Domination Paradigm

So I had a writing assignment for my Nonviolent Communication class and the question was "Reflect on the Domination Paradigm and write about your experience of this in your life. How does this experience affect you today?" So this is what I wrote:

Just reading the words Domination Paradigm made me let out a big sigh. I think, being a female in this society, and especially being a poor female from a poor farm family, with a very life-on-the-edge past, I have very low status in our society, so I have definitely felt the effects of the Domination Paradigm. I first experienced the Domination Paradigm at home, on the farm. I saw my cousins beat a woodchuck to death with their boots and rocks, a first hand example of domination over an animal. I saw a baby bear in a ditch that a farmer had shot, because he was afraid the bear would mess with his cows. I remember crying when a farmer changed the course of a creek near our house to counteract the erosion the creek was causing; I cried because it seemed wrong to change the course of a natural, wild thing like a creek. All of these are examples of domination of nature and the earth I guess. I’ve also seen lots of examples of domination here in Portland; I work for the Salvation Army, so I see co-workers treating the homeless and women escaping domestic violence in a dominating way; some of my co-workers feel better then those women just because they happen to not be in those situations at the moment. I asked a few co-workers why it seemed that dominating behavior was encouraged; one said “we work for the Salvation Army, its’ right in the name…” She was right; I should have known from the beginning that we’d be expected to “lord over” these ladies. I’ve seen a lot of terrible domination up at OHSU when I used to be an on-call doula up there; unfortunately, OHSU policy seems to be to treat Hispanic women with the greatest disrespect I’ve ever seen. One time in particular, a nurse who had just arrived for a new shift said to a client I’d helped all night with painful contractions “You are a bad mom if you don’t get an epidural…you are hurting your baby..” I sort of doubt she would say something like that to a middle-class white lady, but I could be wrong. It is amazing that they can also do lots of procedures to Hispanic clients without going through a translator to find out if the client wants the procedure done. I also saw a lot of unbelievable and blatant domination of native people while I was in Malawi. I could not believe the debts the British are trying to collect from the Malawians for colonizing their country, something the Malawians I’m sure didn’t want in the first place. Essentially, every person in Malawi is a British slave because the British still owe their land and they grow sugarcane for export to Britain to “pay off their debts,” which are the debts of the infrastructure that the British decided to build in Malawi in the first place! I used to have written on my bathroom wall in purple marker “We still have slaves, we just don’t see them anymore,” which I learned while in Africa…I met those slaves, face to face, and realized I am an agent of domination as much as the next person. I think about these things every time I buy something or turn on a light or whatever; I wonder what slaves in which part of the world grew or made whatever it is I am buying, I wonder how many salmon die throwing themselves against a dam so I can have electricity…I think I’m going to have to eventually leave our culture altogether just to feel ethical. Domination is the key to our civilization.