It is a commonly held belief that matters of the home are private and to discuss them publicly is tasteless, indecent, and a betrayal of one's community. Regrettably, millions of women across the U.S. suffer egregious abuses under this veil of secrecy and silence around partner violence.
Domestic violence, partner violence, and spousal abuse are each terms with broad definitions. The focus of the Breaking Silences Project (BSP) is where those terms intersect regarding violence toward women who are:
- married or unmarried
- heterosexual, bi-sexual, lesbian, queer, transgender, or transsexual
- living together, separated from, or dating their partner
These women are partnered with individuals who use abusive and manipulative behaviors in order to control the relationship. These behaviors include Physical, Sexual, Mental/Emotional, Financial, and/or Verbal abuse, none of which are necessarily distinct and often operate in conjunction with each other.
The following sections offer a little more detail on issues related to partner violence in the U.S.
CONTENTS
Forms of Partner Violence
Physical Violence
Sexual Violence
Mental/Emotional Abuse
Financial Abuse
Verbal Abuse
Women on the Margins
Racial Ethnic Minorities
Immigrant Women
Queer Women
Women in the Military
Lower Income Women
Myths About Partner Violence
The Cultural Argument
He was Out of Control
Only Once
Real Victims Leave
She is Also to Blame
return to introduction
In the U.S., understandings of what constitutes partner violence are primarily limited to physical attacks. The success of movies such as The Burning Bed and Sleeping with the Enemy, for example, illustrate American cultural understandings of partner violence as extreme and severe physical assault. Advocates against partner violence have made huge progress toward elucidating the reality that partner violence includes so much more than that – and that many other kinds of abuse are already present long before attacks to a woman’s body occur. Below are brief overviews of some forms of partner violence, none of which are mutually exclusive and often share considerable overlap.
return to top
Physical Violence. Although the Battered Women’s Movement has done much to promote the realities of other forms of violence, “legitimate” partner violence is most often considered only physical assault. Even within this narrow understanding of partner violence, many often stipulate a further step of degree of physical attack. Our legal system, for example, often requires “proof” through visible bruises, a black eye, or hospitalization, such that physical assaults that do not result in those kinds of injuries or hospital reports are sadly deemed less legitimate. Physical abuse also extends beyond actual attacks on a woman’s body. It includes any form of corporeal control and manipulation, such as preventing her from receiving medical care, or confining her to a closet or apartment.
return to top
Sexual Violence. CONSENT is the key to sexual abuse. Forcing a partner into any kind of sexual act without consent is sexual violence. All too often, a woman’s voice and/or actions are not considered valid determinants of her consent in any given situation. For example, many still believe that through marriage, a woman permanently consents to sex with her husband and therefore forfeits any right to her body or sexual desires. Due to normative unequal gender power dynamics such as income, physical stature, and education, this same ideology applies to unmarried heterosexual couples, as well.
return to top
Mental/Emotional Abuse. Mental or psychological abuse is often conflated with Emotional abuse, and many argue over which behaviors fall into which category. Such a debate is unnecessary because it isn’t the point. The point is to acknowledge that these behaviors exist. They include, stalking, isolation (not just physical), silent treatment, guilt trips, humiliation, using children as leverage, threats, and essentially manipulating a person’s emotions (such as love) or ideals (such as loyalty or religious faith) in order to gain control.
return to top
Financial Abuse. Financial abuse entails using money and/or assets in order to gain control. This kind of abuse is prevalent in relationships where the abused person is financially dependent on or makes considerably less money than the abuser. However, many women who are financially independent also find themselves in financial ruin as a result of their abuser's behaviors. Some examples of how this occurs would be outright theft, which is especially easy to do with married couples who share the same last name; manipulating a woman into absorbing debt or liquidating assets and savings; and ruining a woman’s credit via bankruptcy, foreclosure, or any other mismanagement of joint assets.
return to top
Verbal Abuse. You know that saying we’re all taught when we are kids? “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It’s a lie. Words and silences are the primary medium through which abusers are able to enact all of the abuses mentioned above. Verbal abuse includes name calling, silent treatment, correcting, giving orders, and ignoring.
return to top
The following section presents a general overview of issues specific to women on the margins, such as Racial Ethnic Minorities, Immigrant Women, Queer Women, Women in the Military, and Lower Income Women. Although these groups are described separately, it is important to remember the reality that many women simultaneously comprise more than one of these groups.
return to top
Racial Ethnic Minorities. For racial ethnic women, race often trumps gender. Put differently, racial and ethnic politics privilege men over women. Black-on-black crime, for example, was a national political movement in the 1990s. Its platform, however, was actually black man-on-black man crime. Black man on black woman crime simply did not fall under the umbrella of this movement. Some community organizations have since gone so far as to define “real crime” as street crime. Stuff that happens in the home (even though male on female crime is not always in the home) is “something different.” Racial ethnic female victims of violence are discouraged and often ostracized for calling the police on their male partners, especially for populations who are accustomed to negative treatment from law enforcement or communities where men are already perceived as being prone to violence. The mentality is to not “air our dirty laundry” to outsiders. The unfortunate result is that female racial ethnic victims of violence are silenced into protecting their abusers for the sake of racial ethnic solidarity.
