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{{Distinguish|Structural inequality|Structural violence|Societal racism}}
'''Structural abuse''' is the process by which an individual is dealt with unfairly by a system of harm in ways that the person cannot protect themselves against, cannot deal with, cannot break out of, cannot mobilise against, cannot seek justice for, cannot redress, cannot avoid, cannot reverse and cannot change.
'''Structural abuse''' is the process by which an individual or group is dealt with unfairly by a [[social]] or [[cultural]] system or authority. This unfairness manifests itself as [[abuse]] in a [[Psychological abuse|psychological]], [[Economic abuse|financial]], [[Physical abuse|physical]] or [[Religious abuse|spiritual form]], and victims often are unable to protect themselves from harm. An individual's inability to protect themselves may lead to their entrapment in the system, preventing them from seeking [[justice]] or recompense for [[Crime|crimes]] endured and [[damages]] incurred, creating a feeling of [[isolation (psychology)|isolation]] or helplessness.
Systems containing abusive structures are primarily designed to control individuals or manipulate them for material gain. Most social systems contain at least one structure that induces structural abuse. These structures, when allowed to exist, create a [[cycle of abuse]], wherein the abuse is repetitive or contagious in nature, and may become acceptable in other parts of the system.
 
Structural abuse differs to [[structural violence]] in terms of scale – structural violence is a process occurring within an entire society, such as [[racism]] or [[classism]], while structural abuse refers to a specific element of society, or a specific system within society. Abuse occurring on this smaller scale is not necessarily endorsed by wider society, such as [[Modern witch-hunts|modern witch hunts]], which have been condemned in South Africa, regardless of deaths that still occur in areas retaining anti-[[Pagan]] social structures.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Staff Reporter |title=Witch-hunts are illegal and must be condemned |url=https://mg.co.za/article/2012-03-23-witchhunts-are-illegal-and-must-be-condemned/ |access-date=3 August 2020 |publisher=Mail Guardian |date=23 March 2012}}</ref> Structural abuse can be found on a very small scale, such as in instances of [[bullying]] involving more than one perpetrator, or in cases of [https://study.com/academy/lesson/malfeasance-vs-misfeasance.html malfeasance], a common example of which is individual [[Police officer|police officers]] conducting investigations without direct evidence, or ignoring formal complaints made by victims.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Presentation Essay – AntiSocial Supply|url=https://antiss.net/essay/|access-date=2020-07-27|language=en-US}}</ref>
Every system contains at least one level at which structural abuse occurs, when the actions of the system takes over the actions of individuals within that system to create structures by which abuse of others occurs.{{citation needed|date=November 2011}}
 
==Process==
Structural abuse should not be confused with [[structural violence]]. Structural violence refers to action committed by a larger society, such as [[racism]] or [[classism]] in an entire society. Structural abuse refers to actions that are not necessarily endorsed by the broader society.
 
==Classes=Types===
There are three kindstypes of structural abuse:
# ImposedStructural interference with an individual's '''''personal space-time-energy controlhealth'''''; psychological, social, emotional, physical or spiritual.
# "Normal"Structural interferencesinterference with an individual's '''''relationships'''''; compromising the ability to controlestablish and maintain social relationships and– their[[Intimate construction;relationships|intimate]] or [[Platonic love|platonic.]]
# Structural interference with an individual's '''''liberties and rights'''''; compromising the ability to establish and maintain employment, practicing hobbies or executing other liberties and legal rights.
# Missing connections that harness the physical, mental and emotional energies of a person over a protracted period, thus causing damage to both the relationship and the physical and emotional wellbeing of the person being kept waiting.
 
===Affected Groups===
Structural abuse is indirect, and exploits the victim on an emotional, mental and psychological level. It manifests itself in specific situations within each cultural, social, corporate and family framework.
Structural abuse is often ''indirect''. As such it can affect vulnerable groups, such as:
 
# '''''Children''''' {{Main|Child abuse}}
== Impacts ==
# '''''Young adults'''''
# '''''Adults with disabilities''''' {{Main|Disability abuse}}
# '''''The elderly''''' {{Main|Elder abuse}}
 
===Nature===
Structural abuse is also called societal abuse. It has four permanent impacts upon the individuals subjected to it:
Structural abuses often "survive" on heuristics of fallacies and distortions of logic.
* Cognitive abuse by which the meaning of the world is changed forever
* Sexual abuse in which a person's identity is changed for life
* Emotional abuse by which the capability to function in a human manner is impaired
* Physical abuse that is imposed upon an individual or group by a personal, social, commercial or cultural system of dominance.
 
== See also ==
An example of how surface-level structural abuses are accepted by the community is where a political journalist{{Who|date=August 2011}} in Australia presented a review of the day's work within the Australian Parliament in August 2011. During the one-minute presentation, consisting of 18 points, she began eight new points with the word "Now". "Now" is a fixation cue for viewers to forget about the past and the future, but to concentrate only on the "now" time frame. The use of the word was surplus to the data she presented, and even contradictory to it. The regularity of the word "Now", its placement at the front of each point by which the interpretation of each point is shaped, and the later repetitive use of the word by the anchor journalist steering the news program, who does not normally use such a control habit, showed that the word was a verbal dissociative cue by which hypnotic states are induced.
{{div col|colwidth=22em}}
 
