Resist!
Anti Repression Leaflets for Videoactivists and Photographers
Trauma
1: * Making Invisible
2: * Ridiculing
3: * Withholding Information
4: * Damned If You Do And Damned If You Don't
5: * Heaping Blame and Putting to Shame
METHODS OF DOMINATION
A Norwegian feminist and peace activist, Berit Ås, listed five master suppression techniques in the 70's, in order to show the ways in which one person can get power over another person.
1. Making invisible
Are certain people talking all the time? Do some people only have eye contact with each other? Are your suggestions ignored or are others gazing through their calenders or looking at their phones when you're talking? Is somebody's repeating what you've just said and proposing it as their own suggestion?
2. Ridiculing
Are your suggestions laughed at/made fun of? Are you treated like a child? Are people saying that they know your suggestions wouldn't work "cause it's already been tried ten years ago"?
3. Withholding information
Does somebody in the group have all the important information? Do you begin the discussion without having presented the same information to all the participants? Are people swapping information without sharing it with the rest of the group?
4. Double punishment
"Damned if you do, damned if you don't". Is everything wrong no matter what you do? Are others saying you're not participating if you're quiet, and that you're dominant if you're suggesting something?
5. Heaping blame and putting to shame
Blaming happens through using ridiculing and double punishment. Blaming is what's done when people are judging you more for who you are than what you do. This technique can be seen at a societal level in the way women who have been raped feel shame and blame themselves for what has been done to them.
more:
Berit Ås and The Five Master Suppression Techniques, aka Methods of Domination: http://kilden.forskningsradet.no/c16881/artikkel/vis.html?tid=35123
## click the link below saying "master suppression techniques" (there's ten of them here) and also info on feminist self defense :) http://home.swipnet.se/vingen/ArtemisSystrar/frames.htm
## maybe some ideas on how to work on/deal with the methods of domination? http://ungdomsstyrelsen.se/butiksadmin/showDoc/4028e58a001ca0d101001d84004e00c7/shortcuts_to_gender_equality.pdf