Conflict with Care- a Feminist Agenda

Back with some closing thoughts- because I had a few fights....

This last part of the article has taken me longer than I thought and promised, to write and publish. In between the first three parts and the last one, I spent a lot of time with my sisters and niece, as I was visiting my sister. I also had a fight with my sisters while on vacation. It was horrible. My fears of abandonment were stoked and I also started making plans to abandon them before I was shown the door. To abandon is my immediate, instinctive and fear-based response. At such times, my automatic thought is that conflict skills are useless, no matter how hard you try to get better at it- because as much as you might want to conflict with care and respect, the others might not want it. That was, by the way, not the case with my sisters, but at some points, some aspects did lead to a bit of frustration.

Natasha Badhwar, in a comment on one of my posts, mentioned that, although she has been working on her conflict muscles, she still finds herself avoiding it. And I could see why. Conflict and especially conflict with care is extremely laborious. It takes an emotional toll on you and simultaneously asks you to remain vigilant of your feelings to hurt. That’s a lot to ask for and so, you might as well just handle yourself instead of involving someone else.

While speaking to my sisters, during the conflict, (see, how I use the word ‘speaking’ rather than fighting- that’s conflicting with care), I could hear myself saying that I need to stop thinking that conflict is generative. I need to stop trusting that people will be able to conflict well. I need to ensure these conflicts don’t arise. How? I need to stop getting bothered by people, I need to grow a thick skin. I am too sensitive. Maybe, I am the problem. As I saw it, most of us, are primed to avoid conflict. In general, we are peaceful creatures- a point I will return to later.

We are generally peaceful creatures, like nature, who might not want to cause conflict but would like to make things right. Pic Credit: Younger Sis

If we prefer peace, and there is conflict, the agenda item here, is to make conflict as peaceful as possible. This is not an oxymoron as you have been led to believe by men mostly that we need to have war to keep peace. The internet is full of such discourse.

When peace becomes a masculinist project, war is essential. Because war as a means of achieving peace is a capitalistic project that does not include redemption or empowerment. Conflict with care is therefore a feminist agenda and I am going to share why.

Masculine forms of conflict revolve around retaining or gaining power, or maintaining status quo never the reversal of it. Look around you- Palestine/ Israel, India/ Kashmir, the general response of the Indian Government against its protesting citizens, your boss at work- mostly at corporates, I would like to say, but I know it’s mostly everywhere, the way technology is designed to engage with or during conflict or even, most likely, your own father, or even your mother in-law. People who have a masculinist approach to conflict approach it necessarily as a threat to their power and their only response is to squash that threat. They do not want to engage because it would mean the possibility of change in power relations and so, meaningful engagement is never an option. Because what if, that meaningful engagement necessitates a relinquishing of their position of power? Conflict avoidance, especially when you are the powerful is a tactic to retain your position. And if you lack power, and avoid conflict, you have learnt (or have been taught) that conflict will not result in any change, hence you learn to never broach it. Nothing changes as a result of your silence. There is then only one winner.

Masculinist forms of conflict response almost always include brute force or violence. This violence can take many forms including but not only physical, emotional, verbal, and/ or legal. The idea often is not to leave you feeling empowered and good about yourself after a conflict, but masculinist conflict wants to beat the sh*t out of you, so that you don’t dare challenge that authority again.

While thinking about my father recently and how he has approached conflict, now that he is getting older, I realized that, he has lost his only way of dealing with it- beating or hitting. In his younger days, my father reached out to his trusted friends in the face of conflict- his hand, belt, a wooden ruler or maybe you know, his glaring eyes, but never had to learn how to speak. It was always enough- a slap if one of us back answered, a quick knock on the head if we ate our meals slow, an irritated angered look if we cut our nails and they made a noisy click (yup). But now, at 76, no matter how much and how loud we back answer, or how much we ignore his irritations, he cannot even do as much as, simply say, “don’t”. He is disarmed and helpless. Frustrated perhaps. He never learnt to conflict in a way that didn’t harm while we learnt to expect it and moved away before it occurred. Jasbir Puar’s book, The Right to Maim, one that I have only read the summary of, but find it too compelling not to include here, says that one of Israel’s tactics in suppressing Palestinian resistance is to cripple them. Crippling or making the population disabled, not only shows the Israeli Defense Forces in good light, as the death toll is low, but disabled or debilitated people will also not be able to resist in the future. In a family, or any other similar relationship, masculinist violence will cripple you emotionally so that you do not resist again.

Last Sunday, I was out on a Nature Walk with environmentalist and expert botanist, Renee Vyas. The walk was in Mahim Nature Park where Renee was introducing us to Mosses, Lichens and Fungi. While walking we came across a passionflower creeper, which is a rich source of nectar for butterflies. While the nectar allows butterflies to pollinate the flowers, it also is a feast for ants. Renee says that whenever there are ants on a plant, one has to take it as a sign that something is not right. Ants would crowd out the butterflies and interfere with pollination. When we looked closer at the passionflower leaves and buds, we saw nectaries. Nectaries are small cup-like structures that hold nectar that ants can use without disturbing the butterflies’ food source.

Nectaries: dark green spots on the bud, just above the ants Pic Credit: Me

Passion flower creepers create nectaries to peacefully divert the intruders to another food source. Men would find ways to kill them.

As I mentioned earlier, we are in general peaceful creatures. We are also part of nature, just like the passionflower creeper. How can we find ways to win and ensure others win with us?

There are some ways outlined in the preceding posts and so many ways you probably do it. Isabelle, my friend, mentioned to me that she steps aside from a heated argument from her loved ones, only to cool down and come back again. It helps her discuss better. These are feminist conflict tactics.

Next time you are in a conflict, especially with people that you have to or want to make things work with, think of conflicting with care. Because often when you conflict, it is because you care.