domestic violence

How is a lack of feminist analysis within domestic violence and contemporary services contributing to a reproduction of women’s and children’s homelessness and continued risk of domestic violence victimisation?

May 5, 2016
Cross-posted from: Mairi Voice
Originally published: 24.02.16

This is an article that WEAVE  wrote for Parity in 2013. Still very pertinent for today.

How is a lack of feminist analysis within domestic violence and contemporary services contributing to a reproduction of women’s and children’s homelessness and continued risk of domestic violence victimisation?

By Marie Hume, Dr. Elspeth McInnes, Kathryn Rendell, and Betty Green (Women Everywhere Advocating Violence Elimination Inc.)

 

It is well established that a significant percentage of homeless people in Australia are women and children escaping male violence. According to Homelessness Australia, just over two in every five of the estimated homeless population are women. More women than men seek assistance from the homeless service system each year. Two-thirds of the children who accompanied an adult to a homeless service last year were in the care of a woman, usually their mother, escaping domestic violence. Domestic violence is the most often cited reason given by women presenting to specialist homelessness services for seeking assistance.

The majority of people turned away from specialist homelessness services are women and their children. One in two people who request immediate accommodation are turned away each night due to high demand and under-resourcing.
Read more How is a lack of feminist analysis within domestic violence and contemporary services contributing to a reproduction of women’s and children’s homelessness and continued risk of domestic violence victimisation?

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Party Lines – on Women’s Equality Party by @strifejournal

April 6, 2016
Cross-posted from: Strife Journal
Originally published: 16.02.16

With elections coming up in May this year, Holly Dustin gives us a briefing on what the Women’s Equality Party is all about.

Without a doubt, the British political landscape has shifted significantly since I was trudging through a Politics degree at the University of Nottingham 25 years ago. It was, in some ways, a simpler time for those of us interested in who has power and what they do with it. Margaret Thatcher was still in office (until 1990), and you were either for her or against her. Nelson Mandela was still in prison on Robben Island and the Cold War dominated geo-politics. You voted in elections and in between time you could make your voice heard by going on a demo or wearing a t-shirt (I did both). There were no smartphones, no epetitions, no Facebook likes, and definitely no lobbying your MP on twitter.

There were few women in Parliament then and Thatcher, known for ‘pulling the ladder up behind her’, only ever promoted one woman, Baroness Young, to her Cabinet in all eleven years of her premiership. The Politics Department at Nottingham was an all-male affair too (my memory is of a micro-Cold War between the Thatcher supporting majority and Marxist minority). Politics (capital P) was black and white, and did not appear to include feminism.

Twenty five years later we can say for sure that British politics is less blokey, though still too white and male with only 29% of MPs being women and less than 7% of MPs being from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, and there is a new wave of feminist activism both in Parliament and outside it. Furthermore, British politics is fragmenting; the three-party system is breaking up with the collapse of the Lib Dems in Parliament and the rise of Nationalists around the UK. and smaller parties, such as UKIP and the Greens, gaining electoral support even if first-past-the-post means that support doesn’t translate into seats.
Read more Party Lines – on Women’s Equality Party by @strifejournal

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Manifesto on VAWG for London mayor candidates by @newsaboutwomen

April 4, 2016
Cross-posted from: Women's Views on the News
Originally published: 30.03.16

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Commit to maintaining London’s pioneering Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy.

 

 

Women’s groups in London published a ‘manifesto for ending violence against women and girls in the capital,’ recently and sent open letters to Mayoral candidates highlighting the endemic levels of domestic and sexual violence in London, and asking them to make specific commitments on ending female genital mutilation (FGM), on prostitution, on ensuring support services are maintained, and the effective policing of these crimes.

A new ‘mayorwatch’ website, which will track all relevant mayoral and Assembly candidates’ pledges has also been launched.

The manifesto and open letters precede an ‘ending violence against women and girls hustings’ in central London on 12 April, with Sian Berry, Green Party;  Yvette Cooper MP for Labour; Stephen Greenhalgh for the Conservatives; Annabel Mullin for the Lib Dems; and Sophie Walker, standing for the Women’s Equality Party, on the panel.
Read more Manifesto on VAWG for London mayor candidates by @newsaboutwomen

Categories: Campaigns, Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Femicide – Men’s Fatal Violence Against Women Goes Beyond Domestic Violence by @K_IngalaSmith

December 8, 2015
Cross-posted from: Karen Ingala Smith
Originally published: 18.05.15

I wrote this piece for Women’s Aid’s magazine Safe:

The Office for National Statistics released findings from the 2013/14 Crime Survey for England and Wales on 12 February. Men continue to be more likely to be killed than women, there were 343 male victims compared to 183 female victims (of all ages including children and babies). Court proceedings had concluded for 355 (55%) of 649 suspects relating to 536 homicides.  For those suspects where proceedings had concluded, 90% (338 suspects) were male and 10% were female (38 suspects). Men are more likely to be killed, but their killers are overwhelmingly men. Women are less likely to be killed, when they are, they are overwhelmingly killed by a man.  When we’re talking about fatal violence, we are almost always talking about men’s violence.
Read more Femicide – Men’s Fatal Violence Against Women Goes Beyond Domestic Violence by @K_IngalaSmith

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Is this what you think victims of domestic violence look like? by @monk_laura

December 5, 2015
Cross-posted from: Mothers Apart Project
Originally published: 01.02.15

In the Mothers Apart Project one of the themes emerging from talking to both mothers apart and professionals is the problem of stereotyping, and judging people by those stereotypes according to myths about ‘bad mothers’. Another theme is that professionals who are not in the field of domestic violence avoid asking questions about violence and abuse in order to have to deal with it – and this is for a variety of reasons. Professionals are telling me that this is what they observe on a regular basis in other professionals who avoid at all costs opening ‘Pandora’s Box’ that is domestic violence (you have to bear in mind that the professionals I am interviewing are going to be sympathetic to survivors/mothers apart as they have granted me an interview to support the Mothers Apart Project).

