Violence underpins a great deal of everyday social relationships, determining where we can walk, how we appear, who we can speak to. Plus, our intimate relationships. Violent inequality is one of the ways in which gender is lived and experienced: On average, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales. We also know that coping with symbolic violence daily is another consequence of the structures of inequality. We live dynamic lives meaning that we can shape and challenge how inequality is lived as well as accept and legitimate it, depending on the alternatives available. All structures and institutions generate particular relationships which are always social (ie we relate as social beings in a social context). These social relations are lived by us and through us eg we live classifications – think about the struggles around binary gender. Often we don’t even notice we are living them and/or sometimes choose to ignore them. A great deal of the energy of the powerful goes into convincing us of who we are, what we are and the social value we hold eg mothers have a huge amount of pressure on how to be mothers (standards that radically change over history). Living connects the structures to the institutions that we inhabit. We do not choose these eg we are born into certain bodies, families, education, culture, inheritance and classification systems. Yet we live them in different ways. Depending on how they are connected to the interests of the powerful, we may inhabit with comfort or resist. Patriarchy and masculinity, whiteness and heterosexuality are all closer to the interests of the powerful and much less likely to produce resistance. We are all social beings enmeshed in social relations.

Beverley Skeggs, 2024