This article reviews the background, introduction and critical response to new criminal offenses of coercive control in England/Wales and Scotland. How the new Scottish offense is implemented will determine whether it can overcome the shortcomings of the English law. Next, we review new evidence on four dimensions of coercive control: the relationship between 'control' and violence;' coercive control in same sex couples; measuring coercive control; and children's experience of coercive control. Coercive control is not a type of violence. Indeed, level of control predicts range of negative outcomes heretofore associated with physical abuse, including post-separation violence and sexual assault; important differences in coercive control In December 2009, VAW published a Special Issue 'Focusing on Evan Stark's Coercive Control" Since then, advocacy-driven public law making based on coercive control and the critical response has spun far ahead of evidence-based research building or testing the model. This article describes this process, considers the implications of recent research for conceptualizing and measuring the construct and applies coercive control to new research on violence in same sex couples and the coercive control of children. Critical scrutiny of the ways in which the law responds to partner abuse continues to animate academic, legislative and policy debate internationally (
The critical appraisals of Coercive Control focus largely on what my analysis implies for intervention, a matter to which the book devotes only limited space. In this reply, I reiterate core concepts in the book and acknowledge that much more work is needed to translate the realities of coercive control into practical legal and advocacy strategies. I review how coercive control differs from partner assaults and so why it merits a distinct response; the extent to which coercive control targets gender identity; the wisdom of complementing the focus on violence with an emphasis on male domination, sexual inequality and personal liberty; what this implies for shelters and the law; why sexual inequality differentiates coercive control from female partner abuse of men; how sexual equality can be both cause and antidote for coercive control; why I think an affirmative concept of freedom is essential to grasp the human rights violations inflicted by coercive control; and what it means to "story" coercive control by integrating women into the larger liberty narrative on which our national identity rests.
This commentary revisits a core dilemma in "Controversies involving Gender and Intimate Partner Violence in the United States" by Langhinrichsen-Rohling (2010), how to reconcile gender parity in the use of force by partners with the gender asymmetry in the dynamics and effects of partner abuse. This dilemma is a byproduct of a domestic violence paradigm that confounds the normative use of violence in families and relationships and the types of partner assault and coercive control targeted by the advocacy movement. I argue that the dimensions of abuse victims present at points of service contradict the basic assumptions of the paradigm and outline an alternative model of coercive control that sets violent acts in their historical, experiential and political context.
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