 


Read more Is this what you think victims of domestic violence look like? by @monk_laura

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#16Days: Why Supporting Women In Leaving #DomesticAbuse Is Vital by @FrothyDragon

November 28, 2015
Cross-posted from: Frothy Dragon & the Patriarchal Stone
Originally published: 06.12.12

I noticed an irony the other day. I don’t remember the exact date I returned to D, following his court case. But, given that it was a matter of days before my birthday (very early December), it would have been during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. The irony of this only struck me recently; As my family were convincing me to give my relationship with D another go – to put things right-, feminists would have been campaigning to help raise awareness of domestic abuse.

My family, when I phoned to tell them that D had headbutted me whilst I was holding our ten month old son, were a little less sympathetic than they should have been. A few weeks after the attack, I found myself being subjected to an hour long lecture from my mother, about how I’d “isolated” D, by choosing to breastfeed and co-sleep. I’d denied him intimacy. D’s right to sex was, in my parent’s eyes, more important than parenting in a way which worked for myself and my son. I was told that, by pressing charges I was over-reacting. At this point, I’d yet to tell anyone of the extent of abuse D had put me through.
Read more #16Days: Why Supporting Women In Leaving #DomesticAbuse Is Vital by @FrothyDragon

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November 25 is the International Day to Eliminate Violence against Women – not White Ribbon Day

November 26, 2015
Cross-posted from: Louise Pennington
Originally published: 25.11.15

November 25th was first chosen as the date for an annual day of protest of male violence in 1981. This occurred at the first Feminist Conference for Latin American and Caribbean Women in Bogota. It was chosen in memory of Patria, Maria Teresa and Minerva Mirabel.

The Mirabel sisters were political activists who fought the fascist government of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. They stood up to a genocidal regime that used torture, rape and kidnapping and they were murdered for it. This is why November 25th was chosen as an international day of activism that “denounced all forms men’s violence against women from domestic violence, rape and sexual harassment to state violence including torture and abuse of women political prisoners.”

November 25th received official recognition as an international day to raise awareness of violence against women from United Nations on December 17, 1999.

None of this information is out with the public realm. Even Wikipedia, not known for its accuracy, manages to get the facts right. Yet, November 25th is rarely referred to as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women anymore. Instead, it is called White Ribbon day after a campaign started by men in Canada. 
Read more November 25 is the International Day to Eliminate Violence against Women – not White Ribbon Day

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Why talking about male violence matters by @SarahDitum

November 25, 2015

(Cross-posted from Sarah Ditum’s Paperhous)

November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which is also the international day of tediously explaining why violence against women needs to be discussed as a category. November 25 is the day when you will be reminded that two thirds of homicide victims in England and Wales are male, and that (according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales) men are twice as likely as women to have been victims of violence. November 25 is the day of being reminded that women commit violence too. Last year, I was at an End Violence Against Women event in Bristol where a man had bought a ticket solely so he could stand up in the middle of the discussion and shout, “What about Joanna Dennehy?” (Dennehy became the first woman subject to a whole life tariff in February this year, when she was convicted of the murders of three men). What about Joanna Dennehy, then? After all, it’s true that women are also implicated in violence:

Yes, women are violent too. But the traffic of violence is overwhelmingly from men, and disproportionately to women. As a class, men are the bearers of violence. As a class, women are its victims. And this is why feminists talk about male violence: not for lack of concern about the violence perpetrated by women, but because as a demographic phenomenon, violence is masculine. For this reason, we can draw connections between the patterns of violence and other areas of male domination. What about the fact that women are more likely to live in poverty than men? The fact that the UK has a pay gap of 19.7% in favour of men? The fact that women make up just 23% of MPs? What about the fact that purchasers of sex are exclusively men – is that relevant here? All of these inequalities exist in an environment shaped by that traffic of violence: from men, to women. All of them must be addressed in the acknowledgement of that context, if they are to be addressed at all.
Read more Why talking about male violence matters by @SarahDitum

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Emerging issues concerning mothers apart from their children by @monk_laura

September 9, 2015
Cross-posted from: The Mothers Apart Project
Originally published: 15.02.15

The overarching aim of my research project is to address the problem that, in the UK, there is no comprehensive, statutory provision of support for mothers who have become, or are at risk of becoming, separated from their children. But how is it that there are so very many women that need this support? Mother-child separations occur largely in a context of domestic violence and can have profound and long-lasting effects of both mothers and their children. Provision is made, of course, for the health and wellbeing of children through health and social care and the children are the priority – as they should be. However, largely due to a lack of understanding about the dynamics of domestic abuse, professionals often do not see that children could be better protected by protecting and supporting the mother as a priority – by recognising and respecting her status as the primary carer and attachment figure (in the majority of cases), who is often the child’s prime source of soothing and security.

We seem to have found ourselves in a position, however, that mothers are blamed for being in abusive relationships and in seeking to protect the child from being in an unsafe household/environment, all the focus of professionals’ interventions are aimed at the mother: not on protecting her but blaming her. By threatening to remove her children, making action plans with unrealistic targets and setting impossibly high standards of parenting she is all too often set up to fail and ends up losing parental responsibility. Meanwhile, the perpetrator frequently remains largely invisible to any intervention and when a child is removed from its mother because she has supposedly failed to protect the child from the fallout of the abuser’s behaviour, the mother might even find that the abuser eventually ends up with having more contact with the child than she does or even residency of the child. This is likely to be a devastating outcome for both child and mother with lifelong implications for mental health and wellbeing.
Read more Emerging issues concerning mothers apart from their children by @monk_laura

Categories: Featured Blog, Feminist Mothering, Violence Against Women
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20 reasons why Coles and Woolworths should #BinZooMag by @meltankardreist

July 27, 2015
Cross-posted from: Melinda Tankard Reist
Originally published: 17.06.15

Zoo Weekly has a long history of exploiting and objectifying women for the enjoyment of male readers. During this time, supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths have quietly profited from the sale of this unrestricted magazine in stores around the country. There are a lot of reasons why Coles and Woolworths should rethink the sale of Zoo Weekly, but we’ve narrowed it down to just 20, in no particular order.

