Letters to the Editor

• How Men Entrap Women in Personl Life

  [Read the article: Why women stay with abusers]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I was pleased so many Salon readers were interested in my book. So let me put some things straight. First it called "Coercive control" to highlight that woman battering is as much about tactics used to intimidate, isolate, and control women as it is about physical or emotional abuse. I start by showing how far we've gone over the last decades to tackle abuse. But I show these interventions are failing-- almost no offenders are going to jail and violence against women hasn't changed much in 30 years-- because we're taking on the wrong target. All the laws against domestic violence focus on acts of assault. But the reality for millions of women is that abuse consists of a much broader,ongoing, and unrecognized, pattern of subjugation called coercive control. Violence is an important piece of this pattern. But even the violence has been misunderstood. In most cases, what is most harmful is not the sort of bone-breaking violence you see on TV, but the accumulation of poushes, shoves, slaps, grabbing and the like-- what I term routine violence--and the fact that this pattern is combined with tactics that isolate women from friends and family, intimidate them with direct as well as more subtle threats and gaslight games, and most importantly to regulate their lives,the control piece of entrapment. While its true that this pattern looks like kidnapping in some sense, it is also highlgy personal, because the offending men have a personal knowledge about their victim the kidnapper doesn't have about his, and because these tactics often can cross social space and oppress women at work or at other sites far removed from the men. The other new thing I argue that is that unlike violence, where injury is the focus or psychological trauma, coercive control is designed to take away women's freedom, autonomy and dignity and so should be considered a "liberty" crime. And it does this not just around their money or access to transportation or phones and such, but also around sex and the conduct of everyday life such as how women dress or clean or cook or care for their children. Others have said some of this before. But I think you'll find, when you read the book, that it hasn't been put together in this way before. Coercive control is happening all arouund us. Yet it has been invisible in law, medicine, and even to much of the movement dedicated to helping battered women. I'm happy to answer any questions Salon readers may have. the underlying point is that if these harms happened to men or in a public setting, we would see them as completely unacceptable. And I don't say why women stay with abusers...but the tactics men use to stay with them and how hard it is to get them off women's back,

  Permalink Wednesday, June 13, 2007 04:15 AM