Woman : Man = Peace : Violence? [from my What Is Peace Studies? series]

People are always asking me what I study, perhaps even more after I answer them than before, and I’ve noticed that there seems to be a lot of misconception, misunderstanding, and general ignorance about peace as an academic field. It being relatively new and as yet uncommon as a university course, I don’t blame anyone for not knowing much about the study of peace; however, to relegate such concepts and pursuits to the domain solely of ‘hippies’ and mobs (ironically) is irresponsible. The study of war and military strategy is as old as mankind itself; the fact that subjects like nonviolent conflict reduction and peace strategy have not enjoyed equal or even proportionate attention is disturbing, and indicative.

And so I’ve decided to try to turn various efforts here and there, serious and not-so-serious, into a more coherent collection attempting to explain some of what peace studies consists of, why it’s important, and what it can accomplish.

This piece is merely a few quotes from the third chapter of a book by Johan Galtung, a ‘founding father’ of peace studies, called Peace By Peaceful Means. It was written in 1996 and, apart from being groundbreaking intellectually, is incredibly thought-provoking. I found Chapter 3, on gender, to be especially so, largely because it’s a subject I’d hardly ever considered before going to Bradford. While I don’t agree with everything he says, I’ve quoted large chunks so that you may also be provoked, whether to action or vehement disagreement.

[I’ve tried not to put in too much commentary but where I have it will be in these brackets.

Basically, Galtung is exploring the idea that the world is as violent as it is because it is primarily controlled by men – a system known as patriarchy. He discusses male tendencies towards aggression and particularly the link between violence and sexuality. After looking at some cultural and structural factors as well, he puts forward some suggestions for violence reduction and conflict resolution not only through a more inclusive system but through changing some of the fundamentals that gender stereotypes are based on.]

Chapter 3   Woman : Man = Peace : Violence?

3.1 Patriarchy as Direct, Structural, and Cultural Violence

“To account for peace/violence as a dependent variable we shall use the four-factor independent variable discourse based on body, mind, structure, culture. ‘Body’ will be discussed here as female-male; ‘mind’ as high-low empathy; ‘structure’, as horizontal-vertical (‘hierarchical’) and ‘culture’ as centripetal-centrifugal (‘expansionist’). Female-high empathy-horizontal-centripetal disposes for peace; male-low empathy-vertical-centrifugal for violence: that is our basic hypothesis.”

“As to a discourse for violence, we shall stick to the distinction between direct violence intended to insult the basic needs of others (including nature), structural violence with such insults built into social and world structures as exploitation and repression, and cultural violence, aspects of culture (such as religion and language) legitimising direct and structural violence. Negative peace is the negation of all of this.

Failure to perceive the reality of patriarchy in human society can perhaps best be explained as an example of cultural violence at work. Feminist theory has made important contributions to peace theory by pointing this out. As any concept is best understood in terms of its negation, we should hasten to add that the peaceful negation of patriarchy is not matriarchy, but parity, or gender equality – horizontal structures relating the genders in partnership.

Patriarchy is then seen as an institutionalisation of male dominance in vertical structures, with very high correlations between position and gender, legitimised by the culture (e.g., in religion and language), and often emerging as direct violence with males as subjects and females as objects. Patriarchy, like any other deeply violent social formation (such as criminal subcultures and military structures), combines direct, structural, and cultural violence in a vicious triangle. They reinforce each other in cycles starting from any corner. Direct violence, such as rape, intimidates and represses; structural violence institutionalises; and cultural violence internalises that relation, especially for the victims, the women, making the structure very durable.”

3.2 Direct Violence: an Essentially Male Phenomenon

“To say that 95% of direct violence is committed by men is probably an understatement. This does not mean that women may not participate in criminal, even violent gangs, support warfare, etc.: only that the directly violent acts are committed by men.

Correlations between gender and violence are not only very high, but also seem to be space- and time-invariant. No evidence of ‘Amazons’, ferocious and belligerent women, has been unearthed; this is probably a male myth like ‘women enjoy rape’, a way of getting even with women on violence. But such correlations are too high to be visible: social scientists work usually with modest percentage differences. The evident has escaped serious attention for much too long.”

