"Why Doesn't She Leave"?

Readings:
1. Felson, Richard. 2006. Is Violence Against Women About Women or About Violence? Contexts, 5, 2, 21-25.
2. Ann Jones. 1994. “Why Doesn’t She Leave?” Pp. 129-139, 152-166 in Next Time, She'll Be Dead: Battering and How to Stop It. Boston: Beacon Press.
3. James Ptacek. 1988. “Why Do Men Batter Their Wives?” Pp. 133-157 in Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. Edited by Kerti Yllo and Michel Bogrod. Sage Publications.

According to Felson, the gender perspective within the domestic violence argument states that violence against women develops out of sexism, because the men who participate in it are proving their manhood. In beating women, they are maintaining their dominant positions encouraged by today's society, proving that they can continually put women "in their place" with violence, and get away with it. In this case, "They get away with it because victims usually do not report the incident to the police; when they do , they get blamed, and the offender gets off" (Felson, 21).
The violence perspective takes a different look at the situation, and claim that violence against women is done by men who are simply violent by nature, and the fact that domestic abuse has become stigmatized it the reason that many are focusing on wife abuse. If one would examine the men who are abusing their partners, he or she would see that these men are also typically criminals in other areas as well.
To make his argument, Felson gathers information from other researchers, and from his own research on violence and gender. Though he is very objective in presenting both cases, he seems to be more on the side of the violence argument. According to research, "rates of violence against women tend to be high when rates of violence against men are high. Violence is violence. But everywhere, men are much more likely to be victims than are women" (Felson, 24). For this reason, I think I agree with the violence perspective. I think that men who hit their wives and partners are typically violent people, who for one reason or another think it is OK to snap when they "can't take it anymore". And the fact that men are more likely to be the victims of violence suggests that because in today's society we have begun to focus more on the problem of domestic violence, we zero in on the women who are the victims, even though it is a smaller statistic overall. In taking this stance I do not mean to say that I disagree with the gender perspective; perhaps I mean to say that I feel domestic violence is a combination of both gender issues and violence issues. Often it is men who are violent who also feel the need to prove and maintain their dominance, and thus focus the brunt of their anger on those closest to them, IE the women in their lives. Either way domestic violence is a major problem that needs to be addressed, from whatever angle one chooses to look at it.
In Jones' article, she succeeds in painting a vivid picture of the never ending cycle of women who are trapped in relationships with abusive partners. The answer to the question posed in the title is that most women do in fact leave, but their actions are ignored by others because despite their "leaving", they usually cannot escape their abuser. This is because many people such a police men, judges, and social workers choose to not take women seriously, whether because of their discomfort, or their belief in "family privacy". So when women leave, they are unable to receive the proper help and guidance, and when they are caught again by their abuser, or even killed, people then displace the blame onto the victim and say it is her fault for not leaving. I feel as though many women are forced to stay in an abusive relationship because of this fact that there is no way out. How can one be expected to run, and then get help, if no one will take you seriously?
This article looks at domestic violence mostly through a gender point of view, attacking people who take the gender stance and blame the woman both for getting herself into that situation, and not being able to get herself out of it. They are victimized as if it is because they are "not good wives" that they are getting beaten, and are then criticized for not shaping up and getting out. The gender perspective in this case is blaming the women, that it is their fault that they are being abused; even if this is not directly stated by those who believe it.
According to Ptacek, denials and justifications are, "Excuses...in which the abuser denies full responsibility for his actions. Justifications are those accounts in which the batterer may accept some responsibility but denies or trivializes the wrongness in his violence...to make sense of or to normalize his behavior" (Ptacek, 141). A major excuse used by abusers is that they could not help the attack at the time, because they momentarily lost control of their senses and went into a fit of uncontrollable rage. Whether because of alcohol, drugs, or anger itself, many men claim that they should not be blamed for hitting their partner, because they did not know what they were doing at the time. This excuse again puts the blame on the woman, because she typically will have done something to "push him over the edge". Accordingly, a second excuse that men make is blaming the victim. They claim they were provoked, usually by verbal abuse from the woman. But in this case, one has to wonder as Ptacek does; what caused the verbal attack in the first place? (Ptacek, 145).
One major justification that men use for abuse is that its OK, because the woman wasn't really hurt. Conveniently, women who are abused also tend to bruise easily, or fall a lot, so it is expected that they will appear injured after barely any touch of violence. This is really a double-edged sword, because as Ptacek states, "By admitting that they have bruised a woman, and yet denying that this is very significant, the more internal nonphysical injuries are also denied; the instilling of fear, the humiliation, the degradation, the assault on her identity as a woman" (Ptacek, 147.)
The second justification that Ptacek states is that the woman was not being a "good wife". Whether because she was not a good cook or she had the wrong attitude or she was not sexually responsive enough, she was in some way not living up to her partner's expectations, and thus had to be punished (Ptacek, 147). There is a multitude of research on this fact, that many men feel entitled to certain things as the head of the household, and see fit to punish if their needs are not met.
The contradictions in all of these denials and justifications arise from the fact that first they blame outside sources for their anger and provocation, then justify why their actions were acceptable, and then again place the focus on something other than themselves. They are all at once, "denying responsibility, to seemingly accepting responsibility while minimizing the wrongness, to denying responsibility again" (Ptacek, 149). They at the same time have a clear goal and reason for their actions, while denying that they meant to.
Clearly, this article focuses on the gender perspective, as it is written from a Feminist perspective about wife battering. It tries to explain why men feel as though they need to abuse their partners, while getting away with it. The mind-boggling part of this is that in explaining their actions with contradictions, men have managed to convince many therapists and researchers that their justifications are in fact true, that men abuse while in a fit of uncontrollable rage in response to something that provoked them. In this case again, as in Why Doesn't She Leave, the women are blamed for being either too vulnerable, or too pushy, or too...much. And in criticizing them for being who they are, they are dehumanized to objects that deserve what they get, whether it be praise or punishment,.