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relationships can take time. Intimate terrorists entrap their partners using the same
tactics they use to control them. If a woman has been so psychologically abused that
she believes that her partner really can take her children away from her, how can she
leave and abandon them to him? If a woman has no access to money or a job, how can
she feed and clothe herself and her children when they escape? If she is monitored
relentlessly and isolated from others, how can she get away and where can she go? If
her partner has threatened to kill her and the children if she tries to leave, how can
she leave safely?
What women in such situations typically do is to gradually gather the resources
they need to escape safely, sometimes doing this on their own, more often seeking help
from others. They hide away small amounts of money until they have enough to get
a small start, and they start working or going to school to develop a viable source of
income, and they make plans with friends or a shelter to hide them during the period
immediately after their escape, and they involve the police and courts for protection,
and they join support groups to help them with their transition to independence and the
emotional trauma produced by the psychological abuse, and on and on. The process is
not a simple one. Catherine Kirkwood ( Kirkwood 1993) describes it as a  spiral in which
women leave multiple times, only to return, but each time garnering information and
resources that will eventually allow them to leave for good. The process is complicated
not only by the intimate terrorist s commitment to keeping her, but also by the gender
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Chapter 12 " Trouble in the Family 533
structure of institutions that may make it more difficult to leave than it would be in a
more equitable society.
A GENDER THEORY OF DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE ( INTIMATE TERRORISM )
Let me begin with a reminder that the discussion above indicates that in heterosexual
relationships the strongest correlate of type of intimate partner violence is gender. In
heterosexual relationships intimate terrorism is perpetrated almost entirely by men and,
of course, the violent resistance to it is from their female partners. The gendering of situ-
ational couple violence is less clear and will be addressed in the next section.
To a sociologist, the tremendous gender imbalance in the perpetration of intimate
terrorism suggests important social structural causes that go beyond simple differences
between men and women. For over two decades now, feminist sociologists have argued
that gender must be understood as an institution, not merely an individual characteristic.
Although some gender theorists have couched this argument in terms of rejecting gender
as an individual characteristic in favor of focusing at the situational or institutional level
of analysis (e.g., Ferree 1990), I prefer a version of gender theory that incorporates gen-
der at all levels of social organization, from the individual level of sex differences in iden-
tities and attitudes, and even physical differences, through the situational enforcement of
gender in social interaction to the gender structure of organizational and societal con-
texts ( Ferree, Lorber, and Hess 2000; Risman 2004). The application of gender theory
to intimate terrorism that follows will start with individual sex differences and work up
to the gender structure of the economy, the family, and the criminal justice system.
Why is intimate terrorism (and violent resistance to it) so clearly a matter of men
abusing women in heterosexual relationships? First, gender affects the use of violence
to control one s partner in heterosexual relationships simply because of average sex dif-
ferences in size and strength. The use of violence as one tactic in an attempt to exercise
general control over one s partner requires more than the willingness to do violence. It
requires a credible threat of a damaging violent response to noncompliance. Such a threat
is, of course, more credible coming from a man than a woman simply because of the size
difference in most heterosexual couples. Furthermore, still at the level of individual dif- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]