1st Edition

Backs Against the Wall Battered Women's Resistance Strategies

Edited By Kathy A McCloskey, Marilyn H. Sitaker Copyright 2009
    224 Pages
    by Routledge

    224 Pages
    by Routledge

    Backs Against the Wall: Battered Women’s Resistance Strategies tackles several controversial aspects involved with intimate partner violence (IPV)—namely the approaches many victims use when resisting their oppressors. This sensitive and sensible feminist perspective concerning battered women's use of different resistance strategies, and the reasons why they use them, also focuses on ways to support victims through intervention and prevention strategies. Leading experts provide current research, revealing viewpoints, and convincing assertions about the victims of IPV.

    This book powerfully refutes the sweeping assertions made by today’s antifeminist-based mindset that women are as violent as men in cases of IPV perpetration. This insightful source provides strong evidence of the different resistance strategies that battered women use in response to multiple oppressions, including IPV, in the case against the gender parity argument—that may very well be politically motivated. The text provides extensive references and several figures and tables to clearly present data.

    This book is a valuable resource for activists, educators, students, health providers, justice system workers, advocates, and researchers.

    This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma.

    1 Introduction and Overview to Special Issue  Kathy A. McCloskey and Marilyn Sitaker

    VICTIM ARRESTS

    2 Are Half of all IPV Perpetrators Women? Putting Context Back into the Intimate Partner Violence Research Field  Kathy A. McCloskey

    3 Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: Arrest Rates Across Recent Studies  Mekha Rajan and Kathy A. McCloskey

    4 Why Do Police Arrest Victims of Domestic Violence? The Need for Comprehensive Training and Investigative Protocols  Anne O’Dell

    5 Victim-Defendants in Mandated Treatment: An Ethical Quandary  Donna Gardner

    6 “Sorry, We Have to Take You In”: Black Battered Women Arrested for Intimate Partner Violence  Carolyn M. West

    CULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

    7 Non-Violent Survival Strategies in the Face of Intimate Partner Violence and Economic Discrimination  Dana-Ain Davis

    8 Using the Theory of Gender and Power to Examine Experiences of Partner Violence, Sexual Negotiation, and Risk of HIV/AIDS among Economically Disadvantaged Women in Southern India  Subadra Panchanadeswaran, Sethulakshmi C. Johnson , Vivian F. Go, A. K. Srikrishnan, Sudha Sivaram, Suniti Solomon, Margaret E. Bentley, and David Celentano

    9 The Ecology of Intimate Partner Violence: Theorized Impacts on Women’s Use of Violence  Marilyn Sitaker

    Biography

    Kathy A. McCloskey is Associate Professor at the University of Hartford, Graduate Institute of Professional Psychology in Hartford, CT. Her specialties include domestic violence, trauma, forensic populations, and the training of doctoral-level clinical psychologists.

    Marilyn Sitaker, MPH, is Section Epidemiologist at the Washington State Department of Health in Olympia, WA, where she is responsible for surveillance and evaluation of policy and environmental interventions to reduce the prevalence of obesity and obesity-related chronic diseases.

    "Overall, this collection is rife with up-to-date references as well as comprehensive and careful reviews of IPV literature that make the text a valuable resource and a captivating, thought-provoking read for scholars and students alike."

    Lindsay M. Orchowski, Psychology of Women Quarterly