A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [167]
"It seems to me that part of the reason for this loss is not simply the physical trauma itself, but also the fact that the traumatizing actions can't be acknowledged."
She agreed, then added, "And much more broadly, because they take place within a relationship motivated by a need to dominate, and in which coercive control is the central feature." I thought again of our culture.
She said, "When I teach this, I describe the methods of coercive control perpetrators use. It turns out that violence is only one of the methods, and it's not even one of the most frequent. It doesn't have to be used all that often; it just has to be convincing. In the battered-women's movement, there's a saying: 'One good beating lasts a year.'"
"What constitutes a good beating?"
"If it's extreme enough, when the victim looks into the eyes of the perpetrator she realizes, 'Oh, my God, he really could kill me.' "Going along with this violence are other methods of coercive control that have as their aim the victim's isolation, and the breakdown of the victim's resistance and spirit. You have capricious enforcement of lots of petty rules, and you have concomitant rewards. Prisoners and hostages talk about this all the time: if you're good, maybe they'll let you take a shower, or give you something extra to eat. You have the monopolization of perception that follows from the closing off of any outside relationships or sources of information. Finally, and I think this is the thing that really breaks people's spirits, perpetrators often force victims to engage in activities the victims find morally reprehensible or disgusting. Once you've forced a person to violate his or her moral codes, to break faith with him- or herself—the fact that it's done under duress does not remove the shame or guilt of the experience—you may never again even need to use threats. At that point the victim's self-hatred, self-loathing, and shame will be so great that you don't have to beat her up, because she's going to do it herself."
I thought immediately of the secret collaboration into which my father initiated me by my mere acquiescence. I thought, too, of the other members of my family, and of the deal we each one of us had to daily make to get through the day—I will not break the silence, if only you do not kill me. If you are going to kill me, do not let me know about it beforehand. I mentioned to Judith a description I'd read of Jews who collaborated with Nazis: "A man who had knowingly compromised himself did not revolt against his masters, no matter what idea had driven him to collaboration: too many mutual skeletons in the closet. . . . There were so many proofs of the absolute obedience that could be expected of men of honor who had drifted into collaboration."
She responded, "Perpetrators know this. These methods are known, they're taught. Pimps teach them to one another. Torturers in the various clandestine police forces involved in state-sponsored torture teach them to each other. They're taught at taxpayer expense at our School of the Americas. The Nazi war criminals who went to Latin America passed on this knowledge. It is apparently a point of pride among many Latin American torturers that they have come up with techniques the Nazis didn't know about."
Practice doesn't make perfect. If our hearts and minds are wrong, it doesn't matter what we do, nor what justifications we emplace to buttress our decisions, our actions will further destruction. Consider the consecutive claims to virtue for deforestation. Consider the fact that my father never beat anyone without good reason. If we learn nothing else from the insistent cooptation of the words of Jesus by those who would destroy, we should learn this: if your heart is wrong—if you are a member of the race of the indecent, as Viktor Frankl put it; if you are a cannibal, as Jack Forbes said—you can and will twist any words to serve vile ends. It doesn't much matter whether you are raping a woman because Eve sinned, because you need to determine if she is a witch, or because she provoked you by the