LETTERS
Editors: Of all the ways that one might contribute to public discussion on violence against women, Jean Bethke Elshtain's review in the Winter 1985 Dissent of Susan Schechter's book, Women and...
...To characterize all counseling and therapy as "behavior modification," which may be Elshtain's real point, is grossly misleading...
...Arendt is not talking about "instincts"—indeed, she rejects the whole notion of an instinct-driven creature where hu527 man beings are concerned...
...The research on wife-beating does not support such a safe, stereotypic compartmentalization, out of the mainstream of what is "intrinsic" to family life...
...q To Our Contributors • When sending manuscripts, please make sure that you do not send your only copy...
...Schechter should read Arendt on the meanings of speech, action, thought, and the public world...
...I am familiar with the writings of Elshtain, and am surprised that anyone would describe her as antifeminist, arrogant, accuse her of missing relevant points, or of trying "to discredit a political perspective by appearing to adhere to it...
...And please also be sure to enclose a stamped, selfaddressed envelope...
...2...
...The usual role expectations and unconsciously operating 'checks and balances,' the playing off of 'rights' and 'prerogatives' cannot be so easily wheeled into place...
...What I said, quite straightforwardly, was that wife-beating is not a universal pregiven of family life, first, and second, that particular constellations of social circumstance put some relations at far greater risk than others...
...This study substantiates what feminists have been saying all along about the prevalence of violence against women, something that Elshtain has refused to accept...
...3) " . There is a built-in uncertainty, by definition, in homosexual liaisons...
...Schechter's analysis demands that "family privacy" and "family stability" be recognized as potentially deadly concerns for women and children...
...The most methodological, rigorous study of rape in the United States is Diana E. H. Russell's Rape in Marriage (New York: Macmillan, 1982...
...He picks out pieces of my essay and draws conclusions from these fragments that I do not draw...
...People who share households need social supports such as public child care, public assistance, communitybased care for the elderly, socialized health care, and quality schools...
...Schechter slides past the problem of female violence by asserting that many 'women have no alternative but to kill a spouse' in self-defense...
...And to suggest, as Elshtain does, that Schechter is advocating "behavior modification" for batterers is inaccurate...
...Rather, she is concerned that in our rush to eliminate violent behavior we may also damage our capacity for rage at injustice...
...What is so emasculating about challenging, in a weekly group setting, batterers' justifications for their actions...
...I further add Arendt's observations on what it means to be a citizen and the importance of the public realm: the significance of being seen and heard by others comes from the fact that we all see and hear from a different position in life, "this is the meaning of public life...
...II Editors: "Politics and the Battered Woman," Jean Bethke Elshtain's review of Susan Schechter's book Women and Male Violence, systematically distorts Schechter's 526 analysis of male violence against women...
...I only hope that others will accept Schechter's challenge and will confront the issue of violence against women more responsibly...
...Presumably, "resonating" to the New Right means one embraces the agenda of the New Right, or tries to usurp their turf using their polemics, or in some other way passes oneself off as a left-wing sheep when one is really a right-wing wolf...
...JAMES PTACEK Cambridge, Mass...
...Shouldn't this be the ground of debate rather than pitching those with whom one disagrees into the arms of Phyllis Schlafly...
...Elshtain asserts four concerns that reflect her commitment to idealized "stable" homes as the answer to male violence: (1) " . . . violence may well be a major symptom of familial breakups at a time of widespread social dislocation rather than a constant feature of secure relationships in stable settings...
...Elshtain also adopts a puzzling stance on the issue of counseling for wife-beaters...
...And I raise them in part because Schechter tells the story of how the nurturing contexts offered by battered women's shelters often turned into something else once they became bureaucratized as state agencies entered in full force...
...If the problem is one of the destabilized family, then make these families more stable...
...Having been thus politically relocated, it scarcely matters what one in fact has said...
...To reduce the complexity of wife-battering to "instincts"— to primitive rage, or impulsivity, or an angercontrol problem, as some popular analyses would have it—is to deny that the batterer acts willfully, that the violence is intentional and goal-oriented...
...Obviously, the nature of violence against women varies among different societies, and the prevalence of wifebeating may change over different historical periods...
...And does she really see counseling for batterers as dehumanizing or emasculating...
...Schechter posits male violence as a strategy to maintain patriarchy...