return to top
Immigrant Women. The same racial ethnic solidarity logic (mentioned in Racial Ethnic Minorities) applies for immigrant communities. Immigrant women are further isolated by their abusers through language and legal status. Many abusers will not allow their female immigrant partners to learn English, or at least learn English well enough to be independent, which can be extremely debilitating in a country that is so intolerant of non-English speakers. The legal status of many immigrant women is entirely dependent on their male partners. Legal status has far-reaching effects such as the extent to which a woman is allowed to work in the U.S., and the ever present threat of deportation. Threat of deportation is one of the primary tools men will use over immigrant women. Both language and legal status play a huge role in isolating immigrant women into worlds entirely controlled by their abusers. In situations where both the abuser and abused woman are immigrants, extended family situations may further isolate the woman within the home.
return to top
Queer Women. Queer, Lesbian, Transsexual, and Transgender. All of these women are sexual Others, or considered sexually deviant and therefore not deserving of the same kinds of protection as heterosexual women. For women who are still in any way “in the closet," getting help against their abusers would lead to disclosure of their sexuality in a way that they may not be ready to handle. Furthermore, cultural understandings of domestic violence, even within the anti-violence community, are very heterosexual. People can therefore comprehend situations where women are abused by men. But women abused by other women appears to some to be something entirely different. Transsexual and transgender women who may read as masculine to some are in a further bind in that they are sometimes turned away from apparent women-friendly services such as shelters and safe havens because they are not seen as “real women.”
return to top
Women in the Military. Female service members and spouses of male service members share much overlap with racial/ethnic minority issues as well as immigrant women issues (especially women stationed overseas). The military offers rhetoric of family cohesiveness, but privileges the protection of service members first and foremost. This leaves military wives with the harsh reality that the military will protect and take care of you and your children as long as you don’t make waves for your husband. Due to the transient nature of military life, many military wives are unable to maintain careers, thus making them financially dependent on their male service members. Creating any problems for his career thus has a direct effect on her livelihood and/or that of her children. The position of female service members is also tenuous. Despite the many female Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who have joined the military and either died or been wounded in war, when Americans think of service members, they think of men. Men are the real Soldiers. Men are the ones on the “front lines.” "Bring our boys home." This flawed mentality has detrimental effects on the legitimacy of female service members who are victims of partner violence. Furthermore, the hyper-masculine culture of the military discourages female service members from “stirring up trouble” in the name of unit cohesiveness. Many women often buy into this notion in order to fit in and hopefully be respected as one of the guys. The situation is the same for female spouses and colleagues in other hyper-masculine professions as well, such as law enforcement and professional sports.
return to top
Lower Income Women. Mainstream advocacy against partner violence has taken on the following strategy: privileging the experiences of white middle-class women on the backs of lower income racial ethnic minority women. The issues faced by lower income women have much overlap with racial ethnic women, since unfortunately, a larger percentage of racial ethnic minority communities tend to be lower income. One of the larger problems with the anti-violence movement is that it has been formed around the issues of middle-class white women. As a result, partner violence has been solidified as something “normal” for lower income and racial ethnic women and is thus only worthy of attention when it happens to white and/or middle- to upper-class women. Such is the underlying dynamic behind the attention-grabbing power of statements like, “I didn’t think this could happen to ME.” To illustrate an example of this point: at the height of the media coverage of Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna, CNN Commentary posted an article by Leslie Morgan Steiner, titled, “Rihanna May Not Be Alone.” What readers could immediately ascertain about Ms. Steiner before reading a word of her article, came from the large portrait posted at the top of the page of a middle-aged white woman, normatively attractive, blond hair, blue eyes, warm and inviting yet wise countenance, stud earrings, the hint of a tweed blazer collar, and hair coiffed in a manner that signals privilege. Toward the beginning of the article, Ms. Steiner states:
Perhaps the only good that will come from the Rihanna/Brown publicity is destruction of our culture's misconception that abusers and their victims can only be universally poor, uneducated and powerless.
After this clear establishment of distance between her and those women, she then goes on to tell her own horrible account of domestic violence while pointing to class and power in the following way:
I met my abusive lover at 22. I'd just graduated from Harvard and had a job at Seventeen Magazine in New York. My husband worked on Wall Street and was an Ivy League graduate as well. In our world, we were the last couple you'd imagine enmeshed in domestic violence.