“For violent crimes, ratios like 25:1 men to women are standard in criminology; for sexual assault like rape, higher. Political violence from above, state terrorism against citizens, is a monopoly of men – whether committed by judges and torturers during the Spanish Inquisition from the late 15th century, but with decreasing violence; or as police violence and torture today  (routine in about 60 countries, occasion in 30 more).”

“The positive male predisposition for violence is as clear as the negative female disposition: close to 0% of all violence…Men have a obvious vested interests in directing research away from that question, since any findings reflect badly on man as male, not as species. It seems safer to study ‘human aggression’, hiding gender specificity by hiding ‘man = male’ behind ‘human’.”

3.3 Male Violence: the Sexuality-Violence Interface

“Here the general thesis is that part of the explanation for the male predominance in violence is found in the interface between male sexuality and male aggressiveness. This is certainly known to military planners. It was hardly by accident that during the Gulf War, US (male) bomber pilots on the USS Kennedy watched porn videos before leaving on their sorties to destroy military and civilian targets and kill soldiers and civilians (reported by Associated Press, but deleted by the censors as ‘too embarrassing’). In war, the rape of enemy women is part of the conquest. Why this sexuality-violence linkage?

One theory would be sex as compensation for risk and sacrifice, and no doubt there is something to this. But the point to be explored here would be the interfaces between sexuality and the job of the soldier, which is to kill and destroy, not to be killed and destroyed.

Six hypotheses follow: [I will list just a few along with some interesting points.]

1. Male sexual orgasm and violence share much of the same physiology

2. As these are neurological neighbours, triggering one may trigger off the other – …One example is torture…Rape would be another, whether conceived of as violent ways of obtaining sex, or sexual ways of committing violence. The carry-over, both ways, comes easily once the threshold is lowered. Producers of porno films know this, and present neurological neighbours as visual neighbours. There is money to be made in linking sex and violence – blocked in public for socio-cultural reasons, predominantly for male viewers in front of private video screens, adding liquor to lower the threshold. On the other hand, there is also money to be made by linking sex and love in socially legitimate movies etc., and this is by far preferred by women.” [Although I would argue that nearly all action movies, also considered a socially legitimate genre, link sex and violence – just look at which scenes are chosen to represent these films in their trailers.] (footnote: “…the perspective here tends more toward seeing [these differences] as caused by early experiences in the mother-father-daughter-son quadrangle, with the women learning more to associate sex ( = skin contact) with love (physical, mental, spiritual intimacy) and men more to associate sex ( = genital contact) with exploration, penetration, perhaps also violence.”)

3. As these are neurological neighbours, repressing one may trigger off the other – …This does not contradict the trigger hypothesis, just as ‘Not having eaten the whole day, I was very hungry’, does not contradict ‘The more I ate, the hungrier I became’; this is simply the triggering mechanism at a higher level.

4. The testosterone curve for men coincides with military age – …This may seem trivial since there is a third factor: muscular strength. But not all military tasks are muscular…The most useful male for violence is the sexually ripe male; and sexuality in males peaks at around 18-20, which also happens to be peak military age.”

3.4 Cultural and Structural Factors

“Starting with culture, and more particularly language, we may not that a word very frequently used in English – used by men very much more than women – is f***. Among some US males one may easily get the impression of a language reduced to one word only – as verb, noun, adverb, adjective, etc. That it can denote sex in one form or the other is clear. But the sentence ‘my car got f***ed up yesterday is also correct English, even if not clearly descriptive of any sexual activity, nor is the more imaginative ‘I had my car de-f***ed’, probably indicative of a successful visit to a garage. The point is obvious: neurological neighbours are covered by the same term, for both sexual and destructive activity. In this there is also an ambivalence toward sex – intense pursuit and intense rejection being neighbours in psychological space.”

