects of culture on both grand and individual scales, I can't divorce aggression from social conditioning; if it were innate, like breathing and drinking, we would all fucking do it.

Your argument seems to be, I have arms so I will punch. I refute this as absolutely as I would I have hands so I will drive a car with a steering wheel.

"Your argument seems to be, I have arms so I will punch. "

More like 'I have arms, so I can punch, but moreover it should not be surprising if I punch someone-or-thing under stress - as this is an innate gesture and response to stress. One does not need to learn to punch, and one does not need to have punching another modelled for them to do and understand it. You seem to be interpreting me as saying 'humans are inherently ultraviolent/bloodthirsty' or 'humans are unusually violent' or some-such.

"Well, it's certainly true that human voice is innate but language isn't. Individuals who for whatever reason have not been exposed to language in their formative years never develop language."

As I said, a language is not innate - but language as a faculty is. That individuals not sufficiently exposed to a language within some "critical period" do not attain native-like competence is any language is largely due to maturational changes in memory and learning.

"Social conditioning actively does eliminate in some individuals all acts of willful violence."

It is clear that social conditioning complicates violence by introducing contexts and values - we see it at all times with all behaviors in general. However, that social conditioning can affect human expression is self-evident, truistic and doesn't actually tell anything about whether something is innate or not. For example, it is really easy to show that social conditioning affects the manner of satisfying thirst or hunger, without even resorting to extreme cases like endurance competitors or certain Asian monastics.

Think of how you might hold off on fixing and eating a meal if a friend is coming over. After all, you could just eat to your fill and then sit and watch as the friend follows suit once having arrived, but this is not seen as "polite"...

"I don't see the remaining individuals who employ violence as doing anything as unconscious as breathing or feeling thirst like you want to assert."

Conscious vs. unconscious is just a matter of what information reaches the distributed consciousness-producing networks. Because these networks are blind to the sources of the information that reaches them (i.e. the larger brain), they produce output into that very brain that taken together constitutes the experience of "willing". Essentially, source-blindness Just because we "feel" a certain way does not make it accurate.

"if it were innate, like breathing and drinking, we would all fucking do it."

First of all, drinking is not innate. Particular neuromuscular mechanisms that produce an efficient drink or suckle are indeed innate. Thirst is innate. Note here that dehydration is innate in that it is an inevitable feature of the system. Hopefully you will recognize why this is important to note in the present discussion.

Anyway, we do - as infants. From there, we tend to learn that there is a relatively-high social threshold for aggression or violence, and so the fact that in some people out there might possess high thresholds to such behavior, combined with a lack of environments to encourage or elicit it, has little bearing on the issue, and certainly does not support a view that what is innate for most-any macroscopic organism is learned in humans.

It is such a bizarre ideology that would entertain these notions, that humans suddenly came into being as a sharp discontinuity, violent life to non-violent. Never mind explaining how violence was lost, given that that violence is not a specific modality but is a result of immanent and latent structural characteristics. Never mind that humans have hunted for their entire history, so that there is little coherence to an account that implies that humans suddenly and through unelaborated causes shed the capacity for violence and then immediately had to learn it from the environment. Never mind that humans would never have survived for millennia of precarious hard-scrabble living if they could not defend themselves from beasts, or defend their provisions and equipment. Never mind that human infants give a clear example of what aggression and violence unmodified by learning look like in humans. Never mind that if humans must learn violence, then it's difficult to explain how it comes to us so automatically, intuitively, and with little modelling or practice, when institutionalized public education has difficulty teaching humans declarative knowledge or critical thinking.

It's extraordinary that you'd argue for violence as innate where drinking isn't. Drinking and violence both are strategies to manage physical states (of dehydration and stress respectively). However, dehydration is inevitable but stress arises from belief systems; drinking is absolutely fundamental to physical survival whereas as far as I can see, the only thing preserved by violence is an egoic reading of a given situation. I think that this comparison makes you confused in the extreme. You argue that we must learn to drink as a response to dehydration but then talk about the inevitability of being violent as a result of having arms.

