Original German comment cropped out
By now, many of you have probably seen the above photo which has been circulating for several hours already, posted on Germany Chancellor, Angela Merkel’s Instagram account. World leaders gathered in Quebec for the summit. The original caption in German vaguely referenced the spontaneous nature of this meeting, but not the context and the events that led up to this group of leaders taking on the postures and positions they have in this photo. Our “President” is seated and has his arms crossed in front of him and appearing seemingly “toddler-like,” while the rest of the leaders present are taking on more aggressive “adult-like” postures. Whatever is being discussed, it is clear that Trump is not happy and is responding by pouting and throwing his usual tantrum, while the others appear to be interested in asserting some sort of position or perhaps futilely attempting to change his.
This picture reminded me of Episode 6 of the en(gender)ed podcast which I released this morning. In it, the survivor, “Elizabeth,” walks us through her journey from struggle through awakening and reflects upon moments in her relationship with her abusive ex-husband that, added together, amount to what Evan Stark (in Episode 2 on “Coercive Control”) would term a “calculus of harms.” At one point, Elizabeth speaks about how her ex-husband chastised her for his own mistake. He had bought something that he later regretted and held Elizabeth — his wife, responsible — rather than himself in that decision. Rather than acknowledge his own, very human, mistake in making a decision that can be easily remedied, Elizabeth’s husband projected his own internal struggles, whatever they might be, onto her. He deflected from them and exercised it, most often in their relationship, through a series of verbal put-downs, self-esteem deflating missives that were meant to diminish her spirit and her strength, in order to artificially elevate his.
While this photo doesn’t draw direct parallels to the example I just shared, it does put into sharp relief, this man’s inability to “come to the table” as a mature adult and validate all the voices present. The photo makes clear, as Evan Stark might observe, that this man’s lack of respect for the humanity of those others at the negotiating table and his “take or leave it” tantrum-like tactics, are really at the heart of what constitutes abuse in personal relationships and abuse of power in the public sphere. Someone or some entity is exerting power over another, often informed and shaped by a sense of privilege of some kind. Its impact can be to silence, to minimize, sometimes to pathologize, and in the above photo, to dominate. My hope is that en(gender)ed can serve as a starting point for our listeners to better recognize abuse of power in private spaces, so that they can also better recognize and understand its assertion in the public sphere. Together, we can use this newly developed cultural literacy to generate more effective solutions in both realms.
