#38-21 Conflict Is Not Abuse … Mistaking discomfort for violence is an error of our times

Lesbian novelist and nonfiction writer Sarah Schulman speaks in Vancouver about her book Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair. The book could not find a publisher in the US, but was picked up by Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press. As of this reading in 2018, it had sold more than 10,000 copies. Schulman says it is not simple to divide the good and the bad, where the good are the abused and the bad the abusers; many who’ve been abused feel threatened by discomfort and respond with abuse. She argues that we need to untangle as best we can what is really happening between ourselves and others.

Host(s): Frieda Werden
Featured Speakers/Guests: Sarah Schulman is the author of a dozen novels, a playwright and nonfiction writer. She has had a long activist career, including being a founder of the Lesbian Avengers, an early member of the AIDS community social movement ACT-UP, and an advisor to Jewish Voices for Peace. Her most recent book is a social history of ACT-UP. She is now a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at College of Staten Island (CSI) and a Fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Credits: Recorded by Robin Eriksson of CSJF-FM. Edited by Frieda Werden. Thanks to Arsenal Pulp Press, publisher of the book, for permission to record.

Comments: Previously released as WINGS #18-18
https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/C/Conflict-Is-Not-Abuse

Https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u-wid4piQdfNj1YetbTodoFKxFmGtS5s/view?usp=drivesdk