Bad Advice

When it comes to domestic violence, most of us don't know the signs, yet we love to blame women for not noticing them and not getting out of the relationship fast enough. Case in point, a man writes to Cary Tennis, an advice columnist, and his letter is peppered with red flags. On Feministe, where we first saw this advice, Jill breaks them down:

I mean, we have some Classic Signs of A Controlling Man here.

1. Isolates her from her friends and family.


2. Criticizes her.


3. THREATENS SUICIDE when she tries to leave him.


4. Lies, or at least can’t keep his story straight, when he’s appealing for sympathy (see “we ended up having a screaming incident in front of our apartment” followed up with “I never threatened her or even raised my voice”).

The advice columnist, who by the way is paid to be an expert on relationships, has this to say:

It’s sad. I wish you two could patch it up.

This is the advice women are given. We are told to compromise so we won't end up alone, and then people are surprised when the violence escalates and we don't realize something is wrong until we are in too deep. To this advice columnist, the victim is the villain.

How hard would it be to tell women not to compromise, but only to commit to other people who treat them as equals and with respect? How hard would it have been for this advice columnist to tell this perfect stranger that his behavior is alarming and that his girlfriend is right to stay away? Domestic violence will not end if we tell women to put up with it and it certainly won't end until we are able to point out to men when their behavior is controlling or threatening. We need to stop ignoring the warning signs and start treating domestic and dating violence for what it is: a problem that needs to be addressed and can't be explained away.

Not An Isolated Incident

You've seen us write before that the purpose of this blog is to connect the local work we do to larger issues that contribute to a culture that tolerates and encourages violence against women. Part of that culture is a deliberate insistence that incidents of violence against women are isolated incidents. This opinion piece in the Washington Post shows how the media contributes to that view:

A Washington state study of 230 news articles about 44 deaths related to domestic violence found that nearly all the stories portrayed these incidents as isolated events, rather than as part of a larger social problem.

A similar Rhode Island study of the media coverage of domestic violence homicides found that journalists often portrayed the murder as an “unpredictable private tragedy” rather than part of a larger pattern of abuse. Both studies found that media coverage generally failed to provide accurate information about the dynamics of domestic violence or utilize experts as sources for stories. When experts were quoted, however, the media coverage was much more likely to describe the murder as a part of the societal problem of domestic violence and to discuss community resources for responding to violence.

If we can't see domestic violence homicides as connected, and we can't see the larger societal attitudes and issues that contribute to violence against women, how can we devise a solution? That is why it is vital to share what you've learned about domestic violence with those around you. You can help them connect the dots and only then will we be able to come up with solutions that are truly preventative.

Benevolent Sexism

Readers, have you ever gotten a "compliment" that seemed intended to genuinely be a compliment that nonetheless didn't feel quite so good? Scientific American actually recently examined that topic in a great article on benevolent sexism.

In 1996, Peter Glick and Susan Fiske wrote a paper on the concept of ambivalent sexism, noting that despite common beliefs, there are actually two different kinds of sexist attitudes and behavior. Hostile sexism is what most people think of when they picture “sexism” – angry, explicitly negative attitudes towards women. However, the authors note, there is also something called benevolent sexism:

We define benevolent sexism as a set of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling tone (for the perceiver) and also tend to elicit behaviors typically categorized as prosocial (e.g., helping) or intimacy-seeking (e.g., self-disclosure) (Glick & Fiske, 1996, p. 491).

[Benevolent sexism is] a subjectively positive orientation of protection, idealization, and affection directed toward women that, like hostile sexism, serves to justify women’s subordinate status to men (Glick et al., 2000, p. 763).

Essentially, there’s now a formal name for all of those comments and stereotypes that can somehow feel both nice and wrong at the same time, such as the belief that women are “delicate flowers” that need to be protected by men, or the notion that women have the special gift of being “more kind and caring” than their male counterparts. And yes, it might sound complimentary, but it still counts as sexism.

Benevolent sexism also still counts as a problem and still contributes to society treating women as second-class citizens. Check out the full article here for all of the ways how.

Rape Culture Refresher Course

If you've read our blog for any length of time, you are familiar with the term "rape culture". If you don't know the term, or need a refresher, the blog Racialicious has a great breakdown that starts as a conversation about "Don't' get raped" vs. "Don't rape" as prevention strategies, goes through "Not saying no does not equal yes" and ends with violence in movies, books, and music in a full illustration of the permeation of rape into our culture. It is well worth a read.

