From “battered wives” to “coercive control”: 35 years of understanding domestic abuse in Scotland
Nel Whiting, Scottish Women’s Aid
Download PowerPoint presentation
Summary
– Roots of SWA came from Women’s Liberation Movement
- Freedom for all women from intimidation and threat of male violence
– The understanding of what domestic abuse is has been changed by the vocalizing of stories and the revealing of hidden voices
– Story of changing language (changed to reflect our understanding)
- In the beginning:
- Battered wives
- Domestic violence
– The problem needed to be admitted
- Original language was limiting:
- Meant in marriage and physical violence
- Came from a criminology background
- The Dobashes, Violence Against Wives
- 25% of police business was around domestic violence
- Legitimized the problem with statistical proof
- Turn towards ‘domestic violence’:
- ‘Women and their children’
- 25% of police business was around domestic violence
- The Dobashes, Violence Against Wives
- Hearing stories revealed domestic violence was much more than violence à expanded understanding of that domestic violence was more than battered wives, and also made children victims as well even if not physically touched
- Further reveals the need to look beyond the surface
- Shame was something victims grappled with
- A lot of investment in hiding and protecting this aspect of a person’s life who was abused
- Personal stories revealed unexpected and unanticipated forms of abuse
– New language:
- Coercive control (Evan Stark)
- New framing, helps reveal impact of domestic abuse
- New understanding of domestic abuse:
- Coercive control
- Isolation
- Intimate terrorism
- Violence that is fundamental/instrumental
- gendered
- Space for action, personal choices, decreased because someone else is taking that space away
- This awareness means groups like SWA want to also help rebuild that space for action which had been taken away
– Gender as a social structure also impacts approaches to domestic violence/abuse
- How does this impact sexuality, expectations, ways society values men and women, and relationship between men and women
– Importance of the body when analyzing domestic violence
- Bodies are the targets and sites of attach
– Gendered-based violence
- Any form of violence used to perpetuate gender inequalities and keep in place gendered orders
– LGBT Domestic Youth Project
- A result of these new perspectives, language and understanding
– SWA has broadened their work, and expanded connections
Questions:
Lynn Abrams: What about perpetrators and their voices?
– There is work on this as well; also contributes to the understanding of domestic violence
Frankie McCarthy: How was the internet contributed to these developments for women’s aid?
– Positively and negatively
- A new venue for harassment which can cause more complications for prosecution as well as help prosecute