I’ve joined a support group. It feels so good to talk to people who get it.
I met this guy at work who said that my partner’s behavior is abuse.
I’m so grateful for my friends and family; they really have been there for me.
I told my son that the next time he calls a girl “bitch,” he’s grounded.
My daughter’s teacher asked me if everything is okay at home. I lied and said, “Yes,” but it’s actually really nice that somebody noticed.
PARTNER ABUSE is a cyclone that leaves a swath of destruction behind it as it rips through the lives of women and children: destroyed self-confidence,
loss of freedom, stalled progress, fear, bitterness, economic ruin, humiliation, heartbreak, physical injury, ugly custody battles, isolation, wedges driven between mothers and their children, confusion, mistrust between siblings, secrets, lies.
No woman should have to live this way. Neither should her children. But there are other lives that are also affected, because for every abused woman, there are friends and relatives who suffer, too, from their worry and pain over what they see happening to her. Some of those who approach me
to share their anguish are men who are groping desperately for clues to how they can assist their daughters and sisters and mothers who they see being sliced to ribbons a day at a time. In fact, it is unusual for me to talk to anyone, male or female, whose life has not been saddened at some point by an abusive man.
In recent years, in my public presentations, I have increasingly addressed the effects on children who are exposed to partner abuse. While writing this book I spoke at a training session for police officers, where a young cop who was built to intimidate—about as wide as he was tall—
came up to me privately during a break and said, “All this stuff you are talking about went on in my family growing up. My old man was just like what you describe, always controlling, scaring everybody. And he drove me and my mom apart, just like you said. But we all saw through him when we got older, and me and my mom are close now.” I told him how happy I was that he had become a police officer, so that when a family calls for help, they might be sent a cop who can see through the children’s eyes and remember that they are victims too.
We all have a stake in ending abuse, if not for ourselves, then for our loved ones who may be targets or bystanders or who may find themselves mired in an abusive relationship someday. Anyone who chooses to can play an important role in chasing this scourge out of our homes, our communities, and our nations.
Abuse is a solvable problem. We know where it comes from; we know why abusers are reluctant to change; and we know what it takes to make
abuse stop. Abusers specialize in creating mystery and intrigue, but when we clear the smoke away we are left with an obvious moral wrong and a straightforward task to set it right. All that is required is the clarity of our minds and the will of our communities.
Throughout this book, I have been putting forth my suggestions to abused women about steps that they can take to make sense out of what is occurring, to seek safety, and to set their own healing in motion. I have a few more words of advice for them, but most of this chapter is directed at
everyone—male or female, survivor of abuse or not, young or old—who is interested in helping to end abuse.
WHAT THE ABUSED WOMAN CAN DO
My primary message to you is this: An abuser distorts the life and mind of his abused partner, so that she becomes focused on him. The main way out of the abuse vortex, therefore, is to reorient your thinking so that you devote your attention to yourself and to your children. I hope this book has helped to solve some puzzles for you about what is going on in your partner’s mind. Now see if you can stop puzzling about him and turn your energy toward moving yourself forward on your chosen course.
Most of this chapter talks about the ways in which people can transform the attitudes toward abuse that prevail in their communities. Please don’t concern yourself with these suggestions unless you are sure you are ready for them. If you jump from trying to take care of your own abusive relationship to trying to take care of other abused women, you may forget that you deserve caretaking for yourself. Let other people take on the world for now and just be the “hero of your own life,” as one book refers to abused women. Taking action in your community against the abuse of women may be an empowering and healing activity for you, but not if you
take it on too soon. You’ll know when you’re ready.
I have woven practical ideas through all of the previous chapters. I would like to leave you with just a few more thoughts:
Get support for yourself no matter how. Find someone somewhere who can understand what you are going through, who can be trusted with confidences, and who can help you hold on to your
sense of reality. Reach out.
Keep a journal to document your experience, so that when your partner is making you crazy with mind games or with sudden
“good” behavior, you can look back through your writings and remember who you really are and what he really does.
Stay away from people who aren’t good for you, who don’t understand, who say things that push you down into self-blame.
Do anything you can think of that’s good for you, that nurtures your soul. Even women who have extraordinarily controlling
partners often can find some ruse that will free them long enough to work out, take a class, go for a walk, or just get some time alone to think.