Social conditioning is central to the discussion. Since we all live inside of culture, it's actually distracting to start arguing about the innateness of in this case, stress management techniques. Your last paragraph is really situated in hypothesising about an aspect of the developmental or evolutionary qualities of violence which in the context of this discussion, about Solange Knowles particularly and female violence in general, which is moot, given that we all live in culture howsoever it developed. What is certainly true though is that we can regulate ourselves against violence and social conditioning has eradicated it. If we were to attempt to stamp out all drinking of liquid or acting to sate thirst, we would die. Please stop with this persistent and misleading comparison.

Your notion of 'physiological violence' is not anything, except the observation that I can organise my body in motion in a way dangerous to others. So what? That doesn't mean anything: I can also ride a horse, drive a car, sing, go swimming, cuddle strangers. I do none of these things, whatsoever the innateness of my capacity for them.

Your notion of 'aggression responses' are a conflation between the perception of threat (stress, anger, etc.) which I could agree (under certain conditions) are innate and the response to that which I will never ever agree is innate because a choice always is made between fight, flight and freezing. The experience of the state and then the choice to act upon it in a given way are separate.

*social conditioning has eradicated it in many individuals

"It's extraordinary that you'd argue for violence as innate where drinking isn't."
"You argue that we must learn to drink"

Read this bit again, carefully.

First of all, drinking is not innate. Particular neuromuscular mechanisms that produce an efficient drink or suckle are indeed innate. Thirst is innate. Note here that dehydration is innate in that it is an inevitable feature of the system. Hopefully you will recognize why this is important to note in the present discussion.

stress arises from belief systems

I can only interpret this from the perspective of solipsism. I am not a solipsist, unfortunately, so I can by no means accept what you've written above.

"Please stop with this persistent and misleading comparison"

As I recall you are the one who introduced it?

"Your notion of 'physiological violence' is not anything, except the observation that I can organise my body in motion in a way dangerous to others. So what? That doesn't mean anything: I can also ride a horse, drive a car, sing, go swimming, cuddle strangers. I do none of these things, whatsoever the innateness of my capacity for them. "

Really, really strange. My point was precisely that "physiological violence" is inherent and latent to the functional and structural organization of the human body. It manifests from infancy. The ability, say, to ride a bike or swim a breaststroke is not in itself innate, though the physiological basis is related and is innate, but must be developed through maturation and coordinated through practice.

The simple point is that, like pretty much any other animal, humans have retained the instinct that allows them to attack or defend. Obviously, as I explicitly noted, social conditioning modifies the expression of violence by introducing things like context, foresight, propriety, and so on. Again: I am not saying that violence is inevitable or unchangeable or must be tolerated or anything like that. Come on...

And because I feel you may be unthinkingly privileging the social as somehow distinct from the physiological, it is crucial to note that the social is nothing but biological, and that the development of social competence follows a well-understood schedule, deviation from which is invariably a sign of neglect, abuse, or psychiatric/neurological disorder.

" the response to that which I will never ever agree is innate because a choice always is made between fight, flight and freezing. The experience of the state and then the choice to act upon it in a given way are separate."

Typical libertarian nonsense. In fact, to be internally consistent you would have to maintain that thirst, hunger, fatigue, and so on are also "choices" made by humans. This is the coherent, but extremely-primitive egoistic conception of reality as depicted in the Iliad:

Achilleus has made savage the proud-hearted spirit within his body (IX: 792-793)

Finally, the response and the sensation are typically inextricable precisely because they both are produced from the same cause. I've already mentioned that.

"Finally, the response and the sensation are typically inextricable precisely because they both are produced from the same cause. I've already mentioned that."

The point being, one does not cause the other.

Blah blah blah blah

That is all.

Basil