2. ECOLOGY OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Imagine living in a country that legitimizes the use of violence against women. Where husbands beat their wives with impunity. Where maleness is the norm, femaleness an aberration. This country could be Nigeria, where women accused of adultery are stoned to death. But violence against women actually hits closer to home.

Domestic violence is the No. 1 cause of injury to women in the United States, greater than auto accidents, rapes and muggings combined, and still society fails to hold batterers accountable. In fact, a 2000 National Institute of Justice report shows that approximately 1.3 million women are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year. Those whose lives have not been personally touched by domestic violence may be surprised by these figures. But a careful look around town will convince many people of the pervasiveness of patriarchy and domestic abuse lurking nearby.

As a privileged white feminist woman I spend lots of energy responding to women's oppression in our androcentric society to the end of envisioning and seeking ways to ensure a brighter future for women. While looking toward that future, it also helps to look backward to get a broader perspective.

The interests of wealthy white men historically have dominated social, political and economic aspects of this and other societies worldwide. Women's voices have been silenced in this land where all men were declared to have been created equal. They really did mean men, not women. Intent on maintaining his reputation with this nation's other founders, John Adams urged his feminist wife Abigail Adams to be patient when she suggested that he extend those inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to women as well as men. Good thing she did not hold her breath.

Sex translated into power in this guys-only club, who with the Bible at their sides undertook a grand storytelling campaign (despite evidence to the contrary of women's efficacy) that framed women as feebleminded and unable to do more than keep house and bear children.

Later in the nineteenth century, one woman, who would be damned before she would remain silent, was famed suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The words she uttered more than 100 years ago still stand as an unmet standard to achieving just relationships: "There is one kind of marriage that has not been tried and that is a contract made by equal parties to lead an equal life, with equal restraints and privileges on either side." (Fortune 2003, 75)

The insidiousness of sexism in society derails women's resistance against patriarchy, leads women and other disenfranchised people to mistrust their own judgment and to desist from naming their oppression. Still, central to this ethic is that broken things need not remain as they are. Women and other people pushed into "out" groups must conjure their power to imagine a new way of living and being.

Since the majority of family violence victims are women abused by a male partner, this study will focus on women and the situation in the United States when referring to victims or survivors, men when referring to batterers. Battering is a pattern of abusive behavior where a man attempts to wield power and control over his female partner. In fact, he feels entitled to exercise such control. Besides physical violence that may take the form of hitting, pushing, choking, and sexual assault, this coercive behavior also may include verbal and other psychological threats.

Some battered women may not consider physical violence as their greatest risk. He may threaten to kill her and keep her constantly at his beck and call. The threat of physical and emotional violence keeps her constantly reinventing herself to accommodate a volatile environment that could make her doubt her own sanity: He may be loving one day, silent and sullen the next. Tactics such as stalking and controlling her every move both within and outside the house, also may be involved to the end of causing psychological harm to her and her children. His interference may result in lost work days ­ for them both ­ and even getting fired.

Classic cases of woman battering reveal a man keeping his wife or female partner from visiting her family or friends. Male police officers called to a domestic dispute may side with the male abuser, who seeks to downplay the couple's "marital spat." A woman may be denied a protection from abuse order if a (frequently male) judge believes she has not shown just cause.

A battered woman may not want to end the marriage or partnership but she wants the abuse to stop. The moment she begins to value her life and chooses to resist his domination and oppression by leaving has been shown to be a particularly dangerous time. She has shifted the way she thinks about the abuse. She did not do violence; he did. A woman who believes her life matters may go into safety-planning mode, and uses her best resources to find a safe place, squirrels away things such as money, legal papers, and healthful relationships, makes a practical plan for a different future, identifies helpers, secures a protection from abuse order, and receives consultation on crisis intervention.

But despite all her best efforts to escape with her life, the batterer is always there. She has no place to go where his voice does not reach. He may try to stop her from leaving the abusive relationship by feigning remorse. Eventually, she may sense a subtle shift in the relationship and fear he is on the verge of making his threat to kill her come true. As the violence escalates, both women and batterers risk being injured or killed. At least five women were killed by their husband or intimate male partner in 2003.

Other battered women, seeing no other way to save their lives after years of abuse, use killing violence to end it.