Conflict Is Not Abuse

Starred review from March 27, 2017
In this incisive, refreshing work, Schulman (The Gentrification of the Mind), a novelist, documentarian, and social critic, documents how those with power and privilege increasingly tend to conflate any challenge to their authority or ways of thinking with being attacked. Exploring the overlap between the political and personal, Schulman poses thoughtful examples of how conflict and disagreement—especially when marginalized voices try to enter the commons—are met with false accusations of abuse and claims of victimization by those who may feel offended but are not harmed. Unafraid to tackle challenging subjects such as trigger warnings and safe spaces, Schulman also ruminates on what she sees as society’s collective failure to prioritize the teaching of basic problem-solving and relationship skills, resulting in a culture of knee-jerk escalation that, when expressed through physical or emotional force (as in interpersonal abuse and military conflicts) obscures the structural roots of interpersonal and societal breakdown. Like classic works of the early women’s and gay liberation movements, this thought-provoking title expertly analyzes power dynamics inherent to interactions as small-scale as spousal violence and as large-scale as the increasing criminalization of HIV-positive Canadians and the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza. A concluding call to address personal and social conflicts without state intervention via police and courts caps off a work that’s likely to inspire much discussion.