"Violent Partners" offers better solutions to DV issues

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2008-06-03 14:09

Dr. Linda G Mills, a member of SAFE's Speaker's Bureau releases her new book "Violent Partners". From the book site:

'A radical new take on the crisis of intimate abuse, Violent Partners argues that as a culture we misunderstand the root causes and basic effects of abuse, and until that changes there is no hope of fixing the problem. Dr. Linda Mills challenges assumptions, tears down myths, and offer solutions, all the while telling riveting stories of couples who have conquered violence in their relationships. In Violent Partners, she describes several programs that hold promise for addressing intimate abuse, including two nationally known and groundbreaking treatment programs- Peacemaking Circles and Healing Circles.
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Linda G. Mills, J.D., Ph.D., is Founder of the Center on Violence and Recovery at New York University, where she is also a Professor and Senior Vice Provost.'

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Linda Mills cannot be accused of being a feminist propagandist like her sisters at NOW and AAUW, because she strives for credible social scientific research and does not constrain her thinking to the usual narrow feminist orthodoxy.

However, it is important to remember that Mills is a feminist, and makes no bones about where her roots lie.

This is the very first paragraph from "Violent Partners" -

"Women in every class of society have been discriminated against on the basis of their gender for most of human history. Yet we know that many women are extremely powerful in the lives of their families. This is one of the paradoxes at the heart of intimate violence. How do we recognize and address the victimization of women within the family without ignoring or minimizing their strength? At the same time, how do we empower women in ways that allow them to confront and transcend their victimization –rather than simply endure or deny it?"

Note the reliance on the classic feminist interpretations of victimhood, gender discrimination,empowerment,and misogyny.

I read the entire index of the book, and while it appears to contain a lot about couples counseling and the dynamics of intimate violence, there are no entries for "women as perpetrators of DV" or for "men."

It's not clear to me whether Mills is on to something radically new, or merely broadening a feminist mindset to account for social science research that disputes the "Evil Patriarchy" single cause explanation for DV.

Her new book is primarily about womens' experiences of intimate partner abuse, with little apparent examination of mens' experiences.

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Submitted by Roy on Wed, 2008-06-04 17:54