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Coercive Control, the Invisible Basis of Abuse · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
0:15
Speaker 2: should know the podcast.
0:18
Speaker 1: That's right. Big trigger warning just straight from the jump here,
0:24
Speaker 1: because this is about a form of domestic violence, more
0:30
Speaker 1: specifically intimate partner violence, and it's a tough one. So
0:37
Speaker 1: trigger warning.
0:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason that it's worth specifying the difference between
0:43
Speaker 2: domestic violence and intimate partner violence is that domestic violence,
0:48
Speaker 2: like you could have a kid who beats up a parent,
0:51
Speaker 2: that's still domestic violence. Intimate partner violence is specifically between
0:55
Speaker 2: two people same sex, different sex, non binary in a
1:00
Speaker 2: relationship where one abuses the other. That's intimate partner violence,
1:05
Speaker 2: and it almost always includes actual physical violence.
1:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, or as we'll see, where they both abuse each other,
1:12
Speaker 1: which is not as typical.
1:15
Speaker 2: Obviously it may be a myth as well. We'll get
1:18
Speaker 2: to that later. Okay. Yeah, So what we're talking about
1:22
Speaker 2: is not just intimate partner violence or domestic violence, but
1:26
Speaker 2: a specific kind of domestic abuse that for a while
1:34
Speaker 2: just kind of seemed like its own thing. But it
1:36
Speaker 2: seems like as more and more research gets built upon it.
1:40
Speaker 2: This thing that we're going to talk about, coercive control
1:43
Speaker 2: is actually the basis for a lot of the domestic
1:46
Speaker 2: violence or wife battering that it was long called. That
1:51
Speaker 2: it's actually what's actually going on beneath the surface, and
1:55
Speaker 2: that the actual beatings and the actual rapes inside the
1:59
Speaker 2: home are symptoms or just the most obvious parts or
2:04
Speaker 2: factors in this larger thing, which is called coerceive control,
2:08
Speaker 2: where one partner essentially controls the other partner's life. And
2:13
Speaker 2: that's generally what we're talking about today.
2:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the word coercion means, you know, persuasion through threat.
2:20
Speaker 1: So in this case, coerceve control is controlling that partner
2:26
Speaker 1: generally through through threat. And then you know, we'll see
2:30
Speaker 1: there's a host of sort of components to all this,
2:34
Speaker 1: but actual violence is almost always a part of it.
2:39
Speaker 1: Not necessarily always, but a lot of times that violence
2:44
Speaker 1: is part of a like you said, like a larger
2:47
Speaker 1: plan to use the threat of that violence for control.
2:51
Speaker 2: Right, or the violence itself for sure.
2:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.
2:55
Speaker 2: So our understanding of coercion in general dates back to
2:59
Speaker 2: just after the Korean War, and I remember us discussing
3:02
Speaker 2: this in the brainwashing episode. But there was a whole
3:05
Speaker 2: thing where some POWs appeared to be to turn collaborators
3:10
Speaker 2: with the Chinese and Korean captors, and it was chalked
3:16
Speaker 2: up to brainwashing, that they had been brainwashed, which must
3:19
Speaker 2: mean that they probably were pretty weak minded to begin with,
3:23
Speaker 2: so give him a break. And there was a social
3:26
Speaker 2: scientist named Albert Bitterman who was not satisfied by the answer,
3:31
Speaker 2: and he started studying what tactics the Korean and Chinese
3:36
Speaker 2: captors had used on the POWs to get them to
3:39
Speaker 2: seem to collaborate. And what he found was that they
3:43
Speaker 2: used tactics that he came to kind of break out
3:46
Speaker 2: into what constitutes coercion, how somebody could make someone act
3:53
Speaker 2: against their will seemingly under their own will and without
3:59
Speaker 2: just using phys violence. And he came up with a
4:02
Speaker 2: whole list of stuff.
4:03
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, and you know, again just to point out,
4:06
Speaker 1: like his whole jam was, this is not brainwashing. This
4:10
Speaker 1: is something entirely different. And I think and I agree
4:14
Speaker 1: with him. I think he thought he was making it
4:16
Speaker 1: more almost easier to believe, because brainwashing sounds so kind
4:24
Speaker 1: of out there when you it kind of just conjuous
4:28
Speaker 1: to mind, like people that literally don't have control of
4:31
Speaker 1: their mind anymore. Where he's like, hey, coercion can kind
4:35
Speaker 1: of happen to anyone, and your because your brain's not
4:39
Speaker 1: being taken over. And like you said, he came out
4:41
Speaker 1: with this chart of coercion and was like, you know,
4:45
Speaker 1: the Chinese and Korean captors are doing this. It's not
4:48
Speaker 1: like uh in World War Two with Germany in Japan,
4:52
Speaker 1: when actual physical torture was you know, sort of the
4:56
Speaker 1: main component in this case. And again there is some violence,
5:01
Speaker 1: but it's more these tactics and the threat of violence
5:05
Speaker 1: that get someone under your sort of spell in a way.
5:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, because threatening violence, when you're violent with somebody, there's
5:15
Speaker 2: an end to it. There's a point that the person
5:18
Speaker 2: knows is it's going to come to an end. So
5:21
Speaker 2: now this thing that they've been worried about is actually happening,
5:24
Speaker 2: and that means that the end is coming soon too.
5:28
Speaker 2: The threat of violence, there is no end to it.
