Shining a light into the murky depths of partner violence
- Katie Dunlop
- March 20, 2009
DOMESTIC violence, family violence, violence against women, intimate partner violence: we definitely have a range of phrases for the abuse men inflict on women and children within what ought to be relationships of trust and love.
Pity we don't use them to describe the murders we often see on our front pages — the kids driven into the dam or gassed in the car, the wife or girlfriend stabbed in her kitchen, thrown off a cliff or shot in scrubland. Aberrations? Love gone wrong? No. These instances of violence are just the tip of the iceberg. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is everywhere, even if you don't know it.
It seems the subject of IPV is taboo, so those who experience it assume the abuse is their problem and not the social and public health issue it really is. We need to start talking about IPV and we need to do it now.
I have long known that relationships could be abusive, but it had never occurred to me that IPV was a common experience for so many Australian women. More than a third of Australian women who have had a boyfriend or husband experience abuse. Most shockingly, IPV is the leading contributor to death, disability and illness in women aged between 15 and 44.
Since I began working with women who have experienced abuse, the reality of IPV has become even starker. Rather than numbers on a page, these are real women with faces and histories. Each of them has a unique but common story: of living with control, fear and abuse, and courageously doing all they can to look after themselves and their children who, as IPV witnesses and victims, also suffer devastating effects.
If you are surprised at the extent of IPV, you are not alone. Our awareness of IPV in Australia is very poor. According to a recent Victorian study, many think that women abuse their partners as much as men (false: men are the perpetrators 98 per cent of the time) or that IPV is excusable if it represents a "temporary loss of control", or if the abuser subsequently apologises (false: many IPV incidents, especially murders, are premeditated).
How can we work together to solve a national crisis if a significant portion of the nation is unaware of the crisis in the first place?
In an atmosphere where IPV is shrouded in silence and myth, asking for help involves the risk of being judged or misunderstood. We must aim for a society in which women can ask for help, secure in the knowledge they will be supported and respected.
Being equipped with the information and ability to talk about IPV also allows us to recognise and respond to the signs of abuse in our own relationships and in those of our friends and family.
By transforming our silence — which implicitly accepts and condones IPV — into a loud and clear conversation, we create a society where IPV has few places to hide. We create a society that expresses zero tolerance for violence against women. The reality is that the creation of this type of society is within our capacity.
Often the media contribute to the silence on IPV by failing to discuss it constructively or not discussing it at all. Rather than leaving us at an impasse, this points us to a valuable opportunity. Imagine the possibilities for socially responsible reporting that would arise out of a collaborative relationship between IPV experts, survivors and volunteers and journalists.
The IPV service community should provide journalists with training on IPV issues and support the media's coverage of IPV incidents. It should offer information about IPV, advice on sensitive and educational reporting, and the opportunity for journalists to personalise each story by drawing on the perspectives of IPV survivors.
Media collectives of this type would help smash the silence on intimate partner violence by ensuring that, where it is present in the fabric of society, IPV is also present on the pages of our newspapers.
This is one small idea, one small step, but one that might make us a bit more aware of IPV and with that, a bit more eager to act on a phenomenon that is destroying the hearts and bodies of so many Australian women and children. No idea is a silver bullet: solutions happen when small ideas act in concert. If we take this idea of IPV media collectives, add some national, ongoing, school-based healthy relationships education and opportunities for adults to engage with the issue of IPV in a constructive and personal way, I have great faith that we will be taking our first steps in a society where IPV is taken out of the hiding place that to date has afforded it protection.
Katie Dunlop is an outreach worker with the Eastern Domestic Violence Crisis Service and is a contributing author of The Future by Us, published this week by Hardie Grant.
