Excerpts from a paper I wrote about Domestic Violence

Wife-battering is a term encompassing all women who are abused in one form or another. The word speaks truth about the growing evidence of violence is women's homes. Spousal abuse, on the other hand, is a term devised to create and "equal" arena for abuse. If men can abuse women, then surely women can abuse men. And society in its twisted quest to make things equal yet keep them unbalanced created the term spousal abuse. If women want equality, then equality in battering and politically correct terms will arise.

Women are subject to abuse regardless of race or class. Ann Jones (author of: Next Time, She'll be Dead) found a story about a woman called Janice: My husband shot me twice but was so drunk he missed me. I locked myself in the bathroom and crawled out the window. I ran through a field in knee-deep snow with no shoes on. The neighbors took me to the hospital. The next day I was admitted to the psych ward for anxiety (149). Her story continued with a psychiatrist declaring her as paranoid. He felt she had an "irrational fear" that someone was out to get her. She was prescribed Valium and was returned to her home. Women who are battered can not just leave their abusers.

There are two perspectives formed about battered women- the family violence perspective and the feminist perspective.

The family violence perspective brought to light the idea of the "battered husband syndrome." Feminist did not agree with the concept. They critized this syndrom for its failure to measure how much of women's violence was in self-defense or who was injured by the violence.

The feminist perspective disagrees with the family violence perspective. Believers in this idea do not feel that violence and abuse is equal between men and women. They find that men use violence as a way to control female partners.