After a year working in a women’s shelter I think my biggest issue with the anti-domestic violence movement as it stands is: All these models and programs are kind of built around the assumption that everyone involved knows how to have happy, healthy, respectful relationships, and resolve conflicts peacefully, and they just… choose not to, for some weird reason.
Whereas my lived experience was that healthy relationships, problem-solving, and conflict management are skills that a lot of people never learn during critical developmental periods in childhood, and if we want to solve the problem, we have to get involved in the intensive work to teaching them to adults.
And in my opinion, this view doesn’t let abusers off the hook. It’s the opposite.
We used to assume that abusers could behave decently if they wanted, but just chose not to, so if we yelled at them enough, or if they just wanted to hard enough, they would. (Or at least, that’s what abuser intervention looked like under the Duluth model)
Whereas… at the shelter, I more than once found myself saying, “I don’t think he’s actually capable of being the man you want him to be. And if he decided tomorrow that he was going to change, it would take years. You can’t make your decisions for your immediate future based on what might happen when your baby is in grade school. You have to go off what he’s like now.”
When someone tells me that the person hurting to doesn’t mean to hurt them, they just can’t help it, that… is even more of a reason for them to cut the connection, in my opinion. Because if they’re doing it involuntarily, they don’t know what it is or how to stop.
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just moving along like everyone else 