5:30
Speaker 2: It's always around the corner. So it can generate like
5:32
Speaker 2: real anxiety in ways that actual violence can't. Yeah, that's
5:37
Speaker 2: just part of it. Another part of it is isolation,
5:41
Speaker 2: monopolization of perception, like keeping people in a room with
5:44
Speaker 2: the lights on twenty four hours a day. It just
5:48
Speaker 2: has all sorts of weird effects on people. It also
5:52
Speaker 2: helps to restrict information so they are completely isolated and
5:57
Speaker 2: have no contact or way to get information from outside
6:01
Speaker 2: of their captivity. Those are just a couple of them.
6:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, the list goes on with humiliation, any kind of
6:09
Speaker 1: degrading punishment, you know, stripping people naked, no privacy, not
6:15
Speaker 1: allowed to take care of their bodies and you know
6:19
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom in a normal hygienic way or
6:21
Speaker 1: bathe themselves, to basically kind of turn people and to
6:25
Speaker 1: animals and break them down so they don't resist. Exhaustion,
6:30
Speaker 1: of course, is one of them. You know, these long interrogations,
6:35
Speaker 1: you know, limiting food, limiting sleep obviously, so all of
6:39
Speaker 1: this stuff is sort of working them hard. All of
6:41
Speaker 1: this stuff is going to weaken their ability to resist
6:45
Speaker 1: the coercion.
6:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the one that gets me the most is
6:48
Speaker 2: the most despicable of all occasional indulgences. Yeah, I know
6:52
Speaker 2: you're gonna say that, because not only does it it
6:56
Speaker 2: almost like creates like an affinity for the captor in
7:00
Speaker 2: the mind of the pow who's being mistreated, Suddenly there's
7:04
Speaker 2: like this generosity that they can latch onto and be like, yes, people,
7:07
Speaker 2: there is goodness still in the world. But the reason
7:10
Speaker 2: that they're doing that is because it keeps you from
7:12
Speaker 2: getting used to being mistreated. Man, isn't that just the
7:16
Speaker 2: most despicable thing you can imagine?
7:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, because what that says is that a human being
7:21
Speaker 1: could potentially get so used to that abuse, coercive abuse
7:27
Speaker 1: and physical abuse that they're not going to talk. So
7:31
Speaker 1: throw them a bone every now and then, and it
7:33
Speaker 1: just shakes up their mental sort of processes so they
7:37
Speaker 1: don't get used to it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it makes all abuse after that that much
7:42
Speaker 2: more effective. Continuously. There's also demonstrating omnipotence, which I guess
7:48
Speaker 2: just revealing information that they wouldn't guess that you had
7:51
Speaker 2: would be pretty shocking and would also make you feel like, well,
7:55
Speaker 2: there's no way to hide anything from these people. They
7:58
Speaker 2: know everything. And then another one was trivial rules. Did
8:01
Speaker 2: you see that one?
8:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I mean that's I mean, that can be
8:07
Speaker 1: just any mundane thing, like you know, you answer after
8:11
Speaker 1: we knock this many times, or you approached the door
8:15
Speaker 1: in a certain way, just any kind of little trivial rule.
8:19
Speaker 1: And again it's just about control.
8:23
Speaker 2: Right, and it creates a habit of complying in the
8:26
Speaker 2: subject too, right. So if you put all this together,
8:30
Speaker 2: Bitterman is widely considered to have essentially identified the techniques
8:34
Speaker 2: of coercion that anybody could use on anyone else. And
8:38
Speaker 2: in fact, the US government apparently used Betterman's tactics as
8:43
Speaker 2: a playbook at Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure elsewhere as well
8:48
Speaker 2: that we just don't know about at the moment. And
8:51
Speaker 2: there was also this kind of weird thread that also
8:55
Speaker 2: came about a couple decades after Bitterman's research in the fifties.
9:00
Speaker 2: Already in the seventies, the women's movement, like we've talked about,
9:03
Speaker 2: really started to gain steam, right, And one of the
9:07
Speaker 2: things that a huge focus was the plight of women
9:12
Speaker 2: who were physically abused by their husbands battered women, that's
9:15
Speaker 2: what they call them at the time, back in the seventies.
9:18
Speaker 2: And one of the things that scholars, feminist scholars in
9:22
Speaker 2: particular at the time noticed was that there were real
9:26
Speaker 2: parallels between the tactics that Bitterman had identified of coercion
9:31
Speaker 2: used against POW's in the Korean War and reports of
9:35
Speaker 2: how women were treated in the home when they were
9:40
Speaker 2: victims of domestic abuse, and it became clear that these
9:43
Speaker 2: coercion tactics had kind of been adopted unconsciously by men
9:48
Speaker 2: who abused their wives, and that, in a very roundabout way,
9:53
Speaker 2: for decades later, laid the groundwork for our idea of
9:56
Speaker 2: coercive control.
9:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean you grew up. You were
10:00
Speaker 1: a little younger than me. But in the seventies and eighties,
10:03
Speaker 1: the notion of you know, like you said, what they
10:07
Speaker 1: call it at the time, the battered woman, the battered wife,
10:09
Speaker 1: was a real It was really on the radar. I
10:13
Speaker 1: remember when I was a kid, there there were movies,
10:16
Speaker 1: there was this It just scared the crap out of me.
10:20
Speaker 1: Not to get too personal with my family, but you know,
10:23
Speaker 1: I've talked a little bit before about having a nuts
10:26
Speaker 1: great childhood, and that just that the awareness of that
10:31
Speaker 1: and fighting in the house all combined to just terrify me.
