Impolite Company

Don't Rape People!

I'm easing myself back into the online world after spending most of the summer either in the real world or in less interactive portions of the internet.  I haven't quite been brave enough to peek at my Facebook inbox or address any of the Friend Requests that I know are waiting ever-so-patiently for me to acknowledge or decline or whatever but I plan to in the near future.  But I am popping by FB every now and again to see what's up and there's been a fair amount of sexual assault stuff the last couple of days that looks very good and so I wanted to pass it along here. 

The main point for today is the Number One Foolproof Way to Prevent Sexual Assault is the title of this post:  don't rape people.  When we get down to it, rape and sexual assault are primarily the problems of the perpetrators and the responsibility to stop these crimes rest squarely on their shoulders.  Unfortunately, since the perps haven't been too terribly proactive on this front it's still important to teach self defense skills to anyone who's interested and so the need for organizations like Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense will continue for the foreseeable future.  But just as a little old reminder to those of you out there who wonder what the best way to prevent sexual assault, check out this post (read the entire post at: Only Rapists Can Prevent Rape):

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn’t have long hair and women shouldn’t wear short skirts. Women shouldn’t leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn’t dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.

If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.

If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her....

And also:  Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work.

Bitchslap

One of the instructors at Sun Dragon just started writing a column at McSweeney's called "Bitchslap:  A Column about Women and Fighting."  Her initial outing is a nice little list of the five things women who fight need to keep in mind when they go to the ER with a black eye.:

RULE NUMBER ONE for the woman who gets a black eye during karate class: Do not change your clothes before going to the emergency room. Go in your uniform. Go covered in sweat. Otherwise, you will spend a lot of time answering questions about your relationship history. You may be suddenly confronted with a social worker, or even a policewoman, who will sit down next to you and be very reassuring. And it will take forever before somebody actually examines your retina, which is what you came in for.

(my apologies to Facebook people connected to Sun Dragon who have already seen several repostings of this article--I daresay it won't be the last time you see it)

Evolution Made Me the Man I am Today

We often ascribe the reason for gender differences to evolutionary processes.  For instance, we often hear that men are better at math and science because they are hardwired to be better or that the cheap and plentiful supply of sperm in a man's body means that he has evolved to spread his seed far and wide.  Are masculine stereotypes really the result of evolution or do we simply use shallow evolutionary explanations as excuses for male characteristics that may be less than attractive but hell, that's just the way we evolved?  A book that was published back in 2007 tries to take a tougher look at the intersection of evolution, psychology, sociology and gender roles--The Caveman Mystique:  Pop-Darwinism and the Masculine Excuse.  I haven't had the chance to look at the book but it sounds interesting and there's an interview with the book's author, Martha McCaughey, at the above link, in which she says in part:

MM: One way I do that is to show that the popularized Darwinian discourse about men is a watered down, distorted version of evolutionary science. But I also wanted them to recognize that science itself is not certain. Evolutionary psychology's claims about men's sexual desires remain speculative.

WF: You explain the sociological reasons (social science) for that Caveman discourse, and yet some people argue that evolution (evolutionary science) explains a man's reluctance to commit to one woman.

MM: Yes, there are many cultural shifts for which sociological explanations are just as valid as evolutionary ones. My book encourages men to see their lives in cultural and historical perspective, so that they don't swallow whole evolutionary explanations of their behaviors and desires.

McCaughey is also the author of Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women's Self-Defense:

And yet much feminist thought, like the broader American culture, seems deeply ambivalent about women's embrace of violence, even in self-defense. Investigating the connection between feminist theory and women physically fighting back, McCaughey found self-defense culture to embody, literally, a new brand of feminism.

Bitch

Isis the Scientist has posted the first of her Letters to Our Daughters Project letters and it does a bang up job of reducing down to a few paragraphs something I've written about before here and elsewhere and something that was a huge topic during the presidential election, particularly during the Democratic Primary.  Assertive women are often seen as "bitches", certainly by men and often by some other women as well.  Let me give you a particularly good paragraph from the letter here and please go read it for yourselves--it is really more about being a strong woman than about being a women scientist, The Letters to Our Daughters Project--Dr. Pascale Lane:

When my daughter was starting middle school, I explained the world to her in my own warped way. I give my students the same advice. If you have a voice that gets heard in the world, someone will call you a bitch. If you perform acts of kindness and charity, someone will say that the bitch is showing off! If you show more spine than a jelly fish, someone eventually will brand you a bitch. Accept it. If someone calls you a bitch, you are probably doing something right.