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Keep your abusive partner out of your head as much as you can.
Use this book to help you understand what he is doing; naming and understanding is power. If you can understand how he thinks, you can avoid absorbing his thinking yourself and prevent him from crawling inside your head.
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Don’t blame yourself when you don’t reach your goals right away, when, for instance, you break down and get back together with him. Just pull yourself together and try again. You will succeed eventually, perhaps even on your very next attempt.
HOW TO SUPPORT AN ABUSED WOMAN
Question 21:
HOW CAN I hELP MY DAUGHTER, SISTER, OR FRIEND WHO IS BEING ABUSED?
If you would like to make a significant difference in the life of an abused woman you care about, keep the following principle fresh in your mind: Your goal is to be the complete opposite of what the abuser is.
E ABUSER: Pressures her severely
YOU SHOULD: Be patient. Remember that it takes time for an abused woman to sort out her confusion and figure out how to handle her situation. It is not helpful for her to try to follow your timetable for when she should stand up to her partner, leave him, call the police, or whatever step you want her to take. You need to respect her judgment regarding when she is ready to take action—something the abuser never does.
E ABUSER: Talks down to her
YOU SHOULD: Address her as an equal. Avoid all traces of condescension or superior knowledge in your voice. This caution applies just as much or
more to professionals. If you speak to an abused woman as if you are smarter or wiser than she is, or as if she is going through something that could never happen to you, then you inadvertently confirm exactly what the abuser has been telling her, which is that she is beneath him. Remember, your actions speak louder than your words.
E ABUSER: Thinks he knows what is good for her better than she does
YOU SHOULD: Treat her as the expert on her own life. Don’t assume that you know what she needs to do. I have sometimes given abused women
suggestions that I thought were exactly right but turned out to be terrible for that particular situation. Ask her what she thinks might work and, without
pressuring her, offer suggestions, respecting her explanations for why certain courses of action would not be helpful. Don’t tell her what to do.
E ABUSER: Dominates conversations
YOU SHOULD: Listen more and talk less. The temptation may be great to
convince her what a “jerk” he is, to analyze his motives, to give speeches covering entire chapters of this book. But talking too much inadvertently communicates to her that your thoughts are more important than hers,
which is exactly how the abuser treats her. If you want her to value her own feelings and opinions, then you have to show her that you value them.
E ABUSER: Believes he has the right to control her life
YOU SHOULD: Respect her right to self-determination. She is entitled to make decisions that are not exactly what you would choose, including the decision to stay with her abusive partner or to return to him after a separation. You can’t convince a woman that her life belongs to her if you are simultaneously acting like it belongs to you. Stay by her even when she makes choices that you don’t like.
E ABUSER: Assumes he understands her children and their needs better than she does
YOU SHOULD: Assume that she is a competent, caring mother. Remember that there is no simple way to determine what is best for the children of an abused woman. Even if she leaves the abuser, the children’s problems are not necessarily over, and sometimes abusers actually create worse
difficulties for the children postseparation than before. You cannot help her to find the best path for her children unless you have a realistic grasp of the complicated set of choices that face her.
E ABUSER: Thinks for her
YOU SHOULD: Think with her. Don’t assume the role of teacher or rescuer. Instead, join forces with her as a respectful and equal team member.
Notice that being the opposite of the abuser does not simply mean saying the opposite of what he says. If he beseeches her with, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” and you stand on the other side badgering her with,
“Leave him, leave him,” she will feel that you’re much like him; you are both pressuring her to accept your judgment of what she should do. Neither of you is asking the empowering question, “What do you want to do?”
DEALING WITH YOUR OWN FRUSTRATIONS
Because empowerment and recovery for an abused woman can be a long process, people who want to be there for her tend to go through periods when their patience wears thin. They are tempted to aim their frustration at
the woman herself, saying, “Well, if you put such a low value on yourself as to choose to be abused, I can’t keep hanging around,” or “If you care about him more than you care about your children, you’re as sick as he is.” I understand why you feel irritated, but it doesn’t make sense to put her down. The message you send with such an outburst is that you think she is causing herself to be abused, which is just what the abuser is telling her.
And the last thing you want to do is support his message.
