Vol. 13 No. 9 (September 2003)
INSULT TO INJURY: RETHINKING OUR RESPONSES TO INTIMATE ABUSE by Linda G. Mills. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. 216 pp. Cloth $24.95. ISBN: 0-691-09639-2. Paper $12.95. ISBN: 0-412-03456-8.
Reviewed by Trish Oberweis, Department of Sociology and
Criminal Justice Studies, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Email:
toberwe@siue.edu.
In INSULT TO INJURY, Mills explores the failures of the
criminal justice system to address adequately the complex needs of victims
of what she terms “intimate abuse.” Relying on an array of existing studies, she clearly articulates
the pronounced inadequacies of the criminal justice system and the disproportionate
effects of those inadequacies on women of color, women with relatively few
economic resources, and lesbian victims. Moreover, Mills does not stop at exposing
the problems but goes on to offer a proposed solution. She does these things in a tone and with
a writing style that is easy to follow and to absorb. Although the author deals with some aspects
of the violence problem in complex ways, the text remains conversational
and her argument is clearly presented throughout. Mills shares a surprisingly open account of her personal experience
with “intimate abuse” and offers her own insights into how and
why criminal justice avenues are problematic. She suggests that “women in abusive relationships
are placed in the untenable position of choosing between protecting their
lovers or husbands from incarceration or protecting themselves by relying
on a criminal justice system that is unreliable” (p.25).
Instead, Mills proposes a policy alternative that incorporates
a community of care. Given
that so many women return to the relationship in which the violence occurred,
Mills argues that we need a policy mechanism in place to help couples deal
with the roots of violence and to overcome the dynamic. By treating the entire problem through
restorative mental health options, we may be able to offer women a way to
strengthen relationships and maximize those parts of value while reducing
the likelihood of continued or increased violence in the future. The criminal justice system is clearly
unable to offer these benefits to victims of violence. Rather than the judgment, stigma, and
shame of the criminal justice system, Mills proposes a two-tiered care response
that first assesses the risk of future violence, and then, where desired,
provides counseling assistance for those couples who need help in restoring
a mutually satisfying relationship without abusive dynamics. In providing a space for couples to talk about their abusive
dynamic and providing a format in which each individual can listen to and
take responsibility for past transgressions, Mills’ Intimate Abuse
Circle offers a process for healing and restoration. Her model is based on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
in South Africa. These services,
Mills argues, should not replace criminal justice responses, but should
be offered in lieu of or even in addition to them, AT THE VICTIM’S
PREFERENCE.
Mills begins by tracing the roots of our mandatory arrest
and prosecution policies to the activism and scholarship of “mainstream
feminism.” I must interject
that, although she is careful to provide strong documentation of research
SUPPORTING her arguments in the body of her text, she is reticent to identify
particular scholars and research when she criticizes “mainstream feminism.”
She names Lenore Walker’s work from the 1970s that broke ground
in identifying a “battered women’s syndrome” and linking
it to post-traumatic stress disorder, but one is hard pressed to find other
feminist scholars named as “mainstream,” despite a significant
running indictment that goes so far as to call “mainstream feminists”
“paternalistic, judgmental, and even abusive” (p.99) in their
approach to addressing the problem of battered women.
Surely that one text from three decades ago isn’t the whole
of “mainstream feminism?”
While such discussions are certainly important within feminist discourse,
the same regard given to research exchanges outside of feminism—the
specification, citation and refutation of other scholarship—must be
part of that discussion.
Returning to Mills’ text, she argues that “mainstream
feminists” have successfully called for mandatory arrest and prosecution
policies based on four problematic assumptions: that culture permits male
violence; that women stay because of fear and lack of resources; that the
criminal justice system is sexist; and finally, that “only extraordinary
measures will counteract men’s patriarchal power and violence, women’s
weakness, and the justice system’s sexism” (p.28). Mills indicts “mainstream feminists”
for exerting their power over victims of “intimate abuse” through
criminal justice policy to their further detriment. Such policies essentially re-victimize
the victims, she argues, by denying them a voice in resolving their situations,
by dichotomizing victims and offenders, and by sending strong cultural messages
that women who stay with abusive partners are either weak or lack the understanding
that the feminist policy-makers possess.
Mills clearly shows that mandatory arrest and prosecution
policies have not had the desired effects. Not only have the policies not reduced violence, but in some
cases they may actually increase or escalate it. Moreover, by mandating what police and prosecutors do in response
to violence, we override the agency of the women involved, removing control
of the situation from women just at the very moment they need most to be
empowered. Thus, some victims
become all the more resistant to invoking the criminal justice system at
all, and thus, lose an important tool in protecting themselves from their
abusers. These problems, Mills
shows through research, are substantially more profound for women of color. Mandatory reporting by medical professionals
presents a similar problem, with research indicating that about one-half
of all women would not seek medical help if they knew that doctors or nurses
would report their injuries.
The author goes on to suggest that by focusing only on
male violence, we overlook the rest of the dynamic of violence—we
remove the act from its context. Mills
supplies research to demonstrate that men and women are equally violent,
if we use a broad definition (e.g., aggression) to include verbal and emotional
“abuse” such as yelling at someone in public and other non-physical
acts. She offers research suggesting
that women are aggressive when they “sing mocking songs…use
weapons, destroy property, lock their partners out of the house, and/or
refuse to prepare meals for them or otherwise engage with them” (p.72). She justifies this broad definition of
violence by presenting research showing that “verbal abuse by a mother
may cause a man to have extreme anger responses toward his female partner”
(p.73). Her argument is that
we must include emotional abuse as part of the dynamic of violence between
partners, rather than ignoring women’s role altogether.