Susan B. Anthony

I heard this quote from Susan B. Anthony last night and I liked it and so I'm posting it:

'I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.'

Verbal Self Defense

Before anyone jumps up and says, "what the hell are you talking about?  Self defense against being called "dear"???" I figured I'd preempt it by putting the question in the first sentence, before you even know what I'm talking about.  Now that's done and I can tell you what I' talking about.

One of the very important things we talk about in Sun Dragon self defense classes, more important than how to kick someone in the groin or gouge someone's eyes out, is the concept of setting personal boundaries that make you comfortable.  If your boss or colleague is calling you "dear" and it makes you feel patronized, by all means, speak up and let him or her know.  If s/he's a person of good will, they'll accept your boundary and won't need some long explanation.  If they're not a person of good will, you will learn a lot by their reaction, which will help you decide what your next steps should be.  Not only is being direct and assertive in the small things important for your peace of mind, it's also good practice for you when you're confronted by bigger issues, situations calling for stronger boundaries and the instant recognition of when your boundaries have been violated.

I thought about this in reaction to an excellent discussion of the following question at the On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess post, Ask Dr. Isis...Dear?:

I am an ultra-faithful reader of your blog (and an avid random clicker on links on your blog, as of late). I have a quick question for you: I am a postdoc, and I received a phone call today from a Professor from another institution whom I am working with on a Scientific Society-related event. In the past, I've corresponded with him only by e-mail and haven't yet met him in person. During this phone conversation, he referred to me as "dear." "Ok, dear. Sounds good."

What do you do in this situation?

SafePlace Field Day and Festival

SafePlace, a pretty remarkable organization that provides a broad array of services for women caught in domestic violence.  As they put it, SafePlace exists to end sexual and domestic violence through safety, healing, prevention and social change.     They're good people.  And they're doing up a big festival, field day and fundraising event tomorrow down at Fiesta Gardens, Field Day 2009.  I'll most likely be there at the Sun Dragon table for the last hour or two, so check it out.:

Families, friends and co-workers will gather to participate in an afternoon of Team Competitions, Ridiculous Relays, Entertainment, Fabulous Food, Games, Activities for All, Bark’n Play, and Family Fun benefiting SafePlace in an enjoyable Festival atmosphere!

The SafePlace Field Day & Festival is an invitation to all to join us in working to end sexual and domestic violence. At SafePlace, we work toward this goal with programs that address safety, healing, prevention, and social change.

It takes a community to spread the word and stop the violence against women, children and men. By joining us to raise funds and spread the word through the SafePlace Field Day & Festival, you join us in moving toward promoting change around the issues of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.

Ending sexual and domestic violence—it’s not a walk in the park.

Learn more about SafePlace and our mission here.

Domestic Abuse

Thanks to K, I stopped by Racalicious (warning:  the site and the article linked to below opens to a large poster of women with painted on make-up bruises) a few minutes ago, partly to try to get a little better feel for some of the dialogue on race and society going on over there and partly out of sheer curiosity.  The first post that I read was a staggeringly difficult piece to read, the naked face of domestic violence in a couple of accounts of the author's experience with victims in very different circumstances, Bruises:  A Litany.  I'm not going to reproduce portions of her accounts here as both are full of triggers and I don't want anyone to blindly wander across them--they are far more stark than what I usually post here.  But I do want to post her final thoughts because they are about what we must do when we run across this kind of evil--we must do something:

My clothes are clean, and now, so is my conscience. I have compiled a list in a document of hotlines, orgs and associations for victims of domestic violence. I’m going to print them and post them in the lobby and on the bulletin board. I may even make copies of “Love Hurts” and leave a stack downstairs by the mailboxes. I’m not sure how effective any of this will be. I’m not even sure the building management will let me do any of it. But I have to try. Because Doing Nothing in the face of this kind of evil amounts to collusion. I remember reading an article for a class on religion about the nature of evil. The summation: “It exists to make us despair and turn away from God.” That is evil. That is it’s purpose. Whether it is a fist, or a gun, or a war, or a a rape, or a murder. Evil exists to make us despair. So in order to combat it and keep evil from winning, one must battle despair. With a smile. With a joke. With a kind word or gesture. With wit, hope, determination and resilience. With a preachy blog.