One of the biggest mistakes made by people who wish to help an abused woman is to measure success by whether or not she leaves her abusive partner. If the woman feels unable or unready to end her
relationship, or if she does separate for a period but then goes back to him, people who have attempted to help tend to feel that their effort failed and often channel this frustration into blaming the abused woman. A better
measure of success for the person helping is how well you have respected the woman’s right to run her own life—which the abusive man does not do
—and how well you have helped her to think of strategies to increase her safety. If you stay focused on these goals you will feel less frustrated as a helper and will be a more valuable resource for the woman.
Here is a mental exercise you can do to help you through your impatience. Think about your own life for a moment, and consider some problem that has been difficult for you to solve. Perhaps you have had difficulty finding a job you really like; perhaps you have a weight problem or some other health problem; perhaps you wish to quit smoking; perhaps you are unhappy in your current relationship or unhappy being single. Now think about a time when friends or relatives were jumping in to tell you what you should do about the challenge facing you. How much did that
help? Did they gloss over the complexities, making solutions sound simpler than they really are? Did they become impatient when you were reluctant to take the steps that they proposed? How did their impatience feel to you?
Other people’s problems almost always appear simpler than our own.
Sentences that start with “If I were you, I would…” rarely help. When
people start to impose their solutions on me, for example, I feel the desire to respond: “If you are such an expert on how I should wend my way through life’s obstacles, why are there still important sources of unhappiness in your life? Why haven’t you made everything perfect for yourself?” No life situation is as simple as it may appear from the outside.
When your frustration is about to get the best of you, seek support for yourself. Talk to someone you care about. Share how painful it is to be
unable to instantly pluck the abused woman from her thorny trap, which of course is what you wish you could do, as do I. Tell about the rage you feel toward the man who is abusing her. Then prepare yourself to go back and be patient and loving with the woman you are trying to help. Abused women tell me over and over again that nothing has mattered more to their
progress toward safety and recovery than the love and support of friends, relatives, and respectful professionals.
One more word of caution: I observe that many people are eager to find something wrong with an abused woman, because if they can’t, they are confronted with the uncomfortable reality that any woman can be abused.
The urge to find fault in her interferes with your ability to help her—and ultimately colludes with the abusive man.
WHAT IF SHE DOESN’T BELIEVE SHE IS BEING ABUSED?
Family and friends of an abused woman sometimes ask me how they can get her to realize that her partner is an abuser. They complain: “She always makes excuses for him. She has these ideas about how to make him get better, like by helping him find a less stressful job, that obviously aren’t going to work. And she blames herself, saying that she’s the one who sets him off a lot of times. She’s in a lot of denial.”
She may actually be more aware of the abuse than she is willing to say. Her shame, and her fear that other people will pressure or criticize her, may make her pretend she doesn’t see. If she has been with her partner for a long time, or if he is especially scary or crazy-making, she may be experiencing
traumatic bonding (see Chapter 9). Or she may believe that her partner is right—that her behavior really is the root of their difficulties, not his. In any event, you will not be able to “make her” see her partner’s abusiveness any more than she can “make him” see it. I wish I could say otherwise, because I know how difficult it is for an abused woman’s loved ones to accept the
limits on what they can do.
Here are a few steps you can take, however:
Tell her that you don’t like the way she is being treated and that you don’t think she deserves it.
Tell her you love her and that you think she is a good person.
Ask her to read this book. You also might hand her one of the other books listed under “Resources” in the back of this one.
Ask her if she would be willing to make plans with you for ways to respond to specific situations of abuse as they arise. See, for
example, if she would agree to call you the next time her partner
starts to yell at her. Offer to pay for her to spend the night at a hotel the next time he gets scary. Ask whether she could make an excuse to come and visit you on her own for a week over the summer, so that she might get a chance to clear her head a bit. You may think of other alternatives of your own.
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If you ever think she is in danger at a particular moment—if, for example, she calls you in the midst of violence or threats—call the police in her area and tell them what is happening.
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Call her or write her often, even if she never seems to return calls, unless she asks you not to (which would indicate that he punishes her for being in contact with people).
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Treat her consistently well. She’ll feel the difference between what you do and what he does.
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Encourage her to call a program for abused women “just to talk.” She does not need to give them her name or her telephone number, and she doesn’t even have to believe that she is being abused. She can call for support and reality checks and just to describe her
struggles in her relationship. The first call to a women’s program sometimes breaks the ice so that it gets easier for her to reach out for help again.
