Abuse comes in many forms.
The prototypical image of abuse (and in fact one of the most common forms of violent crime) is of a male who physically assaults his female partner, but other forms of abuse— emotional, verbal, and sexual, among other forms, are also ubiquitous in our society, existing in every community, present in every demographic.
The various forms of abuse are often associated with each other:
Emotional abuse in intimate relationships: The role of gender and age
(2013) Violence and Victims 28(5): 804-821
Emotional abuse can include verbal assault, dominance, control, isolation, ridicule, or the use of intimate knowledge for degradation (Follingstad, Coyne, & Gambone, 2005). It targets the emotional and psychological well-being of the victim, and it is often a precursor to physical abuse. There is a high correlation between physical abuse and emotional abuse in batterer populations (Gondolf, Heckert, & Kimmel, 2002), and verbal abuse early in a relationship predicts subsequent physical spousal abuse (Schumacher & Leonard, 2005).
Patterns of abuse persist across multiple generations within families:
Intergenerational Transmission of Partner Violence: A 20-Year Prospective Study
(2003) Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 71(4): 741-753)
Miriam K. Ehrensaft and Patricia Cohen, et. al.
The common thread linking maltreatment, punitive parenting, and exposure to violent parental conflict may reside in their serious disruptions of relationships with caregivers. Such disruptions result in emotion regulation deficits, faulty social information processing, and hostile expectations about the meaning of relationships; these deficits may in turn increase the risk for aggressive behavior in childhood and across the life span (Dodge et al., 1990).Ultimately, the continuity of oppositional, aggressive behavior across the life span may account for the relationships among child maltreatment, punishment, exposure to domestic violence, and partner abuse. Patterns of emotional and behavioral self-regulation first learned and reinforced within the family are later applied to early peer interactions (Gilliom et al., 2002). With repetition, these peer interaction patterns are reinforced, forming stable modes of negotiation of emotional challenges and needs. Peer interactions in middle childhood and adolescence provide repeated opportunities to practice and shape conflict resolution skills (Hartup, 1996),which will later be applied to romantic relationships (Connolly &Goldberg, 1999). (pg. 742)
In all its forms, abuse is a mechanism of dominance, directed at someone deemed vulnerable, and repeated to maintain the vulnerability, and through that, the submission of the abused to the abuser:
Forceful and dominant: men with sexist ideas of masculinity are more likely to abuse women
Michael Flood/ The Conversation
Nov. 6, 2019
Men who adhere to rigid, sexist stereotypes of how to be a man are more likely to use and tolerate violence against women.
On the other hand, men with more flexible, gender-equitable ideas about manhood are more likely to treat women with respect. And promoting healthy, more flexible models of masculinity is an important way to end domestic and sexual violence…
Many factors can reliably predict the risk of perpetrating violence. One key set of factors is to do with masculinity, that is, the attitudes and behaviours stereotypically associated with being a man.
Longstanding ideals about manhood include ideas that men should be strong, forceful, and dominant in relationships and households. Men should be tough and in control, while women are lesser, or even malicious and dishonest.
Defending the abuser, vilifying and ostracizing the abused
Among the most common, if confusing and heartbreaking, aspects of the dynamics of abuse, is the culture of silence that surrounds it (within families, communities, congregations, institutions):
05.05.2014
It wasn’t until I found the courage to leave my husband that the other women of this secretive group identified themselves to me. The tactics of abusive men are almost identical...
The women who shared their horror stories with me asked that I keep them to myself. Although it was a request that I have gladly honored, I didn’t understand the culture of secrecy surrounding domestic violence.
I have always been open about the reason behind my divorce, despite strong cultural pressures to keep silent. I decided early that secrecy protects the perpetrator, not the victim. I am not responsible for my abusers actions, and I should feel no shame for his failures. I am collateral damage in his train-wreak of a life…
So why do women keep silent about their abuse, years, even decades after the relationship ends? Our culture unintentionally places some blame on victims for ‘allowing themselves’ to be abused.
The classic shocked response when people learn that I survived an abusive relationship is “How could you put up with that? I would never let that happen to me.” Well-meaning family and friends who don’t understand the Stockholm Syndrome-like effect that an abuser has over his partner presume themselves safe from falling into this trap.
Women who escape are confronted with the idea that they are somehow responsible, and are inadvertently convinced of its validity. Ashamed at the horrors they ‘allowed’ to happen, they keep their stories to themselves. The overwhelming silence isolates current victims of domestic violence, and benefits abusers.
