NOMAS members have been actively engaged in working on these issues for more than twenty years, and have developed numerous presentations, articles, institutes, workshops, and other educational and professional initiatives. Several of the major elements of NOMAS' analysis of this subject are briefly outlined below.

"Domestic Violence" as part of the broader issue of "Domestic Abuse"
The horrific physical violence that so many men continue to inflict on their wives or woman partners is truly astonishing, shocking, and galvanizing: slaps, punches, choking, severe shaking, being thrown against walls or down stairs, arms twisted or broken, burns, stabbings, gunshots, and innumerable other forms of physical injury. Yet there has been a growing realization, among those who work with and who listen to women who are abused, that these physically violent assaults are only a part and manifestation of a broader issue. Consider the following common examples:

 

• A man repeatedly humiliates his woman partner, calls her names, puts her down, tries to make her feel guilty or crazy and/or bad about herself
• A man repeatedly intimidates his partner, makes her afraid with menacing looks and gestures, destroys her property, abuses pets, smashes things in the house, displays weapons
• A man seeks to isolate his partner, controls who she sees and talks to (including her parents and family), what she reads, where she goes, and all her outside involvements
• A man prevents his partner from getting or keeping a job, makes her ask him for money, gives her a small allowance, takes money away from her, and/or does not let her know about or have access to family income and assets
• A man threatens to take his partner’s children away from her, tries to make her feel guilty about her children, uses the children to relay hostile messages, and/or uses child visitation as a way to harass her
• A man demands "male privilege," treats his partner like a servant, tells her what he considers to be women's roles and men's roles, and demands to be the "master of the castle"
• A man threatens to hurt his partner or her children, threatens to commit suicide, threatens to report her to social services or to immigration authorities or to police, threatens to leave her, or threatens her in other ways
• A man denies that he has ever abused his partner, minimizes his abusiveness, says that it did not happen, or says that she caused it herself

Notice that in none of these instances is a man inflicting actual "physical violence" per se on a woman. Nonetheless, the effect on her and on her life may be identical to, or in some cases even more serious, than that produced by his physical violence.

The implicit goal of all the above behaviors can best be described as a man seeking to control and dominate his partner. While physical violence may obviously be used to gain control and domination, the "non-violent domination" tactics described above may be equally, or at times even more devastating, and achieve the same end. For these reasons, it is important to recognize that "domestic violence" is one part and manifestation of a broader phenomenon of men seeking to unjustly control and dominate one's domestic partner, a pattern which can best be termed "domestic abuse."

There are some practical and policy implications of adopting this broader perspective. Violence per se remains central to our focus, but is not seen as the only manifestation. Social science research approaches that typically amount to "counting the hits" need to be rethought and reformulated. Statistics now based only on "hits" should similarly be broadened in scope. Some elements of popular, traditional, patriarchal culture ("One of these days, Pow, right in the kisser!" Jackie Gleason used to growl at his TV wife in the 50's) need to be recognized as part of the pattern of dominance-seeking of one's partner that are Domestic Abuse.

Not a Two-Way street: Men are NOT the victims of what is meant by Domestic Violence and Abuse
Just as some mental problems are more prevalent among women (e.g. depression) or men (e.g. alcoholism); many crimes are very, very highly correlated with gender. Men commit near 100% of forcible rapes, 90% of murders, etc. It is a simple fact that men are usually larger and physically stronger than their female partners. It is true that men are far more often raised to enjoy and practice fighting, boxing and wrestling skills. Far more significantly, we live in a world where men globally have dominated women, physically, politically and economically, a stubbornly-held patriarchal domination which is deeply rooted in history and pre-history. So it is hardly surprising that men are the perpetrators of controlling or violent partner abuse.

But there is an adage in journalism that "When a dog bites a man, that's not News; but when a man bites a dog, that's News!" So perhaps on that impulse, the national press has always had a seeming fascination with the lurid possibility of "battered husbands" and frequently run articles with quotes and citations suggesting that this is a real but hidden problem. Many of these originate from so-called "Men's Rights" groups, which proclaim that there are just as many battered husbands as battered wives. (The problem is not seen they say because the battered husbands are always just too embarrassed to tell anyone. As if women aren’t!)

Incredibly, in response to these claims, some funding for battered women's programs has been reduced, on the grounds that equal funding should go to battered men. More indirectly, some authors and agencies and legislators have sought to linguistically de-gender the crime, describe it in phrases like "family violence," and obfuscate the reality that this is a crime that men commit against women. (Domestic abuse among Lesbian and Gay male couples does also occur of course.)

Are there instances in which men are physically dominated and assaulted by their female partners? This does occur, often when a man has become weakened by a factor such as illness, injury, or old age. Even in these circumstances abuse by a woman is unusual and when it does occur, it is most often motivated by self defense, fighting back and other protections. Even in these instances, the language “battered husbands” is not useful especially in light of the thousands and even millions of women known to have suffered or been murdered at the hands of a male abuser.

Domestic Abuse is Not a "Mental Health Issue"
People who burn down buildings, or set off bombs, or murder other people, may arguably have mental "problems," and no doubt "need help," but society does not view serious crimes as primarily "mental health" issues; it addresses them with prison terms, not with counseling groups or psychotherapy.

