Violence in the Family

The first article about violence in the family was by Richard Felson and entitled, "Is Violence Against Women about Women or about Violence." In this article Felson addresses the genetic perspective as well as the violence perspective to understanding violence against women. The approach called the gender perspective is the perspective known to most of the general public. "Those who follow the gender perspective argue that men assault women in order to maintain their dominance" (21). "They believe that societies tolerate violence against women, leading offenders to think that they can get away with it" (21). "The reason they are able to get away with it is because victims usually do not report the incidents. They believe that this then leads to an epidemic of violence against women, most of it hidden" (21). However, there is know a new perspective called the violence perspective. The supporters of this perspective say that we should "rely on theories of violence and crime, not theories of sexism, to explain violence against women" (21).

There is prevalent evidence to support both perspectives. Felson takes the violence perspective in his book. He states that "sexism plays at most a trivial role. Typically men who commit these crimes commit other crimes as well, and their backgrounds and attitudes toward women are similar to those of other criminals" (21). Felson states that "they are versatile "bad guys" - selfish, not sexist" (21). "More support for the violence perspective is the fact that a survey revealed that husbands and wives actually hit each other with equal frequency. However, a husband is more likely to do serious damage" (21).

The gender perspective argues with the claim that wives and husbands hit each other equally. "They argue that frequency counts are misleading because wives use violence mainly to defend themselves" (22). "Homicide research does show that women are more likely to kill in self-defense than man, but police attribute only 10 percent of homicides committed by wives to self-defense" (22). This information can lend doubt to the claim from the gender perspective. "Additionally the gender perspective implies that men use violence against wives to maintain their dominance. However, a recent survey suggests that husbands are no more controlling than wives. The survey showed that men are more likely to prevent their wives from working outside the home, but women are more likely to insist on knowing who their husbands are with at all times. Overall the women are slightly more bossy" (22). This once again hurts the gender perspective. "Gender scholars have suggested that rape is used as a form of male domination and control" (23). In an influential book written on rape, Susan Brownmiller argues that rape is used to keep women in their place. "One example cited was that of the Mehinaku, a Brazilian Indian tribe, who use the threat of group rape to prevent women from observing certain male ritual objects" (23). "On the other side, scholars from the violence perspective suggest that rape is usually just sexually motivated" (23).

Personally, after reading this article I tend to lean towards the violence perspective, but that could be because the author of the article is biased toward the violence perspective and therefore provides more evidence against the theories of the gender perspective. After reading about the survey in which woman are found to be more bossy, I found the claim by the gender perspective about dominance in husbands to have many weaknesses. This claim is central to their theory, hence why I tend to agree more with the violence perspective.

The second article about violence in the family was written by Ann Jones and entitled, "Why Doesn't She Leave?" from her book Next Time, She'll Be Dead: Battering and How to Stop It. In this article, Jones addresses exactly what the title says. She looks into why peoples immediate reaction to hearing about a wife being abused is "why doesn't she leave?" and how this can be an unfair question. Jones states that "this question is not a real question. it doesn't call for an answer; it makes a judgment. It transforms a social problem into a personal transaction and pins responsibility on the victim" (131). The question suggests two ideas. "First, it suggests that help is readily available to all worthy victims and second, that this victim must not be one of the worthy victims" (132). Jones writes that the answer is the simple truth; "that she is leaving, she does leave, she left" (132). What people do is question why she doesn't leave, even after she has left. One example to make this clearer is that of Karen Straw. Karen Straw had left her abusive husband and moved with her children to a welfare motel. She wanted a divorce but couldn't afford one. She obtained orders of protection from the court, but for two years her husband continuously cam after her. "Finally in December 1986, he broke into her room, beat her, raped her at knife point in front of the children and then threatened to kill her. She got hold of a kitchen knife, stabbing and killing him" (134). While on trial, a news anchor posed the question of why she would kill him instead of just walking away (135). The thing is she had walked away. "She had tried desperately to get away from him, but a flimsy piece of paper from court was not going to keep him away" (135). She had done everything she could to get away. With the news anchor asking that question it moved attention away from the brutally violent husband and onto the wife, who was the victim.