1) Zoo invited readers to send in photos of their girlfriends’ breasts to ‘win a boob job‘

2) Zoo posted this image on their Facebook page and asked young fans which half they preferred- and why.
Read more 20 reasons why Coles and Woolworths should #BinZooMag by @meltankardreist

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Sex-differences and ‘domestic violence murders’ by @K_IngalaSmith

June 27, 2015
Cross-posted from: Karen Ingala Smith
Originally published: 14.03.15
What could we do if we wanted to hide the reality of men’s violence against women?

Firstly, we might have  a ‘gender neutral’ definition of domestic violence.  Maybe like the UK government which uses the following definition:

“any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to: psychological, physical, sexual, financial [and] emotional.”

Not only treating ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ as the same thing, this definition erases sex differences.  It includes the phrase ‘regardless of gender’ when in reality men – as a biological sex-class – are overwhelmingly the perpetrators, and women – as a biological sex-class – are overwhelming the victims of ‘domestic violence’ (more on the differences between male and female victims of intimate partner violence here).  It is also broad, including violence  and abuse committed between any family members.  Whilst this can be useful, for example allowing service provision to be made available for those experiencing violence and abuse from any  family member, sometimes it is important to focus on ‘intimate-partner violence’, including that committed by former intimate partners.
Read more Sex-differences and ‘domestic violence murders’ by @K_IngalaSmith

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Floyd Mayweather Beats Women But There’s No Video Evidence So Let’s Ignore It by @rupandemehta.

June 9, 2015
Cross-posted from: Liberating Realisations

“How a female dresses is her advertisement. If a female shows half of her body, she’s asking to be disrespected. If she dresses classy, expect to be treated like a lady. How you’re addressed lies on your attire. Sexy is a spirit, not an outfit.” 

Are these words enraging? How about these?

“Even though you can’t drive 10 cars at one time, you got people that got 10 cars. So you’re able to keep maintenance on 10 cars. So I feel that as far as it comes to females, that same thing should apply. If you’re able to take care of 20, then you should have 20.”

The owner of TMT (The Money Team), the face of boxing and the highest paid athlete in the world Floyd Mayweather has no qualms about comparing women as objects he can own and treating them like disposable pieces of property. If his quotes above don’t already prove that point, let’s take a look at his reprehensible history.
Read more Floyd Mayweather Beats Women But There’s No Video Evidence So Let’s Ignore It by @rupandemehta.

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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The Monster of Masculinity in Oz by @LilyRMunroe

March 3, 2015

(cross-posted from REAL for Women’s Campaign)

UPDATE – First 23 days of 2015, 8 women murdered by suspected male violence, 5 women/girls missing.

Three weeks into the New Year and six women have been murdered by men in Australia. Male violence and male sexual violence is plaguing the women of this country, the victims ever growing, and though a national conversation has finally started about Domestic Violence in Australia, which is great, it falls way too short of the problem to get us anywhere, as it has failed to address why? Why are men doing this to us, treating us this way? And as Eve Ensler asked of the ‘good men’, “Where the hell are you?”

Tom Meagher, whose wife was raped and murdered in 2012 by a man who the parole board failed to take off the streets, speaks publically about the Monster Myth here. There are no monsters, these are everyday men of this society, of this culture. What is monstrous here is this culture of masculinity, which most men, even anti-violence campaigners, want to bypass in this national conversation.

So we have to ask again are men born killers and rapists, born abusers of females, or are they shaped, socialised, trained, by the culture they are raised in? And if you are a male and you agree with the latter, then as Former Victorian Police Commissioner said, have a look at yourself. Also we need to talk. And this means listening to us, women.

As Sheila Jeffreys states; “I think that in Australia this is hard to understand, it’s a very masculinist culture, and I think that prostitution and the sex industry generally and the privileges men have to abuse women in this way is so accepted that people are outraged to think that there actually might be other values, but believe me there are, and in fact Australia is quite low, very low in the index of OECD nations on gender equality, and it’s because there’s a very masculinised culture”.

We also need tougher penalties for male perpetrators of violence and sexual violence against women, to send a clear message that this will no longer be tolerated, as Julie Bindel states here, “domestic violence is a crime, not an illness …beating up your partner should carry as serious a consequence as assaulting a member of the public in the street.”

Now there are sure to be cries of “not all men”, but by what barometer? What is the standard of ‘Not all men’? Is it just not beating and murdering women? Because one in three men would rape a woman if they could get away with it. Is it not forcing non-consensual sex/raping women? Because 28% of rapes happen within a relationship with a man, and many, many Australian men pay as little as they can to act out their ‘fantasies’ on real women, no matter the harm to these women.

The national statistic for the last few years was that just over one woman a week will be murdered by their current or former male partners in Australia. By the end of last year there were approximately 1.5 women a week murdered by men. So far 2015 is resembling the statistics of the UK which has a far larger population. As for the next week, and the one after that, sadly I know better than to hold my breath for men to just stop killing us, we know reality better than that.

Want to be a part of the solution. Watch this space!