Another perplexing phenomenon we observe is of the abused defending the abuser, or alternatively, those around the abuser jumping to their defense, at the expense of those being abused:
WHY PEOPLE DISCOUNT THE (ADULT) CHILD AND DEFEND THE ABUSER
Judy Baxter/ Emerging from Broken
July 31, 2013
I have found so much freedom in realizing that I don’t have to explain or justify my decision to draw boundaries with my parents or with anyone else, to anyone. I don’t have to help people ‘understand it’. I don’t have to defend myself or prove myself. There is a reason that some people don’t accept my decision to disengage from my parents and family. There is a reason that this offends certain people but the reason may not be what you think it is. It certainly isn’t what I originally thought it was…
I have discovered that people who have or have had loving parents actually do understand what I am talking about; it is the people still stuck in defending their own abusive /discounting parents that fight the hardest against what I am saying. It’s actually makes sense that it is that way too; People who KNOW what love really is don’t think my mother and her actions regarding me were very loving; they don’t think that the way she treated me had any foundation in her love for me. People who had parents who modeled real love, recognize the truth about what love is. And they don’t stand up for neglect, disrespectful actions, discounting actions, corporal punishment, emotional abuse, verbal abuse or any other type of communication from parents that is less than love.
People who know what love really is and experienced that love from their parents, don’t think my father’s neglect and disinterest in me was loving OR normal. They don’t think he did the best he could. The reaction that I get from people who actually WERE loved by their parents is understanding and empathy rather than the judgment and criticism that we so often hear. Statements such as “but they are your parents” or “I’m sure your parents did the best they could” are not flung in my face by people who know what loving parents really are. Since I have come out of the fog about the whole dysfunctional family system I have met people who have a whole different reaction to my story; I have met people who say things like “OH MY GOSH, No wonder you don’t have a relationship with them anymore”. People who learned love from being loved say things like “HOW can parents treat their children like that?” and they don’t understand why or how these parents could communicate such rejection towards their own children.
People who know what love is don’t defend people that communicate so much less than love.
The people that have a need to stick up for the dysfunctional family system are the ones that have judged me the hardest. The hate mail I get always leaks the truth about the writers own abusive childhood and the need to defend their own parents. These comments/emails contain statements such as “my parents beat me but I deserved it”. Sometimes I get a huge paragraph describing the offences that they endured at the hands of mean hateful parents and the final sentence is “but I know my parents loved me”. (I want to ask “HOW do you know that they loved you?”)…
When a parent denies their child a voice, blames the child for any traumatic events they experienced growing up while still denying that there even were any traumatic events, and continues to paint that child as “a problem”, “unforgiving”, or any other negative blaming descriptive phrases, ~ There IS NO real relationship between that child and their parents. There IS no love lost when there was no love in the first place.
So when someone approaches me with judgment for the decisions that I have made or for my work here in Emerging from Broken, I consider where they are coming from. This judgment ultimately is about them, I mean think about it; why would someone argue that abuse from parents is ‘not abuse’ because it is an action delivered by a parent, or that parents have special rights just because they are parents? Why would people react with anger or judgment towards someone who expresses freedom from walking away from abusive people just because those abusive people were their parents? What could possibly be the motivation behind sticking up for abuse and abusers? When I understood the truth about the answer to that question, I no longer felt defensive about my actions. I was able to let go of the need to defend my choices when I realized that the way people react to my choices is about them and not about me; people who have had loving parents do not defend abusive parents.
Patterns of abuse persist across multiple generations within groups and institutions.
Perhaps the most notorious recent example (although by no stretch of imagination limited to this example) is the decades of efforts by the Catholic Church to dismiss tens of thousands of allegations of abuse, worldwide, by priests and nuns; these efforts to camouflage knowledge of, and complicity in, ongoing abuse continues to this day:
Catholic Leaders Promised Transparency About Child Abuse. They Haven’t Delivered.
After decades of shielding the identities of accused child abusers from the public, many Catholic leaders are now releasing lists of their names. But the lists are inconsistent, incomplete and omit key details.
Lexi Churchill, Ellis Simani and Topher Sanders/ Pro Publica
Jan. 28, 2020
“To award a victim a substantial amount of money, yet claim that the accused is not a pedophile, is an insult to one’s intelligence,” said Garabedian, who has handled hundreds of abuse cases over the last 25 years. “It’s a classic case of the archdiocese ducking, delaying and avoiding issues.”
Over the last year and a half, the majority of U.S. dioceses, as well as nearly two dozen religious orders, have released lists of abusers currently or formerly in their ranks. The revelations were no coincidence: They were spurred by a 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, which named hundreds of priests as part of a statewide clergy abuse investigation. Nationwide, the names of more than 5,800 clergy members have been released so far, representing the most comprehensive step toward transparency yet by a Catholic Church dogged by its long history of denying and burying abuse by priests.