You may wonder why I stated earlier that abuse is a solvable problem, yet now I am saying that you sometimes will have to watch and wait. To say that we can end abuse in our communities does not mean that we can rescue each individual abused woman right this minute. To help your friend or
relative achieve an abuse-free life may take some time. To achieve an
abuse-free society will take a lot of effort on many levels, as we will see.
Finally, do yourself one great favor: Read To Be an Anchor in the Storm, a wonderful book that has been written precisely for the loved ones of abused women (see “Resources”) and is filled with wisdom from cover to cover.
REACHING THE ABUSER
If I were asked to select one salient characteristic of my abusive clients, an aspect of their nature that stands out above all the others, I would choose
this one: They feel profoundly justified. Every effort to reach an abuser must be based on the antidote to this attitude: Abuse is wrong; you are
responsible for your own actions; no excuse is acceptable; the damage you are doing is incalculable; your problem is yours alone to solve.
Who has the opportunity to have an impact on an abuser’s thinking, and what can they do?
Friends and Family
You are the front line. You have a better chance of turning around an abuser’s attitude than everyone else—the abused woman, a therapist, an abuser program, the courts—put together. You are the hardest ones to discredit. He dismisses the others on the list with a wave of his hand,
because they are “crazy” or “liars” or “hysterical” or “anti-male.” But when his loved ones criticize him, he is likely to experience some uncertainty for the first time.
Here are some guidelines to follow:
- When someone you care about is accused of abuse, don’t tell yourself that it can’t possibly be true. Unfortunately, when an abuser complains to his relatives in an outraged voice, “My partner accuses me of being abusive,” they generally jump blindly to his side. They shake their head in disgust and outrage, and respond:
“How could she say that about you? What a bitch!” Nobody asks any questions.
Instead of falling prey to this knee-jerk reaction, begin by finding out all you can. What exactly does he do that she finds abusive?
How does she say she is affected by him? What does she want him to do differently? He will respond to these questions by making her sound ridiculous. He may say, for example, “She says that if I’m ever grouchy or in a bad mood, that’s abuse. Every time she doesn’t get her way, she labels me an abuser.” Keep pressing him about what her perspective is. Ask him to give examples of
specific interactions. Refuse to jump on his bandwagon. Show him that you are reserving judgment.
Next, have a private conversation with his partner. Tell her that he
has revealed that she feels abused and that you would like to know what her concerns are. She may tell you very little, depending on
how much she feels she can trust you. But if she does open up, you are likely to find that she doesn’t come out sounding like a crazy bully the way he would like you to believe her to be. When a woman complains of abuse, the great majority of the time she has valid and important complaints about how her partner is treating her.
- Don’t repeat to him confidences she has shared with you unless she gives you clear permission. You may be persuaded that he isn’t the type to retaliate, but she knows better. Ask her which issues or
events are safe for you to bring up with him and which ones are not. To the extent that she gives you the go-ahead, press him to think carefully about her complaints and to make the
improvements in his behavior that she is requesting.
- Don’t ignore events you witness directly. It is awkward to address a loved one’s conduct toward his partner, but silence implies acceptance. Talk to each of them separately, raising your concerns about his behavior.
- Follow up, especially with her. Find a moment to ask her privately whether or not the problem is persistent, and what kind of help she could use.
I understand and value the loyalty of family members to each other.
There is a natural temptation to speak out forcefully against abuse until the man whose behavior is under the microscope is one of our own, and then we switch sides. But we can’t have it both ways. Abuse won’t stop until
people stop making exceptions for their own brothers and sons and friends.
Supporting a woman against a man’s abusiveness does not necessarily mean taking her side in every conflict in their relationship. They may have huge issues between them that are a tangled mess—collisions about
finances or child rearing or choices of friends—in addition to the abuse. When you challenge a loved one about mistreating his partner, he will say: “You are siding with her; she’s turned you against me.” Respond to these distortions by saying: “I am not against you; I am against your hurtful
behavior. I’m not saying that she’s right about every issue between you. What I am saying is that you won’t be able to work out any of those other differences unless you first deal with your abuse problem. As long as you keep bullying her, you are the number-one problem.”
