Often one form of violence is used in the service of other forms of domination. For instance, as activist and scholar Andrea Smith has extensively documented in the United States, gender violence is a primary tool of colonialism and white supremacy. The goal of colonialism is not just to kill colonized peoples, but to destroy their sense of being people and their ability to care for themselves and one another. It is through sexual violence that a colonizing group attempts to render a colonized peoples, in Smith’s words “inherently rapable, their lands inherently invadeable, and their resources inherently extractable.” One cannot end colonialism and white supremacy without ending heteropatriarchy, and vice versa.
