The issue is that mainstream coverage of abuse cases focus so entirely on the victim, that we lose track of everyone else in the situation, and the pressure is all put on one person whose choices get turned over the mass of public opinion.  The abuser is sort of nullified, as immune to criticism as a rockslide.  And at the same time, the victim’s friends and family just get blended into the public: “leave!  leave!  leave!”

Oh, no, no.  Your post is at LEAST as good as hilzoy’s.  And I’m glad you’ve both weighed in so openly and intelligently on this subject.

when the fact that you aren’t fighting for yourself means that you’re obviously not good enough to deserve to get out

Which, for me, was all bound up with the idea that I better not leave, because who else would ever want me?

There is down the rabbit hole quality, too. When everything is so turned upside down in a relationship, it’s hard to pin down a real sense of self.

In my case, I started to question my own sanity. He would fly off the handle and then later, he would deny it completely, would act as though I was crazy for having thought he’d said whatever he’d said. Or he would accuse me of something - smirking was common - and I would have no idea what he was talking about. But I began to think I must have done *something* because he surely couldn’t generate such a crazy response out of nothing, right?

You can’t see any of this when you’re in the middle of it. It took me a very long time to understand it even in retrospect.

One reason I don’t like discussing this is my situation was hardly the textbook situation.  Most abusive partners are trying to tear down a woman’s self-esteem because they’re afraid she’ll leave.  I suspect my ex was largely indifferent on the question, honestly.

1. Why do men slap, punch and kick women they purport to love?

2. Why do men choke, harrass, berate, belittle, mock and rape women they purport to love?

3. Why do men perpetrate violence against one partner after another?

4. Why don’t men seek help immediately upon physically harming their partner the first time?

5. Why do men stay with women they abuse?

Nobody ever asks these questions. Or answers them. Fuck the world, indeed.

He would fly off the handle and then later, he would deny it completely, would act as though I was crazy for having thought he’d said whatever he’d said.

My mother does this exact thing. Sometimes she can go from statement to denial in the span of ten minutes or less. It took me until several years into my adulthood to realize that I wasn’t the crazy one.

I stumbled on the Hirshman article yesterday, and I thought I had never seen a more perfect illustration of completely missing the point.  I couldn’t believe someone had written that article after reading your original post; I was gobsmacked.  If abusers understand instinctively how asking, “Why don’t you just leave?” shifts the responsibility off of themselves, doesn’t that give you a clue about the value of that question?

Most of all, though, it bothered me that she seems to have expected Steiner to march up to the new girlfriend and tell her that her new boyfriend is a wife-beater.  What did she think would have happened?  This man is an abuser.  He would have started his new relationship by filling his girlfriend in on what a raving, psychotic monster his ex-wife was.

Or he would accuse me of something - smirking was common - and I would have no idea what he was talking about.

YES!  This happened to me all the time, too.  Usually predicated on my not saying thank you for some mundane transaction like passing the salt.

1. Why do men slap, punch and kick women they purport to love?

2. Why do men choke, harrass, berate, belittle, mock and rape women they purport to love?

3. Why do men perpetrate violence against one partner after another?

4. Why don’t men seek help immediately upon physically harming their partner the first time?

5. Why do men stay with women they abuse?

I really fucking have to remember this list the next time this subject comes up.

Why did I stay with my abuser as long as I did? The answer to that question is that my father was emotionally abusive, to the point that my mother committed suicide.

I was all too used to the nice guy/mr. emotional abuse switcheroo, but hadn’t yet identified the pattern. Because all through my childhood my father had played the game that first, my mother was the crazy one, and after she died, it was me, or my brother.

As a therapist explained to me, his was “crazy-making behavior.” So when Mr. Nice Guy boyfriend suddenly turned around and blamed me for his antics, I was set up to accept it. To a degree.

Although since my father hadn’t been a batterer, I was able to walk out the door from the boyfriend on the second occasion where it appeared he was about to get physical, again.

This was 35 years ago, before the term “domestic violence” had even been coined, it was a dirty secret never discussed (a shameful dirty secret, where women felt they must be at fault), there were no shelters, specific counseling, and the police and courts were even less helpful than they may be now.

I was proud that I was able to leave, but my trust had been abused so by the men in my life, I still have difficulties with intimacy to this day.

You don’t ask a woman in such a situation why she doesn’t leave.  You tell her that you will help her when she is ready, and learn how to set the stage and hint around what she will need to do for a successful escape.

For all those people who say “why doesn’t she just leave”, I ask this: how many of you have ever helped someone who needs to leave?  Provided a safe house, picked someone up from a corner with the kids in tow, etc. 