Nothing would work faster to end the abuse of women than having the friends and family of abusive men stop enabling them. And that begins, in turn, with making sure that you listen carefully and respectfully to her side of the story—something the abusive man never does.
Therapists, Clergypeople, and Other Counselors
While an abused woman may sometimes approach a counselor and describe her struggle straightforwardly, an abuser speaks in terms that are less direct. He seeks help not because he senses that he is abusive but because he is tired of the tension in his home or is afraid that his relationship is going to split up. He will not typically volunteer the fact that he swears, tears his partner down, or frightens her. If he is physically violent, he will almost certainly make no spontaneous mention of that fact. However, he may give various hints. Some common ones include:
“I have a bad temper, and I lose my cool sometimes.” “My girlfriend claims that I don’t treat her right.”
“My partner is always making eyes at other men.”
“My wife attacked me, so I had to defend myself, and she got hurt.”
None of these statements is proof of abuse in itself, but each one is adequate cause for serious concern and should be treated as an indication that the counselor needs to ask many questions about the man’s behavior and his partner’s perspective.
I recommend that counselors use tremendous caution in accepting a man’s claim that he has been falsely accused of abuse or that he is the victim of a violent or controlling woman. You could easily become an unwitting source of support and justification for his psychological—or
physical—assaults on his partner. Remain neutral until you have learned a great deal about his circumstances and attitudes.
When you are concerned that a man might have an abuse problem, ask him to talk in detail about his partner’s perspective and feelings about
various aspects of her life, including her view of conflicts with him. The abuser will typically have difficulty looking through her eyes with sympathy and detail, especially with respect to her grievances against him. The more he ridicules and trivializes her point of view, the greater reason you have to believe that the problem lies with him. At the same time, if you keep asking what she would say, you will find that you often get critical
clues to what his behavior and attitude problems are.
Whether or not you suspect abuse, it is always valuable to provide some basic education to any male about partner abuse. Give some examples of
abusive behaviors, describe their destructive impact on women and children, and explain that a man is entirely responsible for his own actions. If you hear him use other people’s behavior as an excuse for his own or if he blames stress or alcohol, point out that he is rationalizing his mistreatment of his partner. If he admits to abuse at any point, encourage him to contact an abuser program.
Police, Prosecutors, Judges, and Probation Officers
Various guidelines for law enforcement personnel are included in Chapter
12. I will review just three critical points here: (1) Abusers need to suffer consequences for their actions now, not just receive warnings of future sanctions, which have little impact on abusers. (2) He can’t overcome his abuse problem by dealing with anything other than the abuse. Working on
stress or anger management, alcoholism, or relationship dynamics will have little or no impact on a man’s abusiveness. (3) Criticism from people in
positions of authority can sometimes have the greatest impact of any fallout that abusers experience. On the other hand, language from professionals that excuses or minimizes abuse, or that attributes responsibility partly to
the victim—as in the case of a probation officer who says to a man: “You and your wife really need to work out your issues and stop abusing each other”—makes an important contribution to enabling the abuser.
Communities
Any community group or agency can help reach abusive men by prominently displaying posters against abuse and disseminating brochures and other literature. Bear in mind that materials that prominently feature
words such as abuse or violence can be useful in getting the attention of abused women, but abusers tend to think, That isn’t me they’re talking to. Instead, use simple questions and descriptions, such as:
“Do you have a problem with your temper?”
“Has your wife or girlfriend ever complained of being afraid of you?” “Do you sometimes swear or call her names?”
“Do you ever blame your behavior on your partner?”
The smaller print should explain that there is no excuse for a man to insult, frighten, isolate, or lie to his partner, even if he feels that she does the same things. Descriptions of laws and potential legal consequences are helpful, including the fact that he can be arrested for pushing, poking, restraining, or threatening his partner, even if he does not hit her. Few men are aware of this possibility, and abusers are shocked when they get arrested for such “lower-level” violence. If your area has a high-quality abuser program include the telephone number, but remember that few abusers
follow through on counseling unless someone demands it of them. The main purpose of your posters and pamphlets is to educate abusers and potential abusers about community values.