Keep fighting.

A couple of Texas resources:  SafePlace Austin and the Texas Council on Family Violence.

Why Women Stay: Battered Women

In a recent post, The Edge of the American West has links up to a couple of articles addressing questions surrounding domestic violence and why women stay in abusive relationships.  The first one by Linda Hirshman in Slate, Crazy Love, Crazy Choices, is a reaction to a new book by Leslie Morgan Steiner, Crazy Love, that is a memoir of one woman's experience with an abusive husband and the post looks at staying in an abusive relationship more as a choice and as a political act than as an individual crisis.  Hirshman writes:

Steiner is wrong: It is difficult to understand why she stayed in this awful relationship, given that she was not risking starvation and had no children with her abuser. Which is why, no matter how many times Steiner and Marcotte and the others tell them not to, people keep asking the question. And it's terribly important to do exactly that. Asking why women participate in destructive relationships is a mark of respect. The amazing thing is that, four decades after the birth of feminism, we are still arguing about it.

I didn't find the post that illuminating as I don't find that the political implications and the feminist repercussions of a woman being stuck in an abusive relationship are nearly as important to think about as understanding how intelligent and perceptive women get caught in these abusive and dangerous relationships that can end in death.  Though we definitely have to think of the broader social context and systemic issues in addressing battered women specifically and violence against women more generally, we can't do so by discounting the suffering in the individual's experience.  I fear that Ms. Hirshman tips to that side in her analysis.

Fortunately, Ms. Hirshman's article isn't the only game in town and Hilzoy over at Obsidian Wings has posted a thoughtful and personal rejoinder that looks at the personal aspect of women who stay in violent relationships with all the complexity and nuance that the situation calls for, Why Do They Stay?

So imagine yourself, in love with someone, on your honeymoon or pregnant, when suddenly this guy just goes ballistic, often for very little reason, and hits you. For a lot of women, this is profoundly shocking and disorienting. There are things that are comprehensible parts of the world, even if they're rare, like having your car stolen; and then there are things that are unexpected in a completely different sense, like having your car turn into an elephant before your eyes: things that make you wonder whether you're completely crazy. Being beaten up by someone who apparently loves you is one of those things.

What this means is that precisely when a woman needs as much confidence in her own judgment as she can muster, the rug is completely pulled out from under her. And it's not just that she questions her judgment because she got involved with this guy in the first place; she questions her judgment because something so completely alien to the world she thinks she knows has just happened.

Open Letter to Sen. Patrick

A friend of mine has posted an open letter to Dan Patrick of the Texas Senate over at Reproductive Health Reality Check and I think it does a terrific job of contrasting the gotcha-style, wedge issue driven use of the abortion issue by some on the right with the real, tangible health issues faced by women in Texas every day.  We spend so much time arguing and posing on the abortion issue, time that would be better spent looking for areas of agreement and ways to improve health care.  Check out her post at Hey, Sen. Patrick, Rachel's Mom Needs a Mammogram:

...Senator Patrick, if I've done my math correctly, it seems to me that each year there are at least 11 million women and girls in Texas who AREN'T getting abortions.  Like the 25-year-old woman who had to give up her job in order to be eligible for Medicaid so that she could afford to give birth to her son.  Or the woman who tried to obtain a tubal ligation but was told by her doctor that she was "too young and too fat to have the procedure."  If you're really passionate about women's reproductive health (and here I will perform a gross suspension of disbelief and claim that you are), why do you choose to ignore everything that doesn't have to do with preventing abortion?

I have listened to you and other legislators discuss in great detail the nuances of a clause about whether or not the patient may avert her eyes when her doctor displays the ultrasound.  Meanwhile, Cheryl hasn't had a pap smear in over five years.   And Sharon needs transportation to another town for a breast cancer screening, since she can't afford any of the clinics in the city where she lives.

Sera Bonds--"In Defense of Self"

The Politics of Women's Health in War and Disaster Areas

The following two videos are from Sera Bonds, who spoke at Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense a couple of weeks ago at the inaugural event of our Fighting for Justice Speaker Series.  Though Ms. Bonds focuses more on the rights and responsibilities surrounding the self defense of individuals in her remarks, she is the founder of Circle of Health International, an organization that goes into war torn and disaster areas and works with the local health care delivery system to try to make sure that women continue to get the health care they need despite often dire circumstances:

COHI defines its target population as women in crisis, specifically partnering with women surviving conflict and disaster. COHI collaborates with locally based, grassroots organizations when invited into a country context to contribute to women's health programming.