10:35
Speaker 1: When I was a kid. I remember there was and
10:38
Speaker 1: I looked it up today because I was like, man,
10:39
Speaker 1: I remember there was a TV movie with the guy
10:42
Speaker 1: from mash that just terrified me. And I looked at
10:46
Speaker 1: you from Honeycut, So I looked at it was an
10:50
Speaker 1: NBC TV movie called Battered, and it was three sort
10:54
Speaker 1: of stories. Mike Ferrell was one of them, like the
10:58
Speaker 1: nicest guy ever on MAS played an abusive husband and
11:02
Speaker 1: it just told each of these stories and it was
11:05
Speaker 1: I remember this coming on and it just like it
11:07
Speaker 1: was awful for a young kid to watch that while
11:11
Speaker 1: also was sort of living in a household of yelling
11:14
Speaker 1: and fighting and stuff like that. So it was just
11:17
Speaker 1: it was a big part of the national landscape if
11:20
Speaker 1: like a kid is hearing about this stuff all the
11:23
Speaker 1: time via TV movies. Another one that came out was
11:27
Speaker 1: obviously The Burning Bed, which was is a big case
11:30
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about now because it was
11:33
Speaker 1: I mean, the movie it was a landmark TV movie,
11:35
Speaker 1: but the case that it was based on also a
11:38
Speaker 1: landmark case in a lot of ways.
11:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, One, I'm really sorry that you experienced that as
11:44
Speaker 2: a kid. That's awful things. And two, yes, the Burning
11:48
Speaker 2: Bed was a huge, huge deal. It changed everything. Like
11:53
Speaker 2: this was nineteen eighty four that the TV movie came out.
11:56
Speaker 2: I think the book came out in nineteen eighty and
11:59
Speaker 2: the whole thing was based on the experience of a
12:02
Speaker 2: woman who throughout the seventies suffered tremendously at the hands
12:06
Speaker 2: of her husband and then ex husband, who continued to
12:09
Speaker 2: abuse her even after they were divorced. The woman's name
12:12
Speaker 2: was Francine Hughes. Her husband and then ex husband's name
12:16
Speaker 2: was Mickey Hughes. And he did everything like he beat her,
12:20
Speaker 2: he raped her, he controlled her. The story itself is
12:26
Speaker 2: actually you could do an entire episode on it easily.
12:29
Speaker 2: It was just so horrible that this happened, and it
12:33
Speaker 2: so captured the attention of America. Thanks to the book
12:36
Speaker 2: and then to the TV movie, it really kind of
12:38
Speaker 2: helped move forward this awareness of just how bad the
12:43
Speaker 2: lives of battered women were, because it was not a
12:46
Speaker 2: secret that there were women who were beaten by their
12:49
Speaker 2: husbands in America. I think it was outlawed in the
12:52
Speaker 2: United States, first by Alabama in eighteen seventy one. By
12:57
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty, every state has had outlawed wife abuse in
13:02
Speaker 2: the home right, Yeah, but in the courts that wasn't enforced.
13:07
Speaker 2: There was very frequently not enforced, and in general American
13:10
Speaker 2: culture viewed wife battering spousal abuse as a private family matter.
13:17
Speaker 2: As long as it happened buying closed doors and your
13:20
Speaker 2: your wife didn't show up to work, if you let
13:23
Speaker 2: her have a job with black eyes, people were probably
13:27
Speaker 2: going to look the other way. Even if you ended
13:29
Speaker 2: up in court over it, criminal court over it, you
13:32
Speaker 2: were still probably going to get off because it was
13:34
Speaker 2: a family matter. And I saw, just real quick, I
13:37
Speaker 2: saw a quote that a writer named Aaron blakemore for
13:41
Speaker 2: I think history dot Com found there was a New
13:44
Speaker 2: York City councilman in nineteen seventy six named Leon Katz
13:47
Speaker 2: who said, are we to break up a marriage simply
13:50
Speaker 2: because a man beats his wife? Like that was the
13:53
Speaker 2: attitude at the time. So this is what the feminist
13:56
Speaker 2: movement was up against. And circling back to the burning
13:59
Speaker 2: bed help a.
14:00
Speaker 1: Lot, yeah, big time. You know you mentioned in case
14:04
Speaker 1: people are confused about how or why he continued to
14:07
Speaker 1: abuse her after their divorce. This is over a thirteen
14:11
Speaker 1: year period. But they divorced in nineteen seventy one, he
14:14
Speaker 1: got in a bad car accident and she let him
14:17
Speaker 1: move back into the house and suffered six more years
14:20
Speaker 1: of abuse. And this guy was a despicable human being.
14:28
Speaker 1: If all of this abuse wasn't enough, and we're talking,
14:31
Speaker 1: and this is stuff that'll come out, you know, as
14:33
Speaker 1: clear examples of course of control, like not just the
14:36
Speaker 1: physical violence, but threatening her life. She made her drop
14:41
Speaker 1: out of secretarial school, burn her books the night of
14:46
Speaker 1: the final incident. And this seems to be a common
14:50
Speaker 1: thing as far as tying in historical cultural at the
14:55
Speaker 1: time domestic roles of like, you know, the wife cooks
14:58
Speaker 1: for the husband and takes care of the kids. In
15:00
Speaker 1: this and that he like destroyed the dinner, threw it
15:03
Speaker 1: on the floor, made her clean it up, made her
15:05
Speaker 1: cook it again, that kind of thing. And then in
15:09
Speaker 1: another incident, strangled his daughter's kitten in front of uh.
15:14
Speaker 2: He actually did. He didn't just threaten.
