The Wifebeater's Wife

Battered women: Sex roles and clinical issues.

“…Early reports by mental health professionals looked toward an intrapsychic psychopathology model as the most likely explanation for maintenance of these violent relationships. The report by Snell, Rosenwald, and Robey (1964) was most typical. They diagnosed battered women as masochistic, frigid, hostile, and provocative.…”

Sex Role Inequality and Spouse Abuse H. Saville Mobile Community Information Service Sydney P. Wilkinson Sydney C. O'Donnell Department of Education Macquarie University New South Wales I. Colley Department of Environment and Planning New South Wales Government

“…in Domestic Violence Snell (1964) and Scott (1974) suggest that women who are battered are predisposed to this treatment largely because of ill-treatment in childhood. In Australia, Price and Armstrong (1978) examined 30 battered women and compared certain of their personal characteristics to those of 30 control subjects.…”

Mapping the Language of Male Partner Violence: An Historical Examination of Power, Meaning, and Ambivalence

“…Feminist scholarship concerning male partner violence prevention also emerged at this time, with a growing number of feminist researchers vocalizing a critical gendered discourse in addressing the problem (Dobash & Dobash, 1979;Pagelow, 1981;Schechter, 1982;Yllo, 1988). As discussed previously, the authorities of the 1930s-1960s were influenced by misogynistic research conducted within medical and psychology disciplines (Faulk, 1974;Lion, 1977;Shainess, 1977;Snell, Rosenwald & Robey, 1964). Feminist researchers, therefore, tasked themselves to confront and dispel the layers of misogyny that founded these "myths" (see Pagelow, 1981).…”

“…The ways in which male partner violence has been understood and talked about have endured a complex history, layered in contradictory and confusing discourses (e.g., Amussen, 1994 ; Dobash & Dobash, 1992 ; Faulk, 1974 ; Gordon, 1988 ; Lentz, 1999 ; Lion, 1977 ; Moore, 2002 ; Peterson del Mar, 1996 ; Pleck, 1983 ; Schechter, 1982 ; Sewell, 1989 ; Snell et al, 1964 ). More often than not, misogynistic and gender-neutralizing understandings of this form of violence have dominated language.…”

“…Not only confined to the field of social services, this woman-blaming discourse became widespread across other fields of action. As Schechter (1982 , p. 27) remarks, “the police, courts, hospitals, and social service agencies cooperated, although not conspiratorially, in defining the abuser's behavior as legitimate or insignificant and the victim's behavior as crazy, provocative, or reformable.” This new way of making sense of male partner violence was particularly manufactured by psychiatrists and psychologists who authored a range of journal articles on the matter (see Faulk, 1974 ; Lion, 1977 ; Shainess, 1977 ; Snell et al, 1964 ). These medical professionals made up a new dominant field of medicine that now claimed authority on issues relating to the family.…”