Richard Jones asks three interesting questions about my new book on Coercive Control, how my position differs from earlier views of coercive control, like Judy Herman's whom he quotes; whether my concept of coercive control as a crime against individual liberty is compatible with broader criticism of "patriarchy" and manhood; and whether I make recommendations to bring patriarchy to justice. The question of how coercive control is linked to sexual inequality and justice for women is at the heart of the book.

Coercive Control attempts to close the gap that separates how men subjugate women in personal life from the domestic violence model that guides the current response. I describe the basic elements of the domestic violence definition of abuse, show that interventions based on this model such as programs for batterers or arrest have failed to substantially improve women's safety, provide an alternative model of abuse based on viewing coercion and control as the key rather than assault, illustrate the new model with dozens of case examples, and argue that adapting this model could put the domestic violence revolution begun in the l970's back on course. The violence approach is based on a "calculus of harms:" the most severe the violence, the more serious the crime. I argue that coercive control jeopardizes individual liberty and autonomy as well as safety and that its center is the micro-regulation of women’s default roles as wife, mother, homemaker and sexual partner. In this model the primary harm is the denial of freedom, equality and respect that are preconditions for citizenship in democratic society.

I devote considerable space in the book to earlier theories of coercive control, a term that has floated around the edges of the battered women’s movement for three decades. Originally used to describe the brain washing of POW’s in Korea, coercive control was first applied to abuse by feminist psychologists in the early 70’s (twenty years before Herman or I used the term), adapted by David Adams when he started Emerge, the pioneering group for abusive men in Boston, and is illustrated to a greater or lesser extent in a number of popular books on abuse, including Jones and Schechter’s When Love Goes Wrong and Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That?. While the passage Richard Jones cites from Herman is intriguing, her book is primarily about the psychological consequences of prolonged, repeated trauma. By contrast, I focus on the strategies men use to subjugate women and how women resist. I devote about l50 pages to detailing these strategies, trace the process by which coercive control emerged from simple domestic violence as men’s strategy of choice, and show how reframing domestic violence as coercive control illuminates aspects of women’s subjugation that have not been widely discussed until now. Unlike Herman and others who talk about “psychological abuse,” I emphasize the external controls men put in place, such as taking a woman’s money, monitoring her time, and restricting her movement rather than psychological dynamics, which I view as secondary.

I argue that men have made coercive control their abuse strategy of choice because many of the supports for the traditional patriarchy have been swept aside by women’s liberation, economic progress and the attainment of formal sexual equality. In countries where women’s lives are still circumscribed by religion and they remain economically, politically and socially marginal, there is no need for individual men to regulate a woman’s dress or control their money, since they have none. If women’s attainment of formal equality leads men who wish to dominate them to construct what amounts to a patriarchy in miniature in individual relationships, they can only succeed in this adventure because men can exploit persistent inequalities, such as the huge difference between men and women’s earnings. Thus, coercive control is personal because it is constructed in personal life; but it could not exist if women enjoyed full equality.

I distinguish partner violence—which women use against their partners as well as men—from coercive control precisely by the extent to which the latter depends on sexual inequality and focuses on the imposition of stereotype sex roles. Among the other recommendations I make is to identify coercive control as a distinct course of conduct crime that incurs serious penalties. But I do not believe that doing so will end male domination any more than outlawing lynching put an end of racial inequality. What I do believe is that identifying and stopping coercive control could open a space for women’s self-expression in millions of homes and relationships.

Jones ends his letter by agreeing with Carolyn about recognizing the danger signs and standing up to abusive behavior firmly and as soon as it happens. This is a much simpler matter with violence than with coercive control, where many of the early signs—such as insisting she stay home or quit school or her job for me initially feel like love. It suggests that women get caught up in coercive control because of a failure of nerve or ignorance. In fact, as the stories in my book show, we build public monuments to men who exhibit the courage in the face of adversity that women routinely exhibit in these relationships. We don’t urge a hostage or a kidnap victim to “stand up” to the kidnapper or terrorist. Instead we take forceful, collective and public action to right the wrong that is done. This is what is needed with coercive control.