15:16
Speaker 1: To no, no, no, He did so a despicable human
15:21
Speaker 1: to the point where after that final night where she
15:24
Speaker 1: was raped, one final time, he passed out drunk and
15:28
Speaker 1: she set his bed on fire, which is why it's
15:31
Speaker 1: called the burning bed. And Fara Faucet got a lot
15:34
Speaker 1: of acclaim for taking on like a really serious role
15:37
Speaker 1: and portraying Francin and Hughes to the great Paul La
15:42
Speaker 1: Matt's despicable Mickey Hughes.
15:45
Speaker 2: I had not heard of him. I didn't bother to
15:48
Speaker 2: look him up. Who is he? What did he do?
15:50
Speaker 1: Oh? He was He was a great actor in the seventies.
15:52
Speaker 1: He was in a lot of stuff.
15:53
Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't recognize him.
15:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, you remember Melvin and Howard Jonathan Demmy move about
16:00
Speaker 1: the true story of the when the guy picked up
16:04
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes as a hitchhiker. No, he was Melvin and
16:10
Speaker 1: he was in a lot of stuff, Paulick guy in
16:11
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties.
16:12
Speaker 2: Okay, I got to see that movie. I've never heard
16:14
Speaker 2: of that.
16:15
Speaker 1: Well, it's not what you think.
16:18
Speaker 2: It's not a fun road trip in that tradition of
16:20
Speaker 2: road trip.
16:21
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it's a very good movie. But that's a
16:23
Speaker 1: very small part of it. Anyway. Just a couple of
16:25
Speaker 1: more quick points just of how reprehensible this case was.
16:30
Speaker 1: When the cops came they that night, they didn't arrest him,
16:35
Speaker 1: and in front of the cops, they later testified the
16:37
Speaker 1: police said that in front of them, he said it's
16:41
Speaker 1: over for you because you called the police in front
16:44
Speaker 1: of the cops and they still didn't arrest him. And
16:47
Speaker 1: after she killed him, she drove straight to the police
16:50
Speaker 1: station and confessed.
16:52
Speaker 2: Right, and we should say they had kids, and the
16:54
Speaker 2: first thing she did was get the kids out of
16:56
Speaker 2: the house and then go back in and set the
16:58
Speaker 2: bed on fire or said the bedroom fire around him.
17:01
Speaker 2: So yeah, there was. Yeah, the impact that the book
17:06
Speaker 2: and then the TV movie had and spreading awareness is
17:08
Speaker 2: like really hard to overestimate. But it had another really
17:13
Speaker 2: significant impact too in the courts, because remember we said
17:18
Speaker 2: that the course would just kind of be like, yeah, sorry,
17:20
Speaker 2: you shouldn't have burned dinner. I mean that's just what
17:23
Speaker 2: women do. You cook dinner and you do it right
17:25
Speaker 2: or else who knows what your husband's gonna do kind
17:28
Speaker 2: of thing. Right. And this, this case that Francine Hughes
17:33
Speaker 2: actually went through when she turned herself into the police
17:36
Speaker 2: and was charged with first degree murder, she got off
17:41
Speaker 2: just because she used a temporary insanity defense. I think
17:45
Speaker 2: that that was what it took for a jury to
17:47
Speaker 2: be like, okay, fine, we'll we'll let you off. We'll
17:50
Speaker 2: buy that, but we can only buy that because it
17:53
Speaker 2: doesn't matter what else he did to you. All we
17:56
Speaker 2: know about is the physical abuse that happened from time
17:58
Speaker 2: to time, And yeah, that sucks, but is it enough
18:01
Speaker 2: to kill a man and she had to use temporary insanity.
18:05
Speaker 2: And shortly after that, I think because of that case,
18:09
Speaker 2: a psychologist named Leonora Walker started studying women who had
18:13
Speaker 2: killed their abusers and found that there were a lot
18:16
Speaker 2: of similarities between them, and she came up with a
18:19
Speaker 2: concept called battered Women's syndrome, and essentially it sought to
18:22
Speaker 2: explain how a woman put in a position of being
18:27
Speaker 2: abused could reasonably kill her abuser, even if the abusers
18:33
Speaker 2: not in the act right then of committing violence against them.
18:37
Speaker 2: And it laid a really great legal groundwork for a
18:41
Speaker 2: lot of women to follow who did kill their abuser,
18:45
Speaker 2: because this had kind of been established like this is
18:48
Speaker 2: a thing, and that ultimately kind of came out of
18:50
Speaker 2: the Francy Use case.
18:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she she got off on temporary insanity, but
18:55
Speaker 1: also may have only gotten off on temporary insanity because
18:58
Speaker 1: of the credible groundswell of support from you know, obviously
19:05
Speaker 1: largely women protesting outside the court. I mean, it was
19:08
Speaker 1: a very well known case and a very big deal,
19:12
Speaker 1: and it was not one that could just be sort
19:14
Speaker 1: of dealt with as usual because there were hundreds and
19:18
Speaker 1: hundreds of women outside the court every day with signs
19:21
Speaker 1: like demanding acquittal for Francy and Hughes. So it was
19:24
Speaker 1: just sort of one of those moments in time and
19:26
Speaker 1: history that changed everything because people spoke.
19:30
Speaker 2: Up so that the whole the syndrome really gets a
19:34
Speaker 2: lot of people. Woman's gets a lot of people too.
19:38
Speaker 2: There's some issues with the concept of battered women's syndrome
19:41
Speaker 2: and that it basically says you have to be the
19:43
Speaker 2: kind of woman who is submissive and passive and your
19:46
Speaker 2: husband's still beating you up. You're still cooking dinner correctly,
19:49
Speaker 2: and your husband's still beating you up. It calls for
19:53
Speaker 2: like a certain kind of perfect victim for juries to
19:56
Speaker 2: accept battered women's syndrome defense, and some people are like, Okay,
20:00
Speaker 2: we need something that's like more gender neutral and essentially
20:04
Speaker 2: says any reasonable person would kill their abuser given these circumstances.