An abuser rejects at first what he hears from any of these sources. But when positive social messages begin to line up, that’s another matter. I have occasionally had physically abusive clients, for example, who have been criticized by the arresting officer, then prosecuted fully, then criticized by
the judge—in addition to having a sentence imposed—then criticized by the probation officer, and then finally confronted in an abuser program. This man may also see a program on television about abuse or read a pamphlet in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. His own mother or brother may tell him that he needs to stop bullying his partner. If all these different voices
reinforce each other, saying that he is responsible for his own actions, refusing to let him blame the victim, breaking the silence about the pain he is causing, and insisting that the responsibility to change rests on his
shoulders alone, the abuser’s vast sense of entitlement starts to shrink. I have watched it happen. Here is where change can begin.
REMEMBERING THE CHILDREN
Amid the screaming and insults, behind the cascade of accusations and counteraccusations, lost in our panic as we see a woman being repeatedly psychologically hammered or physically beaten, we can forget that the abuser has other victims too. The children can become invisible. The police who go on a domestic abuse call sometimes have been known to forget to even ask whether there are children in the home. These children recede into the corners, trying to keep themselves safe, and may remain unnoticed until they are old enough to try to jump in to protect their mothers.
As is true with almost every approach to abuse, we have to begin by breaking the silence. Ask the mother privately how she feels her children
are being affected by the man’s behavior and by the tension it creates. Does he abuse her in front of them? How do they react? What are her concerns about them? What does she feel they need? (Remember, think with her, not for her.)
Break secrecy with the children as well. Let them know that you are aware of what is happening and that you care about their feelings. Ask:
“How are things going at home for you?”
“Is it hard for you when your parents argue?” “What happens when they get mad at each other?”
“Does anyone at your house ever hurt any one else’s feelings, or frighten anyone?”
“Would you like to tell me about that?”
Even if the child answers no to all of your inquiries, you have demonstrated that he or she matters to you and that you understand that the abuse—without calling it that—can be hurtful or frightening. Then leave
the door open to future communication by saying: “You can tell me about your life at home any time you want. It’s okay to talk about it. Children can get upset sometimes when their parents argue.”
Notice that I recommend using soft terms that neither name abuse nor assign responsibility for it until you find out how much the child knows.
This language is important to avoid alerting children to painful dynamics of which they may not be aware. This guideline should be reversed, however, if the child does disclose abuse directly to you or if you know that he or she has directly witnessed explicit verbal or physical abuse toward the mother. Then it becomes important not to use neutral terms; children of abused women already feel that they themselves and their mothers are at least partly at fault, and you do not want to reinforce those hurtful misconceptions. So once the secret is out, avoid evenhanded language such as the problems between your parents or the mean things they sometimes do to each other.
Children do need to hear the following messages:
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“It’s not your fault if someone in the family says mean things or hurts someone.”
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“It’s not your mother’s fault if someone treats her badly.”
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“No one should ever blame you for being mean to you or hurting you.”
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“A child can’t really protect his or her mother, and it isn’t the child’s job.”
The term abuse doesn’t mean anything to children younger than ten or twelve but may be useful in speaking with teenagers. In general,
descriptions work better than labels.
If the abuser is the children’s father or father figure, take particular caution not to speak badly of him as a person but only to name and criticize his actions. Children do not want to hear that their dad is mean, selfish, or bad. In cases where the abuser is dangerous, it is helpful to discuss the risks with the children, both to help them protect themselves and to validate their reality. However, even a violent, dangerous abuser is a human being, and children tend to be acutely tuned in to the humanity of anyone they know well. Don’t talk about him as if he were a monster. You can say, for example, “Your dad has a problem that makes him unsafe sometimes, doesn’t he?” These are terms that make sense to children.
Those community members who work with the children of abused women in a professional capacity, such as teachers, police officers, therapists, or court employees, can increase their effectiveness by being sensitive to the family dynamics that partner abuse creates and by remembering how manipulative abusers can be. Too many children of abused women are labeled “ADD” or “ADHD” and given medication instead of receiving the assistance they need. Children need us to take an
interest in their predicament, help them to learn positive values, and support their crucial connection to their mothers.
INFLUENCING YOUR COMMUNITY’S RESPONSE TO ABUSE
One-on-one approaches to overcoming abuse work well only when the wider community pulls together to create an environment in which the
victims are supported and the abusers held accountable. You can play a role in making your community an abuse-free zone, a haven where abused women know that they can count on complete support and where abusers
know that they will not succeed in gaining sympathy for their excuses or in avoiding the consequences of their actions.
