Table of Contents
Introduction: A Reparative Manifesto 15
Methodology 17
Facing and Dealing with Conflict 19
Positive Change Can Happen 22
Part 1 The Conflicted Self and the Abusive State
Chapter 1 In Love: Conflict Is Not Abuse 35
The Dangerous Flirt 37
Email, Texts, and Negative Escalation 42
Reductive Modes of Illogic 46
Chapter 2 Abandoning the Personal: The State and the Production of Abuse 55
Understanding Is More Important than Determining the Victim 61
Authentic Relationships of Depth vs. Bonding by Bullying 64
When the Community Encourages Overreaction 70
False Accusations and the State 74
Chapter 3 The Police and the Politics of Overstating Harm 81
The Police as Arbiters of Relationships 83
"Violence," Violence, and the Harm of Misnaming Harm 92
Calling the Police on Singular Incidents of Violence 96
Calling the Police on Your Partner, When It's Your Father Who Should Have Gone to Jail 106
Chapter 4 HIV Criminalization in Canada: How the Richest Middle Class in the World Decided to Call the Police on HIV-Positive People in Order to Cover Up Their Racism, Guilt, and Anxiety about Sexuality and Their Supremacy-Based Investment in Punishment 113
Privileges and Problem-Solving in the Canadian and US Contexts 114
Think Twice Before Calling the Police 115
The Racial Roots of Canaditan HIV Criminalization 116
Viral Load and the State 117
Being "Abused" Instead of Responsible as State Policy 119
Criminalizing Human Experience 121
Women as Monsters 124
Crimes that Can't Occur 126
Claiming Abuse as an Excuse for Government Control 127
Claims of Abuse as Assertions of Normativity 130
In Conflict: Real Friends Don't Let Friends Call the Police 134
Part 2 The Impulse to Escalate
Chapter 5 On Escalation 139
Supremacy Ideology as a Refusal of Knowledge 140
Traumatized Behavior: When Knowledge Becomes Unbearable 144
Interrupting Escalation Before It Produces Tragedy 149
Control is at the Center of Supremacy and Traumatized Behavior 152
The Making of Monsters as Delusional Thinking 157
The Cultural Habit of Acknowledging Distorted Thinking 158
The Denial of Mental Illness 161
Chapter 6 Manic Flight Reaction: Trigger + Shunning 165
Trigger + Shunning #1: Manic Plight Reaction (Historical Psychoanalysis) 168
Trigger + Shunning #2: Borderline Episode (Psychiatry and Pop Psychology) 172
Trigger + Shunning #3: Fight, Flight, Freeze (Mindfulness, American Buddhism) 178
Trigger + Shunning #4: Detaching with an Axe (Al-Anon) 183
They All Agree: Delay and Accountable Community 186
Chapter 7 Queer Families, Compensatory Motherhood, and the Political Culture of Escalation 189
Good Families Don't Hurt Other People 192
Rethinking the Family Ethic as a Form of Harm Reduction 194
Queer Families and Supremacy Ideology 197
Compensatory Motherhood and the Need to Blame 200
Part 3 Supremacy/Trauma and the Justification of Injustice: The Israeli War on Gaza
Chapter 8 Watching Genocide Unfold in Real Time: Gaza through Facebook and Twitter, June 2 - July 23, 2014 209
The Strategy of False Accusation 210
When We Need to Be "Abused," the Truth Doesn't Matter 220
Conclusion: The Duty of Repair 271
What's So Impossible about Apologizing for Your Part? 272
Feeling Better vs. Getting Better 274
Acknowledgments 283
Works Cited 287
Citations by Page 293