20:10
Speaker 2: And so battered women's syndrome has kind of evolved over time,
20:14
Speaker 2: and the circumstances that have kind of been laid. Is
20:17
Speaker 2: the groundwork for that reasonable woman to kill her abuser
20:21
Speaker 2: or reasonable person to kill her abuser was coercive control.
20:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, and within that Leonora Walker sort of groundwork that
20:30
Speaker 1: she laid one of the big things that she focused
20:32
Speaker 1: on with something called learned helplessness, and that is this
20:37
Speaker 1: concept that, hey, they have they have learned to be helpless.
20:40
Speaker 1: They probably didn't go into this relationship or not necessarily
20:44
Speaker 1: went in to this relationship like that, but through the
20:47
Speaker 1: tactics of coercive control a KA torture when looked at
20:52
Speaker 1: in a military setting, they have learned to be helpless
20:56
Speaker 1: and maybe the only option is to set their back
21:00
Speaker 1: on fire.
21:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's also a good example of how other communities,
21:04
Speaker 2: like black communities, like black women in particular, are left
21:08
Speaker 2: out of that battered women's because again, it requires them,
21:12
Speaker 2: the victim to be perfect white, submissive, middle class typically,
21:17
Speaker 2: and if you're a black woman culturally speaking in America,
21:21
Speaker 2: you're viewed is much stronger physically emotionally than a white
21:26
Speaker 2: woman of that description. And so it'd be tough for
21:29
Speaker 2: you to use battered women's syndrome because maybe you didn't
21:32
Speaker 2: learn learned helplessness, and that's a part of it. Maybe
21:35
Speaker 2: you do seem like you wouldn't put up with much guff,
21:38
Speaker 2: so you killed the guy who knows it's just that
21:41
Speaker 2: battered women's syndrome was much more limiting. And then one
21:45
Speaker 2: of the things that coercive control does is really kind
21:47
Speaker 2: of spread it out and it takes the woman out,
21:49
Speaker 2: and it takes the syndrome out and says, this happens
21:52
Speaker 2: a lot, and it's a pattern that can result in
21:57
Speaker 2: the abuse. Are being killed by the abuse, and that's
22:01
Speaker 2: a reasonable response to that kind of treatment.
22:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we.
22:05
Speaker 2: Take a break, Yeah, for sure.
22:08
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back with more on coercive control.
22:38
Speaker 1: All right, So we've been throwing that word around a lot.
22:41
Speaker 1: That term, rather coercive control, was actually coined by a
22:44
Speaker 1: guy named Evan Stark, a sociologist, and again it's sort
22:50
Speaker 1: of trying to highlight the idea that what's going on
22:55
Speaker 1: is not just physical violence, but really just a deprivation
22:59
Speaker 1: of freedom, making sure that your partner doesn't have autonomy
23:05
Speaker 1: by controlling them. And he wrote a book in two
23:08
Speaker 1: thousand and seven called Coercive Control colin of course, the
23:12
Speaker 1: Entrapment of Women in Personal Life. Evan Stark has done
23:17
Speaker 1: some pretty great work. In nineteen seventy nine started getting
23:21
Speaker 1: into domestic violence work along with his wife, who was
23:27
Speaker 1: a physician named Anne Flitcraft who worked at Yale New
23:32
Speaker 1: Haven Hospital and noticed in the seventies that way more
23:37
Speaker 1: women were coming into the er that had been beaten
23:41
Speaker 1: up by their partner than the statistics typically had indicated.
23:46
Speaker 1: I think it was supposedly like one in twenty and
23:49
Speaker 1: she said it's actually more like one in four.
23:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was another way that I think society lived
23:55
Speaker 2: with itself and being complicit in allowing domestic abuse. It
23:59
Speaker 2: was this pretty rare, and Flickcraft was like, no, twenty
24:04
Speaker 2: five percent of women who come into the er were
24:06
Speaker 2: beaten by their husbands or sent there by their husbands. Right. So,
24:10
Speaker 2: in addition to kind of supporting the women's movement at
24:14
Speaker 2: the time and their assertions that this was a big
24:17
Speaker 2: deal and we need to do something about it and
24:19
Speaker 2: it's really widespread, Flickcraft's research inspired her husband to kind
24:26
Speaker 2: of go off and do this parallel work I guess
24:30
Speaker 2: where he tried to figure out how to explain how
24:35
Speaker 2: a woman could kill her husband and it not be
24:38
Speaker 2: because she's crazy or because she was a perfect victim.
24:42
Speaker 2: So he started looking into like they did some side
24:45
Speaker 2: research together, and they found something that people hadn't really
24:49
Speaker 2: realized before that in addition to women reporting being beaten.
24:53
Speaker 2: They also reported this whole kind of cluster of other
24:56
Speaker 2: mistreatment at the hands of their spouse, and that they
25:01
Speaker 2: kind of followed a pattern, and those patterns really resembled
25:05
Speaker 2: the coercion that Albert Bitterman had identified back in the fifties.
25:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was kind of Bitterman plus almost
25:12
Speaker 1: because in the context of a domestic partnership or marriage
25:17
Speaker 1: or whatever, and not a pow. And again, this is
25:22
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies and early eighties, when you know,
25:25
Speaker 1: the culture of how you partner and what partners are
25:32
Speaker 1: responsible for was a lot different than it is now.