If you are a woman suffering domestic violence contact – 1800Respect or Call 1800 737 732

If you are man seeking help with your violence contact – Men’s Referral Service or Call 1300 766 491

For men wanting to be a part of the solution contact – No To Violence

passivity of good men

 

Recommended reading;

Silence on Violence

Gender Representations; Parts of Reality

Common Problems Associated with the Myth of Perpetrator “Abnormality”: believing victims and looking past perpetrator camouflage

 

REAL for women: Reflecting Equality in Australian Legislation for women: Australia has a population of around 22 million yet this year 6 women have been murdered by men in the first 3 weeks, giving us the same statistics as the UK – 2 women a week (https://www.facebook.com/LilyRoseMunroe https://twitter.com/LilyRMunroe)

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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It feels like my soul has died by @God_loves_women

February 28, 2015

(cross-posted from God Loves Women)

On Sunday I awoke from a dream and everything changed.  Since then I have barely been able to eat, talking wears me out, even typing these few words is a huge effort.  I have done very little work, the meetings I have had to attend require me to fake being myself which, although possible, is exhausting.  My usually super fast brain has slowed almost to a standstill and in the middle of sentences I will lose the thread of what I’m saying.

I am irritable and my ability to parent has become vastly depleted.  I have become impatient and snap at the littlest thing.  At times I become unable to move or speak and my husband has to physically move me and help me with basic tasks.  By early afternoon I am exhausted and have to sleep.

It feels like my soul has died.  All that’s left is a shell.  All that makes me who I am has been enveloped by deadness.

The dream wasn’t even that bad.  Nothing dramatically awful happened within it.  It involved me being almost physically transported back ten years and spending time with my ex-husband.  And now I am broken.

It turns out it probably wasn’t a dream, but rather a flashback.  A flashback isn’t a nightmare or a memory, it’s like whatever you are seeing is happening in the present.  And the brain and body cannot distinguish between the flashback and reality.  So for all intents and purposes, on Sunday I was transported back ten years to spend an hour with my ex-husband.  And it has messed up my entire life.

Over a year ago I had a similar incident when I was watching a programme and a violent assault suddenly took place on screen.  My brain stopped working on anything but a superficial level for about 6 weeks.  This is what I wrote back then.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I can go for months, over a year without any problems and then, without warning, everything will change.  A friend of mine likened it to someone suffering epilepsy, “it’s like you’re walking across a stage and you know that at some point a trap door may open up underneath you, but you don’t know when.”  Which is basically what it’s like.  The challenge is that PTSD is not socially acceptable.  If it’s not a physical illness, it doesn’t really exist for many people.

Reporting of the recent cases of Oscar Pistorius and Ched Evans have often focussed on the perpetrators’ rights to continue with their lives.  That justice has been served and regardless of our opinions, we must respect the process.  Yet the problem is much greater than individual cases.

What does justice look like for me?  My ex-husband has received no court based consequences for what he did to me.  And even if he had, at most he would have served two and a half years in prison.  The majority of what he did wasn’t even technically illegal.  Still, ten years later and I am still coping with the consequences of his choices to hurt me.  As are my husband and children.

In many ways punishing him won’t change things for me, the trapdoor will still open underneath me, life will still stop when something unpredictable triggers my PTSD symptoms again.  But maybe it would make a difference for the next girl he hurts, maybe it would prevent him having the same access to girls and young women?  Maybe it would change the perception of the impact of abuse and rape on the individual?

Regardless, I am still broken.  There is this deep pain that simmers below all the symptoms and ways in which the trauma affects me; that I will always be broken.  That no matter how many years pass, who I am or what I do; I will still be broken.  And don’t feel you need to rush to reassure me that I’m not broken.  Because to do so denies the impact of abuse and rape.  It breaks people forever.  It smashes and breaks people in a way that cannot be repaired.

In the least awful parts of this week I have some confidence that things will improve.  That I will become myself again.  In the darkest minutes and hours, I wonder if this time the damage will be permanent, if this will be the time when I lose myself forever.  I am going to have a session of something called the Rewind Technique this afternoon, which will hopefully sort some of this out and repair the damage that has been done to my brain by the flashback.

I know I should write something to complete this piece, to bring it to a close, but my brain has shut down again.  So I’ll leave it here for now.

UPDATE TO THIS POST HERE

God loves women: A blog sharing my love of God, the love He has for women and my frustration that the Church often doesn’t realise this (@God_loves_women)

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Coercive Control legislation is essential for domestic violence victims

January 18, 2015

(cross-posted from Rachel Horman)

August 2014 saw the announcement by Teresa May that the government was to launch a consultation into whether there is a need for a criminal offence of coercive control in cases of domestic abuse. This comes after a campaign spearheaded by Paladin the National Stalking Advocacy Service, Women’s Aid, and the Sara Charlton Charitable Foundation. Some critics argue that there no need for a specific offence as the law is fine as it is and somewhat contradictorily that a law would be impossible to implement due to difficulties in obtaining evidence.

Most of the people that I speak to are stunned to discover that coercive control isn’t already a specific offence, particularly when you discuss examples of the behaviour that constitutes coercive control. Whilst coercive control is contained within the government definition of domestic violence the criminal law has no offence to adequately deal with it. Coercive control is not about couples falling out – we all do that.  Coercive control is a sustained campaign of psychological terrorism which is the lifeblood of domestic violence. Domestic violence is not a one-off act – it is a series of destructive acts designed to break down the victim’s confidence and will. Coercive control is the regulation of the minutiae of someone’s daily life e.g. what they wear, where they go, who they speak to, what they eat. This type of abuse inflicts long lasting psychological harm on the victim and is the behaviour my clients feel affects them the most – more than physical violence alone. It is coercive control that enables perpetrators to get away with committing physical and sexual violence against the victim and precisely why the victim feels that there is no escape as their will is already destroyed by that stage.