I queried Salon.com for articles about domestic violence because I'm researching and writing an article, not about why some women stay with their abusers (or, why some women don't leave their abusers) per se, but why don't some people [sic] end their relationships at the first sign of abuse?

I plan to post my article on my blog (www.iamrj.com) and a few other sites in the very near future. For now, I have some questions for Evan Stark and a follow-up to Carolyn the Red's very point.

First, it's good to see Stark join this discussion and volunteer to "answer any questions Salon readers may have." Stark, I'm looking forward to reading more about your perspectives, especially since you admitted, "Others have said some of this before."

In fact, the phrase "coercive control" goes back at least as far as Judith Lewis Herman's book "Trauma and Recovery" (1992). In the chapter simply titled "Captivity," she wrote, "Prolonged, repeated trauma, by contrast, occurs only in circumstances of captivity. When the victim is free to escape, she will not be abused a second time; repeated trauma occurs only when the victim is a prisoner, unable to flee, and under the control of the perpetrator."

Herman added, "Political captivity is generally recognized, whereas the domestic captivity of women and children is often unseen."

Finally, she noted, "Captivity, which brings the victim into prolonged contact with the perpetrator, creates a special type of relationship, one of coercive control. This is equally true whether the victim is taken captive entirely by force, as in the case of prisoners and hostages, or by a combination of force, intimidation, and enticement, as in the case of religious cult members, battered women, and abused children. The psychological impact of subordination to coercive control may have many common features, whether that subordination occurs within the public sphere of politics or within the private sphere of sexual and domestic relations... In situations of captivity, the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim..."

Thus, my first question for you, Stark, is, how is your concept of "coercive control" substantially different from Herman's? In what way, if any, does your work rely or build on Herman's (and "others")?

Stark, I'm also intrigued by your suggestion that "coercive control" should be considered a "liberty" crime, since it is "designed to take away women's freedom, autonomy, and dignity."

That is true. But, in most societies, it's not just a man, one man, that cripples and crushes a woman's, one woman's, capacity to make choices and act on them. Instead, an abused woman is also made unfree by "manhood" often as it has been socially constructed within the context of a still-patriarchal society.

"In other words," as wrote Nancy J. Hirschmann in a Frontiers article titled "Domestic Violence and the Theoretical Discourse of Freedom" (1996), "the ultimate barrier to women's freedom is patriarchy, or the social, legal, and economic control that men are accorded over women; all other particular and specific barriers that individual women experience at any given time or place, in any given relationship, in any given experiential moment, can be understood only in this larger repressive context. Accordingly, battered women's freedom is restricted by men's violence and the sexist values that underpin and perpetuate it. Women's freedom requires that this violence and its ideological supports be ended. As long as society does not recognize and support that goal, however, it is up to individual women to manage and cope in the best way they can. When looked at from this perspective, what may appear to be complicity, internalization of abuse, or even masochism may in reality be a form of resistance, management, or just plain survival.... But that does not mean she does not feel fear, that she wants or enjoys the beatings, or that she is free."

Stark, I'm wondering, of course, whether you also indict patriarchy in your new book and, if so, make recommendations for finally bringing it to justice.

Finally, I wish to say that I wholeheartedly agree with Carolyn the Red that we must "put more effort into getting people to recognize the danger signs for abuse early in, and before getting into, a relationship." Because, as she also points out, "People don't generally transform into an abuser without some clues earlier on."

Indeed, Carolyn, this is the very reason I wrote "The Measure of a Man" and "Abuse Me, Lose Me," which are also posted on www.iamrj.com. Now, if only I could convince women, in particular, and people, in general, to truly have BELOW-zero tolerance for any form of disrespectful behavior FROM DAY ONE of their relationships.

Or, as I wrote in "Abuse Me, Lose Me," at the slightest sign that your (prospective) partner is moving toward demeaning or dictating to you, kindly but sternly warn your partner that you will not allow yourself to be mistreated. However, do not be like the kid who cried wolf, sounding so many false alarms that your partner eventually ignores you. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Do not settle for anything less than honesty, respect, good communication, and the kind of problem solving that can strengthen the relationship. Make sure that your actions as well as your words say, "If you abuse me, you will lose me."