Mother vs Cultural Bullying

Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo only to be cursed by him after she rejected him.  His curse, that all who hear her prophecies, will not believe her, effectively silenced her.  The torture of having something to say, and no one to hear her caused her eventually to go insane.  Her strong and prophetic voice, forever silenced by what I would call a form of verbal abuse or bullying.

Women are often the target of verbal abuse in our patriarchal social system,  but I wonder, as the world begins to shift from what Riane Eisler in her book, A Caring Economy, calls a more masculine oriented domination system to a more feminine oriented partnership system, that patriarchy, as a collective, is increasingly becoming desperate to silence all whom it perceives to threaten the rigid rules of the hierarchal model of the domination system.

In a patriarchal social system, women are the “other,” a woman’s sense of the world is the “other,” and we are often overtly and covertly bullied into believing that our place in the world is lesser than, subservient, and somehow wrong. My interest is in women’s issues as I  see that as the pivot point for social change, but I also can see similarities between the “otherness” of women and anyone else who does not fit into the model or the values upheld by a patriarchy or domination system.

Verbal abuse, I describe, as the overt, or covert attempt to bully another into silence to gain power over them - someone they find threatening to their way of thinking or being in the world. To stay too long in a relationship of this kind, thinking you can positively influence it, is to risk slowly having your fundamental navigation system shutdown. To become lost, as the other intended, though I believe, often unconsciously, in a vast sea of confusion.  And, ultimately, to begin to become separated from your own soul, from your source, from God, from the essential You.

This "violence" is not the sort that we were taught to recognize and respond to, and there are often no witnesses, and no bruises. Instead of responding to your concerns, well meaning “experts” may label you as the problem. You may be diagnosed with a chemical imbalance, a genetic predisposition to a mood disorder, a behavior disorder, or just over reacting. All which make you the "problem" and will effectively silence your concerns, and negate your experience. You may begin to feel a sense of invisibility, and like Cassandra, a sense of insanity.

And I wonder, is bullying part of an overall pattern of domination in our culture. Not just in our relationships, in our families, in our workplaces, in our schools, but in our collective mindset, something that many of us are subtly, unwittingly participating in.

We decide, as a culture who is ok, and who is not. And those "who are not," we collectively tell, cruelly or kindly, and with authority that they have a problem. We may openly bully them for their differences or maybe we recommend medication and therapy (Both of those things necessary at times.) But, tragically,  we can send the single message that they are wrong, and the rest of the world is ok. That there is something different about them. They make us uncomfortable and we need them to be less visible - to be quiet.  

Have many of us become guardians of the domination culture, both men and women.  We don't generally like change. We don't generally like difference. We hold on to the status quo even when everything is falling apart around us. We have been stubbornly holding on to our beliefs that we can continue on in the ways of the thousands of year old domination system, and refuse to embrace the need for radical change at every level. 

Maybe we need to look at the larger systems that govern the world we live in. Maybe there are some among us, a growing number, who are responding, like canaries in the mine shaft, to something that is very wrong in our culture. Could we be labeling some in our culture as a problem, rather than, possibly, harbingers of change? And to those labeled "other," like Cassandra, with little sense of communal support or shared experience, the level of alienation, and oppression must be excruciating.  We have all lived too long in a patriarchal dominator system to not all be serving it in ways that we are not aware. I think we should take a close look at those (with sometimes the best of intentions) we are collectively silencing. Who and what does that serve?