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In popular
culture a new spotlight has come to men’s violence against women through the
recent accusations against various celebrities and athletes. Many men have been
accused of intimate partner violence and/or sexual assault in the past but the
dialogue about domestic violence has never been so present in our culture. It
is saddening to think that for this to happen women had to be victimized but as
feminists, we should embrace this opportunity to decrease the occurrence of
violence against women. This is especially true given the high incidence of
violence against women where in America every nine seconds a woman is beaten
(Bachman & Saltzman, 1995) and one out of five women have been sexually
assaulted sometime during their life (Black et al., 2011). Ideologically as
feminists we are against violence towards a person simply because of their
gender. As psychologists we also believe in the possibility of prevention
through interventions that can change behavior and attitudes. However, the
majority of psychology tends to focus on treating women negatively impacted by
domestic violence and sexual assault rather than the men who perpetrate these
crimes. It is important to not diminish the stories of those who have been
abused by people who are not men but the majority of perpetrators are
heterosexual males who are abusing heterosexual females (Black et al., 2011)
and thus may be the place to begin intervening. Why has feminist psychology
largely ignored the area of primary prevention? The CDC views violence as a
public health problem and promotes primary prevention as the way to intervene
(2014). The lack of current feminist involvement is especially puzzling when
recognizes that most perpetrators abuse multiple partners (Babcock, Green,
& Robie, 2004).
There are
possibilities for why this may be including a discomfort with a topic that
causes a very visceral reaction, dearth of research, and a feminist tradition
of centered on devoting resources to those impacted such as the creation of
domestic violence shelters or rape crisis center. There are some training
programs aimed at adolescents and young adults, which attempt to change the
cultural understandings that women are lesser which have shown some success (http://www.datesafeproject.org/).
However, these programs are not necessarily based on psychological research and
their effects may not be seen for years. What as feminist psychologists are we
supposed to do about the men who are abusing women now and are not the target
demographic for these programs? I argue that it is our duty as feminist
psychologists to begin acting as the driving force behind primary prevention of
domestic violence.
I came to this
conclusion though a winding series of events that led me to become trained as a
group facilitator for a batterer’s program intervention. As a person who is
interested in assisting survivors of sexual assault it was an odd choice but my
gut kept saying to keep going, keep doing. I trusted my gut and after much
processing identified that in my conception of social justice I should be doing
more than simply working on one side of the equation, conducting psychotherapy
with survivors of violence against women. In order for true social justice
action to occur I need to work on the other side as well, the perpetrator. I
co-lead one group for perpetrators of domestic violence a week. Afterwards I
leave feeling like I have truly done
something.
This is not
just a question of needing more to practice with perpetrators but also to
conduct more research. Research on everything from what the beliefs of men who
perpetrate are to how best to intervene to how to best advocate for program
implementation. Few researchers are conducting this type of work, though Christopher
Eckhardt has been conducting very exciting work. In writing this, I performed a
literature search so I could see if I was incorrect in my assessment of the
status of this topic in our field. Sadly I was not and I was only able to find
a couple relevant articles that adopted a feminist perspective and only one that
was published in a feminist journal (Lecouteur & Oxlad, 2010). Let us then
change this sad state of affairs. We should start conducting research and put
it in action, even if it is unpleasant and uncomfortable to work with
perpetrators.
References
Black, M.C., Basile, K.C., Breiding,
M.J., Smith, S.G., Walters, M.L., Merrick, M.T., Chen, J., & Stevens, M.R.
(2011). The National Intimate Partner and
Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010 Summary Report. Atlanta, GA: National
Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
Bachman, R., & Saltzman, L. (1995). National Crime Victimization Survey:
Violence against Women: Estimates from the Redesigned Survey. Bureau of
Justice Statistics Special Report. Washington, D.C.
Babcock, J., Green, C., & Robie, C.
(2004). Does Batterers' Treatment Work? A Meta-analytic Review Of Domestic
Violence Treatment. Clinical Psychology
Review, 23, 1023-1053.
Center for Disease Control. Violence Prevention Basics: Primary
Prevention. (2014, October 5). Retrieved from http://vetoviolence.cdc.gov/index.php/violence-prevention-basics-primary-prevention/
Lecouteur, A., & Oxlad, M. (2010).
Managing accountability for domestic violence: Identities, membership
categories and morality in perpetrators' talk. Feminism & Psychology, 21, 5-28.
Written by Madeline Brodt
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