Lethal Love
We know the Sunday morning headlines by now: house prices are up, the Roosters lost, and a woman was found dead in a quiet Australian suburb, her partner is being questioned by police. And the fact is that on average, one woman per week dies in the hands of her current or former partner, and most domestic violence occurs in the home, between 3pm and 3am on Saturdays and Sundays. The topic gets an increasing amount of attention in the media and has recently, and rightfully so, been recognised as a major public health problem.
“Why doesn’t she just leave?” is a question that contributes to the long and strong Australian tradition of victim-blaming. Just like the Indigenous population “needs to get over” the European invasion, women “need to leave” their abusive partners.
Some of the comments that were made about Brisbane woman Melanie Floyd’s death. It hasn’t even been confirmed that this was a case of DV, but people are still quick to blame the victim.
(To find some examples of victim blaming for this article, I went through the comments on Courier-Mail’s Facebook page. Here’s a little tip for y’all: don’t read the comments on Courier-Mail’s Facebook page.)
Saying that women need to leave their abusive partners is like saying it’s their own fault for staying, and it is an example of ignorance in its purest form. It is, however, an opinion that is so deeply rooted in the society that it even makes normally (in my opinion) pretty decent men like Joe Hildebrand express it on national television. He said that “feeling threatened is not an excuse for women to not leave their abusive partners”:
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR5VXxLkENo&feature=youtu.be[/embed]
He said this on Channel Ten in a segment with Rosie Batty.
Rosie Batty whose son was killed by her ex-partner.
Her ex-partner.
That she’d left.
You get the point.
Women are 70 times more likely to be killed in the two weeks after leaving their partner than during any other time in the relationship. The abuser has nothing left to lose when the relationship is over, and murder becomes an act of desperation. In Rosie Batty’s case, her ex-partner killed their son because he had lost the control over her. It was his final act of abuse.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC3WQNjbVPY&feature=youtu.be[/embed]
Rosie Batty’s amazingly heart-felt response to Hildebrand.
Many abusive relationships are continued because the perpetrator has gained complete control over the victim; emotionally, socially and financially. This makes it impossible for women to leave, even if they wanted to. But, in many cases the woman doesn’t want to leave. Why?
Because love.
The neurochemistrical basis of love is that central dopamine pathways mediate partner preference behavior, while vasopressin in the ventral pallidum and oxytocin in the nucleus accumbens and paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus mediate partner preference and attachment behaviors.
Was that confusing? Well, love is confusing. And I’m not just saying that because I’m single (although I’m probably better at neurochemistry than boyfriends). Love is the glue in all relationships, and the main thing people need to understand is that violence in many cases is a tiny part of the relationship between the victim and the abuser. Some victims don’t even realise that they actually are sufferers of domestic violence. In some cases physical or emotional violence can be a daily or weekly occurrence, but in many cases it may only happen a few times per year, and only last for a few seconds. The time in between the abusive and violent outbursts are filled with normal relationship stuff like movie dates, brunches, romantic holidays to Fiji and way, waaay too much PDA on social media.
In order to explain patterns of behaviour in a abusive relationships, Leonore Walker developed The Cycle of Violence in 1979. It is a social theory that provides an understanding of why victims continue abusive relationships, as well as an explanation of how and why the behaviour of the perpetrator can change so dramatically.
The remorse and pursuit phases is where the abuser feels ashamed, expresses regret, tries to make everything better and gives promises of it never happening again. These stages include gifts, love and affection, and quite often the victim end up comforting and reassuring the abuser.
The honeymoon phase would be the “normal relationship part” (this is where the brunches and online PDA happens). Both parts are in denial of how bad the abusive situation actually was, and ignore the possibility that it might happen again. The honeymoon phase can go on for months, whilst the build-up phase, the stand over phase and the explosion might happen in a couple of days. All the abuse can happen and be forgotten within a week. So in the few percent of abusive relationships where the victim has the social and financial ability to leave the abuser without putting her life at risk, the reason is stays is love. She wants the violence to end, not the relationship.
So what about the perpetrator? How does a man go from loving a woman to beating the life out of her?
There are many explanations to why someone might feel a need to control or dominate their partner. According to MD Toby D. Goldsmith, abusive behavior can spring from low self-esteem, extreme jealousy, or sense of inferiority to the partner in education and socioeconomic background.
“Inferiority to the partner in education”.
Ain’t that gonna be a problem now when women are outnumbering men in higher education.
With 78% of all assault offenders being men, it would be silly not to look for some explanations to violent behavior in the gender system. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the pressure on men to be masculine in a cultural environment that demeans or belittles women might be a significant contributing factor to violence against women. That’s why I love the new campaign from the Australian Government, which in true public health spirit tries to combat the problem from its roots:
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjBfU-bfGII[/embed]
To me, this TV commercial is so relatable because as a kid, I, like most girls, hated being teased by the boys. What I hated even more was when teachers and other adults said “he’s doing it because he likes you”.
“He’s doing it because he likes you” tells the boy it’s ok to tease and disrespect girls.
“He’s doing it because he likes you” tells the girl to be fine with it.
Twenty years later, people ask why the girl doesn’t leave the boy.