I find it genuinely hard to believe that this tremendous "revelation" has just been stumbled upon. Surely anyone with even a passing knowledge of patterns of domestic abuse knows that leaving entails at least as much risk as staying, and sometimes (sadly) more.

If this book sobers up some administrations and law-enforcement agencies (to say nothing of ordinary individuals) about the reality of the kind of support and protection women require when they leave abusive situations, then I'm all for it. I must say, however, that I am skeptical that this will be the case. When even the experts themselves treat this information as news, my hopes cannot be high.

This study is not the paradigm-shift that Lloyd reports. For a real eye-opener about the problematics of even asking the question "why women stay" see Loseke and Cahill (1984). The question does not "[confound] even domestic experts," since those like Loseke and Cahill criticized reducing the complexity that is domestic violence into such a loaded question over twenty years ago.

I mean, if Stark is purporting a new theory ("cohesive control"), then he isn't as much breaking out of the "why women stay" paradigm, but is just looking at the abuser side of it more closely (which heavily populate both psych and soc lit).

By even engaging the question "why women stay" is akin to the "pro-life" rhetorical frame, the assumptions about women in both are dangerous.

When someone with whom you're in love attacks you, there really isn't any right answer. Getting out of the relationship is often the *best* answer, but it's not the *right* answer. We love to think it's cut and dried, but it's not. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I was reading a comment the other day about the young woman who was kidnapped and murdered in Kansas last week. A man (I presume) made a comment that she shoudln't have been wearing shorts and a tank top, because it brougth unwanted attention to herself. A lot of people attacked him for the comment, but, surprisingly, a woman backed him up, saying that her 3 daughters weren't allowed to dress that way because they would draw undesired attention.

I think we do this so that we can feel safe. If the victim did something to bring on their attack, then we can simply not do that something and we will not be attacked. It doesn't work, of course, because life is not that simple. People get mugged even when they aren't flashing expensive watches. Women get raped even if they aren't young and beautiful and wearing skimpy clothing, or drunk, or in a bad neighborhood. And spouses get battered even if they are totally innocent of any wrongdoing. But if we pretend that they must be doing something to deserve it, then we know that we must be safe - because we'd never do anything to deserve being beaten.

My father was a horribly mentally damaged WWII vet. My mother worked really hard to get us all free from him. We lived the car for weeks. When we finally found a place and started having a life, he found out where we lived.

The Chinese people next door had an illegal immigration problem and my father figured that out and coerced them into spying on my mom. He found out exactly the right time to come and steal my brother.

Once he had my brother, we all had to go back. There didn't seem to be any choice. My mother wouldn't leave my brother alone with that freak.

That was back before feminism. There weren't any places where you could hide from a deranged combat veteran using every brain cell he has left to hunt you down.

I get so mad when people ask, "Why don't they leave?"

But then I suppose it's hard for people haven't ever seen anything like that to understand.

Wow. Anyone growing up in my small southern town could have told the experts that 30 years ago.

Guns don't kill people. Crazy ex-husbands hopped up on speed kill people, usually with guns, but also with cars and broken glass and whatever comes in handy.

the book seems like a very well thought out, balanced attempt to discuss this issue, sure. but what irritates me to no end is the way we ask over and over again: why do women stay with abusive husbands or lovers? instead of: why do men sometimes abuse their wives or lovers?

After all, if he holds her in such contempt, such low esteem, as to threaten and abuse and deride her constantly, he can't really love her or think he has a better life with her around, right? If she's such an albatross, let her go.

That's a more reasonable question to ask, but for some reason we don't, we take the psychosis of a man who wants to keep a woman he loves (and many abusers do love their victims, it's just the expression of love is twisted out of recognition for most earthlings to recognize) as a punching bag in stride, and look at the women with the 'psychosis' of staying and make moral judgments.

I've always seen domestic violence as akin to being growled at by a rabid Doberman or hungry bear. You don't turn and run - everyone knows that. I think violent men are much like these beasts - you don't run, it only provokes their instinct to run you down and savage you.

I didn't always see it that way. When I was 23 I worked as a temp in an office with 10 other women. A year into the job and I was pretty good friends with most of them, though they were all about 8-15 years older. I got invited to a lot of lunches and happy hours and learned much about their private lives, including Cheryl, who frequently missed work and often appeared in pain, sometimes even with her nose broke or an eye swelled shut. The other women constantly tried to persuade her to 'leave that asshole'. She'd just shake her head and say, you don't understand how he is. Still, they worked on her. To her every protest they had an answer, e.g. "where will I go?" "you can stay with one of us, we'll take turns, or go to a domestic violence shelter where they are used to keeping guys like him out." "What if he follows me?" "Get a restraining order."

She left him and got a restraining order and moved herself and her kids to a shelter. About a week later we were having some snacks and drinks at the TGI Friday's when her husband walked in, walked up to our table, sat down and put his arm around Cheryl and said "I told you not to leave me, babe."

He gave her a little shake, like a hug, and then got up and left. Everyone was chattering indignantly but as he left I saw him wipe something knife on his jeans. The something turned out to be a knife. He hadn't been hugging Cheryl but pressing her into the knife he'd jammed into her side, under her arm. It penetrated her heart and she died before the ambulance got there. Her husband had almost made it across the state line by the time the cops caught up to him, and he freely admitted what he did and went to jail - not for the first time, I might add, and not, I'm sure, for the last.

So after that I was a little less likely to be critical of women who stayed. Cheryl was right all along - we didn't know him like she did. When someone is determined - *determined* - to kill you, they can pretty easily succeed.

It takes a severely disturbed person to outright kill someone when there is no external danger or issue of self defense. Most of us can't imagine killing our spouse or boyfriend during a fight. We just know we wouldn't. Women married to violent abusers apply this logic to their abusers and end up dying for it. The questions and potential solutions should be pointed toward the abusers, not their victims.