Blog #7: Family Violence

“Is Violence Against Women About Women or About Violence?”

This article discusses the two perspectives of gender and of violence when talking about violence between men and women. Felson mentions that there is the gender perspective and the violence perspective. The gender perspective is that violence against women is a problem of sexism and deals with men’s feelings toward women. The violence perspective is that the violence against women has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the victim is a woman; instead it is simply violence in general. There are some commonalities between these two perspectives. For example, violence usually occurs between two men, men are more likely to be the victims of crime, when the victim happens to be a woman, she usually knows her attacker intimately, in terms of sexual usually the victim is generally a woman and the attacker is usually a man. However, the two sides disagree on the following: “whether wives are as likely to hit their husbands as husbands are to hit their wives,” what motivates these people to commit such crimes, and “whether men who assault women get off easily because society tolerates violence against women.” Felson talks about the “chivalry norm” and says that “the violence perspective suggests that violent men are less likely to assault their partners because of the chivalry norm.” I do not agree with this whatsoever. All a person has to do is see just see how many men abuse their partners in the U.S. and all over the world and they will see just how many men do abuse their partners. One good point that Felson mentions is that even though men and women are equally likely to hit each other, some not all of the women use physical abuse to defend themselves from the abuse of these men. The gender perspective also says that many men use violence against women as a means of maintaining power and control in relationships. I feel as though it is not one or the other and that each case should be looked at independently. Some cases may have more of a violence perspective while others may have more of a gender perspective. With that said, I think that if I had to pick one over the other I would lean more towards the gender perspective.


“Why Doesn’t She Leave?"

In this article we read about a couple cases of women who were physically abused by their husbands and tried to do everything they could to get their husbands to stop but nothing seemed to work for them. It finally got to the point where these women had no other option but to kill the men who were continually beating them. In this article Jones looks at how often times people will blame the women in situations like these and ask why didn’t she just leave the men? Even in the stories of the women mentioned in the article, who not only left the men but also went to other measures to try and get them to stop, and still people would ask why these women didn’t just leave the men. By doing this, people are putting the blame on the women for what happened between themselves and their abusers instead of blaming the men who are battering them. Jones’ answer to the question posed in the title of her article, “Why Doesn’t She Leave?” is that this question shouldn’t even be asked to begin with. Jones says that this question isn’t even a question. She writes, “This question, which we can’t seem to stop asking, is not a real question. It doesn’t call for an answer; it makes a judgment.” However, what Jones does say in regard to this question is that in many cases the women do leave, but rarely does her leaving ever solve the problem. Jones goes on to say, “So powerful and dazzling is this question that someone always tries to answer it. And the answer given rarely is the simple truth you find in the stories of formerly battered women: She does leave. She is leaving. She left. No, so mystifying is the question that someone always tries to explain why she doesn’t leave even after she has left.” This just shows how people tend to clump together every different case of a women being abused and see them all as the same. I agree with what Jones says about the women who leave but still are often times blamed by society for not leaving. Even in examples where the women have tried leaving the men and were successful in doing so, the men still were able to find them and continue abusing them, society will still blame the women for being abused and not leaving. It is as if we don’t look at each case individually but instead we just assume that in all cases of domestic abuse the women do not leave the men. This article relates to that of the Felson article on the different perspectives of violence because in the Felson article we see that those who are on the side of the violence perspective seemed to, in a way, to blame the victim for the abuse that took place. We also saw that in the Jones reading when society would blame the victim for not leaving even in the cases where the woman did leave.


“Why Do Men Batter Their Wives?"

This article looks at a study of eighteen men who in the past have battered their wives, girlfriends, or a female that is of some relation to them. All of the men have received counseling for the abuse over different periods of time. This article is interesting because it looks at the many different excuses and reasons the men gave as to why they physically abused the women. Also, the article discusses how many figures in society accept and legitimate these reasons for domestic violence. It is important to note that much of this takes place because the majority of the people who accept these reasons are men just like the batterers studied in the article. It is interesting to see how some of these people have jobs that are supposed to protect members of the society when many of them are minimizing the seriousness of domestic violence. According to Ptacek, the denials that men use to explain their abusive behavior is a loss of control, which many of the men in this study attributed to either drug or alcohol use or from a “buildup of frustration.” Another common excuse was that of victim-blaming in which the men believed that the only reason that they abused the women was because the women had provoked them in some way. Many of the men stated that prior to battering the women, the women had verbally attacked them and that physical abuse was the only way they could respond to the women. In terms of justifications for their actions, there were two types. The first is called the denial of injury. Ptacek writes, “According to some clinicians who have worked with men who batter, many batterers neutralize the unacceptability of their behavior by denying or minimizing the injuries battered women suffer.” By doing this, the men validate their behavior in their minds and don’t see what they’re doing as wrong. Another justification men used was the claim that women just bruise easily and that is why she ended up with marks on her body, as opposed to the amount of physical force he used on her. Lastly, there is the justification that is titled “failure to fulfill obligations of a good wife.” The men who fell in this category attributed their behavior for reasons such as “for not being good at cooking, for not being sexually responsive, for not being deferential enough to her husband, for not knowing when she is ‘supposed’ to be silent, and for not being faithful. Some of the contradictions we see in the explanations offered by men are that some of the men would deny any responsibility for what took place and then in the next sentence might blame the victim for what happened. Ptacek states, “The batterers’ excuses of ‘loss of control’ and ‘provocation’ are undercut by the callousness they displayed about their partners’ injuries, and by the goal orientation that appeared in their own words.” By this Ptacek means that no matter what excuses the men used, these excuses were significantly weakened by the insensitivity they used when discussing the injuries their victims sustained and how there was some goal they were trying to achieve when they decided to physically abuse these women. Many of these contradictions occur because the men are willing to say anything that will make the situation sound better. Ptacek writes, “[…] the conflicting statements result from the batterers’ willingness to apply any number of verbal strategies to the task of making the violence appear normal, regardless of whether the accounts have any internal consistency.” This article relates to the gender vs. violence debate because in the Felson article he mentions that sometimes men use violence against women because they can. In some of the cases of the eighteen men who had previously battered women, we learn of all different reasons for why they did what they did. Many of these reasons can be found in the Felson article on either the gender or the violence side.