What Jones wants to show in this article is the fact that people have still not turned their attention from the victims to the violence of men. There definitely seems to be a gender bias in this situation. The issue presented by Jones can be related to the gender vs. violence debate presented in the first article by Felson. In this case I believe this should be looked at through the gender perspective. In society their is still this view as males dominate over females, even if it is now reduced. But this underlying belief can cause the public to take the perspective that the abused wife must be passive or helpless. What Jones is showing is that this is not the truth. The women take action, but without suitable support from the government their is only so much they can do to get away from a husband who most likely will take extreme measures to get to the wife.

In my opinion, i think the question "why doesn't she leave?" is horrible. It's a way to turn attention from the faults of the system. Karen Straw did everything that the government offered to try to get away from her husband. But what the government offered feel extremely short. It showed the terrible weaknesses in the system. It is easier for the public to ask the question of why didn't she leave, and then be able to speculate about passiveness, helplessness, dependency, etc. I think the question should be "What steps do we need to take in the government, so that men like Karen's husband cannot get to her even after she has left?"

The last article relating to violence in the family is by James Ptacek and entitled, "Why Do Men Batter Their Wives." In this article Ptacek looks at the explanations made by abusive men. In the article Ptacek points out the denials and justifications men use to explain their abusive behavior. Ptacek also shows the contradictions within their explanations. For this study, Ptacek conducted interviews with 18 abusive men. There are two types of accounts that are used by the abusive men. "The first is excuses. Excuses are those accounts in which the abuser denies full responsibility for his actions" (141). "The second is justifications. Justifications are those accounts in which the abuser may accept some responsibility but denies or trivializes the wrongness of his violence" (141). Often the abuser will use both excuses and justifications, which is where contradictions will arise.

"The most common way that batterers try to excuse their violent behavior is through an appeal to loss of control" (142). "Partial or complete loss of control is usually attributed to either alcohol or drug use or from a build up of frustrations. Of the 18 men interviewed, 94% said that their abuse was a result of either drugs or alcohol, frustrations, or complete loss of control. An alcohol-drug excuse is present in 33% of the men interviewed" (142). "With these men, when asked if they would be violent towards a woman again they said no if they could stay free of alcohol and drug dependency. A frustration-aggression description of violence is present in the accounts of 67% of the men" (143). "In the accounts of 56% of the men, descriptions of the violence are presented in terms of being completely out of control" (144). "Appeals to lose of control and victim-blaming are excuses that represent denial of responsibility. On the other hand, justifications are denials of wrongdoing on the part of the offender" (145).

The first category of justification is denial of injury. These men deny or minimize the injuries the women suffered. These men say that "the woman's fears were exaggerated, or possibly they will deny that the behavior was violent" (146). "The second category of justification is failure to fulfill obligations of a good wife. Of the 18 men interviewed, 78% gave accounts falling into this category" (147).

The definitions of excuses and justifications contradict each other. "One is a denial of responsibility, while one is a denial of wrongness. Most of the 18 men made statements falling into both categories, so they were obviously contradicting themselves" (149). "With one man, in the space of a few minutes, he went from denying responsibility, to seemingly accepting responsibility while minimizing the wrongness, to denying responsibility again" (149). This is an obvious contradiction and is just the man's attempt to make the violence appear more normal.

This article addresses the gender vs. violence debate. "Excuses and justifications are "standardized within cultures" and they are "socially approved vocabularies" for avoiding blame" (151). "These rationalizations represent culturally sanctioned strategies for minimizing and denying violence against women. The excuses of loss of control and provocation are largely taken at face value by the larger public" (155). "This shows a bit of a gender bias. People readily believe the excuses of these men. Clinicians tend to label the batterers as temporarily insane. Clinicians largely accept batterers' rationalizations for the violence" (153). The issue of people believing that women create their own victimization is discussed here as well. So once again I do believe that this shows the gender side of the debate. It seems again that men seem to get off easily.