But even as bishops have dedicated these lists to abuse victims and depicted the disclosures as a public acknowledgement of victims’ suffering, it has become clear that numerous alleged abusers have been omitted and that there is no standard for determining who each diocese considers credibly accused…
He doesn’t blame the dispute with his wife or other low points in his life directly on his sexual abuse, but says it colored everything that followed. “It all stems, mostly, from that incident,” he said.
When a reporter told Giacalone that the Boston Archdiocese had found his accusation against Donahue to be “unsubstantiated,” even after the decision that Giacalone had to be compensated, he shook his head.
“I feel bad for their parishioners,” he said. “They are living a lie too.”
As is often the case, the abusers employed by the Catholic Church are in positions of authority, and so are granted a presumption of credibility, while the victims of abuse are deemed untrustworthy, perhaps because of history of mental illness (of course, this the direct result of the abuse itself), or because the abused is a child, or member of a disfavored group.
A Culture of Violence Tolerates, Encourages, Begets Violence
Historian Richard Hofstadter, writing a piece that originally appeared in 1970, described the culture of violence in the US:
Reflections on Violence in the United States
Richard Hofstadter/ The Baffler
(2015)
Today we are not only aware of our own violence; we are frightened by it. We are now quite ready to see that there is far more violence in our national heritage than our proud, sometimes smug, national self-image admits of. Our violence frightens us, as it frightens others, because in our singular position uncontrolled domestic violence coincides with unparalleled national power, and thus takes on a special significance for the world. It is not only shocking but dangerous for a primary world power to lose three of its most important and valuable public leaders within a few years, and with them to lose an immeasurable part of its political poise. Violence in Colombia or Guatemala is of life-or-death concern to Colombians and Guatemalans. Violence in the United States has become of life-or-death concern to everyone. It is, again, disturbing to many Americans that the recent outbreaks coincided with the most sustained economic boom we have ever had. Although the American creed has been built upon the efficacy of riches, it has now become alarmingly clear that some of our social discontents, instead of being relieved by prosperity, are exacerbated by it. Although Americans are richer than ever, they have not found a way to buy themselves out of trouble.
Americans certainly have reason to inquire whether, when compared with other advanced industrial nations, they are not a people of exceptional violence. Any American who has lived for a time in England, for example, can hardly fail to notice there a gentleness and a repugnance to violence that underlines our own contrasting qualities. Americans, however they may deplore and fear violence, are not so deeply shocked by it as the English are. Our entertainment and our serious writing are suffused with violence to a notorious degree; it is endemic in our history. Americans, apparently taking it as a part of the stream of life’s events, do not as a rule very promptly rise up in large numbers and in lawful ways to protest, oppose, or control it. They are legendary for their refusal to accept the reality of death, but violence they endure as part of the nature of things, and as one of those evils to be expected from life.
It’s not a new observation to say that American culture, American society, doesn’t simply tolerate violence, it celebrates it:
The US’s Culture of Violence Is Killing Us All
Although violent incidents occur in other countries, they are not as frequent — or as deadly — as in the US.
César Chelala/ The Globalist
August 16, 2019
The United States doesn’t just have the most guns per capita, but also the weakest gun control laws of any developed country. It is estimated that at least 30% of American adults own a gun, and an additional 11% lives with someone who does.
Nearly 48% of U.S. adults grew up in a household with guns. Nearly two-thirds of Americans who own guns own more than one...
In a banal act of macho posturing, almost half of the 50 states in the United States have adopted laws that allow gun owners to carry their guns openly in most public places…
Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude goes one step further in its criticism of the situation. As he commented to a reporter on MSNBC:
America is not unique in its sins as a country. We are not unique in our evils, to be honest with you. I think where we may be singular is our refusal to acknowledge them –and the legends and myths we tell about our inherent goodness to hide and cover and conceal so we can maintain a kind of wilful ignorance that protects our innocence.
However, to say ‘American’ culture celebrates violence is not truly accurate, even though the celebration of violence permeates almost every aspect of our society.
When it comes to interpersonal violence, the narratives of justification beget the perpetuation of violence:
‘Ideological masculinity’ that drives violence against women is a form of violent extremism
Joshua Roose/ The Conversation
July 11, 2018
Verbal and physical violence shapes the daily experiences of girls and women in cities. A recent analysis showed that women in Melbourne face habitual sexual harassment in public space and feel unsafe, particularly in the evenings.
Many commentators have framed the problem of violence against women perpetrated by men as being the result of toxic masculinity, defined by male entitlement and abuse of power. While this goes some way to identifying and labelling the problem, comparatively less work has been done to explore its underlying factors.
My forthcoming book New Demagogues: Populism, Religion and Masculinity, explores what I term “ideological masculinity”. Men who subscribe to this ideology believe that women’s empowerment has left them victimised and discriminated against…
Ideological masculinity is radical. It seeks to promote a return to a perceived period of male supremacy, now “lost” to women’s rights and self-effacing men (referred to by some members of the alt-right movement as “beta cucks”).