Coercive control isn’t something that can be committed “by accident” as some commentators have claimed. This behaviour would be obvious to everyone as being damaging to the victim. I have clients who are forced to sleep on the floor, eat their meals from a dog bowl on the floor, have their every move tracked through their mobile phones and vehicles, their money taken from them so that they are forced to steal tampons as they are reliant on their partners who refuse to give them money which is rightly theirs.

When these women do go to the police they are told to ‘come back when he hits you’. This is something that I hear every single day. In almost 20 years of working exclusively in domestic violence, stalking and forced marriage I have never known a prosecution for this type of behaviour whilst the parties are still in a relationship. Once they separate then suddenly it is treated as harassment or stalking which is a criminal offence. There have been a handful of cases which have been brought to court only to be thrown out due to the fact that the parties were in a relationship at the time of the behaviour and accordingly this could not be deemed to be harassment or stalking!

Coercive control needs to be a specific criminal offence so that it is clear to the police, the CPS, the judiciary, victims and perpetrators that it is illegal. The government has already announced that emotional abuse of children will become a criminal offence so how can they ignore coercive control of (in the main) women? Forced marriage is now a criminal offence which was needed and could not be adequately dealt with under stalking or harassment laws. The same is true of coercive control.

As for claims of it being impossible to prove – this is what some said in the 1990’s around the criminalisation of rape within marriage and has been said about historic sexual abuse. We still get convictions in these cases so why not with coercive control? There is now more and more evidence able to be brought and it is regularly used in the civil courts.  Victims sometimes manage to record the abuse, tracking software can be found on phones and devices on cars, bank statements can show money immediately disappearing from the victim’s account into other accounts and there are witnesses far more often than we think. The criminalisation of coercive control will assist in protecting victims by making them realise that it is a crime, may make perpetrators think twice and make witnesses more likely to speak out. Society as a whole needs to combat this and the law needs to facilitate it too.

See Rachel discuss the issue on BBC Breakfast:

Rachel Horman on BBC Breakfast News 20th August 2014 discussing proposed domestic abuse crime proposed legislation from Rachel Horman on Vimeo

 

Rachel Horman: Feminist legal blog by family legal aid lawyer of the year Rachel Horman. Mainly domestic abuse /forced marriage and violence against women. Sometimes ranty but always right…..

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Remember my name at Truth about Domestic Violence

December 29, 2014

(Cross-posted from Truth about Domestic Violence)

“REMEMBER MY NAME”

When you remember my walk upon this earth

Look not into my steps with pity.

When you taste the tears of my journey

Notice how they fill my foot prints

Not my spirit

For that remains with me.

My story must be told

Must remain in conscious memory

So my daughters won’t cry my tears

Or follow my tortured legacy.

Lovin’ is a tricky thing

If it doesn’t come from a healthy place,

If Lovin’ Doesn’t FIRST practice on self it will act like a stray bullet not caring what it hits

You may say:

Maybe I should’ve loved him a little less

Maybe I should’ve loved me a little more,

Maybe I should’ve not believed he’d never hit me again.

All those maybes will not bring me back– not right his wrong.

My life was not his to take.

As your eyes glance my name

Understand once I breathed

Walked

Loved

just like you.

I wish for all who glance my name

To know love turned fear – kept me there

Loved twisted to fear,

Kept me in a chokehold

Cut off my air

Blurred my vision I couldn’t see how to break free.

I shoulda told my family

I shoulda told my friends

I shoulda got that CPO

Before the police let him go

But all those shoulda’s can’t bring me back when I lied so well

To cover the shame

To hide the signs.

If my death had to show what love isn’t

If my death had to show that love shouldn’t hurt

If my death had to make sure another woman told a friend instead of holding it in

If my death reminds you how beautiful, how worthy you really are

If my death reminds you to honor all you are daily

Then remember my name

Shout it from the center of your soul

Wake me in my grave

Let ME know

My LIVING was not in vain.

By Kimberly A. Collins

 

Truth about Domestic Violence: my own personal experience with DV and also about general issues in relation to Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Rape, exposing the truth in just how severely victims are let down, in particular by poor policing and in the family courts.

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The Power of Derailing Political Discussions about Male Violence by @EVB_Now

December 5, 2014

(cross-posted from Ending Victimisation and Blame)

This morning we received a link to a Jezebel article entitled “Woman Shot and Killed After Refusing to Give Man Her Phone Number” from . 27-year old Mary “Unique” Spears was shot to death for refusing to give out her phone number to a man. The unnamed (as of yet) suspect shot Spears three times and then injured 4 other people as they left an American Legion following the funeral of a family member.

The comments below the article are full of women sharing their stories of a man refusing to respect their boundaries, continuing to harass them and then the subsequent victim-blaming when the incident changed from a man refusing to accept the word no to violence. We recommend that all our male supporters read through the comments to understand the reality of male violence that women live with everyday.

One comment, in particular, stuck out:

Screen Shot 2014-10-08 at 07.44.41Following an article where a woman was brutally murdered by an entitled man who did not believe she had the right to personal & bodily autonomy, one man felt the need to include the caveat “certain men”. This is a derailing tactic. Women understand that only certain men perpetrate misogynistic violence – whether this be domestic & sexual violence and abuse, street harassment, or fatal violence. Women cannot tell, just be looking, which men  will perpetrate violence so women take precautions. We tell men, as Mary Spears did, that we “belong” to another man (in this case she was out with her fiancé); we give false phone numbers, and sometimes we acquiesce to the unwanted social interaction because of fear of being killed. These fears aren’t unreasonable or paranoid.

When men derail women’s conversations about their experiences of male violence to say “not all men” or “certain men”, they are telling women their individual experiences aren’t important. It is a silencing tactic which suggests that men’s feelings are more important than women’s safety. This leads to blaming women for experiencing male violence: if only she was nicer to him, made it clearer she wasn’t interested, said no “properly”.

