Self Defense: A Philosophy of Violence

If you go door to door in our nation and talk to citizens about domestic violence, almost everyone will insist that they do not support male violence against women, that they believe it to be morally and ethically wrong. However, if you then explain that we can only end male violence against women by challenging patriarchy, and that means no longer

A major reason for our reactive defenses is that many of us still unconsciously identify ourselves as children and those around us as grown-ups—parent figures—who could devastate us with their rejection and whose protection is necessary for survival.

The violence allowed him to promulgate a clear story, which the mainland press reinforced. Reformers pursuing prosperity, like him, were rational. Nationalists, by contrast, were lunatics.

Most people, though, learned to hide for their own safety or to fight back to protect themselves or to become small and pathetic so that people would take pity on them. If you have any of these responses to conflict—defensiveness, rage, withdrawal, weepiness, whatever—it is certain that you developed them for a good reason.