Why on earth do women stay in abusive relationships?

Earlier this spring, when pop singer Rihanna went back to the man who allegedly beat her, the blogs were full of objections to blaming the "victim." It just makes women feel bad to say, "Why doesn't she leave?" feminist commentator Amanda Marcotte wrote in her blog. Indeed, she continues, "every time we ask that, we are engaging in batterer assistance ourselves." Shouldn't we be focusing on the abusers? Well, not exactly. Old-style feminism would say "the personal is the political," as long-time columnist Katha Pollitt put it in her own tale of personal sexual betrayal, Learning To Drive: And Other Life Stories. A social movement that passed political judgment on a subject as intimate as domestic violence may be tough on the victim, but, as Pollitt concluded, "at least it offered a perspective." The alternative, she warned, is that "These days anything is feminist as long as you 'choose' it … no matter how dangerous or silly or servile or self-destructive it is."

Leslie Morgan Steiner's new memoir about her four-year relationship with an abuser, Crazy Love, is a textbook illustration of just how dangerous and destructive such a choice can be. Steiner describes in detail her relationship with her ex-husband, who choked her, punched her, held a gun to her head, knocked her down the concrete steps, and regularly slapped her around for four years. The somewhat fictionalized memoir (Steiner says she changed some identifying details and combined some characters) follows earlier essays in which she chronicled her anorexia and financial dependence. In this latest episode of bad choices, her future husband gave her clear warning. Once when they were having sex, long before they got engaged, he choked her until she almost passed out and informed her that he "owned" her before he came. Still, she made herself available for the hurting. Since the relationship ends when he walks out of their apartment after three years of marriage, we never know if she would have left on her own.

In the press kit for Crazy Love, Steiner says it's easy to see why she married someone who choked her on a regular basis. She was, she says, "kind, insecure and desperate for intimacy. … It is not difficult to understand why anyone … could become trapped in an intimate manipulative relationship." She also relentlessly reminds the reader that she is a WASP of impeccable ancestry and therefore an improbable abuse victim. "All my family is blond," Steiner writes. "I do not look the part." Her abuser was blond, too. It was the first thing she noticed about him. She also acknowledges that she should have picked up on the warnings he littered behind him.

Steiner is wrong: It is difficult to understand why she stayed in this awful relationship, given that she was not risking starvation and had no children with her abuser. Which is why, no matter how many times Steiner and Marcotte and the others tell them not to, people keep asking the question. And it's terribly important to do exactly that. Asking why women participate in destructive relationships is a mark of respect. The amazing thing is that, four decades after the birth of feminism, we are still arguing about it.

Tags: domestic abuse, domestic violence, relationships

Linda Hirshman writes "The Princess" column for Double X and is the author of Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World. Before she retired, she taught Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Brandeis University.

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