This derailment is part of victim blaming culture and it needs to stop. Women are allowed to say no – without fear of consequence and men need to understand that women sharing their personal stories about male violence do not need the conversation derailed. This isn’t about one man who doesn’t perpetrate male violence having his feelings hurt – it’s about women being killed for saying no. It is about male entitlement – and – trying to derail a conversation about male violence is male entitlement.

Mary Spears was brutally murdered by a man who refused to take the word no as an answer. The conversation should be about Spears – and all the other women who have experienced violence in similar situations.

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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Vile Product: Mick Philpott & our cosy acceptance of male violence by @Marstrina

December 3, 2014

(Cross-posted from It’s Not a Zero Sum Game)

The Daily Mail is doing what the Daily Mail does: taking a human tragedy & obscenely distorting it to score a cheap political point, in the process shedding or neglecting every semblance of decency or tact. Small things like the fact that children are born, not “bred” like piglets; or that if you plaster an enormous headline screaming “VILE” above a photo of six dead kids, people will assume that’s what you’re calling them.

The Daily Mail is, of course, interested in twisting this awful, incomprehensible event to have a dig at people on benefits. All of them, it implies, are morally bankrupt scroungers who would murder their own children to do the taxpayer out of a buck. Who’s more morally bankrupt is of course a debatable point, but the debate wouldn’t be very long or very interesting (hint: it’s the Mail).

But almost as interesting is what the Mail is almost equally interested in eliding, turning away from, hiding. Reaching back into some unspecified past, the Daily Mail news team implicitly posit a scrounging attitude, engendered by reliance on benefits, that developed over an unspecified length of time to a murderous approach to benefit fraud. That’s the implication of “product” – first there was the benefits system, then there was this murderous monster, so clearly the two are connected.

But we don’t really need to engage in hand-waving and insinuation to offer an opening bracket to the kind of mindset that leads a man to set this own children on fire: we can go back to when Michael Philpott was 21, and broke in to the home of a 17 yer old woman who dared to leave him. He stabbed her 17 times, attacked her mother, and was sentenced to 7 (!) years imprisonment for attempted murder. When he was 21, he thought that the penalty for daring to rebuff his violent, controlling advances was death, whereas the penalty for trying to kill a woman was a few years bread & board at Her Majesty’s pleasure. If he really is such a determined scrounger as the Mail makes him out to be, he must have been in heaven.

Is it any wonder, then, that a man who was allowed to go back out into society and inveigh vulnerable young women with a history of abuse or violence to give themselves over to his control would have drawn the conclusion that leaving him was a crime that should -and could – be severely punished? When Lisa Willis decided to leave him, is it really such a stretch that a man who’d been breezily getting away with abusing and nearly enslaving one teenage future wife after another would decide that she should be punished?

This man killed six children trying to get back at a girlfriend who dumped him. That’s all there is to it. He didn’t do it because he was on benefits (in any case, both of the women he’d been controlling worked, not that the Mail would care for such a detail of fact) or because he was particularly evil or twisted. He did it because that’s what men get away with in society all the time.

Two women a week die at the hands of their abusers; the majority, while trying to leave or just after having left. The Philpott children are just another such statistics. You’d almost think that this unusual circumstance would lead us to ask: why? Why do we let men like Mick Philpott get away with decades of violence, abuse and exploitation? You’d almost hope we’d ask those questions instead of the inevitable “why did she stay with him” (look at happens when “she” does!).

But nope. Our leading daily newspaper uses this opportunity not to start a conversation that will possibly safeguard the lives of other children, other women, but to ram home a mendacious, rancid piece of propaganda that will probably endanger their lives even more.

I don’t know whether the national conversation about the Philpott case can ever rise above the sexual prurience of it all and really get into the mechanics of how men such as him find, target, groom and control vulnerable women with our collective support and connivance. Certainly the Fred and Rosemary West case never gave rise to anything other than polite but ultimately ineffectual horror. But we can and should try; we can and should tell people when the topic comes up: no, he wasn’t especially or uniquely evil. He was a common or garden variety abuser who had gotten away with it for a very long time, and thought he could get away with it yet again. We never gave him a  reason to believe otherwise.

ETA: Apparently Philpott only served just over 3 years for the attempted murder & GBH of his ex-girlfriend and her mother. If I were given to making up hysterical screamy outraged headlines for tabloids, that’s what I’d be shouting about.

ETA II: Women’s Aid have released an excellent statement highlighting the mechanics of “decades of domestic abuse”.

Not a Zero Sum Game: Angry feminist, naive idealist, dogless atheist, person. @Marstrina

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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This is what male violence does by @God_loves_women

November 26, 2014

(Cross-posted from God Loves Women)

Today is my son’s 9th birthday.  He is an amazing child; intelligent, articulate, funny and extremely cute!  I am married to the most extraordinary man, who has selflessly given so much of himself, his gifts, his time and his energy to enable me to fulfil that which I have been called to.  I have an 11 year old daughter who is wonderful; clever, sensitive, funny, kind, beautiful inside and out.  Today should be a day of celebration and for my son and daughter that is what today is.

I have wept most of the morning and the pain inside weighs me down. Most of the time I feel blessed to have such a beautiful life, most of those who know me, know me as I am now; confident, strong, articulate, filled with the spirit of the living God.  Yet, today I weep and am filled with great pain.

Nine years ago today my beautiful son was born 3 months premature weighing only 2lbs 6 oz. He was born premature because a week before his birth my ex-husband raped me.  Nine years ago today at 5.30am in the morning I gave birth to a tiny precious life and immediately he was whisked away to be ventilated, I didn’t get to see or hold him.  In fact the first time I held him was about 3 weeks later.  I was then put on drugs to keep my contractions going for another 4 hours in case anything from the birth was still left inside me.