Survivors

Rookie Mag has an amazing post by Sady Doyle, a rape survivor, on the journey that a woman goes through in healing after such a trauma. It is written to survivors from a survivor, but it also gives us a glimpse at the toll such an invasion can take on a woman's life. We encourage you to read the piece in its entirety.

5 Things a Survivor Wants You To Know

Last week, we spotted this amazing post from The Good Men Project, written by a domestic violence survivor. She challenges 5 myths about domestic violence, using her own story to set the record straight:

I’m not weak.

I , legitimately, walk the planet on a daily basis knowing that there is someone out there that wants to physically harm me. I live knowing that, at any minute, Scott could return. And I’m only able to do this because on a hot July afternoon I picked up my broken body from the concrete floor and limped out of the door, without looking backward. Nobody else did that for me. Nobody was there to protect me from the madness, nor did they hold me by the arm while I walked on a strained ankle and battered knee. I was in so much pain that I wanted to crawl. But I didn’t, knowing that if I took even a second longer than necessary he might kill me. Weakness wasn’t an option. Strength is what allowed me to survive. And it kept me alive every day before and every day after.

It wasn’t easy to come home to a house that didn’t have electricity or running water. It was heartbreaking to have my car repossessed two days after I made the decision to leave. Trying to find a job, without a car, was embarrassing and difficult. But I did it. And I lived in a home for the next several months knowing that, at any moment, he could walk back into my life (and my house) because he knew where I was and he knew that my back window was broken out (because he shattered it with his left fist).

Survivors of domestic abuse are strong.

This excerpt is just one highlight from an article that you really should read in its entirety.

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

We are so pleased that the Obama Administration has made violence against women a priority, both domestically through the efforts of Vice President Joe Biden and abroad through the leadership of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Click here to read Secretary Clinton's remarks on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

What's The Difference Between Anger and Abuse?

We face this question a lot in anti-domestic violence work. People like to write off batterers' behavior, even homicides, as explosive anger that should be treated by anger management classes, rather than as systematic, planned behavior that focuses on control. The Marriage Counseling Blog has a pretty good breakdown on the difference between anger and the behaviors typically associated with domestic abuse.

Anger is a natural and normal feeling. However, the behaviors people exhibit when they feel angry may or may not be acceptable. Abuse should not be tolerated.

The underlying reasons for angry behaviors and abusive behaviors are different. When people are angry they may lash out or say things they don’t mean out of difficulty being rational while feeling so upset. Angry feelings can cause people to do or say some things they might not normally do and say. This, however, shouldn’t be used as an excuse.

Abusive behaviors tend to be a lot more purposeful. Abusive behaviors are meant to control the other person. Various strategies ranging from intimidation and guilt may be used as manipulation tactics.

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When behaviors become abusive, the person doesn’t take responsibility for the behaviors. They may deny that the abuse occurred or minimize the seriousness of it. They may also blame the other person.

In contrast, people who exhibit angry behaviors can take responsibility for their role. They can admit to crossing the line if they became angry and yelled or behaved inappropriately. They also work on making changes so that it won’t happen again.

The final statement is possibly the most important. Those who use violence against their partners are much less likely to take responsibility for their actions than those who simply have difficulty controlling their anger. Thus, traditional anger management classes, and even many batterers intervention programs based on an anger management model, don't work for perpetrators of family violence because they don't feel that they have any changes to make. We need to acknowledge domestic violence for what it is - a series of behaviors that are tactics one partner uses to control the other - before we can begin effectively helping batterers to change.

Proposed One-Year Waiting Period for Divorcing Parents

For the women we serve, a mandatory one-year waiting period for a divorce is a terrible idea.

Once women gather the courage to leave an abusive relationship, they take their first steps on what is often a very long journey before they are actually free of their former partner. That journey is longest for mothers who are leaving a husband. Divorce from an abusive partner is often fraught with complications, and men with a history of using violence are more likely to end up with custody of their children (shared or otherwise) because they are much more likely to fight for it as a way to continue contact with their former victim. Women who were married to the father of their children sometimes never truly get away, because they are forced by the courts to co-parent with their abusive former partner and, therefore, must continue to stay in contact with him. Adding another hoop, another arbitrary length of time during which he can try to convince or scare her into coming back to him, is, at best, counter-productive and, at worst, incredibly harmful.