COHI provides teams and individual volunteer practitioners such as OB/GYNs, midwives, trauma specialists, and public health professionals with the opportunity to connect with conflict and disaster affected-women as members of international field teams.

Sun Dragon at Austinist!

Spike Gillespie has written a very nice article about Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense that she just posted today at Austinist.  She writes about her own experiences growing up and feeling awkward, the role that martial arts training played for her later in life and then describes Sun Dragon and its mission by comparing Senpai Leila's performance in last week's black belt test with where she was when she was fourteen years old.  It's always difficult to imagine the what-ifs in life--what if I didn't make that decision that brought me to Austin nine years ago and that type of thing.  Spike does a good job of asking what-ifs about her own life and the big one is what if she would have had the sort of martial arts experience as a young girl that Senpai Leila has had and what a huge difference that might have made in her life, Fight Like a Girl!

I wish you all could have been there with me, watching Leila. Long ago I wrote an essay, I think it was called something like Notes to My Thirteen Year Old Self. And in it, I wished I could go back and take the young me, whom thought I was so clumsy and stupid, and just reassure myself. I wish I could’ve circumvented at least some of the crushes and found some wormhole that would’ve taken me faster to a place of a bit more knowledge, self-confidence and enlightenment.

If you're ever looking for a truly worthy cause to donate some money to, please keep Sun Dragon in mind.  The money keeps the dojo going by subsidizing scholarships for folks who otherwise wouldn't be able to train and helps us reach out into the community with affordable self defense programs.  If you get the hankering you can donate via our website by clicking the "Donate" button underneath the navigation menu.

Women Fighting Back

Women are always smaller than men and should never try to stand up to them.  That's a lie, based on stereotypes and it's a lie we regularly try to break down at Sun Dragon.  Women and men come in all shapes and sizes and even the tiniest women can fight back fiercely and successfully if placed in a dangerous situation, like in the following story. 

A woman was hanging out with friends at a bar, then went outside with them to have a quick smoke.  While they were outside, some loon attacked her friend with a knife and ran away.  She chased the guy down, wrestled him against a wall and held him there for ten minutes till the police arrived on the scene, 5 Foot Fitness Fanatic Pins Knife-Wielding Attacker to a Wall (by the way, I hate that headline as her fitness fanaticism is just taking walks and being involved in sport--though I think "fanatic" may not be quite as strong a word in the UK):

As 6ft 2in Ogden ran off down the road, Miss Harmer - who is just 5ft 4in tall and weighs eight stone - gave chase and tackled him outside a bank before pinning him to the wall in a headlock.

CCTV pictures from cameras located at the HSBC bank dramatically capture the bravery of her citizen's arrest.

As she desperately clung on to Ogden, a doorman from a nearby pub came over and helped her restrain him until police arrived.

While I wouldn't generally recommend chasing down a guy with a knife once the immediate danger of attack is over, this woman showed extraordinary bravery and reinforces the old adage, it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog that matters.  Men and women come in all shapes and sizes, all of us have the right to defend ourselves and it doesn't matter how small we are we can still fight back. 

A friend of mine passed on this story to a bunch of us via email, though I'm not sure if she wants online props or anything so I'll just say thanks to Jeremy and if she wants linkage to her blog it's all hers. 

Fighting for Justice Speaker Series: Sera Bonds

Event press release on the other side of the fold.

 

The Face of Sexual Assault

As I've mentioned around here before, the media tends to paint rapists and sexual assault perpetrators as the man jumping from the bushes, the evil guy dragging his victims into a waiting van or any of the other variations on stranger-rape that makes for compelling cheap crime drama.  But the sad fact is that over 70% of those who assault women are known to their target--friends, family, co-workers and other acquaintances.  This was brought home to me once again by a post I read over on ScienceBlogs about a couple of University of Iowa professors who committed suicide in the midst of controversies surrounding them allegedly using their positions to coerce students into granting sexual favors, Why Do We Think Only Really Hideously Evil Human Beings Could Be Sexual Harassers?  The post is a response to a news article that essentially says of the two professors, you know, I'm sure they didn't really do all that stuff because they were such nice guys.