Domestic abuse and even violence however have long been viewed more ambivalently by western society. Male physical dominance of women has been a feature of patriarchy since ancient times, was effectively legal in earlier days in Britain (the "rule of thumb") and the U.S., and is even now widely tolerated, covered-up and excused in popular culture, whatever the law may now say. Thus, when confronted in recent years by the growing reality that there are a great many men beating and assaulting their wives or girlfriends, society has been somewhat unsure of what official legal response to make, of who to turn to for expertise, of how to combat the problem. The over-taxed prison system did not seem equipped to take on a huge number of offending men (many of them white and affluent); police on the beat never liked to get involved; and judges felt uneasy at sentencing men to real penalties for "crimes" that so many men viewed as really no big crime at all. In recent years mental health professionals have increasingly been gaining ascendance in the competition for funding and leadership roles, to respond to domestic violence. Programs proclaimed to be "for batterers," offering group therapy, "anger management" techniques, "time-out" training, personality diagnostics, etc. and staffed by credentialed therapists, have appeared in hundreds of communities across the country. Local judges are increasingly being persuaded to require men to attend these programs, as an alternative to jail. Despite the lack of any convincing empirical evidence that such programs have ever actually in fact reduced the prevalence of Domestic Violence, mental-health-based programs are now increasingly dominating the official domestic violence landscape. Characteristically, these programs have no contact with the local Battered Women's programs, or with formerly battered women or their advocates.

While important conceptually, and important in how we speak and write about Domestic Violence, the recognition that this is fundamentally a crime and not a mental health issue will also have social, legal, career, and economic reverberations. One specific and important policy implication is described below.

Programs or Groups for Batterers can be more Harmful than Beneficial
Even Groups for Batterers run by private or social service agencies that are not mainly mental health staffed and oriented are unlikely to have any real effect on the abuse, and may in some ways make it worse for the abused woman.

When an abusive man is required by a Judge to attend a weekly local group "for batterers" for six months or a year, his partner and everyone who knows the situation is likely to breath a "Whew!" of relief, and think that now he is "getting the help he needs." It is a sad reality that, (self-serving claims and anecdotal stories to the contrary), there is no solid empirical evidence that any such groups have in fact ever significantly reduced or even altered the incidence of violence. Men attending these programs have severely battered and even murdered their female partners, while attending and seemingly doing "fine" in the weekly group. So a false and misleading hope is given, and because he is now "getting help,” some women may be persuaded to remain with a man who is actually a great danger to them. In addition, many of these programs have "partner contact" policies, whereby they seek information by phone or mail from the battered partner ("to see if he's still hitting"). Women who reported that their partner was still being abusive have often been brutalized, "for getting [him] in trouble."

There is probably a valid role for weekly supervised groups for men who have abused their partners, but that role is not as a substitute for the criminal justice system. It is instructive to look at the example of the societal response to the crime of driving an automobile while intoxicated (DWI). When a motorist is found guilty of drunk driving, a wide range of social and legal penalties are in place. Depending on the number and egregiousness of the offences, the penalties include small fines, medium fines, gigantic fines, loss of driving rights, confiscation of the car, prison time, and public shame and condemnation. And also, in some communities, there are required "DWI classes," which offenders are required to attend for a period, as part of their punishment, before being allowed to drive again. In these classes, offenders are taught highway safety, the effects of alcohol on the brain, drunk-driving statistics, and so forth. The classes probably serve a useful function, as a small part of a stern system-wide response to the crime of DWI; but no one would ever expect that by itself, without all the more serious penalties and policies, a weekly class would solve the problem of DWI.

It is similarly outlandish to imagine that attending a weekly class said to be designed "for batterers" will, by itself, have any significant effect on the behavior of men who have been accustomed to dominating, controlling, and abusing their partners. Such classes may be useful, but only when part of a coordinated, system-wide legal and social response to the crime of Domestic Abuse, including the possibility of real prison time.

An especially important aspect of an effective social response is probably the element of condemnation and shame that a really "serious" crime evokes, and the withdrawal of all social support for cultural norms and traditions that might justify it. Drinking-and-driving has had a long colorful history, and there were once countless jokes (Dean Martin, Red Skelton) and popular songs about driving drunk. But when society decided to get serious about combating DWI, those jokes and songs became unfashionable, and gradually disappeared from public airwaves. When society is truly serious about the huge tragedy of Domestic Abuse, all the aspects of popular culture that implicitly approve and encourage male dominance of women, from beer commercials to misogynistic song lyrics to mail-order brides, must also be systematically challenged.

NOMAS Resources
The perspectives summarized above are not unique to NOMAS, and are shared among a large number of battered women's advocates and feminist women leaders and writers across the U.S. and the world. One collaborative effort among domestic violence leaders has sought an alternative social policy, one that puts the safety of women central at all times, that avoids "psychologizing" about batterers' inner motives and problems, that treats what they have done as a crime, with legal and other sanctions from the broader community, the police and the courts. Since this realistic feminist approach has now been officially adopted and endorsed by the State government of New York, including progressive Republican Governor George Pataki, it is generally now being called "the New York Model."
NOMAS has officially adopted and endorses as social policy the New York Model for Batterer Programs. Many details of the New York Model are now available on the web site: www.nymbp.com