This last statement is the classic million dollar attention getter. It is effective because in our world, the first couple you’d imagine enmeshed in domestic violence is lower income and/or racial ethnic minority because that’s just what those people do, thus, why should we care? The telling of stories such as Ms. Steiner’s is necessary. The telling of all stories of partner violence is necessary. But it is not necessary to add legitimacy to one’s violent experience by framing it in a way that subordinates and naturalizes another woman’s violent experience. Why not allow the horror in the details of one’s own story speak for themselves? Answer: Because our cultural understandings of domestic violence only allow those details to have meaning when they pertain to privileged women.
return to top
The Culture Argument. Just as many Americans believe that violence toward women is only a problem in other countries, many also believe that it is a problem specific to certain sub-cultures within America. It isn't. The only evidence we have of occurrences of partner violence is based on reporting. Reporting is sadly something that does not occur nearly as often as it should, hence one of the reasons for the Breaking Silences Project. Furthermore, lower income minority neighborhoods are policed much heavier than others – if college dorms were policed as heavily for drug possession, one wonders how many college students would go to jail daily. Thus, depending on which data source one uses, reports of many crimes appear higher in lower income minority areas. Even then, for reasons mentioned above, no one can know how many cases of partner violence go unreported. On the other hand, professional, educated, and/or privileged communities have similar codes of silence around reporting, often for the purpose of maintaining appearances and upholding the appearance of refined culture and decorum. Women in this demographic are often too embarrassed or ashamed to report partner violence and are discouraged from doing so by family members whose will share the shame and embarrassment.
return to top
He was Out of Control.
Abusers are often thought to be out of control or in some altered state when they are violent or abusive. In many ways, this notion exonerates them from responsibility for their actions. What is interesting about this he-has-no-control-over-his-actions ideology is that abusers who physically attack their female partners rarely attack others with whom they have regular contact such as co-workers, siblings, friends, and other family members. Many abused women are rarely physically harmed on their faces or other easily exposed parts of their bodies. Furthermore, the abuser who consistently yells at or calls his female partner a bitch, slut, stupid whore, etc., rarely talks to co-workers and others the same way. When abusers do not resort to violent attacks, yelling, and name calling over conflicts at work or playing sports with friends or eating dinner with their parents, yet "lose control" on their female partner for not unloading the dishwasher before bedtime, one has to question the “out of control” ideology. All of these factors suggest a very high level of self-control and purposeful intent when abusers become violent toward their female partners.
return to top
Only Once. “It was only once. It won’t happen again.” Wrong. It will.Unless both of you acknowledge that it happened, that it was wrong, and take constructive steps to ensure it does not happen again, it will happen again.
return to top
Real Victims Leave. It goes something like this, "If she really was a victim of partner violence, she would have left." When it comes to some things, such as the Holocaust, it is easy for people to understand how fear and manipulation operate. Yet, when it comes to partner violence, it suddenly becomes difficult for people to understand the deeply powerful nature of fear and manipulation. The combination of those two forces causes people to forget who they are and divorces them of the ability to think for themselves. Fear and manipulation paralyze people from taking action even in moments of clarity when they know they should. And fear and manipulation cause people to believe that there is no where to turn and nothing they really can do to change the situation. Did the Holocaust occur because all Germans were born evil? Did slavery in the U.S. occur because all whites were born evil? Both historical events point to how easy it is to convince people that they are naturally superior to others just as abused women come to believe they are naturally inferior to their abusers. Both historical events are wraught with the inaction of those who felt that what was going on around them was wrong, yet did nothing due to fear of retaliation, death, and simply not knowing who to trust or turn to for justice, just as abused women are paralyzed to inaction, due to fear of retaliation, death, loss of their children, financial dependence, and not knowing who to trust or where to turn. Both historical events were allowed to flourish due to larger social ideologies of racial domination just as violence toward women occurs and is allowed to flourish due to larger social ideologies of male domination. In essence, it may not make sense to some that abused women stay with their abusers. Yet whether it makes sense or not, it does happen. Therefore, that a woman has remained with someone she says has abused her is absolutely not a marker of dishonesty on her part.
return to top
She is Also to Blame. So many abused women feel that they are not “real” victims of partner violence or that they have no right to report partner violence because they are partly at fault. If they hadn’t said this or done that; they know this particular thing upsets their abuser and should’ve known better than to do it; I know he/she was wrong to hit me, but I’m also to blame; I’m so stupid, I don’t know why I didn’t just leave; I’m such an idiot for allowing this to happen to me. As you read some of the submissions under Broken Silences you’ll notice a constant tone of self-blame. Even stories written by other individuals, such as mothers and sisters, about an abused loved one have a tone of blaming the loved one in some way. Blame is a tricky topic. But to situate it, it’s important to ask, blame for what? In a relationship, it may be true that both partners are responsible for many things that occur, even arguments. Where blame is no longer mutual, however, is when one partner’s actions become abusive. A couple may have an argument about something for example, which results in them feeling anger toward each other. One party escalates. The other party can then further escalate or de-escalate. In the midst of that process, however, neither individual deserves any kind of violent behavior from their partner and is therefore not to blame if violence occurs. Put very simply, anger, disappointment, and betrayal are very human emotions; but, none of them justify violent behavior toward one’s partner.
return to top
|