25:35
Speaker 1: So this is in context of back then.
25:37
Speaker 2: I mean even ten years ago chuck, Oh.
25:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, But especially in the late seventies and
25:42
Speaker 1: early eighties, it was as far as coercive control goes,
25:46
Speaker 1: you know, things again like dinner, are my clothes ready?
25:50
Speaker 1: Are they iron properly? Have you cared for the kids
25:53
Speaker 1: in the right way? And not just like oh I'm watching,
25:57
Speaker 1: but like you said, even the perfect dinner could be
26:01
Speaker 1: made and that's thrown on the floor. It's all about,
26:04
Speaker 1: you know, controlling and manipulating and that threat of physical
26:09
Speaker 1: violence that is peppered in along the way to you know,
26:13
Speaker 1: to kind of hold that weight.
26:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fact that at the time, especially American
26:18
Speaker 2: culture viewed those roles as specifically for women. Then a
26:23
Speaker 2: man being upset when dinner wasn't made correctly, I mean,
26:27
Speaker 2: that's that didn't strike anybody as completely abnormal. That wasn't
26:31
Speaker 2: like a hey, hey, what's going on here kind of thing,
26:34
Speaker 2: and that helped reinforce these patterns of domestic abuse that
26:38
Speaker 2: included coercion, like constant criticism and nagging that led to
26:42
Speaker 2: dehumanization and the humiliation that that having your dinner thrown
26:48
Speaker 2: on the floor, being made to clean it up and
26:50
Speaker 2: then recook it creates in the person. This is the
26:54
Speaker 2: stuff that that Evan Stark really started to tease out
26:57
Speaker 2: from the Battered Women literature and created like this whole
27:01
Speaker 2: body of research that it's weird. The way that I
27:05
Speaker 2: saw it was he took this kind of like little
27:08
Speaker 2: germ that grew out of like a flower that was
27:11
Speaker 2: in the midst of blossoming, and found that that germ
27:14
Speaker 2: led to actually the foundation that the flower was growing
27:17
Speaker 2: out of was it the confusing So the women's movement
27:25
Speaker 2: was making a headway with the Battered Wives Awareness movement. Right,
27:30
Speaker 2: that's the flower blossoming. And then Evan Start comes along
27:33
Speaker 2: is looking at that and he notices there's a little
27:36
Speaker 2: piston or something or stamen can never remember what's what
27:39
Speaker 2: pist and sure, and that's growing, not a piston, a pistol, right,
27:43
Speaker 2: and that's growing out of that flower. And that pistol
27:46
Speaker 2: is the is coercive control. And as he started to
27:50
Speaker 2: follow it, he realized that actually, that's not just this
27:53
Speaker 2: little part of the flower. This is the thing, the
27:55
Speaker 2: substance that the flower is growing from. That coercive control
28:00
Speaker 2: is really what's going on in the vast majority of
28:03
Speaker 2: domestic abuse cases. The battering that can bring the cops
28:08
Speaker 2: to the house. That's just what we witness. That's just
28:11
Speaker 2: what pops its head up in the public sphere behind
28:14
Speaker 2: closed doors. It's even worse than any of us even imagined.
28:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know what this all led to is
28:19
Speaker 1: basically the long and the short was they were saying,
28:23
Speaker 1: you know, you shouldn't have to show bruises to have
28:28
Speaker 1: someone believe that you're being abused, because there's all kinds
28:31
Speaker 1: of abuse a woman, you know, at the time, and
28:36
Speaker 1: I'm sure this still goes on sometimes, but at the time, like,
28:39
Speaker 1: if you were an abused partner in a relationship and
28:43
Speaker 1: you had children, they may take your kids away as
28:47
Speaker 1: the victim slash survivor because the kids witness this stuff
28:53
Speaker 1: and they might be in foster care. So this was
28:57
Speaker 1: sort of a normal thing at the time, and they
28:58
Speaker 1: were saying, like, no, you don't have to show bruises.
29:02
Speaker 1: The partner doesn't necessarily have to have mental health problems
29:07
Speaker 1: and lose their children. So in nineteen ninety Stark opened
29:12
Speaker 1: a forensic social work practice where he would go in
29:16
Speaker 1: and testify in court on behalf of these women and say,
29:20
Speaker 1: you know, and sort of preach this gospel basically on
29:24
Speaker 1: behalf of these women, saying you can't take their kids away.
29:27
Speaker 1: There was I believe fifteen women in New York that
29:30
Speaker 1: had their kids placed in foster care that he testified
29:33
Speaker 1: for as and one of them actually murdered her abusive husband.
29:37
Speaker 1: So he was really doing some pretty astounding work.
29:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine Chuck, like you have to plead insanity or
29:45
Speaker 2: temporary insanity so that you don't get the electric chair
29:47
Speaker 2: of the gas chamber. But then they're like, okay, but
29:50
Speaker 2: you're crazy, So you can't have your kids anymore because
29:53
Speaker 2: your husband abused you. That's the hand you were ended
29:55
Speaker 2: up being dealt in life.
29:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, and you know, once they started
30:01
Speaker 1: diving into the research, they found that sixty to eighty
30:03
Speaker 1: percent of women who look for assistance because of violence
30:09
Speaker 1: in the household have experienced coor some of control. So
30:13
Speaker 1: twenty to forty percent is just physical violence, but up
30:18
Speaker 1: to eighty percent is like controlling and manipulating their lives,
30:24
Speaker 1: you know, like they make movies about this stuff. Now.