The original article requires a password to gain access and I don't really feel inclined to give out my info (or fake info) in order to access something I disagree with.  But there's plenty of good, thought-provoking stuff in the blog post:

But even if, in both cases, we weren't exactly sure, the article would still bother me. Because the tone it takes is one of bewilderment. How could such nice, nice men find themselves in such difficult circumstances? The implication is that if one has an outstanding reputation as a scholar, has a wife or partner who loves him, has colleagues who respect him, and friends who like him, why, then it's just not possible to imagine that he could ever, ever, ever do something so nasty! Why in the world would those women be saying these things? It just doesn't make sense!

Don't look at this post as an indictment of these two men who took their own lives--they may well have done what they are accused of and I'm glad the lawsuit is going forward if that's what the girl needs in order to move on.  And don't think of it as an indictment on men, that we're all evil lechers hiding behind a friendly face.  But it is a reminder that it's probably more important to set strong boundaries with people that we know than to spend all of our time worrying about who's hiding in the bushes. 

Supreme Court Affirms Domestic Violence Gun Law

If you hit your wife or your girlfriend and get convicted for it, you cannot buy a gun.  That's the law passed by Congress back in 1996 as part of an update to the 1968 Gun Control Act that extended the general ban keeping felons from owning guns to those who have committed misdemeanor domestic violence or a misdemeanor assault against a person they are in a relationship with.  A challenge was before the Supreme Court saying that the law really required the offense to specifically be a domestic violence offense, one identified as such, and couldn't apply to garden variety assault, even if it was against your wife, your husband or your significant other.  The Supreme Court denied the challenge (United States v. Hayes) in an opinion relying a lot on proper reading of legislation and the technicalities of doing so--it's not an opinion that sings, one that eloquently defends rights or protects civil liberties.  But it's an important decision--folks who are abusive to their spouses or significant others shouldn't have access to guns that can up the level of terror in their abuse.  The Washington Post has more of an analysis here:  Justices Uphold Ban on Guns for Abusers.

In a week when Justice Ginsburg returned to the bench after surgery two weeks ago and made a glorious entrance at Pres. Obama's speech to the Joint Session last night, it was fitting that her opinion in this case would be released.

Women in Bikinis=Objects (2X Updated)

National Geographic News is reporting a study that shows when men are shown images of women in bikinis, the portions of the brain associated with tool use lights up and in some men there is no reaction in the part of the brain associated with viewing another person.  It was a limited study with only 21 subjects.  Here's what the story says, Bikinis Make Men See Women as Objects, Scans Confirm:

Brain scans revealed that when men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with tool use lights up.

Men were also more likely to associate images of sexualized women with first-person action verbs such as "I push, I grasp, I handle," said lead researcher Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University.

And in a "shocking" finding, Fiske noted, some of the men studied showed no activity in the part of the brain that usually responds when a person ponders another's intentions.

What does this mean?  Well, you know me, I'm not a scientist but I'm not too shy to post my opinion.  First, I don't think this means that men's brains are hardwired to see women this way.  As the blurb above notes, the reactions in the men were not consistent and some were more extreme than others.  I think this tells us two things--men aren't destined to have an objectified view of women and education can mitigate the more extreme objectification (the men in the study with the most sexist views had the most extreme reactions).  Just as socialization of gender roles can affect the way we perceive what others can do and what we can achieve ourselves, socialization can affect the way our brains perceive others.  Granted, there's a whole lot of socialization that turns bikini-clad women into objects to be overcome, but I think that though this study is kind of depressing, it doesn't describe the world as it has to be. 

I'd like to see the study replicated across cultures to see if there are differences of degree in different cultures.

UPDATE:  Feministing commented on this and has a bunch of comments here, New Research on Women's Objectification Ain't So Simple:

If you read the whole piece, you can see that the researchers seem to have good intentions. But while they're acknowledging the oversexualization of women in American culture, suggesting that men are hardwired to objectify women is really dangerous, and for obvious reasons. Simply taking naked women out of the picture (figuratively and literally) is not going to resolve the problem, and implying that "men can't help it" will just be used to contribute to the same sexist customs and rape culture that we're fighting against.