“Turning to structure…besides religion, how do human beings solve the problem of finite life? For women, eternal life is guaranteed through their children, their offspring, particularly in matrilineal terms. For men the answer is less obvious. Patrilineal, patrilocal, even patriarchic systems are partial answers, and they start with giving children the (presumed) father’s family name. Beyond that there is competition – entering eternity through corrosion-proof fame, whether gained in arts or science, sports or entertainment, business or politics, or by military prowess. The latter has the advantage that lasting geopolitical changes often carry the names of battles and generals, at least for a while.

The most visible monuments around the world seem to be dedicated to the man of violence, on horseback. Hence one more reason for violence, fame obtained through structures of competition. And each major city, at least in the West, seems to have some phallus-shaped monument (Nelson’s column, Place de la Concorde or the Eiffel Tower, the Washington Monument and so on). Then there is the fourth independence factor, the mind. Assuming nursing and nurturing to be one way of creating and expanding human empathy, women do have a near monopoly position in some very basic physiological ways. Nevertheless, males as infants also benefit from mothering, from warmth and safety and concern, from having first priority. But at an early stage differences in nursing set in. Boys are treated more roughly, assuming they can take it; or with more care, assuming they are more valuable.”

“A girls life can be spun around the theme of high empathy, from infanthood to motherhood to grandmotherhood. It is not necessary to assume that the boy is trained for more risk-taking, less consideration, even for violence, in order to postulate a lower level of empathy. All we have to assume is less training for motherhood. Both infants transit from the same warmth of the inside to the warmth of the outside of the mother’s body. But the girl is invited to stay, the boy will have to leave. This must have some deep effects.” (footnote: “…women tend to see ethical problems in terms of care and direct consequences for those concerned; men in terms of abstract principles…Women see the alternative to direct violence in direct care and love. Men, afraid of their own violent inclinations (and those of other men) try to engage themselves in social hierarchies with strict control, giving those on the top monopoly on (commanding) violence; and/or in verbal hierarchies of commandments, commands and general norms, produced in theology and law. They build themselves into structural and cultural violence to escape from direct violence and its alternative, direct care.”) [While Galtung takes a dim view of Christianity, particularly Protestantism, calling it “defeminised” and therefore facilitative of the dehumanisation of women, I would argue that the Biblical message as a whole (i.e. the gospel) is much closer to this ‘feminine’ approach to problem-solving, as opposed to the more ‘masculine’, law-based approaches of most major world religions.]

“The girl has a re-entry ticket to that warmth: socio-culturally she is permitted to cry, to be cuddled and comforted. The boy is less in possession of that re-entry ticket, and will tend to spend less time skin-to-skin with the mother, more time roaming around…A sense of rejection, sacrifice, and envy in the young man can be compensated by notions of superiority as the chose gender for production, not ‘only’ reproduction.”

3.5 Conclusion: What Can We Do About It?

“That question is entirely legitimate and to the heart of peace studies, not to be postponed by the safe ‘we-have-to-do-more-research-first’. We shall never get final knowledge, least of all in a field as complicated as this. Whatever we do, we are merely testing hypotheses in order to develop new hypotheses.”

“With 38% of the parliamentarians in Sweden recently being women, the power configuration is approaching parity; with 83% it would be more similar to what males have always enjoyed…But there are only 2% women on the boards of Swedish corporations; and the Swedish ministries of defence and foreign affairs are essentially boys’ clubs, in spite of some ministers.” (footnote on how women, even when included in most government ministries, are still generally excluded from the ministries of defence and foreign affairs)

“…let us now look at the total configuration, drawing on the multi-factor discourse. Imagine a highly vertical structure in a highly expansionist chose gender-race-nation type country, and put on top of it a low empathy male, adequately stimulated with pornography, maybe some alcohol/drugs and a combination of coffee and sweets (the ubiquitous ‘Danish’ pastry). We get a high violence potential, noting that pornography and drugs/alcohol may be for lower classes and coffee/pastries for higher.