These statutes often claim to have a domestic violence waiver, but domestic violence is often hard to prove. It usually comes down to her word against his, especially if she was never able or willing (because of fear, immigration status, or some other reason) to contact law enforcement to create a paper trail.

Whatever the reasoning behind proposed guidelines such as these, the reality is that battered women don't need any more obstacles in their path to safety.

Murder is Leading Cause of Death for Pregnant Women

Murder has been confirmed once again to be the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US.

Roughly half of those women who died violently had had some sort of conflict with their current or former partners leading up to the death, causing experts to call for more thorough screening and follow up for domestic problems during pregnancy check-ups.

"I think that there's still an under-appreciation of the risk (for murder and suicide) and probably less screening than should be done," said Dr. Linda Chambliss, director of maternal fetal medicine at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, who did not participate in the new work.

The study shows that about three out of every 100,000 women who are pregnant or have a child less than one year old are murdered, and two out of every 100,000 kill themselves.

Those numbers remained fairly constant from 2003 to 2007, the years that the researchers examined.

This is why it is vitally important for all medical professionals, but especially for OBGYNs, midwives, doulas, and others who provide care for pregnant women to screen for domestic violence and to have information available about community resources. Please encourage your doctors, nurses, and those you know if the medical field to contact us at (404) 370-7670 for training, information, or brochures to keep at their practices.

Mass Shooting in California DV-Related

Another mass shooting can be attributed domestic violence, this time in Seal Beach, California.

Seal Beach police said the death toll from the salon shooting has risen to eight people. A ninth victim is in critical condition at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center.

"This could be one of our greatest tragedies," Police Sgt. Steve Bowles said.

The gunman opened fire inside the crowded salon Wednesday, littering the shop with bodies. Police said he acted alone, although investigators said they were still scrambling to piece together what triggered such violence.

Eyewitnesses said that he was targeting his ex-wife and that the two were involved in a custody dispute.

To risk sounding like a broken record, domestic violence is not just a private family matter. It can easily spill out into our communities. Many, if not most, of the mass homicides of this nature in recent years have been motivated by domestic violence or a hatred of women in general. Until violence against women is eradicated, cases like this prove that we are all in danger.

Topeka Decriminalizes Domestic Violence

In a follow-up to a previous post, we find that Topeka, Kansas has made good on their threat to remove their domestic violence law from the books (trigger warning for photos of injuries), making DV legal in the city of Topeka. Domestic battery is still illegal in Shawnee County, the county in which Topeka is located, but the Shawnee District Attorney had previously announced that, due to budget cuts, he would no longer prosecute misdemeanors, including domestic violence, occurring in Topeka.

Topeka has had at least 35 reported incidents of domestic battery or assault since early September. Those cases are not being pursued, and as of last Friday, 18 people jailed have been released without facing charges, according to Topeka police. Prosecutors and police have refused to discuss details of the cases out of concern for victims' privacy, making it difficult to assess in what situations suspects aren't being prosecuted.

The use of a weapon in an assault or battery makes a crime a felony, which would be handled in state court.

Taylor's decision has prompted furious reactions nationwide, and county commissioners say they've received hundreds of emails in the past few days from people upset by Taylor's move and the city's response. Outside the Shawnee County Courthouse on Tuesday, about two dozen people carried signs protesting the moves.

It also doesn't help that the possible repeal comes during National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

"It can't continue like this. They have to be prosecuted," said County Commissioner Ted Ensley, a Democrat. "Supposing they're charged and they're not prosecuted and it ends up they go back and cause a death of a woman or a child."

We can only hope that officials resolve this situation quickly, and that this debacle doesn't lead to a homicide.

Topeka Considers Decriminalizing Domestic Violence

Officials in Topeka, Kansas are in the process of deciding what they feel is more important: money or women's lives.

In Shawnee County, the county in which Topeka is located, the District Attorney is facing budget cuts. He therefore decided that he would no longer prosecute misdemeanors, including domestic violence cases, that occurred within the city of Topeka. He instead would expect those cases to be prosecuted by Topeka Municipal Court.

Officials in Topeka say that they do not have the resources to prosecute the DV cases and so, in a political maneuver they hope will force the DA to rethink his position, the city is considering removing their domestic violence laws from the books, thus making domestic violence perfectly legal in Topeka. It would still, however, be illegal in Shawnee County, but they County would be responsible for choosing whether or not to prosecute individual cases.