Sure, "sexy images" of women may be one trigger that results in our objectification. But the hand behind that trigger is what should really be looked at here. It's not what's found in men's heads, but what's being ingrained into them.

Update Part Deux:  I've been sitting on this really cool New York Times article that talks about studies of women's sexuality for several weeks now and just never quite found a way I wanted to work it in.  From some emails and what-not, I think now is the time to pull it out and I'm going to feature a quote that Cindy pulled from it.  So, thanks to K for the original heads-up and thanks to Cindy for bringing it up again, What Do Women Want? (it's a wicked long article but the bits that I've read closely have been very interesting):

"During that time, she has followed the erotic attractions of nearly 100 young women who, at the start of her work, identified themselves as either lesbian or bisexual or refused a label. From her analysis of the many shifts they made between sexual identities and from their detailed descriptions of their erotic lives, Diamond argues that for her participants, and quite possibly for women on the whole, desire is malleable, that it cannot be captured by asking women to categorize their attractions at any single point, that to do so is to apply a male paradigm of more fixed sexual orientation. Among the women in her group who called themselves lesbian, to take one bit of the evidence she assembles to back her ideas, just one-third reported attraction solely to women as her research unfolded. And with the other two-thirds, the explanation for their periodic attraction to men was not a cultural pressure to conform but rather a genuine desire."

Only One out of Three Stalkers are Reported

I focus on the effects of women being stalked by men more because the consequences are generally greater and because of my broader interest in the problems associated with violence against women.  Though this is breaking down to some extent, we continue to have a cultural perception that women should be more passive and "nicer" than men.  As long as this is part of our cultural heritage, women will continue to be more vulnerable ta acts of violence and more plagued by internal questions of whether it's okay to fight back when attacked or when their boundaries are violated.  For more information, check out Mona Lisa's Sword or if you're in the Austin area, Sun Dragon Martial Arts and Self Defense.

A new Justice Department study, Stalking Victimization in the United States, is out showing that only one out of three stalkers are reported by their targets, a statistic that is in line with similar though more extreme trends when it comes to sexual assault.  According to a New York Times article on the study, Though Many are Stalked, Few Report It: 

Experts say only a small number of stalking incidents reach the courts because cases are often difficult to compile. There is often no clear physical evidence linking a stalker to the victim.

In the Justice Department study, the most common reasons for respondents’ not telling the police they were being stalked was that they felt it was a personal matter or they did not think the police would think it was important.

Rape as a Recruiting Tool

Iraqi security forces detained a woman who is allegedly the key recruiter of female suicide bombers in Iraq.  There's plenty that is horrifying about this story but I think the worst is her unconfirmed claim that they used organized rape as a tool in recruiting bombers.  Militants would take a woman and rape her and then the recruiter would approach the woman and try to convince her that becoming a suicide bomber was her only way to redeem herself from the shame of being raped.  I believe I read this two word description elsewhere but it absolutely fits:  pure evil.  Iraq's 'Female Bomb Recruiter':

In an apparent video confession, the middle-aged woman described how she identified potential bombers, helped supply them with explosives and led them to their targets.

She also explained, in a separate interview with the Associated Press, how insurgents used rape as a tool, with the "shamed" women persuaded to redeem themselves through suicide attacks.

Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome?

I have two distinct disadvantages in this discussion--I'm not a woman and I'm not a fundamentalist.  Being a man, there's much I don't directly understand about Battered Woman Syndrome and the debates over whether it's "real" or not.  But I can look at statistics and read women's stories and try to get some understanding.  Not being a fundamentalist any longer, I don't know what they are all teaching these days.  I try to be fair on both of these fronts but I welcome comments to correct me when I'm factually wrong.  Eh, or even when you think I'm just plain wrong regardless of the facts.

I ran across an article the other morning entitled Biblical Batter Wife Syndrome:  Christian Women and Domestic Violence that I want to talk about a little bit and encourage people to read, think about and if you feel so inclined, comment about here.  It's a four page article on AlterNet that looks at how the theological understanding that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands affects some women's ability to break away from an abusive marriage.  Earlier today I posted an article that I wrote during law school looking at the way that women's socialized gender roles can create disadvantages for them in the legal system and though I didn't specifically look at the role religious beliefs play in the socializing process, there can definitely be a strong effect. I'm going to try to meld the two into one post here, using some of my thoughts and results of research from my paper as a framework for thinking about the AlterNet piece.