In other words, people who think like this need to put up or shut up.

because who else would ever want me?

This represents another layer of patriarchal control and misogyny: the belief that a woman has to have a man - that we always need or have to be with somebody other than ourselves!

Women and men get brainwashed into thinking that they have to have a partner.  I’m teaching my boys that having a partner is nice, but being able to be on your own is critically important.  You don’t have to always have somebody else, and that sort of thinking lowers our standards tremendously when it comes to selecting partners.

In my experience with victims, which is quite limited, what worked for me was not asking them why they didn’t leave, but helping them realize that the abuse was wrong and not their fault.  One woman I knew was religious and talked about the sanctity of her marriage vows.  I pointed out that he was breaking his vows to her as well, and that she could not convince him to follow them.  At one point, when she said that maybe she could get him to change, I asked her if that really mattered.  He would still be the person who did those awful things to her, even if he never did them again.  And he certainly did not seem capable of understanding exactly how wrong they are.

Something she said to me after she left that is utterly heartbreaking—she told me that not only do people give women a hard time for leaving an abusive relationship “too late”—she was taking all kinds of heat for getting out *before* he hit her.  Think about that.

This represents another layer of patriarchal control and misogyny: the belief that a woman has to have a man - that we always need or have to be with somebody other than ourselves!

This, among other things, was my key to getting out.  There were other aspects, but this was a big part of it.

For sorting out the situation, and very good advice in how to separate from an abusive man, I’d recommend

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-He-That-Controlling/dp/0425191656/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239427131&sr=8-1

t Bancroft is the former codirector of Emerge, the nation’s first program for abusive men,

But Lundy primarily has written a guide for the woman in the abusive relationship, and how to disentangle herself, safely.

Lundy “specialized in domestic violence for 15 years, and his understanding of his subject and audience is apparent on every page. ‘One of the prevalent features of life with an angry or controlling partner is that he frequently tells you what you should think and tries to get you to doubt or devalue your own perceptions and beliefs,’ he writes. ”’ would not like to see your experience with this book re-create that unhealthy dynamic. So the top point to bear in mind as you read [this book] is to listen carefully to what I am saying, but always to think for yourself.’”

“He maintains this level of sensitivity and even empathy throughout discussions on the nature of abusive thinking, how abusive men manipulate their families and the legal system and whether or not they can ever be cured. Jargon-free analysis is frequently broken up by interesting first-person accounts and boxes that distill in-depth information into simple checklists. Bancroft’s book promises to be a beacon of calm and sanity for many storm-tossed families.”

‘Cause Lord knows, Amanda, you don’t do vague generalities. Why, yours are positively specific.

Exactly. My SO when she was in her back-to-back emotionally abusive relationships did the same thing, built by her partners that she was “too crazy”, “too ugly”, “too sexually broken” (because she couldn’t get into coercive sex with abusive partners) to ever date anyone else again and that their words and any critical words had more validity than any positive words. There was also a loop system wherein those ideas would close the option of leaving or say she wasn’t good enough to leave, which would then trigger a second system that would say “the fact that you haven’t left is proof that the relationship isn’t abusive and you are really crazy”. Because people in abusive systems leave, because that’s the only statements made on the subject. So if you stay, you must be complicit or overblowing the whole situation.

On Linda’s attempt specifically, my SO actually had a friend who believed the hard line yell at her every moment she saw her to leave method was the best. I think that’s why she stayed longer with that abusive partner than any other partner, because she felt like she had to make the abusive partnership “work” because she had already “ruined one friendship” pursuing it.

We really need to shift the narrative to building up self-esteem and admission to leave as well as actually biting the bullet and tackling the male culpability for abuse. Too often on these sorts of things, we shift to the victim, because that’s where all the oppressed people are and attacking the other way would have us sympathizing with non-male or non-white guys and that makes people uncomfortable. It’s beyond time to suck it up and get over it for the common wisdom people.

I’ve met Linda Hirshman and she’s a jackass. She was part of a feminist lecture series at a University (I’ll not name names here because other people will be implicated) I worked at. She came to speak on “Get to Work” (which does have some really good points) and yet got really pissed off and TALKED ABOUT IT IN FRONT OF THE AUDIENCE AND THEN LATER TO SOME OTHER STAFF about how the Director of the Women’s Center brought her baby to the lecture (this was an evening lecture, after day-care centers are closed and her husband wanted to attend the lecture as well, so they brought the baby and when he got fussy each took it in turn to take him out of the hall—it was not even remotely distracting. She went on and on about how unprofessional it is to bring children to the work place (a fucking University Women’s Center!) and how you need have your nanny deal with children so that women essentially have wives to pick up the slack and act like men in the work world to get equality. Her view is that women need to be like men, not that we need to reshape work/life interactions because we aren’t all 1950’s men who don’t have any caretaking responsibilities.

