Abuse isn’t just pathological, it’s political
Red flag for anything rationalizing “this is just the way things are,” or framing a problem as an individual one instead of a collective one. (Or worse, putting the onus on the victim instead of the offender.)
Feminists know about power. Specifically, they know a lot about unequal power relationships; how they are systematically used, and how they are rationalised or explained away as ‘just the way things are’. Long before individual men abuse women, they internalise the logic of “ unequal power relationships between men, women and children embedded in social organisations like the family”. Abuse isn’t just pathological. It’s political. Where others might just see some behavioral problems that need fixing, one to one, a feminist sees the abuse of women and girls as something inevitable — even intentional — in patriarchy. So, just as we don’t fix climate change by individually eschewing plastic straws, we don’t fix our smartphones’ designed-in lack of trust by individually trying to spend a bit less time on Twitter. —Maria Farrell, This is your phone on feminism