…But then let us change the equation. Make the structure horizontal from early age on, at a stage for participation, solidarity, cooperation; and make the culture less exclusive, without steep Self-Other gradients, more inclusive, able to see Self in Other and Other in Self. Put into that a woman, and she would probably feel, literally speaking, at home. Put into that a male, and he might grow humanly to like it. His physiology would remain about the same. But thresholds, motivations, capabilities, and opportunities would be drastically changed, or at least so we might assume. Result: reducing direct violence, to the great benefit of all, using the reduction of structural and cultural violence as some of the ways to bring that about.”

(“And that leads to a  conclusion about epistemological adequacy: always do feminist and peace studies within multi-factor discourses. Stick to one of the four factors alone, and not only will discourse and theory suffer, but the practice may even become counter-productive. This comes easily to interdisciplinary new social sciences like women’s studies and peace studies. Older sciences, take note: you have nothing to lose but your poor, mono-disciplinary discourses.”)

These are just a few quotes, designed more to pique interest than explain an entire argument; I highly recommend that you seek out the chapter in full, if not the whole book.

Hope you enjoyed this tidbit of the remit of peace studies.

Day 18: Star Wars Marathon (Part 2)

Alright, where were we in my saga…ah yes. The remaining two movies came out, I duly enjoyed them, though I really don’t like Natalie Portman or Hayden Christensen and some parts were rather Hollywood-esque. Being older, I couldn’t help but notice the technical aspects a bit more – my youthful innocence-likeness replaced by the criticalness of age. But the story was still far more valuable to me. I even attempted to watch the animated series they made about the Clone Wars, taking place in between the second and third films, but that, I could not suffer through. The main character was a whiny American teenage girl, no discipline, completely went against the grain of Star Wars. Criminal. The Clone Wars books, on the other hand, are excellent, and I rue that I’ve only been able to get my hands on one of them (the video game was brilliant as well).

I haven’t read any Star Wars books in quite a while. I’ve accumulated a small collection of them which I intend to continue building on, but having moved around loads in the past few years, they’re boxed away and scattered across several continents. One day I’ll bring all my stuff together and have a nice flat in London that I return to every once in a while. Something like that. Would be nice if it had a music room as well. See, there’s my ideal life path, and there’s the actual life path which will be much better and may or may not incorporate aspects of my idealised version.

So that’s my story with Star Wars. It’s a big part of me, though I don’t access it as much anymore. I noticed again just how big it is after I got talking about it with a friend and realised I could go on and on (at his expense). If you could go on and on about it as well, I’d love to get together sometime. Just use this Grade A chat-up line I just heard on 30 Rock: (in a bar) “So, they make you leave your droids outside too?” Quality. I’d probably talk all night with someone who approached me with that line. I may use it. The reactions, at least, will be amusing.

My favourite character is Boba Fett. If you know anything about him beyond the films, you’ll know that he is straight-up BA. But with principles. And heart, way down. The best kind of BA. I actually did loads of research on him and Mandalorians in general at one point, drawing together every bit of info I could from the sprawling internets, organising it chronologically and classing it by level of canon (if you don’t know what canon is, I’m surprised you read this far; this is clearly not the post for you). Found so many stories, in addition to the ones I’d read in books. He took out an entire Imperial garrison one time, you know. He survived the Sarlacc, for crying out loud! (And you say, Twice!) And the whole multiple-encounters-with-Han-Solo-all-throughout-their-lives thing is just delicious.

So yeah, if you hadn’t already guessed, this and the previous post are devoted completely to my geeky side, because it’s definitely big enough to merit attention, and I think everyone should have at least a bit of a geek in them.

Okay, now the actual marathon. It was funny. We weren’t at someone’s home, we were at some community centre; I’m not sure what the connection was but it was a big room (and fortunately, a kitchen). Snacks, check (I brought some Japanese jellies that my parents sent over. Didn’t realise they would seem so strange here). Two projectors, check. Someone had brought a video games console with FIFA and the intent to play it, which was disheartening, but what can you do. The unfaithful ones.

It was freezing in there. Some had brought sleeping bags but there weren’t enough to go around, and even after I snagged one, it was chilly. It may’ve had a polarpoint presentation effect in keeping us awake, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable. Nevertheless, we began the challenge with The Phantom Menace. Man, it was good to hear those opening horn blasts. That tune will always get me pumped up. I used to feel the same way about the 20th Century Fox sound, and the THX vroom, until I realised those weren’t specific to Star Wars.