If you are experiencing abuse, the Women's Domestic Violence Crisis Service is a 24 hour/7 days a week telephone service providing support, information and accommodation. Call 9373 0123, or Country toll free 1800 015 188.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/shining-a-light-into-the-murky-depths-of-partner-violence-20090319-937y.html?page=-1
I have a parallel blog (USA) that actually somehow found this article, and responds to it in some detail, at:
ReplyDeletehttp://familycourtmatters.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/
My viewpoint is of a woman leaving abuse who was stripped of her children, overnight, on frivolous charges (no evidence, not even an accusation of abuse) and basically can't safely see them again. I left the batterer coming up on 10 years. That overnight action basically undid what was left of my work history in a profession built up from scratch and welfare post-divorce. It's quite a story to see one's own life dismantled -- BY THE COURTS (with help from my own relatives who are to this day in denial that violence happened in my home. Money, and cute children, are great blinders indeed) --- and brought back again to poverty. I just returned to Food Stamps (government aid for food) after a year of unemployment resulting directly from government refusal to enforce -- for a woman -- its own laws.
So my commentary on this article, which I still do appreciate, is somewhat in disbelief at the concept that media would make the difference. Since then, and before then, i also carefully have been watching how media handles each new family wipeout or femicide/suicide by a male. They are downplaying the obvious, to say the least. I do not expect major media to help us out. I think that groups such as the woman who started this post, or anonymums, by a combinatino of sweat, tears, and hours of advocacy (on-line, including telephone lines, and in the courthouses) are going to make some difference.
My main area of interest is the history of this destructive family law system, that appears to have begun in the southern part of my state (California, USA) which has the largest court system of any in the countries.
I refuse to become a male-basher or a religion-hater, but it sure does give one pause to think that the institutions designed primarily by men, although now staffed quite a bit by women as well (including judges, and including a fair share of CROOKED judges as well) simply cannot conceive of a woman protecting her children telling the truth. We are in days of horrible backlash and uncertainty, and in part I believe insecure men bolster their sense of power by finding someone lower on the ladder to kick -- or kill. Who better than the proverbial Eves of this world (women) and others who are weaker physically -- children.
Two excellent discussions of the topic of manhood vs. humanity come under odd titles -- I recommend these: "The End of Manhood" (also cited on my blog) and another one written by a Rabbi, actually, 'Hating Women." He makes some good points, namely, that a woman can have a clean, functional, and productive life without a man, and the end of the day, there are no dead bodies around.
President Obama, himself having been raised by a single mother, is nevertheless attempting administratively to stay in favor (??) by just about driving us underground. He has also alarmed some very sensible feminist authors (I refer to Dr. Phyllis Chesler) and others by, in one instance, actually bowing to a Muslim head of state when no others present did. This might be akin to a President kissing the Pope's ring -- it was inappropriate in context.
It takes female tolerance of male violence for this to go on century after century. Some of the women who are NOT being personally physically threatened, need to listen to those of us who have, and take our word for waht does and does NOT work in getting out from under that. We don't want to be objects of CHARITY, we want our self-determination, and economic self-sufficiency. The self-esteem was already regained by virtue of having survived so much violence for so many years, in many cases. Being separated from our children, without due process, we also have to regain our personal sense of identiy apart from being Moms. Some of us get thrown in jail for protecting our kids -- or for, after some years apart from the violence, but still having to deal with these men in the court system -- for failing to produce adequate child support to fund this man in his new marriage, or pay for whoever he has hired to babysit the kids he just took from us.
Please take a serious look at what happens to such women as you have helped, two, three, four, and maybe even nine years AFTER the shelters. This information should be incorporated into how the crisis and shelter systems work.
The real situation is much simpler -- women are to be treated as full citizens with full legal status. Motherhood is honorable work, and although it's not for pay (and I do NOT recommend that it ever become so!), this should be taken into account when we leave abuse.
Thanks,
Liberty. I also go variously by: Intrepid, StrongMom and ChristianFeminista, And Psalmseek. These names somewhat counter all the "bitch" "slut" "wimp" and other bad names I was called during the marriage, and after. They do not, however make up for those losses. All I really hope to redeem from the experience is some wisdom and possibly advocacy for others "going through it" too.
Economic self-sufficiency is absolutely paramount to leave abuse. MOST of us can achieve it quite quickly, given a GENUINE safety zone and freedom to determine how, on a case by case basis.
In America (USA), the "Healthy Marriage' rhetoric (like "manhood" or "fatherhood" it's both an illusion, a genuine idol (religiously) is, unless exposed, going to produce more and more family annihilations by disgruntled overentitled males than we already have.
I stand with FriendofAnonymums in protesting the outrages.