Erin Pizzey's work with Refuges

[ParsleyTheLioness]

Talking about this on the Relationships board. Does anyone remember this woman from the 60's/70's who set up an early(?) refuge? Are her work and writings still valid today, or discredited at all, anyone have any knowledge? I may not be spelling correctly.

hmm women who live with dv, are absolute experts at de-fusing tense situations - the "walking on eggshells" phenomenon is very well known, but unfortunately it doesn't work because men who beat up women, don't do you spell because they are tense, but because they believe that they have the right to control women, with violence if necessary

sorry my voice recognition is a bit shit. that should say don't do so because they are tense

Hmmm I am a bit lost here. You seem to me to be telling women to get a grip; but say you have used male user names in the past to direct or elicit a certain response. I'm just not getting the coherence.

But it's not a big deal.

It's called humour.

Alas, us feminists appear to be lacking in it... :(

I keep trying to be humourless feminist but then I realise it's just the drink talking.

I've tried to adhere to the strawman trope for feminists... :( I'm no good at it.

I take the point about wanting to address violence in society as a whole... but, having read many threads on here by women being abused by their male partners, I'm not sure that these men do want to improve their communication strategies. They want to have power over their wives/partners and don't care how they get it.

Basil, I have a MiL who takes chucks out of my FiL. She has a drink problem she won't admit to. To the point that DH and his sister refuse to visit on Christmas Day after lunch these days, as its a given she'll be drunk. DH's brother hasn't helped the situation as he has 'golden child' status and happens to be a doctor. Everyone else knows there is a problem but because he's never been on the receiving end of her emotional abuse, or he encourages her because he thinks its funny when its aimed at his siblings. Its awful to watch. Took me a long time to take DH seriously about how his mother is. I only did, when she started on me and I feel terrible for not believing my DH about it.

My FiL will never do anything about it either. He just takes it, even after it became apparent that physical violence was part of the picture and this has been happening for a very long time. DH didn't find out about that until last year, when there was an incident which left him with numerous and pretty bad marks. DH's sister has known about it for years and has been the only one to witness it and has tried to intervene with the problem without success. She's found it very distressing and I really feel for her; she lives locally to them still.

As I said before, there are many forms of DV. I take issue with constantly confining it to one form. Its not.

I truly believe that women in abusive relationships should be helped to leave them. Not to stay and 'work' on them.

And I know that Domestic Abuse teams do work with women to help them be better prepared for their next relationship, so as to make it less likely that will be abused again.

I think there probably are people out there for whom all communication is characterised with violence, but I think the one thing that has come out of research into DV is how strikingly similar abusers are in their patterns of behaviour.

Hmm That family dynamic needs some serious attention, counselling and assistance. There are lots of women on these boards who have experience of this kind of family situation which has fucked them up. The doctor son sounds like an enabler, and a credible one at that. Your MiL sounds like she needs help. Sounds grim. Sorry.

Its not fun. Its worse when you know that she was a teacher until recently. Head of department. Seen her drink a bottle and a half of wine in a couple of hours whilst marking GSCE exam papers to perfection. So she uses that too as she is well respected by the board. Then she'd drive to work the following morning... FiL is a big bloke. Patient as anything. But I worry about what will happen when he also retires. Not exactly sure what else anyone else can do though now though. Not until one of them is prepared to admit there is an issue. Or DH's bro intervenes.

And I'm certainly saying that women should work on a relationship that has become violent. I certainly think they should be helped to recognise the problem, but its also men being able to recognise the problem too. Be it, if they are in fact the abuser, a victim, brother, a father, a friend, a friend of the abusive partner. Its about making everyone more aware of whats ok and whats not, and how to walk away from conflict. I do think there are situation where you can stop it getting to the point of violence if you notice the pattern before it starts too. Prevention is better than cure and all that jazz. I think school is the only place you can realistically do that. But not if its taught as being a gendered issue.

certainly not* typo.

I remember reading her soft novels in the 80's- Think one title was 'The Watershed' and another 'In The Shadow Of The Castle'. They both featured extreme tropes of 'womanhood'- the mother who would 'eat' her own young and the soft vulnerable female born to her or in-law to her.

Tbh I think that schools can be such a hotbed of stereotypical gendered behaviour that they can be part of the problem not the solution. (I have two teenagers in state ed at the moment.)

My DD has had blatantly homophobic teachers, too.

But I do think that violence is a gendered issue.

if you don't acknowledge that it's a gendered issue, a) you are being dishonest and that will not help you to tackle the problem, because you will be starting from a wrong presumption and b) you will not effectively help victims in atypical situations, such as the minority of male victims, women in lesbian relationships, etc.

I think it makes an equally wrong assumption to say it is gendered and not accept that DV has more than one form though. You need to make that clear from the very outset. Stereotyping is just as damaging.

it is not stereo typing to acknowledge reality. the majority of victims of dv are women. the majority of perpetrators of dv are men. that is not stereotyping, it's simply telling it like it is.

I believe Basil's right. You can't disregard the sweeping pattern; but of course you need to look at other patterns within it. They are all gendered, though; as well as predicated on class and other 'identities'.

I'm talking about gender as the social construction of sexuality.

as in eroticising dominance/submission linerunner?

I'd analyse it as gendered.

I think every lens through which we look at gendered behaviour is itself gendered.

Just wanted to say that sunshineandbooks, I really liked your big post upthread. It seems to have gone unacknowledged by the poster you wrote it to.

I agree. It was a significant post.

it is not stereo typing to acknowledge reality. the majority of victims of dv are women. the majority of perpetrators of dv are men. that is not stereotyping, it's simply telling it like it is.

Shall we talk about crime and race? "Telling it like it is" fails to deal with the actual problem. It can create prejudices. They might well be based on a factual basis, but it nonetheless still creates a prejudice. It hinders male victims from reporting. Hence the need to separate generalisations and stereotypes from the crime. ANYONE can be the victim of DV.