Despite coming dangerously close to dozing off in the middle of the later films, every time one finished we hurriedly popped in the next. I say that figuratively; one guy had them all downloaded on his computer. And thank goodness we had bacon sandwiches, though we nearly burnt down the building cooking them.

Tragically, with six films to get through it took longer than one night and we were forced to quit late Saturday morning in the middle of Episode V. Actually, ‘forced to quit’ is putting it forgivingly – a certain owner of the computer containing the gems decided he had to leave, and shut it off. To be honest, I wasn’t as engaged as I should’ve been. It’s hard to watch over ten hours of film and stay alert, all the more so at night after a pattern of nonexistent nighthood. (I watched the final two some time later.)

It was fascinating to watch them again; it’d been a long time and I was much younger then. Now I could see more underlying themes, like the imperialism of the Empire and the politics of the Galactic Senate.

One thing you observe when going from the new ones to the old ones (like I said before, we watched them chronologically, and though I was all for that, I’ve now been convinced that it’s better to go with the older films first, to not let them be shown up graphics-wise) is that the old ones have far fewer alien species and more ‘human’ characters, but less diversity among the humans. And while this is easily explainable considering the Empire’s anti-alien brand of racism, it does also reveal the evolution of film (I’m older, remember; I don’t have the luxury of taking in only the story – or being completely taken in, rather). Computer graphics are much more advanced, so aliens are easier to do without messing with costumes. Globalisation allows actors to come from all over for a big break at Hollywood, and it’s not so Cold War-nationalistic anymore (reference to the old Indiana Jones films which I also watched recently).

However, I am not a film critic; I am critical but I leave the review business to my friends. And I’ve delved deeply enough into my relationship with Star Wars for one (well, two) posts. Put simply, it was good to enter into that world again, and I do intend to one day write a Star Wars book. I have to become a good writer first, however, which is partly what this is about, though I really should be doing more fiction.

I didn’t do much for the rest of today; just finished up packing and attempted to finish off all my food, which turned out to be a bigger chore than I’d foreseen.

Going to bed excited about going to my favourite city in the world for the first time on the morrow! (Isn’t life wonderful when you decide that where you’re headed is where you most want to be? Or would it be: isn’t life wonderful when you decide to head where you most want to be?)

Day 17: Star Wars Marathon (Part 1)

I didn’t do much today during the day, understandably. But that was just fine, because that night was nothing near the return to regular sleeping hours I’d hoped it would be.

I mentioned that we were planning to do a Star Wars marathon sometime in December, right? Well, we were. Some friends and I. All six (episodes, that is). In chronological order, of course. Only…I thought it would be during the day sometime. My friend showed up at my door this afternoon saying they were planning to do it that night. I suppose that really was the only time left before we departed for London, but it was a surprise. Nevertheless, I said I was in. It’s Star Wars!

Star Wars…it’s hard to explain the magic to someone who isn’t a believer. I hope all of you are. Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood; no, scratch that, Star Wars is a huge part of my life.

My parents showed me the first one (Episode IV, which was Episode I back then) when I was…can’t remember how old. Young. I guess it would’ve been between 5 and 10, because we were in the apartment with the pink couch. (That’s how I organise my memories; they’re attached to where we were living at the time, seeing as we changed location every four years with one year intervals in the US. Conveniently, those single years corresponded to my multiples-of-five birthdays.) We didn’t get very far. Darth Vader stepped into the Rebel blockade runner, and I said my stomach hurt. It really did – I don’t know why. I guess I was scared. I was a very sensitive young boy. Haha. Something. We stopped it and that was that. Sometimes I thought I saw Vader’s outline in the darkness of my closet, so I always made sure the doors were closed before I got into bed.

Sometime after that I got a sticker book about Episode IV, the kind where you stick the stickers into the blanks to complete the story. My first Star Wars book…the first of many. I don’t remember really understanding the story but soon after that we tried the film again and made it all the way through.