30:26
Speaker 1: Don't know how this became a movie plot, but I
30:28
Speaker 1: feel like I've seen half a dozen movies where there's
30:32
Speaker 1: some sick o guy that like has detailed instructions written
30:37
Speaker 1: for their wife to follow to the tea over you know.
30:42
Speaker 1: I can't think of any of them right now, of course,
30:43
Speaker 1: but someone just recently.
30:45
Speaker 2: I can't think of any either right now.
30:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've just seen that as a plot line a
30:49
Speaker 1: lot lately. And that's that's all coercive control. Of course,
30:53
Speaker 1: in these movies, you know, it's always a great like
30:56
Speaker 1: sleeping with the enemy, that kind of thing.
30:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he was a physical abuse or two, oh.
31:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And that's an old one. I feel
31:04
Speaker 1: like the newer ones have been more along the lines
31:07
Speaker 1: of these what was it I just saw recently, But
31:10
Speaker 1: you know, in the end, of course, there's always a
31:12
Speaker 1: good inning and that guy gets what's coming to him.
31:14
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because.
31:15
Speaker 1: It's a movie.
31:16
Speaker 2: So as Stark's research kind of gelled and solidified, like
31:20
Speaker 2: you said, in the eighties, nineties, especially up until I
31:23
Speaker 2: think two thousand and seven when he published that book.
31:26
Speaker 2: Like you said, he came up with basically signs and
31:30
Speaker 2: symptoms of coercive control as a form of domestic abuse,
31:35
Speaker 2: and there is physical violence that is actually not just
31:39
Speaker 2: a part of coercive control, but in relationships where the
31:44
Speaker 2: husband dominates the wife through coercive control, the physical abuse
31:49
Speaker 2: that the woman suffers is actually worse than other kinds
31:52
Speaker 2: of couple situations where physical abuse happens. So it's more
31:57
Speaker 2: frequent and it's worse. But you really want to kind
32:02
Speaker 2: of limit that part because it can easily mislead you
32:06
Speaker 2: into being like, this is what we're focusing on, because
32:08
Speaker 2: that's what we did for decades, and it's like, no,
32:10
Speaker 2: there's focus on this, but also expand your your focus
32:14
Speaker 2: to include all this other stuff as well.
32:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of this other stuff, and again it'll sound
32:20
Speaker 1: a lot like what we detailed with torture in the
32:24
Speaker 1: Korean War. But isolation, of course, that's a big one.
32:28
Speaker 1: Isolating a partner or spouse from their family and their friends,
32:33
Speaker 1: controlling their comings and goings and social activities, spreading lies.
32:39
Speaker 1: Maybe hey, we need to move to another state to
32:41
Speaker 1: like really isolate them. You can't go to this thing,
32:44
Speaker 1: you can't go to your book club, that kind of thing.
32:48
Speaker 1: Just you know, isolation and constant monitoring, and these days
32:53
Speaker 1: that goes all the way to like you know, cameras
32:56
Speaker 1: in different rooms of the house and spywaar in GPA
33:00
Speaker 1: tracking and stuff like that.
33:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the more people that your abused spouse interacts with,
33:08
Speaker 2: the higher the likelihood that they're going to be confronted
33:12
Speaker 2: with this idea that what they're being treated like is
33:14
Speaker 2: not okay and not normal. So if you limit their interactions,
33:19
Speaker 2: you can keep them more under your thumb. That's something
33:22
Speaker 2: that Stark identified. Also, another way to control them is
33:27
Speaker 2: through restricting their finances, which is another thing that was
33:31
Speaker 2: up until very recently very culturally supported as well. The
33:35
Speaker 2: man had the checkbook right, and a lot of a
33:38
Speaker 2: lot of traditional families, the man had the credit card,
33:41
Speaker 2: the car was in the man's name, the house was
33:42
Speaker 2: in the husband's name. Like it was, That's just how
33:45
Speaker 2: it was. So it didn't seem particularly abnormal or a
33:48
Speaker 2: form of control, even though that's how it's used a
33:52
Speaker 2: lot of times where the man is able to keep
33:56
Speaker 2: his wife from running away because she doesn't have the
33:58
Speaker 2: money in some cases.
34:00
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and also like I have you know, no credit,
34:04
Speaker 1: no bank account, no no job, no job history, no car.
34:09
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's really like it's so it's it's such a
34:14
Speaker 1: limiting thing that the very idea of leaving is scarier
34:18
Speaker 1: than staying in a and of course this has got
34:23
Speaker 1: huge air quotes around it, but a stable situation as
34:26
Speaker 1: far as having a home above your head, right and
34:30
Speaker 1: and you know, being able to buy groceries and stuff
34:32
Speaker 1: like that.
34:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the resources that are out there that are like, no,
34:37
Speaker 2: you don't have to have a car, you don't have
34:38
Speaker 2: to have a credit card, will come get you, will
34:40
Speaker 2: take care of you, will help you get on your feet,
34:43
Speaker 2: which I think was really well demonstrated in that that
34:48
Speaker 2: movie or limited series made.
34:51
Speaker 1: I never saw that one.
34:52
Speaker 2: What is her name?
34:55
Speaker 1: Margaret quality.
34:56
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh, it's just amazing, Like I just think about
34:59
Speaker 2: that every once in a while. It's just so good.