* [[Accumulation by dispossession]]
Other examples include:
* [[Causes of poverty]]
* Standing over another in a dominating manner;
* [[Conflict theories]]
* Calling people unkind{{clarify|this smacks of appeal to pity and pov terminology|date=May 2014}} names;
* [[Cultural reproduction]]
* Snatching belongings of another, refusing to return them immediately;
* [[Civil Rights Movement]]
* Being late for meetings;
* [[Cycle of abuse]]
* Talking over other people, thus excluding them from participating in the discussion;
* [[Cycle of poverty]]
* Touching another in a sexual manner without their verbal or body language permission;
* [[Discrimination]]
* Punching people on the arm as "a gesture of friendship";
* [[Economic abuse]]
* Torturing newcomers to the organisation as a form of Rites of Passage.
* [[Economic violence]]
 
* [[Extermination through labour]]
'''Cues indicating a Structurally Abusive Corporate System'''
* [[Freak show]]
 
* [[Frog pond effect]]
Structural Abuse Indicators include the inability of an outsider to make contact on a personal level with the people who work within an organisation. Cafe meetings turn discussions into plagiarisable events, while lack of agendas for high performance meetings create heightened levels of feeling threatened which impacts on how such meetings are approached. Being kept on hold with music blaring down the earpiece is structural abuse because by listening for the resumption of the discussion there is no escape from the sound.
* [[Global inequality]]
 
* [[Global policeman]]
'''Structurally abusive political systems'''
* [[Golden Rule]]
 
* [[Hate-watching]]
Making promises which are not kept is a category of political structural abuse. Unkept promises fixate the expectations that people create from such promises. Expectations that create physical arousal states and a physical, emotional, intellectual and behavioural mindset by which to accommodate the fulfillment of those promises. When those visualisations of the future and its mobilisation of personal responsiveness is not satisfied in a timely or appropriate manner the result is an extended period of physiological arousal which can turn into stress and emotional depression over time. Hence the anger responses of electorates to the unkept promises of politicians, as well as the frustrated responses of victims of abuses of court processes (e.g. "protective" orders) to the [[abuse of discretion]] exhibited by misfeasant court and law enforcement officers who can claim to be acting under authority or color of law.
* [[Human zoo]]
 
* [[Imperialism]]
'''Community Control Functions of Structural Abuse'''
* [[Institutional abuse]]
 
* [[Institutional racism]]
All categories of structural abuse involve the manipulative control of time, energy, focus and connection between people, groups and organisations, in the service of one side, and to the disservice of the other.
* [[Iron cage]]
 
* [[Judicial murder]]
Most people call structural abuse "bad manners" or "rudeness", since it generally breaks conventions by which there is mutual control within each situation.
* [[Kangaroo court]]
 
* [[Peacebuilding]]
Each instance of structural abuse breaks down the positive relationship between the two parties, creating for those being abused increasingly negative relationships built on expectations of exploitation, snatching of time, waste of effort, missing redress, and feelings of entrapment from which it is hard to escape.
* [[Political repression]]
 
* [[Privilege hazard]]
'''Dealing with structural abuse'''
* [[Slow violence]]
 
* [[Social conflict]]
Structural abuse is helped by talking therapies in which those abused find a listener, and then find their voice by which to begin to remove the power of the abusing system to continue to harm their inner identities.
* [[Social exclusion]]
 
* [[Social inequality]]
Currently in most countries, there is no formal [[law]] that has been formulated against structural abuse, protecting the victim from such abuse, and enabling him or her to approach the [[court]] for relevant justice.{{Citation needed|date=June 2008}}
* [[Social murder]]
 
* [[Structural violence]]
==See also==
* [[DiscriminationSubsistence crisis]]
* [[List of suicides of LGBT people|Suicide among LQBTQIA+ people]]
*[[Judicial murder]]
* [[KangarooSymbolic courtviolence]]
* [[LegalToxic abusemasculinity]]
* [[StructuralWar on violenceDrugs]]
* [[Washington consensus]]
* [[Witch-hunts]]
{{div col end}}
 
== References ==
{{Reflist}}
*Dissociative Cues:Dave Siever, 2003, "Audio-Visual Entrainment: I. History and Physiological Mechanisms", published in the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) publication, "Biofeedback Magazine" Volume 31, Number 2.
 
==Further reading==
* Antisocial Supply -- An educational resource to help others identify emotional and psychological abuse -- [http://www.antiss.net antiss.net]
* {{cite book | last=Hines | first=Denise A. |author2=Kathleen Malley-Morrison | title=Family Violence in the United States: Defining, Understanding, and Combating Abuse | publisher=SAGE | year=2005 | isbn=0-7619-3086-8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UKs-IyJgjRIC&pg=PA10 }}
* {{cite book | last=Lawson | first=Edward H. |author2=Mary Lou Bertucci |author3=Laurie S. Wiseberg | title=Encyclopedia of Human Rights | publisher=Taylor & Francis | year=1996 | isbn=1-56032-362-0 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LHoO5qUcSD4C&pg=PA102&dq=%22structural+abuse%22&sig=HnItkcD8SIKC-0iQUU6lxyi8vug}}
* {{cite book | last=Slot | first=Pieter J. |author2=Angus Charles Johnston | title=An Introduction to Competition Law | publisher=Hart Publishing | year=2006 | isbn=1-84113-445-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_zLvpzZzsNsC&pg=PA120 }}
* {{cite book | last=Hopkins | first=Michael | title=The Planetary Bargain: Corporate Social Responsibility Matters | publisher=Earthscan | year=2003 | isbn=1-85383-973-6 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LHoO5qUcSD4C&pg=PA102 }}
:* Andrew Young. ''[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4D71330F935A35754C0A961958260 Condemning Nike Plants Won't Prod Change]''. [[NY Times]], July 6, 1997.
 
{{abuse}}
 
[[Category:Psychological abuse]]
[[Category:Peace]]
[[Category:Abuse]]
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