I loved it – though I can’t remember my reaction to the films, a few things give evidence to the extent I was into the saga. First, I started collecting Star Wars action figures. There was a Toys R Us not too far from where we were living, and they had a whole shelf of them. I used to go there and just look at all of them. The first one I got was Luke Skywalker on a speeder bike, from Episode VI. Came with a green lightsaber, blaster, and removable brown rubber cloak. His knees even bent! That was the first of several. The next might’ve been Grand Moff Tarkin, or Boba Fett. Several years later I even received a cardboard fold-out diorama of the cantina from Episode IV. That was a treat. Even made little cardboard mugs and plates to go in it (yes, I was the type of kid who could get as much enjoyment out of the box something came in as the toy itself – I thank my parents).

Second, in early 1999, posters started appearing in the trains and train stations that I used for going to school. They pictured a desert, what looked like an igloo made out of sand – just like part of Luke’s house in Episode IV – a kid I didn’t recognise, and a shadow I very much recognised – Darth Vader. What was this??? I was intrigued, and very excited. A girl at school told me that another Star Wars movie was coming out. Dude.

IMDB tells me that Episode I came out July 16, 1999, and that was a summer we returned to the States, so I probably saw it in theatres there. Can’t remember. I was into it, though – people put down Episode I so much, and perhaps yes it wasn’t great as a movie, but I wasn’t watching them as movies. I was watching them as stories. Something massive was unfolding in a galaxy far far away; well, unfolded a long long time ago, and these movies were the only connection relating to me what had happened.

That is, until I discovered the books. Sometime during these years I started reading the stories that others wrote, which George Lucas approved. Taking place before the movies, after the movies, even between the movies – I devoured whatever I could get my hands on. By any means possible I was eager to enter into this other universe.

And enter in I did. I wasn’t content to merely consume, I had to be a part of it. And so at some point in all of this I began making up my own stories about my own character in this galaxy, interacting with the characters and plots from the books and films. At night before I drifted off to sleep, or even during the day when I didn’t have anything to focus on (or chose not to), I’d advance my own story in my mind. Sometimes I’d act it out with LEGO, or my action figures. But it all went on in my head, and if all the stories I played out were made into a TV show there would be enough content to fill at least several seasons. I still have those stories up in here, somewhere. I still know exactly where I left off, and every once in a while I revisit my personal saga. Kent Kenobi has been stuck in the hidden New Sith Order base for quite some now, however. Although…I just remembered I got him out of there a few days ago. He’s now in an escape pod headed who knows where.

This is the first time I’ve told anyone about this, come to think of it. People talk about vivid imagination, but is it normal to have such detailed storylines going on in one’s head, all alongside one’s real life? I did this with a bunch of things, though – Pokemon; Magic: The Gathering, when I got into that; Harry Potter, especially when the films came out (I mean, come on – who wouldn’t?). In fact, nearly any time I finished a movie or TV show or book that I really liked, I’d continue or expand the story with me inside it. Any of you do anything like this?

(It wasn’t a huge leap to go from that to making up stories about my actual life; for example, imagining that my day had gone differently. A favourite bedtime activity was taking a situation from the day and imagining how it could’ve gone if I’d said or done something else (something much cooler, of course) or playing out an upcoming situation in my mind (rife with things I would never do or say in real life, of course, and things others would never do or say). A few years ago I woke up, figuratively speaking, to the damage this was doing to me, because I was imagining and wishing for things that I would wouldn’t actually work to achieve, and shying away from taking risks in real life because I could just imagine a different life; escape to it, if you will. I was also reducing others to my conception of them, which was very shallow indeed, seeing as it was basically a projection of myself. But that’s a rumination for another post. In short, I didn’t need World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons, I had my own mind. I have yet to kill off the habits I formed during those many, many years. )

I’m actually going to end this post on this low note simply because I don’t have much to say about the next day (this marathon took up half of it, after all), and this is getting long. Answer my question about imagination in a comment below, I’m really interested to hear about that.