...Let us not forget that wife-beating was legal in the United States up until the 1870s...
...In a chilling way, rage that erupts into violence may aim for clarity on this question...
...4...
...From the New Right and profamily advocates on the left, attempts to further privatize family violence and strengthen families in which women and children are at risk reflect an antiwoman and life-threatening public policy...
...q JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN Replies James Ptacek employs a common rhetorical device, used when the aim is not so much to challenge the arguments of another as to call into question her political good faith...
...Whose interests are served when feminists and the left cannot give one another space for honest disagreements and discussion about major social problems...
...Schechter's book demonstrates the battered women's movement as a social movement designed to accomplish both ends—to empower women who opt to leave, and to support even those who stay and endure male violence...
...Why would we not find an increase of women initiating violence against men as marriages and heterosexual relations near an end...
...What is so dehumanizing about holding batterers responsible for their violence...
...Elshtain, resonating to the New Right in her views of the family, sees male violence against women as a desperate response to the condition of the crumbling and privatized family system...
...As Elshtain so eloquently wrote (in Public Man, Private Woman), if speech is the way we come to know ourselves, reveal ourselves to others, express our identities, then to deny or repress them closes possibilities for that "transformative political discourse...
...a likely or possible outcome of family privatization given the breakdown of social constraints and supports for families...
...but can one really deny the remarkable continuity of this form of violence throughout much of Eastern and Western civilization...
...One really must avoid to be what Rabelais feared, the agelaste, a person who does not laugh, who is convinced that the Truth is obvious and that all people think the same thing...
...If domestic violence were the result of unstable relationships, and if patriarchy were an irrelevant social condition or an excuse generated by feminists to justify their anger, why, in relationships that seem "stable" by all traditional definitions and in which women are desperately dependent on men economically and emotionally, does violence occur at such extraordinary rates...
...battering] constitutes . . . not an intrinsic feature of family life but...
...Why do we find a greater incidence of male violence when women are reclaiming some power, for instance, through pregnancy, or return to work or school...
...Quoting Hannah Arendt, she states that "our capacity for rage and violence is part of a complex repertoire of `human emotions, and to cure man of them would mean nothing less than to dehumanize or emasculate him.' " Can Elshtain seriously characterize wife-beating as instinctual behavior...
...For example: (1) He claims that I seem "to want to . . . allege" that wife-beating occurs "only" under circumstances of social isolation...
...But a nurturing social context must support individuals who wish to leave oppressive arrangements as well as those who wish to stay...
...Russell's figures are between 7 and 13 times higher than official federal figures (depending on whether one compares them with National Crime Survey or Uniform Crime Report data...
...Of the 644 who had ever been married, 14 percent reported at least one rape or attempted rape by their husbands...
...I am quoting data from pp...
...This reality compels us to think about the fact that marriage makes a relationship more public, hence more accountable...
...There is a huge discrepancy between male- vs...
...Elshtain misrepresents the prevalence of wife-beating by associating it solely with exceptional social circumstances...
...But when Schechter says that women "have no alternative but to kill a spouse in self-defense," she slides past many important questions concerning personal violence—by whom, when, under what circumstances—preferring to stick with a rigid male/female bifurcation...
...One brief, final note: with Fine I am all for nurturing social contexts...
...The most interesting portion of Michelle Fine's letter occurs in her second sentence...
...Herein lies the value of that lively interchange between Elshtain and Schechter...
...Why is it necessary to resort to such tedious tactics...
...Ptacek goes on to misunderstand and twist Arendt's argument completely...
...But I do not want to allege anything of the sort...
...Editors: Of all the ways that one might contribute to public discussion on violence against women, Jean Bethke Elshtain's review in the Winter 1985 Dissent of Susan Schechter's book, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women's Movement, is most peculiar...
...MICHELLE FINE Philadelphia, Pa...
...When she wrote On Violence in 1969, we had not yet entered the era of "inclusive language...
...On the contrary, most researchers claim that violence against wives is more common than is generally acknowledged...
...She claims that I am "resonating to the New Right" in my views on the family and violence, thus casting an ideological pall over my argument from the outset...
...We know that the phenomenon of the battered woman is not a pregiven of social life," Elshtain asserts...