I saw him briefly before he was transferred to a hospital an hour away. He was in a large plastic box, naked, hooked up to machines, his chest moving mechanically as the ventilator kept him alive.  There was blood on the towelling mattress where they had pierced his skin with intravenous drips.

Later that day I went home to collect my clothes in order to be driven by my dad to stay in the hospital with my precious son. My ex-husband was in the house and took forever to let me in.  2 years previously he had been placed on the sex offenders register after being found guilty of sexually abusing teenage girls.  As I collected my things, I realised there was a teenage girl hiding in the house; her jewellery on the fire place.  Hours after watching me give birth 3 month early, he had invited a fourteen year old girl to the house and abused her.  I couldn’t face calling the Police.  The last time I called them to report my ex-husband’s abuse of teenage girls, the officer who interviewed me said to me, “Don’t you think you should stop allowing him to see teenage girls?”

I can’t remember much of those hospital days. I remember it took a lot to convince my ex-husband to bring my two year old daughter to the hospital.  That in the end, it was less than two weeks after the terrible event of my son’s birth which convinced me to separate from my ex-husband, for the last time.  That I would express milk using an electric pump in a little room, day and night.  That my daughter and I lived in hospital for five months in total.  That I would take her swimming, to the park and to toddler groups, because she would remember being neglected in favour of sitting in a hospital room with a tiny baby on the edge of life, but that my son wouldn’t remember that I could only sit with him for a little while at a time because my daughter needed the stability.

I only cried a few times in that whole five months; once was when a nurse told me not to touch my son so much as it could cause him distress. People naturally want to stroke tiny babies in their plastic incubator boxes.  But you can’t stroke them because their skin is too fragile.  All you can do is gently hold their head and their bottom and even then, not for too long.

My daughter would do her dolls’ observations, checking their temperature and using the little pink sponges we used to wet my son’s tiny mouth to pretend to wet her dolls’ mouths. We shared a room in most of the hospitals we stayed in and it was only because we lived so far from the hospital that we were allowed to stay, most parents travelled in each day.

After a month of being in hospital with my son, I reported my ex-husband to the Police. Friends took my daughter out while I made a statement at the police station.  It took hours.

One of the hospital cleaners asked me where my ex-husband was. I said we had separated, she asked me why I’d let such a good one get away.

During the time I was in hospital I would pray, a lot. At first I prayed for my son to live.  Hoping that he would make it through.  And then God clearly said to me that I needed to stop praying that my son would be okay.  He said, “Stop praying for him to live and start praying for my will to be done.  Can you praise me the same this week, with your son alive, as you will praise me next week if your son dies?”  In that place of utter desolation, God wanted to take away even my hope of a better future.  And I thought for a long time about whether I could and from that moment on I stopped praying for my son to live and began praying for God’s will to be done.

I don’t explain this lightly or without knowledge of how this sounds to those who do not have a relationship with God. But I can tell you with all surety, that I would not be who I am today without having surrendered everything to God.  Because when everything is stripped away and there is nothing left, it is then that true freedom and life can be found.

The only weekend I had away from the hospital was when I went back to my house to move all my possessions out. My ex-husband left the electricity key so low in credit that it went off during me organising the house, which meant I had to collect the key from him.  I removed everything of mine from the house.  Cleaned it from top to bottom, so that I could collect my half of the deposit back from the landlord.  This was the same house my daughter had spent most of her life in.  The same house I had tried to commit suicide in.  The same house at which a neighbour punched me in the face for being married to a sex offender.  The same house I had been sexually abuse in day in day out, called names, constantly devalued, intentionally been made exhausted.  I stored my possessions in my parent’s garage and travelled back to the hospital.

Three months after he’d been born my son was moved to a less specialist hospital. I knew that if I moved back to my home town, I’d re-enter the relationship with my ex-husband.  I now know that is because of something called Trauma Bonding, at the time I thought it was because I was too weak and pathetic to even keep myself safe.  We moved to Gateshead.  And my son’s care continued.  Twice after being released from hospital he stopped breathing and went blue/grey.  I resuscitated him, once in a car, once at home.  When we arrived by ambulance at the hospital, I would play colouring in with my daughter on the floor, watching as my son was surrounding by medical professionalstrying to save his life, smiling at my daughter saying, “Isn’t that wonderful colouring in? You’re doing a brilliant job!”

My ex-husband was charged with rape. The Police contacted me and asked if I thought he should have bail.  “Of course!”  I said, “He wouldn’t hurt me!”

He would call me and threaten to tell people about the bad stuff he’d made me do. He would call me and say he couldn’t remember what he’d done.  And I would call him.  When I needed support, when there was news about my son’s health, when I couldn’t cope with not having spoken to him.  I genuinely believed the only person who really deserved to hear me moan about how hard life was, was him.  One time he spent twenty minutes telling me on the phone how terrible a person I was.  I cried and pleaded with him to stop, but I couldn’t put the phone down.  No matter how much I wanted to.  He controlled me absolutely.  On two occasions while on bail, he manipulated me into sleeping with him.  The Police thought he may threaten me to keep himself out of prison, but he used something much more effective than fear, he didn’t have to threaten me to keep himself out of prison, all he had to do was pretend to love me.

When asked by consultants, “Are you on your own?” I would respond with, “Yes!  I’ve separated from my husband.  He is a registered sex offender.”  I couldn’t just say yes.  I needed to explain.  To prove I’d really tried at being married, that I wasn’t a failure, or worse, one of “those” single mothers the media goes on about (turns out there’s no such thing!).  This meant that my ex-husband wasn’t allowed on the children’s ward where my son was being cared for.  I received a phone call via a hospital payphone from the police officer who was responsible for my ex-husband’s rehabilitation process.  He proceeded to shout at me over the phone, berating me for “stopping a father from seeing his child.”  Apparently I shouldn’t have told the hospital about the conviction.  I think it convinced him of my vindictiveness towards my ex-husband.