We hope you are as appalled as we are. Women's very lives are being put in jeopardy over political squabbling. Until a decision has been made, individuals arrested for domestic battery are being released from jail with very little consequence for their actions because no one, the City or the County, is filing charges against them. We hope Topeka will come to their senses before they vote on the issue next week.

Georgia Has 6th Highest Rate of Men Killing Women

In it's annual report on men murdering women, the Violence Policy Center found that Georgia ranks the 6th highest in the nation among women killed by men.

The national homicide rate of women killed by men in single-victim, single-offender instances was 1.25 per 100,000, the study said. There were 1,818 such female victims during 2009.

“Violence against women too often escalates to homicide. Prevention of such violence deserves serious and sustained attention from law enforcement officials and policymakers alike,” Kristen Rand, the center’s legislative director, said in a prepared statement.

The center said its study used the most recent data available from the FBI’s unpublished Supplementary Homicide Report. It is released each year as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October.

The 10 states with the highest rates of women murdered by men were in descending order Nevada, Alabama, Louisiana, Arizona, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota, Hawaii and Missouri, according to the study.

Where weapons use could be determined, firearms were used in slightly more than half the homicides, and more than two-thirds of those firearms were handguns, the study said.

Ninety-three percent of the victims were killed by someone they knew, and 63 percent were wives or intimate acquaintances, the study said.

The full study is available here.

The Best DV Article Ever (So Far)

This is a really great article that tells survivors' stories respectfully, doesn't victim-blame, and does a great job of illustrating many of the common issues that survivors of domestic violence face. All around, it is a fantastic article. We don't get to say that very often, so we encourage you to click through and read.

Norwegian Terrorist Was Anti-Woman

In addition to being racist, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant, it appears that the Norwegian terrorist responsible for the massacres in Oslo and Utoya was also virulently anti-woman.

Hugo Schwyzer at the Good Men Project writes:

His manifesto, which largely consists of uncited work from a host of other right-wing thinkers, is now available online. 2083: A European Declaration of Independence gives us a picture of a man who is deeply troubled by multi-culturalism, by Islam, by modernity, by feminism, and by what has happened to traditional masculinity.

Breivik’s manifesto features an extended section called “Radical Feminism and Political Correctness,” cribbed uncredited from an American writer named Gerald Atkinson. The section complains “that the ‘man of today’ is expected to be a touchy-feely subspecies who bows to the radical feminist agenda.” Feminism’s aim, the manifesto continues, is to “emasculate” men, and render them “unwilling to defend traditional beliefs and values.” This rage at women in general, and at progressive feminists in particular, runs through much of the long and unwieldy 1187-page text. It’s a rhetoric familiar to anyone who reads the writing of Men’s Rights Activists.

So are anti-feminists and Men’s Rights Activists directly to blame for the actions of Anders Breivik? Of course not. Most MRAs – perhaps almost all – reject violence and mass murder as a political tactic. To suggest otherwise would be an indefensible and tasteless attempt to capitalize on a tragedy. But to pretend that there was no coherent political component to the tragedy would be almost equally indefensible.

Michelle Goldberg at The Daily Beast continues:

[Breivik] picked up the argument that selfish western women have allowed Muslims to outbreed them, and that only a restoration of patriarchy can save European culture. One of the books he references approvingly is Patrick Buchanan’s The Death of the West, which argues, “[T]he rise of feminism spells the death of the nation and the end of the West.”

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Nevertheless, the right clings to the idea that feminism is destroying Western societies from the inside, creating space for Islamism to take cover. This politics of emasculation gave shape to Breivik’s rage. Thus, while he pretends to abhor Muslim subjugation of women, he writes that the “fate of European civilisation depends on European men steadfastly resisting Politically Correct feminism.” When cultural conservatives seize control of Europe, he promises, “we will re-establish the patriarchal structures.” Eventually, women “conditioned” to this new order “will know her place in society.”

When tragedies like this happen, we like to pretend that they exist in a void. If we try too hard to understand their causes, we have to admit that they may happen again. It is easier to dismiss one person as crazy than to confront the fact that there are thousands of people in the world who feel this way about minority groups, immigrants, and women, and that Brevik is simply one who decided to take his views to the extreme. On this blog, we won't let you take the easy way out.