Here are just a few of the many steps you can take:
Offer to help your local program for abused women as a volunteer, fund-raiser, public speaker, or board member. These programs are always short of both help and funds, because the number of abused women needing assistance is so tragically high. Many programs offer free or low-cost training for volunteers.
Get involved with an abuser program if there is one in your area.
You can be trained to be a counselor for abusers or to be an
advocate for abused women within the abuser program. Use your influence to guide the program to keep improving the support it offers abused women and their children and the quality of education and counseling it provides the abusers. If no local program exists, contact one of the abuser programs listed in
“Resources” in the back of this book for guidance in starting one up.
Join or start an organization devoted to education and activism regarding the abuse of women. Such groups distribute literature, hold protests, promote more effective laws, sponsor artistic
projects related to domestic abuse, and take many, many other
forms of courageous and creative action to end abuse. Your local program for abused women may have a “social action” or similarly named committee, but efforts to promote social change are
sometimes more effective when they come out of a separate organization that is not trying simultaneously to provide services.
Bring programs into your school system that teach respect and equality for females and that make children aware of relationship abuse.
Join your local domestic abuse task force, or start one if none exists. An effective task force (or “roundtable”) includes
representatives from as many community institutions as possible that deal with families affected by abuse. Invite therapists, clergypeople, school personnel, police, personnel from the district attorney’s office, and court personnel as well as staff from
programs for abused women and for abusers. Such task forces have been multiplying rapidly over the past ten years, with countless
laudable accomplishments in coordinating services, launching new programs, and educating the public.
Help to get services going in your area for children of abused women, especially counseling groups. Press therapists who work with children to educate themselves on the issue of partner abuse and its effects on children who are exposed to it. Participate in
public education efforts regarding the reinjuring of abused women and their children through custody and visitation litigation. For
more information on all of these suggestions, see “Resources” at the back of this book.
Join educational efforts in secondary schools regarding abuse in teen dating relationships, in order to stop abuse before it starts. See the section on teen issues in “Resources”.)
Advocate for expanded welfare benefits and other forms of public economic support for abused women. The cuts in public assistance
over the past decade have often made it much more difficult for abused women to leave their partners, especially if they have children. Women can’t leave abusive men if they are economically trapped.
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Protest TV and print media portrayals that glorify abuse and sexual assault or that blame victims, including news coverage.
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If you are a former abused woman who is no longer with her abuser, consider telling your story in public. There is a tremendous need for women who have had personal experience with abuse to go to social service agencies, schools, police departments, and other groups and help people to grasp more deeply what abuse
looks like and what tremors it sends through so many lives. I have often seen professionals and other community members transformed by hearing the account of a real-life woman who has lived with psychological or physical assault.
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Support women who are survivors of abuse to take leadership in your community, and make sure that they are represented on all task forces and policy-making bodies addressing domestic abuse.
CHANGING THE CULTURE
Abuse is the product of a mentality that excuses and condones bullying and exploitation, that promotes superiority and disrespect, and that casts responsibility on to the oppressed. All efforts to end the abuse of women ultimately have to return to this question: How do we change societal
values so that women’s right to live free of insults, invasion, disempowerment, and intimidation is respected?
One way is simply to declare out loud to people in your life that women have these rights unconditionally. Much of modern society remains regrettably unclear on this point. I still hear: “Well, he shouldn’t have called her a ‘slut,’ but she did dance all night with another man.” I hear: “He did keep hassling her at her job even when she told him to stay away, but he
was heartbroken over their breakup.” I hear: “He did use some force in having sex with her, but she had really led him on to believe that they were going all the way that night.” You can influence your friends, your religious
group, your bowling club, your relatives by having the courage to stand up and say: “Abuse of a woman is wrong—period.”
Next, put on pressure against songs, videos, “humor,” and other media that aid and abet abusers. The flood of complaints regarding Eminem’s Grammy award succeeded in pressuring CBS to run a public-service announcement about domestic abuse during the broadcast and led the Grammy’s president to read an antiviolence statement from the podium. A stream of complaints flowed into Simon & Schuster for distributing a video game in which the object was for the male character to successfully rape a female, who was a tied-up Native American woman. When the public
decries the cultural agents that teach or excuse abuse, the culture receives another strong push in the right direction.
