know what women really want out of sex, (2) women continue to be socialized simultaneously to guard our "reputations" yet encourage, indeed
want
, a sexually aggressive response, and (3) women submit to men's sexual advances only when we have been sufficiently "paid" with money, status, security, or a good time, then the possibility for misinterpretation, miscommunication, and forced sex among sexual partners will remain high.
99
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The battering of women is regarded as an especially complex case of coercion, as it often involves a combination of isolation, mental manipulation, and physical violence that succeeds in narrowing the victim's choices of action to those defined by the batterer. As in the pimp's seasoning of his prostitutes, the strategy of the woman batterer is to capture and attach his partner to him.
100
A battered woman is often made to think she cannot survive without her batterer's protection, yet his verbal and physical abuse tell her that she may be killed or abandoned if she displeases him. Her total enslavement requires that her own interests actually become the batterer's interests. Her enslavement is only partial when she regards doing whatever her batterer wants as the best means to her own survival. Her belief in her own responsibility for the abuse, her conviction that things will not get better, and the unpredictable nature of her violation often induce in her what I referred to earlier as a learned helplessness that paralyzes her into inaction.
101
As in rape, many women, particularly young women, often do not regard battering as coercive, since the violence against them signifies attention, affection, even love. Such beliefs are consistent with the claim of some feminists that violence against women is so normalized and institutionalized that women themselves often fail to recognize its coercive and manipulative quality.
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Several feminists point out that myths surrounding the battered woman parallel those of the rape victim: a battered woman wants, needs, or deserves her abuse, and if she will not take responsibility for her battering, then it simply did not happen. Such myths reinforce accusations that battered women always choose violent men, have a history of repeated sexual abuse as children, and are never seriously harmed (otherwise they would always have their partners arrested). Some feminists have contended that the very language of woman battering contributes to such myths by failing to identify the perpetrator: "woman battering" by
whom
? "spousal abuse"
by whom
? "The wife was beaten with a hose until unconscious"
by whom
? This linguistic analysis also suggests that the expression "domestic violence" succeeds in obfuscating the identity of the victim as well as the abuser, while "domestic situation'' obscures that any violence occurred at all. Just "
slapping
a woman around a little" might be condoned by some (unfortunately), until it is revealed that such
hits
can be so hard that some women's jaws have to be wired shut.
102
As in rape, such myths make it difficult for women to establish credibility during police investigations and in the courtroom. If the battered woman is a woman of color, she may confront white police officers or judges who believe such violence to be normal and inevitable among a people many of whose members reside in a racial or ethnic ghetto. Yet because of the general lack of privacy and heightened police presence in such communities, people of color tend to become statistics more readily than whites.
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Battered women can become susceptible to myths about themselves, since beliefs in their inferiority and blameworthiness for abuse are often reinforced by the very
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