So, with that in mind, I suspect that she once again thinks that women need to “man up” and “leave” rather than actually deal with how complicated abusive relationships can be. She’s very black and white—she and Bush would have got on in that respect. I think that she believes that she’s a Liberal, but she doesn’t have (or is too lazy to cultivate) a practice of nuance.

Hirshman is a prime example of why Hillary lost: she was supported by women who don’t get it.

The whole “we need a woman in charge of a fucked up system” is fucked up, but it is what Hirshman promotes.  The real answer, and one reason why Obama picked up so much momentum a year ago was that his message was: we have a broken system and we need to change it to serve everyone.

Maybe Hirshman should go help Michael Steele out.  He needs to know that being black and in charge of a fucked up system is enough change.

Are you being sarcastic with me, daphne?  If so, why don’t you quit with the misuse of sarcasm in service of passive aggression and come right out and say what you’re thinking?

The thing about being labeled crazy is that it’s the gift that keeps on giving. You can feel desperate to establish credibility after that, and that shows. Of course that then feeds into so many sexist stereotypes of women, too, so it’s perfect.

  The Duluth Model is the model that MRAs and FRAs hate the most. It doesn’t hold abuser’s hands and sit them in circles so they can feel better about themselves. They’re bullies because it works. They pick on women because nobody gives a fuck about women. It’s the perfect crime.

“‘No one can treat you like this if you don’t let them,’ she tells a woman whose male companion raises his fists to her on the street. “

I’m glad that someone called this particular piece of bullshit for what it is.  Truth is, the law is inadequate for preventing an abuser from continuing to abuse you, even after you leave.  As Hilzoy pointed out, something like a fourth of female homicide victims were killed by abusive spouses.  I can certainly understand why many women fear angering their husbands and boyfriends by leaving them: for these women, there is no “out”, only lesser degrees of abuse represented by staying in.

Hirshman doesn’t want to accept that any woman can get trapped in an abusive relationship.  She wants to believe that her feminism grants her a magical golden ticket.  “It can never happen to me because I’m a feminist, raised with pro-woman values”, she seems to say.  I was raised in a matriarchal household with pro-woman values too.  I was a pretty co-ed at a highly rated college with my whole world in front of me.  And I got trapped in an abusive relationship.  Hirshman is dangerously blind to the fact that being a feminist is no protection.  Vigilance is necessary regardless if you are a blue collar worker or an independently wealthy debutante.  I never thought of my relationship as being abusive until I got out with help. I merely thought this was my due for being too emotionally needy and for dating above my station (I actually thought he was too good for me and I had to put up with his needs to keep him).

Given what has been said about the direct-to-face woman bashing of a pair of parents who brought their baby to an evening campus event, I have to wonder: Hirshman says that women should just leave their abusers, but I somehow doubt that she would be the kind of supportive boss or coworker that a woman leaving an abuser needs.  Not now, not ever, because she would likely find the following to be “unprofessional” as well:

restraining orders that require workplace security to enforce

rehearsals for violations of restraining orders, where the office works out a response to the abuser showing up at a workplace ahead of time

Dealing with a woman showing up late because her ex was stalking her after she dropped her daughter at school

Actual arrest of ex in the workplace

These are all things that I have seen, participated in, and been involved in responding to.  These are things that happen when women leave their abusers and still need their paycheck.  These are things that have to be addressed in the workplace in order for a woman to successfully leave her abuser and remain safe and employed (and staying employed is needed to remain away and safe in many situations) and permanently separated from an abuser.

These are all things that Doucheman would consider to be “unprofessional”, even as she spews her self-esteem cult drivel and just can’t seem to understand why women cannot manage to leave abusive partners.

In other words, she has every interest in shaming, and ZERO NADA NULL NO interest in actually doing a goddamn thing besides piling on more abuse.

BTW, when I witnessed a man slap his girlfriend in a train station lobby once, in the company of my now husband, we didn’t bother lecturing.  I very suddenly, despite being in a dress and heels myself, picked up and pinned his lame ass against a brick wall with his feet hanging while screaming in his face.  Meanwhile, my companion quickly used his train pass to get the woman through the turnstyle and onto a train.

You have to help the abused partner escape.  Then you can ask, someday, why they didn’t leave before that.

