Second Week

What is Domestic Violence?

Common misconceptions:

1. Domestic violence is unusual or only happens to poor women and women of color

2. Alcohol, drug abuse, stress, and mental illness cause domestic violence (by causing the person to suddenly become violent)

3. Both parties usually hold some responsibility in domestic violence situations

4. Men are never victims of abuse, and women never perpetrators

5. People who commit intimate partner violence are violent in most of their relationships

6. Calling the police or leaving the situation is an obvious choice

Reality

1. One in four (between 25 and 31 percent of) US women and one in seven men report being a victim of domestic violence at some point in their lives according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline and sources such as Safe Horizon. While people can become victims of domestic violence regardless of their age, sex, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status, people who have greater economic independence may be more likely to escape the situation and to ask for help. According to the article Development and Preliminary Psychometric Evaluation of the Domestic Violence—Related Financial Issues Scale written by Weaver, T. L., Sanders, C. K., Campbell, C. L., & Schnabel, M., “Women’s economic status is linked to domestic violence in three primary ways. First, although domestic violence occurs across socioeconomic classes, poorer women are more likely to be survivors of domestic abuse than wealthier women... Second, women who are economically dependent on their abusers are less able to leave and more likely to return to abusive partners. Further, the degree of women’s economic dependence on an abuser is associated with the severity of the abuse they suffer. Greater economic dependence is associated with more severe abuse. Third, economic abuse is in itself a form of domestic abuse since abusive partners may act in ways that harm women financially and undermine their ability to become financially independent. Examples of economic abuse include limiting women’s access to funds and undermining their ability to gain employment or attend school”. Abuse can also be especially harmful in the LGBTQ+ community, as the methods of isolation and control that are used in these relationships further isolate the individuals from the community and abusive partners can play on the risk of outing or undermine the abused individuals identity (this is especially harmful if the victim has had relationships in the past that contrast with their current identity or if the victim currently presents in a way that they have not always presented). For more information on this kind of abuse you can go here: http://www.thehotline.org/is-this-abuse/lgbt-abuse/.

2. These are all common excuses for the behavior, but they are rarely the cause. Domestic violence is usually caused by a need to control the situation and people around them or by the abuser having been subjected to an environment where they learned abusive behaviors as correct behaviors. In the experience of a man who worked for the National Domestic Violence Hotline: “There are a lot of strategies that an abusive partner uses in order to control their partners aside from physical violence — verbal abuse, isolation, controlling the finances, reproductive coercion, sabotaging birth control so a partner gets pregnant and he's saying she has to stay home with the baby. It's not usually a one-time incident. Maybe there was one physical abuse incident, but she usually speaks to the isolation, the verbal abuse, the fear, the threats”. The abuser is usually in control of all aspects of the situation and the victim. Easy ways to tell the difference between an abusive encounter and a person who was truly out of control or angry: during the incident a) did they hurt or break anything that they would consider theirs? b) did they show remorse before or after the situation was cleaned up?. A truly out of control person would be unable to discern between their possessions and others and would thus inevitably harm something of theirs. If they always calm down and show remorse after incidents are fully cleaned up as opposed to offering to help as soon as they have calmed down it is another warning sign that things might not have been as out of control as they seemed.

3. Some violent situations are cases of two equally violent parties getting into a physical fight. It would be easy to paint intimate abuse in this way. It can seem like an argument or a fight; it can look like there is an agitator and a responder and that both parties have equal roles in perpetuating the abuse. However, this is completely inaccurate. Abuse is never the abused fault. Domestic violence describes any situation where one person deliberately and consistently hurts another. It has many forms: physical abuse (which is the most reported), stalking, sexual abuse, incest, and verbal/emotional abuse. There is no rational reason to emotionally manipulate someone, to beat someone, to hold someone financially hostage, to dictate what they can or cannot do with their own body. So why does it happen? Why do people think that abuse can be double sided? Studies have shown that this violence is more likely to occur if the subject or the victim of the violence is treated as a part of a minority group - one which experiences discrimination or exclusion from social capital based on one or more observable human characteristics, including, but not limited to: ethnicity, race, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. When women are demonized or infantilized it becomes easier to justify their abuse. When women are infantilized it seems easy to assume that they want someone to order them around to protect them from themselves, much as you would a misbehaving child. When women are demonized, it is easy to pretend their experiences did not actually occur. Anti-feminist groups have suggested that domestic violence is mutual fighting that a women has lied about to get something — immigration status, child custody, revenge. This is baseless and trivializes the experience of victims (regardless of their gender) because it assumes that anyone that comes forward about their abuse is doing so not because they need help but because they want something. It is easier to ignore the problem and blame it on the lying woman than to acknowledge that there are problems in how our society views the individuals within it. Men have fewer reported instances, and it is speculated that this is because they feel that coming forward about domestic violence at the hands of a female partner would make them less masculine or less fit in some manner.

4. Anyone can be a victim of abuse. To say otherwise is to allow people to be abused in silence and to refuse help to people who have been traumatized. You could be a 300 pound bodybuilder and be abused by your 90 pound partner. Abuse is more than just physical.

5. It is easy to paint abusive partners as monsters or to villainize them for their actions. To do so is to simplify the process overmuch; while abusive partners are actively trying to bring harm to one of their partners they might be absolutely charming and kind when they are in another environment. There are lots of examples about men who are abusive of their wife or girlfriend but who everyone thinks is a great guy and a great date because they can manipulate the situation to look like their partner is having fun and enjoying themselves.
   
6. There are many reasons that a person would decide to stay in an abusive relationship, and while it would be ideal for everyone to be able to leave easily and call the police after an incident, it is not always feasible. Some victims of abuse fall for their abuser and do not want to leave. Abusers sometimes use something called trauma bonding, a technique whereby they cause severe emotional or physical damage and then help the person recover and coddle them so that they grow to love their abuser. A main factor in the abuse is often isolation and the tearing down of the victim’s self esteem. This ensures that the victim feels too powerless to run or that, if they can manage the courage to run, they will feel like they have nowhere to run to. Sometimes victims stay for their children or for fear their abuser will hurt someone else close to them or kill them if they try to leave. This fear is not unfounded; most women who die at the hands of an intimate partner have already left the relationship. One of the biggest problems with people in these relationships is that the victim might not have the resources to leave. By refusing to let the victim work, freezing their bank account or monitoring access heavily, refusing to let the victim use phones or the internet, or by screening the contact that the victim has with the outside world it becomes almost impossible for the victim to get the help they need to leave the situation.

If you want more information, the National Domestic Violence Hotline website is fantastic and very easy to navigate: http://www.thehotline.org/. Thank you so much for reading!

Savannah Lane