Taking this wider view of violence stands in direct contrast
to the usual thinking about violence where male batterers abuse female victims,
and changes the phenomenon from “woman battering” to “intimate
abuse.” Unfortunately,
it also intentionally puts “nagging” in the same category as
marital rape. Indeed, the author
presents research indicating that women may, more often than men, engage
in aggressive, or even violent behavior (p.70). However, a few pages later, she cites
scholarship asserting that when we include severity of injury as a component,
women are the ones who overwhelmingly suffer the greatest injuries—94%
of the time, according to one study (p.75).
Thus, I seriously question the wisdom of broadening the definition
of violence this way. Given
that there is a cultural tendency to blame victims of battering, I see no
reason to stretch the definition of violence this far. According to Mills, “we are all, to one degree or another,
victims and abusers” (p.113). What do we gain by broadening the concept to the extent that
everyone becomes a victim and everyone becomes an abuser? Mills argues that we gain the ability
to begin healing by taking responsibility for our actions. While, realistically, some couples will
reunite after violence and would benefit from a support system that can
help them do so safely, other couples will not and should not reunite. Why must all couples face the additional
victim-blaming rhetoric that will undoubtedly be deployed and justified
on the basis of this broadened definition of violence that fails to consider
the results of violence and also conflates words with violent actions?
I find the stretching of the concept and the bracketing of injuries
involved deeply problematic.
Even more problematically, Mills argues that “mainstream
feminists” dismiss male batterers’ comments that their victims
“nagged,” “went on and on” or “failed to shut
up” (p.95) and instead contends that we must take such comments seriously
in considering the whole dynamic of abuse (p.95). Here I have to raise an objection.
To call nagging “aggressive” or “violent”
dilutes and diminishes the suffering of those who are physically harmed
at the hands of their lovers. To suggest that “nagging”
and so on is part of a dynamic that produces violence and is therefore implicated
in the violence, is to blame the victim and to fail to ask why women must
“nag” in the first place. To take seriously those justifications for beating one’s
wife or girlfriend adds insult to injury. Although Mills writes that we must be careful to avoid blaming
victims, her focus on having both members take responsibility for the dynamic
and on equating the verbal with the physical does exactly that.
Mills argues we must deconstruct abuser/victim dualism
and understand violence in its more complicated context. She attempts to apply a Foucaultian notion of power to intimate
relationships, and she asserts her desire to deconstruct the victim/abuser
dualism on the basis of the complicated movement of power. She argues that such a construct implies
a single power-ful member (the abuser) and a power-less one (the abused),
while feminist discourse recognizes only the exercise of power from one
person to the other, but not in both directions.
Thus, she emphasizes the need to incorporate women’s actions
into the abuse formula. To
argue that women are purely victims and men are purely violent batterers,
she says, does not adequately capture how women themselves experience abuse. Understanding violence as a two-way dynamic
“frees women to see themselves as much as agents as they are victims”
(p.97). However, she notes
that women neither view violence in unilateral terms, nor do they see themselves
as purely victims. Indeed,
she suggests, some women perceive strength in the ability to survive their
own situations, and some “already take responsibility for abusive
relationships, usually in the form of self-blame” (p.99).
There is a contradiction in Mills’ thinking here. She criticizes “mainstream feminist”
discourse for imposing a totalizing view of women-as-victims, finding this
to be an exertion of power over women, but she fails to recognize that such
women are not unilaterally subjectified by such discourse. Even as she condemns policy for taking
away women’s agency, she presupposes that the same women lack sufficient
agency or common sense to realize that the terminology misrepresents them. I find her argument at least as paternalistic
as the one she critiques. Mills
fails to recognize the slipperiness of power and agency in the very relationships
she is criticizing. While she
invites a discussion about women’s contributions to the abuse dynamic
between intimates, she fails to recognize (even in her own examples) the
very agency being exercised by women who resist notions of pure victimization
and who see their own power and agency, both in self-blame and in survival
in the face of catastrophe.
Moreover, Mills misses a second important power dynamic
that is essential in understanding criminal justice policy. Mills launches a significant and warranted
indictment of mandatory arrest and prosecution. She explicitly lays the blame for the
failed policies at the feet of “mainstream feminists,” contending
that it was they who demanded that criminal justice professionals treat
battering husbands and boyfriends with the same seriousness that other violent
criminals are treated. This
contention is true. But what
Mills overlooks is that, with enactment of codes (and perhaps even before),
those reformers lost control of the policy.
The implementation process is slippery, as human decisions and human
actors inject themselves into the abstraction of law on the books. Human actors whose discretion was removed may have resisted
the imposition of such a stringent policy, creating a backlash for female
victims. There may have been
cultural carryovers of the kind of sexism that denied legal protection to
women in the first place. Whether
due to explicit sexism, or resistance to restrictions on discretion allowed
to professionals at the scene, or to other factors, blaming mainstream feminists
for the failure of a policy’s implementation denies certain realities
– the power exercised by legal personnel charged with implementing
the policies and the influence of an array of criminal justice practitioners
who make decisions on a day-to-day basis.
To lay the blame exclusively at the feet of (an illusive group of)
mainstream feminists denies the complex way that power operates to adopt,
co-opt and bring to life those abstract policies.
While the book is simple enough to be appropriate for an
undergraduate audience, I find Mills’ reasoning to be highly problematic.
While her solution is indeed novel, the supporting arguments give
rise to a range of serious concerns.
The addition of mental health services
in addressing the monumental task of restoring a relationship that has become
violent may be useful in some situations, given the number of couples who
do choose to stay together after violent incidents. Certainly, at least in terms of the service array, her care-community
ideas are worthy of discussion, even if much of the supporting logic is
flawed.
REFERENCES:
Walker, Lenore E. 1979. THE BATTERED WOMAN. New York: HarperCollins.
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Copyright 2003 by the author, Trish Oberweis.