“Why don’t you just” anything is pretty much a question that only a jerk can ask. “Why, no, I had never considered that I might be in an abusive relationship, or if I had considered that fact, the possibility that I might do better by leaving the abusive bastard had never occurred to me. What a brilliant suggestion, and now that my eyes have been opened I shall implement it immediately.”

(Okay, the part about the opening of eyes is glib; one of the great achievements of the past half century or so is the widespread recognition that hitting your partner, constantly belittling your partner, isolating your partner from friends and family etc are in fact abusive rather than the natural course of things. For a lot of people that’s made the first step—giving up the “Oh, no, this isn’t abusive, it’s just the way we do things around here”—much easier.)

I’ve never been through this kind of an experience, but it sounds as though some of the tactics employed by rotten boyfriends (“why don’t you leave”) are very much like the tactics unloaded on people who are trying to break into any arena where they are not welcome.  The same question gets asked when people of color, for example, voice their dissatisfaction with having to listen to jokes of which they are the butt, and notoriously, it get asked when women object to having to listen to jokes centered around their foibles.  It used to be a workplace-harassment mainstay, whether the person getting ganged up on was female or was objectionable for some other reason: if the persecution was that bad, why didn’t the individual who was on the receiving end of it take a hint and vamoose?

I’m not saying that the situations are that similar, but I am saying that the same underlying expectation on the part of the people who are trying to control them (rotten boyfriends or husbands in the one case, rotten bosses or co-workers in the other) is what makes them hard to deal with.  That expectation might be expressed in this way: “I belong here and I participate (in a job, in a relationship, in whatever) by right, but you do not belong here and if you choose to stick around, I will see to it that you stick around and participate (in whatever) on terms I will make sure you find degrading.  If you stay, I will make sure you pay me an emotional tithe, and if you leave, you’ll have to write the whole endeavor off as a loss.” The harm this kind of thing does is obvious: it ends up affecting the ability of many, many people to play a part in their own lives.

Nope. Just pointing out the redundancy. Nothing passive-aggressive about it, though it did require a slight bit (get it: slight bit) of cognitive skills.

There’s all sorts of reasons I stayed with my abusive boyfriend, and not one of them were helped by people trying to shame me.  I got out once I had enough friends and other positive influences in my life that I realized that I wanted to get out.  Shaming just drove me more into his arms with the thought “I’m obviously screwed up and he’s obviously screwed up - it’s us against the world.”

If you feel a need to shame someone, shame the abusers.  Shame the rapists.  Don’t think that treating them as forces of nature is a condemnation; it’s just an excuse for them.  If you want to help someone who is being abused, just be their friend.  Abuse screws up your thinking processes just like depression does, so “why don’t you just leave?” is about as effective as “why don’t you just stop feeling sad?”

The previous commenter desperately wishes he had a girlfriend to abuse.  I guess she left a while ago, huh?

Gavel Down I think you’re giving them far too much credit. Anybody who’d use a discussion about abuse to engage in abuse is basically a shit sandwich of a person.

That’s why you named yourself after a ‘substitute” for men?

I vote to ban DKs’ ass, it obviously has no social life, that’s why it comes here to troll.

My father was psychologically abusive to everyone in his life, but I got the least of it by far, even less than my two brothers.  It took a long time for my mother to demand a divorce, and I understand exactly why.  He said he would change, and of course we wanted him to.  Even now, I have not talked to him for several years, and I still occasionally think about calling him.  I really want to believe that my father loves me, and some day he will realize how much he has hurt me and feel genuinely sorry for the first in his life, and he’ll turn his life around and become a person, and it’s all because of me.  Who wouldn’t want to believe something like that?  It’s much harder to think that your parent (or spouse) doesn’t really love you.  It’ really easy to feel like they don’t love you because it’s your own fault and not because they are monsters who can’t really love anyone.  Even if this person has never truly loved anyone before, wouldn’t it be a wonderful feeling to think that you managed to change him?  That you are just so much better than everyone else that he will change for you?  One big reason why victims stay with abusers is because they want to feel like they can inspire someone to change for them.  I still have to remind myself that my dad is a psychopath (in his case, it’s true and not an exaggeration) and that he can’t change no matter what.  He is just not capable of loving anyone.

Ms Kate’s comments about office preparedness are excellent and applicable to other situations as well. The other situations are easier to expect - disgruntled ex-employee who used to brag about his gun collection, student with flunking grade, employee passed over for recent promotion, dissatisfied client (#1: people denied workmen’s comp.). For some reason, managers and employees don’t consider the possibility of ex- or current male partners stalking a woman employee, though that is not uncommon. The last murder on site in my city hospital wasn’t some rival gang member trying to finish the job on someone he already shot, but an ex-husband who walked in during daylight hours.