Approximate Ball Knowledge

Studies of Native American Leaders Made at Fort Laramie

c. 1859

Oil and graphite on paper

It is true that money and power enables abuse on a grand scale, but the converse is not true— having no money and no power does not make abuse less likely. I think many of us know this from experience. There is no special moral quality to being poor or being oppressed. Oppressed people abuse each other all the fucking time, in families and relationships and friendships. People of color abuse each other. Women abuse each other. Gay people and trans people abuse each other.

Cesar Chavez raped the women and girls of the labor rights movement throughout his career, using worker solidarity as a bludgeoning tool to ensure their silence.

If you say “people in my group don’t do this, it’s the powerful men that do it” then you harm yourself in several ways.

1. You signal to your social circle that you do not hold them to any standard of behavior. You have preemptively pledged loyalty, which means that if they behave objectionably, any objection on your part will mean a betrayal of your community.

2. You mark yourself as socially permissive. People in your social group know that you are, at baseline, unwilling to accept or act on allegations against them. To be frank, this makes you very easy to take advantage of, whether in service of abusing someone else or abusing you directly.

And you harm other people by telling a lie. What about all of the people who have been abused by a person within this oppressed group? They have it reiterated that their abuse cannot be spoken about, for the sake of solidarity.