...q Pro-Elshtain Editors: I applaud the vigorous exchange between Elshtain and Schechter...
...Paradoxically, when Ptacek argues against Arendt's defense of righteous rage, he undercuts his own stated support of a woman's right to self-defense up to and including the murder of a violent spouse...
...Elshtain's notion that violence is an anomalous response to domestic instability resonates to a dangerous position of the New Right...
...She fails to acknowledge that equalization of rates of interpersonal violence when weapons are used challenges her theory of why violence and who is violent...
...As a researcher on wife-beating and one who is involved in counseling batterers, I am aware of no program that uses "behavior modification" as a technique, in the sense of Skinnerian operant conditioning...
...For Arendt's use of the term "man" is generic...
...female-initiated violence, repeated violence, and inflicted pain, injury, and murder...
...Contrary to what Schechter may think, she and Elshtain do share a vision...
...If there is now an abuse with counseling, it is that it is used as a moral sop by a society that refuses to treat wife-beating as a crime...
...2) I nowhere criticize Susan Schechter for the selfdefense argument made by some women in cases of spouse murder...
...Yet there are numerous studies of this phenomenon, widely available, whose findings point consistently to Schechter's explanation: Wives who kill their husbands are often battered women who act in self-defense...
...Far from providing universal answers, as Elshtain charges, Schechter lays out questions that demand further attention...
...q 528...
...Elshtain's response is to continue to deny the centrality of violence to the private lives of women...
...In the best tradition of Hannah Arendt, Elshtain questions and examines...
...But the contested issue is the nature of court-"mandated counseling," under whose terms, with what therapeutic imprimatur, to what explicit or implicit ends...
...We are not looking at an intrinsic feature of family life," Elshtain concludes at one point...
...Elshtain is thorough and rigorous...
...the public realm, the polis, is the arena for speech and action...
...Milan Kundera's speech upon receiving a literary prize (the translation was printed in the New York Review of Books, June 13, 1985) observed that " . . . it is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual...
...Drawing from a random sample of 930 women, Russell found that 44 percent reported at least one completed or attempted rape...
...Here she criticizes Schechter for employing self-defense as an explanation for why wife-husband homicide occurs nearly as frequently as husband-wife homicide...
...She seems to want to marginalize wife-beating, to allege that it occurs "only" under circumstances of social isolation...
...Quite the contrary...
...She portrays such counseling as an example of using science "to manipulate and control our 'instincts' in the interest of social amity...
...men enter and drop out of the program at their own initiative...
...Susan Schechter's book presents that rare bridge between grass-roots political activism and social theory...
...I put her up there with John Schaar and Sheldon Wolin, a stature all the more pleasing as Elshtain's is a woman's voice in a field of thought long dominated by men...
...One senses an evasion here...
...MARIA KALLAI San Diego, California • This discussion is now concluded...
...3) The question of treatment for offenders is complex...
...I urge Schechter to read Chapter Six of this book...
...Social intervention designed to strengthen the family at the expense of its least powerful members— women and children—is a sacrifice we have made in this culture far too long...
...Currently, most counseling for wife-beaters is voluntary...
...The persistence and prevalence of male-initiated intimate violence suggests that such abuse is far more commonplace than Elshtain is willing to admit...
...But thinking about such contexts immediately raises important questions concerning welfarism, state bureaucracies, care coupled with control, all those issues Fine ignores but I raise...
...The issue of murder between husbands and wives is another example of Elshtain's misrepresentation...
...Then, rather than feel she was mercilessly attacked, she would appreciate Elshtain's criticisms, view Elshtain as one who provokes, incites one to think and to challenge one's own presumptions...
...This is drastically overstated...
...was this legal entitlement to beat women reserved only for men in isolated or unstable settings...
...He also ignores the fact that much "wife"-beating takes place among unmarried couples...
...EDS...
...Counseling is no doubt helpful and important for a whole range of problems...
...her knowledge (and understanding) of political theory, its relation to feminist political theory in particular, and the implications for thought and action, makes a significant contribution to the field of political inquiry...
...57 and 64...
...Even the court-mandated programs with which I am familiar screen potential participants in order to select those who seem most willing to take the group-counseling process seriously...
...She invites the reader to explore the many issues raised by a decade of impressive feminist organizing...
Vol. 32 • September 1985 • No. 4