David Futrelle, a guest blogger at Shakesville who regularly visits men's rights and men's separatist blogs in order to discuss them at his own blog, writes about an attempted experiment. Someone posted some of the most anti-woman excerpts from Breivik's manifesto on a men's rights message board without identifying their author, to see how they were received. It should be no surprise that the posts were very popular until their author was identified.

But Reddit's Men's Rights subreddit is actually one of the most moderate and least misogynistic Men's Rights hangout online. Others in the manosphere have stepped up to defend Breivik's manifesto (if not his actions) plainly and explicitly, in full knowledge of just whose ideas they are endorsing.

On In Mala Fide, blogger Ferdinand Bardamu praises Breivik's "lucidity," and blames his murderous actions on the evils of a too-liberal society:

[A]nother madman with a sensible manifesto. Another completely rational, intelligent man driven to murderous insanity. And once again, society has zero introspection in regards to its profound ability to turn thoughtful men into lunatic butchers.

He's not being sarcastic here. He continues:

That makes HOW many rage killers in the past five years alone? And not just transparent headcases like Jared Loughner or George Sodini, but ordinary men like Pekka-Eric Auvinen or Joe Stack who simply weren't going to take it anymore. No one bothers to ask WHY all these men suddenly decide to pick up a gun and start shooting people – they're all written off as crazies. Or the rage killings are blamed on overly permissive gun laws …

Here's an idea – sick societies produce sick individuals who do sick things. Anders Breivin [sic] murdered nearly a hundred teens (not children, TEENS – they were at a summer camp for young adults) and must pay the price, but the blood of those teens is ultimately on the hands of the society that spat him forth. He is the bastard son of a masochistic, degenerate, rootless world that pisses on its traditions and heritage to elevate perversity, mindless consumerism and ethnic self-hatred to the highest of virtues.

That final reference to "ethnic self-hatred" seems to be Bardamu's euphemistic way of complaining that not enough white people are white supremacists.

Meanwhile, Chuck of Gucci Little Piggy offers what appears to be a somewhat more restrained, if ultimately more puzzling, defense of Breivik's manifesto – or at least that portion of the manifesto that Breivik borrowed from the writings of far-right blogger Fjordman.

After first complaining, incorrectly, that feminists are "try[ing] to blame Breivik on MRAs" (he cites me and Hugo Schwyzer as examples), Chuck goes on to endorse Breivik's (and Fjordman's) notion that feminism "grease[s]the wheels to allow Islam into his country," as Chuck summarizes the argument. The rest of Chuck's post elaborates on, and endorses, Breivik's/Fjordman's theories, arguing that feminism's "emasculation of Western men has taken the organic policing mechanism out of the hands of men in society" and thus rendered Western society helpless before the Islamic cultural invaders. (More on Bardamu and Gucci Little Piggy's arguments here.)

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No, Breivik is not an MRA. No, he didn't take his marching orders from The Spearhead or In Mala Fide. But he is steeped in the same kind of hatred that is prevalent on those sites, and many of his repugnant beliefs about feminism and women in general are virtually identical to beliefs widespread in the misogynistic manosphere – a fact that a few in the manosphere are already willing to acknowledge out loud, as we saw above.

Further suggested reading: A Tale of Two Terrorists Redux

How Men Who Buy Sex View Women

Newsweek has an absolute must-read article on men who buy sex. It paints a haunting picture that illustrates the clear link between a view of women as objects and men's use of violence, which reinforces everything we have ever posted.

An excerpt:

Overall, the attitudes and habits of sex buyers reveal them as men who dehumanize and commodify women, view them with anger and contempt, lack empathy for their suffering, and relish their own ability to inflict pain and degradation.

Farley found that sex buyers were more likely to view sex as divorced from personal relationships than nonbuyers, and they enjoyed the absence of emotional involvement with prostitutes, whom they saw as commodities. “Prostitution treats women as objects and not ... humans,” said one john interviewed for the study.

In their interviews, the sex buyers often voiced aggression toward women, and were nearly eight times as likely as nonbuyers to say they would rape a woman if they could get away with it. Asked why he bought sex, one man said he liked “to beat women up.” Sex buyers in the study committed more crimes of every kind than nonbuyers, and all the crimes associated with violence against women were committed by the johns.

Prostitution has always been risky for women; the average age of death is 34, and the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that prostitutes suffer a “workplace homicide rate” 51 times higher than that of the next most dangerous occupation, working in a liquor store.

