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Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

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Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman is an American novelist known for her profound insights into the LGBTQ+ community and her exploration of historical themes. Her works often focus on issues of gender, race, and class, and how these factors intertwine to influence individuals and society. more

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“False accusations of harm are used to avoid acknowledgment of complicity in creating conflict and instead escalate normative conflict to the level of crisis. This choice to punish rather than resolve is a product of distorted thinking, and relies on reinforcement of negative group relationships, when instead these ideolo- gies should be actively challenged. Through this over-statement of harm, false accusations are used to justify cruelty, while shunning keeps information from entering into the process. Resistance to shunning, exclusion, and unilateral control, while necessary, are mischaracterized as harm and used to re-justify more escalation towards bullying, state intervention, and violence. Emphasizing communication and repair, instead of shunning and separation, is the key to transforming these paradigms.”

ConflictSeparationPunishmentCrueltyIdeologyControlResolutionExclusionFalse Accusations
Book:Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair
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“[To speak more particularly at last of lovers] their situation allowed them to consider their feelings with a sort of feverish objectivity, and it was rare, at such times, for them not to see their own shortcomings clearly. The first occasion of this was the difficulty they had in imagining precisely the absent person's actions and gestures. They deplored the fact that they knew nothing about how their loved ones spent their time; they felt guilty about their past failure to find this out and about having pretended to believe that, for a person in love, the beloved's actions are not the source of every joy. From then on it was easy for them to go back through the story of their love and to examine its imperfections. In normal times we are aware, consciously or not, that there is no love that cannot be surpassed, yet we accept with a greater or lesser degree of equanimity that ours shall remain merely average. But memory is more demanding.”

LoveSeparation
Book:The Plague
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“I would like to announce that my marriage to Brock McCain is undergoing a transition period. Although we will be dissolving our marriage, our friendship will remain strong. Over the past couple of years, our schedules have taken us away from each other for lengthy periods of time. That, along with a shift in our growth as individuals, has resulted in a relationship built on mutual respect, but no longer one with a romantic connection. I know this will come as a shock to many who thought of ours as a 'marriage made in heaven' and for that, I apologize. We are public figures, but certain aspects of our relationship remain private. I wish Brock all the best as we both embark on new paths.”

SpeechDivorceSeparationStatement
Book:A Hollywood Ending
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“Departure" Everyone wants to leave Those here want to go there, and many there are eager to return here… There are those who understood that living is not possible neither here nor there, so, you see them, in vain, searching for alternatives… Few have understood that the impossibility of living is a result of complicity not geography, that most of those who stay or depart never part ways with their complicity and tendency to surrender, thus, they recreate the circumstances and the causes of departure everywhere they go… Few have understood that all places will remain unlivable so long as the causes to depart are a result of a complicit and defeated Self… [Original poem published in Arabic on June 20, 2024 at ahewar.org]”

LeavingSeparationSurrenderDenialEscapeDepartureComplicityArabic PoetryArabic LiteratureThe Art Of Life
Author:Louis Yako
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“The Involuntary Princeling by Stewart Stafford The candle's blaze grows distant fast, Quenched to an ember spark, unseen, Carriage taken in larceny's grasp, Darkness made far bank unclean. Daubing a sovereign slogan, In violet shadows unmasked, A delinquent reunion reprieved, A doggerel name outcast. Trade winds howl to storming, As fireballs 'neath seas seek to atone, The red-crowned crest now stakes its claim, On writhed Rosetta's key stone. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”

PowerChildhoodIdentitySeparationIronyRoyaltyFamily DramaDisplacementCustodyBiographical
Author:Stewart Stafford
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