At one point my son contacted bronchiolitis. I came into the intensive care ward to find him paralysed by a drug that stopped him pulling the ventilator out of his throat.  All his veins had been used and the only one left was on the top of his head, so they had shaved the area and put a drip in there.  He was ventilated and still needing to be resuscitated every two minutes.  They said they were sending him for a lung bypass which they explained had a 70% chance of physical or mental disability.  On his way to the specialist hospital he miraculously began improving.  They didn’t need to do the bypass in the end.

Eventually my son was released from hospital on low flow oxygen, not long before my daughter’s 3rd birthday.  After turning a year he rarely needed any medical treatment.

This is what male violence does. Men take the lives of women and children and destroy them, rape them, kill them.  And no matter how wonderfully we rebuild our lives, no matter how beautiful the restoration is, every birthday is never just a celebration of life, it is also a reminder of death.  I was 21 years old when my son was born, I am now 30.  And each year seems to get harder, as the years travelled show me more clearly what I have lost.  My wonderful husband and I have chosen not to have any children that are biologically ours together.  The two I brought into the marriage need to know they are enough, and God made it clear to us that we shouldn’t have more children.  And though that decision was right and obedience to God is always worth it, the pain of knowing that my pregnancies and the early years of both my children were filled with such pain is something I mourn deeply.  This is what male violence does.

I don’t have any life giving words or clichés about how it all gets better. Even though it does.  Because for now, in this moment, the cost feels greater than the cause.

Yet, by the time I collect my wonderful son from school, no matter how much it hurts, I will greet him with the biggest smile, because it’s his birthday, and for him that means it’s a really happy day.

 

God loves women: A blog sharing my love of God, the love He has for women and my frustration that the Church often doesn’t realise this (@God_loves_women)

Categories: Featured Blog, Violence Against Women
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16 reasons for #16days by @CathElliott

November 25, 2014

(Cross-posted from Too Much to say for Myself)

It’s the 25th November – the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the start of the 16 Days of Action against Gender Violence Campaign. And as I haven’t been posting much recently, and as I’m pretty much laid up at home at the moment following a hip arthroscopy last weekend, I’m going to be blogging throughout it again this year.

So without further ado, here’s my first post for day one of the 16 days, detailing 16 reasons (but there are so many more reasons than that!) why this campaign exists and why it’s still so important.

1. Because femicide. Between January and October this year at least 100 women have been killedthrough suspected male violence in the UK alone. Across the globe, across all countries and all cultures,women are the most frequent victims of intimate partner violence and they are often killed by their own family members.

2. Because rape and sexual violence are endemic. Research published in January showed that:

  • Approximately 85,000 women are raped on average in England and Wales every year
  • Over 400,000 women are sexually assaulted each year
  • 1 in 5 women (aged 16 – 59) has experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16.

And yet just this month it was revealed that police forces in the UK are continuing to find ways to manipulate their figures on rape and other sexual offences, under-recording these crimes by as much as 25%,  in order to meet targets.

3. Because in England and Wales, more than 24,000 girls are at risk of, and more than 66,000 women are living with the consequences of, FGM.

4. And because those who speak out against FGM are being subjected to abuse and threats.

5. Because across the globe women do not have autonomy over their own bodies and are still being denied abortions.

6. Because in September this year an eight-year-old Yemeni girl died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age. And because according to Plan UK, around one girl under 18 is married every two seconds that tick by.

7. Because earlier this year two teenage girls, Noor Basra and Noor Sheza, and their mother Noshehra, were murdered for allowing themselves to be filmed dancing and playing in the rain. There are nearly 3000 cases of so-called ‘honour’ violence every year in the UK. Globally, there are around5000 so-called ‘honour’ killings every year.

8. Because women and girls are trafficked both across and within country borders for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Just last month Ilyas Ashar was jailed for 13 years by a Manchester court for repeatedly raping and abusing a deaf and mute girl he’d trafficked into the country from Pakistan in June 2000, when she was 10 years old.

9. Because men still believe they have some inalienable right to purchase women for sex.

10. Because sexting and revenge porn are driving women and girls to despair and suicide.

11. Because victim blaming is still a thing. In August this year for example a convicted paedophile escaped a jail sentence after the prosecuting barrister, Robert Colover, labelled his young girl victim “predatory” and “sexually experienced”and the judge, Nigel Peters, said he was taking into account in his sentencing how the girl looked and behaved. After an outcry the sentence was revised to a two year jail term, and Colover agreed to resign from the CPS rape panel of advocates, but the fact that these things were ever said in a UK courtroom about a child victim tells us all we need to know about the state of our criminal justice system.

12. Because when they can’t get their own way some men throw acid at women and girls.

13. Because Josef Fritzl wasn’t a one-off and Emma Donoghue’s Room is more than a work of fiction. Cases continue to emerge of women and girls, many of whom are missing and presumed dead at the time of their discovery, who have been held captive, raped and/or otherwise abused, sometimes for decades.

14. Because sexism and racism are rife in music videos.

15. Because despite signing the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention on preventing violence against women and domestic violence, the UK Government still hasn’t ratified it. You can sign the petition here – Tell Theresa May to guarantee standards for women’s services in the UK and worldwide.

16. Because I thought it would be difficult to find 16 reasons for the 16 days campaign, and it wasn’t. In fact I could go on and on citing examples of woman hatred and gynocide because depressingly, compiling this post was all too easy. And until the violence stops, until women and girls are truly free, feminist activists must and will continue to campaign against, and raise awareness of, the atrocity that is male violence against women.

 

Too Much to say for myself: Blogging about feminism, politics, and anything else that takes my fancy [@CathElliott]

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