And we see it played out through a broad sweep of misogynistic actions. They range from a disparaging remark about a female politician’s sex life to vandalising the memorial site of Eurydice Dixon to the murder of one’s own children to punish an estranged wife…
Girls and women have the right to feel safe in their environment. Public policy must treat ideological masculinity’s call for violence against women as seriously as other forms of ideologically motivated violent extremism. Beyond toxic masculinity as a mere normative label, the end state of ideological masculinity is the subordination of women to men grounded in deep resentment and indeed hatred.
The Politics of Interpersonal Violence
The generalized statement ‘American culture’, when referring to the culture of violence, diffuses and obscures the reality that it is a contingent of subcultures that embraces interpersonal violence as a virtue:
The Right Wing’s Cultural Civil War Is a Drag
A splintered conservative movement slouches toward authoritarianism, thanks to—of all things—drag queens at the library.
Osita Nwanevu/ TNR
September 9, 2019
… it was noted by an FBI agent that there is an active shooting episode every two weeks in America, one of the striking statistics that have convinced many on the left that these increasingly common events—beyond reflecting the failures of our policymakers and political system to address gun violence with meaningful legislation—are evidence of a national psyche gone horribly wrong. It is a sick country that prizes its gun culture over public order, the freedom of a minority of Americans over the safety of all.
This includes our children, who have proven to be particularly vulnerable targets of mass gun violence. As of 2015, 96 percent of American schools now undergo active shooter drills. Last week a school district in Michigan unveiled plans for a new high school building with features designed to thwart gunmen including curved hallways and impact-resistant windows. Against solutions in this vein, a growing chorus of progressives is insisting that the time has come to take on the issue of gun violence more aggressively than ever before—to, through mandatory buybacks or gun bans—fundamentally rethink a certain sacred freedom for the common good…
It has become almost a cliché to note the persistent victimhood embedded in conservative thought, but these kinds of statements remain remarkable renderings of sociopolitical reality. A political movement that has already twice this century taken the presidency against the will of the American voting public and which holds total and undivided control of nearly half the states in this country remains, evidently, the underdog of American political life, helplessly buffeted by the winds of change. Liberal parents having drag queens read to their children anywhere is the latest intolerable imposition of liberal authority upon Christian conservatives everywhere…
This is how the conservative movement works; the golden rule ethos—here derisively called “Frenchism” by people who mostly agree with David French—typically loses. The conservative response to supposed liberal media bias within mainstream journalism wasn’t the creation of better, even-handed press outlets, but right-wing outlets as biased as conservatives imagined the liberal press to be, such as Fox News. The conservative response to supposed liberal bias and indoctrination within the academy wasn’t the creation of more viewpoint-neutral and academically free universities, but the funneling of resources to explicitly conservative universities like Liberty and Hillsdale.
These subcultures, not coincidentally, are the same ones that minimize the severity of domestic violence, child abuse, bullying, hate crimes against LGBTQ individuals, or the terrorizing of African-Americans by law enforcement— the subcultures that are contained with the rubric of political conservatism:
Cognitive Reframing of Intimate Partner Aggression: Social and Contextual Influences
(2018) International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15(11)
Wind Goodfriend and Ximena B. Arriaga
In cultures in which patriarchal beliefs and/or sexism are prevalent or more ingrained in social norms, acceptance of IPA within relationships and/or sexual assault in general is also higher…
While the individual culture of our participants was not measured, they all came from a rural part of the country (specifically, Indiana) that has a blend of Midwestern and Southern values. This part of the U.S. traditionally votes for conservative politicians and promotes old-fashioned values. These cultural influences may have affected participants’ views of what they believe is “normal” or “acceptable”, just as people in other countries are affected by their cultures or sub-cultures.
Even what “counts” as abuse changes within a culture over time. Some people perceive that “domestic violence” only refers to physical acts, such as punching or slapping, but that psychological aggression, such as insults, does not apply [80,81]. Too often, people react to hearing about cases of psychological and emotional abuse by stating, “At least they weren’t hit”. What is surprising about such statements is that they overlook how it can be more difficult to overcome an extended period of being belittled and humiliated than the occasional physical abuse [7]. The link between psychological abuse and feeling depressed or anxious is robust and occurs beyond instances of physical abuse [6,8,60]. Many people in the U.S. believe that perpetrators of physical violence should be sanctioned or punished, but that psychological aggression should not [82].
There will be no way to eliminate the epidemic of abuse and other forms of interpersonal violence that are a rampant epidemic in our society, if we do not work to eradicate the political culture that endorses the violence, and defends the abuser, at the expense of the abused.