Is it because you feel sidelined?
Not yet, should I be?:)
Everyone knows that all violence is bad.
I don't think that is entirely true
I certainly grew up with the twisted idea that violence needed to be used. I hadn't thought of it clearly at the time but the only question was the one that Vladimir Lenin articulated, "Who, Whom?" who gets to inflict what on whom?
Look at any election campaign, and you will see the two sides advocating the initiation of violence against none violent people and victimless activities
Stereotypical mainstream conservatives would be seen advocating the initiation of force against people ingesting certain herbs, consensually exploring the contents of other adults underwear outside of certain narrowly defined circumstances, and the bombing of people in certain geographical areas.
Stereotypical mainstream liberals would be seen advocating the threat of force to take money from certain people, and also to prevent certain types of consensual business transactions from happening, and to force some none consensual transactions to happen
Neither lot will typically think of themselves as violent people, but they have no hesitation in advocating the initiation of force - and if the people they are advocating the use of force on, attempt to defend themselves, Those mainstream conservatives and liberals have no problem with that force being escalated to deadly, or in blaming the victims for "resisting"
The result of that system in the united state is over one million fe'ral regulations, each one of which can potentially be taken up to and beyond the point of lethal force to enforce its compliance. - over 1 million reasons to use violence on non violent people.
I think that acceptance of the idea that it's ok to violently coerce people does spill over into our one on one interactions, even if we sometimes use a proxy (in a blue costume) to do the dirty part.
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I realise that to someone who has been immersed in the mainstream (that's most people), it might look like I am advocating either a Mad Max type world, or a unicorns and rainbows utopia where all people are magically nice.
Far from it
Most of the positive laws on the statute books are very recent, most are within the period since 1900, and well over half of them are younger than I am.
Without getting too nerdy, there are well developed and proven legal systems which provide mutual reciprocal incentives to follow them. They're also easy to understand.
They're not very useful to kings who are looking for money, or to robbing politicians or to greedy cronies or police unions, and they do not allow for some people to force their prejudices onto other people.
but they do provide very strong effective, swift and cheap protections for all individuals against force, theft, fraud and other torts. They can also evolve extremely rapidly as conditions and technology change.
In terms of feminism, The customary pre colonial Irish "Brehon" legal system, had developed a consensual system of women's rights that was more advanced and liberal than any in the English speaking world, probably up to the 1970s
In summary, I disagree that violence is either recognised, or seen as always bad, by the vast majority of people
I also argue that that violence (and arguments for it) and its adverse impact on all of our lives has greatly increased in my lifetime,
and that that violence is not necessary (on either logical or historical grounds) to achieve an extensive and just system for protecting rights, including women's rights.
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Sorry it's long, I don't know how to explain the idea in a shorter form, that advocacy for violence is the norm in the mainstream, and that that advocacy for violence is not infact necessary.
