More Darkness – and a Sliver of Light – on DV
I guess this is progress (Chicago Tribune, 4/20/09).
The Nation's Katha Pollitt takes on domestic violence and the question of why women don't leave their abusers. Unfortunately, about half of her bout with that question is just feminist boilerplate, but the second half actually looks like a serious effort to come to grips with the issue she raises. Who'd have guessed?
She starts out badly enough, first with (of course) Chris Brown and then with this semi-literate offering: "Leaving aside those who claim women abusing men is just as big a problem, sure men will hit, so it's up to women to run away."
I can only guess at what that is supposed to mean, but women do engage in DV as often as men. Literally hundreds of studies over about 35 years show it conclusively. Whether that means it's "just as big a problem" or not I suppose depends on your point of view. I have a feeling I know Pollitt's, but to me whether female on male DV is "just as big a problem" as the other way around is far from the point.
The important point is that DV gets addressed and its incidence reduced. To do that we have to, among other things, admit the facts. Once we do that, we can dispense with the Duluth Model and move on to psychological therapies that, being based on the realities of DV and not political ideology, can work.
But meanwhile, Pollitt wants readers to think that, men's rights advocates believe male DV to be OK and "it's up to the woman to run away." I'd like to know where she gets that idea. Not from GlennSacks.com, I can tell you.
No, what MRAs are pointing out is far simpler - take care of yourself. Bad things, including DV, can happen to anyone. If it's happening to you, do what you can to prevent it. That's not to excuse the person hitting you, it's just a reasonable thing to do. If you're standing in the roadway with a car bearing down on you, get out of the way; don't let it hit you and then complain that your self-esteem was too low to allow you to move.
Of course there are times a woman can't reasonably be asked to leave an abusive relationship, but they're extremely rare. If a woman has no job and no prospects and there's not a DV shelter and she has no relatives or friends, I can see the point, but not otherwise. Pollitt's answer, that must be Rule 1 of the feminist DV handbook, is that, if she tries to leave, he'll kill her. Pardon me, but that phenomenon is vanishingly rare. Does it happen? Probably so. Lightening strikes kill people too, but we still go out in the rain when we need to.
But Pollitt finally gets around to some serious thinking on the subject of DV. Based on the experiences reported by Leslie Morgan Steiner, Pollitt finally comes to the understanding that women who stay with abusive mates sometimes do so out of a misguided sense of empathy for the guy. They think of themselves as helpers, caregivers and their partners as in need of help. In other words, Pollitt actually sees at least part of DV for what it really is - a psychological phenomenon.
Now of course Pollitt only takes this concept so far. She doesn't, for example conceive of empathy as it actually is - based on the certain knowledge that "there but for the grace of God go I." She doesn't begin to get the notion that for every abused there's a person who fully understands the abuser, and may be capable of it herself. No, to do that would be to acknowledge the facts of DV - that, yes, men and women do it equally.
Pollitt asks, but doesn't answer or apparently even pause to think about "why do men abuse women?" If she'd pick up the telephone and ask a qualified professional, or read a book on the subject, she'd know the answer. Men who abuse as adults were abused as children. The same is true for women who abuse. And of course those children were most likely abused by women, usually their mothers. There's no way Pollitt is going there.
And Pollitt certainly doesn't get the concept that, if a person stays with a habitual abuser, he or she perceives that they get something out of the arrangement. To her, that simple, basic psychological notion constitutes "blaming the victim." It doesn't. It seeks to understand the victim and why he or she allows their victimhood to continue.
I hate to tell Pollitt and her sisters, but until you do that, you'll never understand, let alone reduce, incidents of domestic violence. I've come to suspect that, for many DV activists, that's not the goal.
But on the bright side, never once did Pollitt fall back on the tired and utterly false trope that DV is all about men controlling women. Thank heaven for small favors.
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