And yes, people I know who have been in abusive relationships have encountered all of this crap.

Hell, I got this shit when I was in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship, and frankly, I don’t give a crap about someone’s intent when they ask me why I stayed, or when I get lectures about victimhood. I didn’t need feminists or DV outreach workers to tell me that survivors and victims get blamed because I experienced it first hand, and have seen other women who were in abusive relationships get blamed–and frankly, when I was in the situation, I was getting the message that it must have been me that I started to think it must be the case. Your rhetoric comes across as self-righteous and ignorant, and DV survivor or no, you are hurting a lot of women who have been through it. If you’re going to go on about proper fucking behavior it would be refreshing for you to hold yourself to the same standards you hold others to. Just sayin’.

Comment 32: You insinutate that I claim they do not know their intent. I believe that many people do not mean harm, that does not mean they are not causing harm. Just because you do not mean to say something that makes someone feel attacked or belittled does not mean they do not feel that way and you should respect their feelings.

Comment 35: I am not saying you’re saying this but by “re-educating” the victims as to the fact that people do not mean to hurt them often times can sound like a nicer way of saying “get over your victimization and how it makes you feel because people don’t mean any harm by their statements” I think it is unfair to say that victims need to be re-educated so that they stop being offended by statements that can sound like victim-blaming.

Geez, it’s like seeing a Hit-and-Run victim and pondering why they didn’t just stay home that day!

OK, I guess I can understand the question to an extent, but … it seems to be too common that this is the question that takes precedent. More “blame the victim.”

Statistically, most abusive relationships do not last. The murder of Jana Mackey by her EX-boyfriend is a good example of that.

As I’ve written in my blog and newspaper column, “Why do they stay?” is the wrong question. Here are some questions we could be asking instead:

“Why wasn’t that person in prison?”

or

“How we can help abusive victims escape cleanly and safely?” Which goes back to the first question and points out the flaw in the whole thinking.

How about:

“Why does society assume that victims fleeing is the answer to domestic violence?”

I mean, hey, when somebody breaks into a house and hurts a person who lives there, we don’t say, “Why didn’t the homeowner get out of the house?”

When a man is mugged, people don’t ask, “Why did he let himself get mugged?”

Domestic violence should be outlawed.

i see it very differently. by denying that domestic violence happens across the board, that is when it is talked about only in isolation. i work in a domestic violence shelter and yes, most of the women that use our services are poor. this could lead us to thinking that dv happens more with poor people.

except not.

and heres why. because a rich woman is more likely to not have to come to a dv shelter to get help. she could hire her own lawyers. she could stay in a hotel or get her own place. she could shell out the cash to travel a long distance to get to family or friends. it is not to say that her struggle is less difficult but its certainly less visible to the public eye.

poverty is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed and racism and classism of course are tied to domestic violence. but at the end of the day, this is an issue of patriarchy and misplaced ideas about masculinity. even when women are perpetrating..even when men are victimized. it is an issue of sexism and power. poverty does not create domestic violence….if only it were that easy. no, this is an issue that is much much MUCH more complicated than that.

This is not really a naïve question. It is frequently denied because such a denial allows domestic violence to be talked about in isolation, without bringing into question the economic question, the economic oppressions which means overcrowded housing, unemployment, low wages for women but also for men, restricted choice for everyone and therefore among other things more domestic violence. At least it seems that way to me.

I’m not sure if this comment will be allowed to stand, but I just want to say that I appreciate you taking the time to address this in a civilized manner. I do not agree with every point you have made but I do understand where you’re coming from. Beyond that, I’m not going to spend a lot of time explaining what I disagree with or why, because Marcella has already deleted at least half a dozen of my comments, so I don’t see the point.

Thanks for taking the time. Perhaps I’ll address it in greater depth on my own blog when I have the time to give it the attention it deserves.

Pipkin: I have replied twice to you and both comments were deleted as well. Sorry…

Lottie– again– what other force (not at all related to actual DV victims) is drilling this into victims’ heads? DV victims are telling you that your language is burdensome to them.

Lottie, I have a really hard time not seeing the question as victim-blaming, even though that is not your intent, and may not be the intent of every person who asks the question. Here’s why:

1. The question is most frequently asked of a woman who did, in fact, leave. And when? After she is maimed or murdered (thus, the abuse coming to the general knowledge of the public).

2. Headlines of beaten or murdered DV victims almost always emphasize the relationship—and do so in a way that romanticizes the violence (crime of passion/he loved her too much to let her go/ you know the drill). They refer to the beaten/mutilated/dead woman as “the wife” or “former wife” or “girlfriend” (yet strangely enough almost never “former girlfriend”—the relationship is spoken of as ongoing even in the presence of ample evidence that the woman left. It is almost never mentioned that the reason she left was because of the violence. That she was escaping.

3. Women are expected to move the earth, sun and stars in their escape; if they fail to do so, the monday-morning-quarterbacking begins: “why did she go there? why didn’t she move out of state instead? why didn’t she just get another job?—-ad nauseum.

4. As umpteen (feminist) commenters have pointed out, we do not yet live in a culture that place the focus on the crime, nor the person who committed it, when it comes to DV. Why is that? Vestiges of women as chattel property? A tacit, yet unspoken, belief that DV victims are the sacrificial lambs, the ones who take the blows to keep the violent men from perpetrating that violence upon the rest of the community? A belief that DV will always be with us, that violent behavior between intimate partners is a problem that will never be solved? (because that isn’t the tack taken with child abuse—just sayin’)

5. DV is seen as a loose collection of isolated incidents, not as an endemic public health issue.

Now, if the questions is rephrased as “what are the barriers that make escape harder for those suffering under DV?”…..well, then we have something to work with! As a survivor, I’ve got plenty of answers there, and have ideas for solutions, too. If that’s what you mean, why not ask it in that manner, because it isn’t just semantics. Reinforcing the mistaken belief that women stay in abusive relationships because they get some sort of twisted “feedback” or whatever reinforces the idea that resources devoted to assisting the abused are resources wasted. “Why did she stay” assumes that (a)she stayed, (b)she intended to stay, (c)that she wasn’t formulating an escape plan that she was not yet in a position to execute.

Meanwhile—he could always just not abuse her, right? Why did her hit her? Why did her choke her? Why did he knife her? What made him think he had a right to have her, like an object, to begin with? What made him go to such lengths to find her, to kill her, to hide her body? These are the questions that don’t make the headlines. We assume low self-esteem as the answer to “why did she stay”, rather than structural barriers (job, housing, school, children, lack of protection—’cuz lemme tellya, it’s difficult to keep up that regimen of looking over your shoulder all the time, hair-trigger reflexes, seeing all your escape routes, limiting sleep, etc.). Why is this?

Why, on even feminist blogs, do people assume the victim to have a major flaw, rather than as a person with few resources attempting to fend for herself? Police go in with cadres of armed companions when confronting violent criminals—yet we expect DV victims to “just leave”.

Bah.