Refuse to go along with jokes that insult or degrade women. If you are a man, your refusal to fall in step with destructive jokes and comments can be especially powerful. When someone tells you, “It’s just a joke,” answer by asking, “How do you think an abuser reacts when he hears this joke? Do you think it helps him realize the harm he is doing? Or do you think that his sense of justification gets even more solid than it was?”
Encourage the women in your life—your friends, sisters, mothers, daughters—to insist on dignity and respect, to have faith in themselves, to be proud. Expect boys and men to be respectful, kind, and responsible, and
don’t settle for less. Again, men have a particularly important role to play in cultural change. When a father tells his son, “I don’t want to hear you saying bad things about girls,” or “No, I’m not going to let you have a ‘boys only’ birthday party, that’s prejudiced,” the boy sits up and takes notice.
The “Resources” section includes some organizations that are particularly involved in helping men take leadership against the abuse of women. Vocal leadership by men makes it much more difficult for abusers to claim that
the battle over abuse is one between men and women rather than between abusers and everyone else.
Finally, promote alternatives to abuse and oppression by recognizing how intertwined different forms of abuse and mistreatment are. The
opposite of arrogantly defining reality is listening respectfully to each person’s perspective. The opposite of placing yourself above other people is seeing them as equals. The opposite of establishing a hierarchy in which the top few people lounge comfortably while everyone else gets squashed is sharing resources. The opposite of madly scrambling to the top, whether it’s
the top of the corporate ladder, the top of the softball league, or the top of the household pecking order, is building communities devoted to
cooperation and support, where everyone wins. To consider a world without relationship abuse is to open up to even more profound possibilities, to the potential for human beings to live in harmony with each other and with their natural environment.
Anger and conflict are not the problem; they are normal aspects of life.
Abuse doesn’t come from people’s inability to resolve conflicts but from one person’s decision to claim a higher status than another. So while it is valuable, for example, to teach nonviolent conflict-resolution skills to elementary school students—a popular initiative nowadays—such efforts
contribute little by themselves to ending abuse. Teaching equality, teaching a deep respect for all human beings—these are more complicated undertakings, but they are the ones that count.
Some people may feel that I am unrealistic to believe in a world that is free of abuse. But words like unrealistic, naive, and impractical come from voices of superiority who use them as put-downs to get people to stop thinking for themselves. Abuse does affect us all. If you haven’t been involved with an abusive partner yourself, even if no woman that you love has ever suffered chronic mistreatment, the quality of your life is still dragged down, your horizons still circumscribed, by the existence of abuse and the culture that drives it. The voice of abuse takes so many different forms. You can hear it each time a child’s dreams are shot down by an adult who thinks he or she knows it all. It rings in the ears of anyone who has ever been ridiculed for crying. It echoes through the mind of each person who has dared to put a name to his or her own mistreatment, or to the cruelty directed toward someone else, and then has been derided with stinging words such as sissy or mama’s boy or hysterical or thousands of others.
If you choose to believe that your life could be free of abuse, or that the whole world could be, you will be taunted by similar voices, some originating inside your own head. Some people feel threatened by the concept that abuse is a solvable problem, because if it is, there’s no excuse for not solving it. Abusers and their allies are reluctant to face up to the
damage they have done, make amends, and live differently in the future, so they may choose to insult those who address the problem of abuse. But the taunts and invalidation will not stop you, nor will they stop the rest of us,
because the world has come too far to go back. There are millions of people who have taken stands against partner abuse across the globe and are now unwilling to retreat, just like the woman who gets a taste of life without the abuser and then can’t live under his control anymore, because the taste of freedom and equality is too sweet.
Key Points to Remember
Once we tear the cover of excuses, distortions, and manipulations off of abusers, they suddenly find abuse much harder to get away with.
If Mothers Against Drunk Driving can change the culture’s indifference to alcohol-related automotive deaths, we can change the culture’s attitude toward partner abuse.
Everyone has a role to play in ending abuse.
If you are trying to assist an abused woman, get help and support for yourself as well (see “Resources”).
All forms of chronic mistreatment in the world are interwoven. When we take one apart, all the rest start to unravel as well.
