AR: This morning, on my way here, I walked past a subway advertisement and it said something like “New York wouldn’t smell like a bathroom if there were more public bathrooms in New York” and it was so slick and well designed. It seemed like a really good example of the gentrification mindset you write about, where people think of change in the really comfortable area where it’s allowed. It was both obvious and absurd, it could have just as easily read, “New York wouldn’t have a rat problem if people would eat rats on their bagels.”

SS: Exactly. It’s beside the point. Or, at that point, change is so compromised and between the lines that it’s only the illusion of change. People have ceased to learn how to conceptualize.

AR: What are you working on now?

SS: I’m writing a book right now called Conflict Is Not Abuse and one of the things I’ve strongly come to believe is that the word violence should only be applied to physical violence. Even though psychological, emotional, financial, and all kinds of punitive behaviors can be more damaging than physical violence, they are different. I think we need new terms to separate those experiences.

AR: Where did that idea come from?

SS: I was born in 1958 and if you were raped you had to have two witnesses. The laws were draconian. Things like stalking, domestic violence, date rape, they weren’t recognized. Radical movements, believing patriarchy was the enemy, helped create these concepts. But, like all the radical movements of that era, everything ended up in the hands of the police, to the point where today, the police are the primary arbiters of people’s relationship conflicts.