Please, please read the whole thing.

Ensure Our Future

As we've mentioned before, 2011 is WRC's 25th Anniversary of providing services to families who have experienced domestic violence. As we are honoring this milestone, we are also mourning. At our founding, we hoped it wouldn't take 25 years to bring domestic violence to an end. In 2011, we certainly hope that we do not have to recognize our 50th Anniversary.

In light of that goal, we challenged ourselves to imagine what the year 2036 would look like if domestic violence were a thing of the past. How would it look if WRC could close our doors forever?



Please help us get there. Make a donation and call (404) 370-7670 to learn more about volunteering your time. It will take each and every one of us to ensure a peaceful world.

Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn

By now you have probably heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to fathering a child with a household employee while he was married to Maria Shriver. You have also probably heard that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French economist and politician, has been accused of raping a housekeeper at a hotel in New York. At face value, these stories may seem unrelated, but we'd like you to look at them a little closer.

The reason that most companies have strict rules about intra-office dating, especially between a boss and a subordinate, is that, by nature, a power difference exists between a person and the person that he or she works for. The boss has the power to fire, reprimand, promote, give raises or other perks, or to make work life miserable for his or her employees. If an employee fears even for an instant that saying no to an advance made by her or his boss will result in a negative on-the-job consequence, it calls into question whether the act or relationship is truly consensual. The mother of Schwarzenegger's baby was his household employee. Because of the power he held over her merely by virtue of providing her paycheck (especially in a time when employment is harder and harder to come by), not to mention that he is a powerful man politically and because of his celebrity, we will never know if the relationship or the act that produced a child was truly consensual. We do know that Schwarzenegger has a history of being accused of violence and harassment toward women.

The woman accusing Strauss-Kahn of rape is making it clear that she did not consent.

These women are both domestic workers, and domestic workers all over the world are particularly vulnerable to violence. Just like in rapes, just like in domestic violence, assaults on domestic workers come from a place of unequal power and are able to continue because those using violence do not fear punishment. Just as scores of people, including Ben Stein in a truly abysmal article, rush to defend Strauss-Kahn against the accusations leveled by a women who, as Stein says, is "just a maid", most people in a position to stop violence against those who are vulnerable just can't bring themselves to believe "just maids" over the fine upstanding citizens who employ them. Violence against women happens to people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and income levels and is perpetrated by people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and income levels. Yet, in both of these cases, the women in question are working class women of color, where the men are wealthy and white. Yet another difference in power as afforded by our society.

We're not the only ones who have noticed that men in power sometimes abuse that power, but instead of painting it as men "behaving badly", we call it what it is - a culture that perpetuates violence against women. If any man, powerful or no, thinks that he can get away with abusing women, he is more likely to consider doing so. That doesn't mean that all men will abuse their partners, but you're more likely to consider doing anything bad if you don't think you'll get punished. If a man also thinks that a woman's purpose is to please a man, or that women aren't as smart are as valuable as men, or that being a man means that you have to be in control at all times, or that being a man means using violence, he especially will take advantage of opportunities to violate women while escaping punishment. We have to challenge those mindsets, but we also have to make sure that men who use violence against women are punished. Otherwise they'll do it again and again and again, just as these men have been accused of doing.

Why Pastors Struggle with DV

It seems like all we have been doing lately is sharing other people's work, which is great, because that means all sorts of people in the media are paying attention to issues including and surrounding violence against women.

The article we want to share today looks at reasons why many pastors struggle when trying to address domestic violence among their congregants. The author comes up with six:

1. Domestic violence is fundamentally unbelievable (that a person would be capable of hurting someone they love).
   
2. Wife abusers are masterful manipulators.
3. Pastors think spousal abuse only happens in certain kinds of families.
4. Pastors haven't thought enough about the gray area between "submit" and abuse.
5. Pastors believe what they preach.
6. Pastors simply aren't trained about domestic violence.

The only fault in this article is that it, unless it is meant to be implicit within the last point, the author offers no solutions for pastors who want to become better at helping both abuser and survivors address the abuse going on in their relationship. That's where we come in. If you are reading this post and belong to a church, synagogue, or other faith-based institution and you would like to help your religious leader increase his or her skills in addressing domestic violence without causing more harm, please call us at (404) 370-7670. We would love to provide the training needed to make our community's faith leaders part of the solution.