35:01
Speaker 2: But they did a good job of showing like how
35:04
Speaker 2: that actually works. The problem is is if you're being
35:07
Speaker 2: constantly monitored, including your internet activity, if you go onto
35:11
Speaker 2: one of those sites you're in trouble, you're going to
35:14
Speaker 2: raise the the attention of your abuser. And those sites
35:17
Speaker 2: actually when you go on to them, like a domestic
35:21
Speaker 2: violence help site, they'll pop up, will come up immediately
35:25
Speaker 2: and say, hey, if your computer's being monitored, they can
35:27
Speaker 2: see that you're visiting the site, so be careful. So
35:31
Speaker 2: it's like just complete. You can't escape. The places that
35:35
Speaker 2: can help you escape, you can't reach out to because
35:37
Speaker 2: you're being monitored. And then on top of it, and
35:40
Speaker 2: this is like a day to day thing like your sleep,
35:43
Speaker 2: you're eating, your whatever, medications you take, whatever, just basic
35:47
Speaker 2: things that people take care of themselves. This is controlled
35:51
Speaker 2: for you, Like your medicine's left out. This is what
35:54
Speaker 2: we're going to have for dinner. Make sure it's it's
35:56
Speaker 2: cooked by six on the dot. We're gonna go to
35:59
Speaker 2: bed at this time, and we're going to have sex
36:01
Speaker 2: now and you're just going to go along with it.
36:04
Speaker 2: That's another huge part sexual coersion.
36:06
Speaker 1: This Another one is humiliation. You know, we talked about
36:10
Speaker 1: that as far as the war torture, same deal, criticizing
36:14
Speaker 1: their appearance, making fun of them in front of other people,
36:18
Speaker 1: and then controlling how they look. You know, you don't
36:20
Speaker 1: wear this, don't wear that. You have to wear what
36:22
Speaker 1: I say, you have to wear your hair like this,
36:24
Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
36:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, pus. Also, don't forget threats. Those are a big
36:28
Speaker 2: deal too, not just the threat of violence, but also
36:31
Speaker 2: the threat of saying like I'm going to get the kids.
36:33
Speaker 2: If you try to leave me, I'm taking the kids
36:35
Speaker 2: from you. They're coming with me. Like any kind of
36:37
Speaker 2: threat helps just kind of underpin this sense of control
36:41
Speaker 2: or helplessness. And so there's another kind of separate thread
36:46
Speaker 2: of I guess research by a guy named a sociologist
36:50
Speaker 2: named Michael Johnson who identified the same thing as course
36:53
Speaker 2: of control. But he said, no, I'm going to call
36:55
Speaker 2: this intimate terrorism. And he said that there's basically just
36:59
Speaker 2: different kinds of domestic violence, and course of control is
37:02
Speaker 2: one of just a few of them.
37:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you mentioned earlier somebody getting abused in
37:10
Speaker 1: a situation, but it's not part of a larger abuse pattern.
37:15
Speaker 1: He defines that as situational couple violence, whether it's you know,
37:19
Speaker 1: one person hitting the other, both of them kind of
37:22
Speaker 1: going at it after, you know, usually consuming alcohol. It's
37:25
Speaker 1: a big component of a lot of this, And especially
37:28
Speaker 1: in the seventies, all those movies I've talked about, they
37:30
Speaker 1: were all those guys were all drunks as well, and
37:35
Speaker 1: that is a result of anger management skills, poor conflict
37:39
Speaker 1: revolution still terrible, but not coerceive control. And then the
37:44
Speaker 1: idea of violent resistance, which is the person being beaten
37:51
Speaker 1: ultimately will will retaliate basically, either as retaliation, as payback
37:58
Speaker 1: in an effort to resist being controlled, or just to
38:02
Speaker 1: maintain their dignity. And in those situations it's sort of
38:06
Speaker 1: like there is no other choice at this point other
38:09
Speaker 1: than to strike back.
38:10
Speaker 2: Right, That's the opposite essentially, or the outcome of coercive control. Sometimes.
38:15
Speaker 2: I guess that's what Farah Faucea did in the Burning Bed. Yes,
38:19
Speaker 2: there's also this concept that you touched on way early
38:22
Speaker 2: in this episode about how it could be mutual mutual
38:25
Speaker 2: violent control or mutual abuse and that's kind of a
38:27
Speaker 2: controversial topic because some people are like, No, by definition,
38:31
Speaker 2: coercive control means one partner has power over the other partner.
38:35
Speaker 2: They can't have equal power over each other or even
38:38
Speaker 2: like sea sawing power. It doesn't work that way. And
38:41
Speaker 2: I think some people think it's a myth because what
38:43
Speaker 2: they're saying is you're seeing an abused person push back
38:48
Speaker 2: or fight back or defend themselves, and you're mistaking that
38:52
Speaker 2: for abuse, when really they're responding to being abused. That
38:55
Speaker 2: doesn't make it mutual. That's a normal, rational response to
38:59
Speaker 2: being abuse used is to fight back, And I think
39:02
Speaker 2: that's why people who think it's a myth say it's
39:04
Speaker 2: a myth.
39:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, course of control versus just sort of
39:10
Speaker 1: a situational violent episode or episodes. You're more likely if
39:15
Speaker 1: it's course of control, and this makes a lot of sense,
39:17
Speaker 1: of course, to suffer from mental health problems later on
39:22
Speaker 1: as a survivor than you would with just situational violence.
39:26
Speaker 1: When partners separate, it is actually likely to get worse. Yeah,
39:30
Speaker 1: that's crazy, which that was the case with the burning bed.
39:34
Speaker 1: You know, they were divorced, he moved back in and
39:37
Speaker 1: there were six more years of abuse, but separation is
39:42
Speaker 1: going to threaten that sense of control, so a lot
39:45
Speaker 1: of times it will intensify. And that's when stalking behaviors,
39:48
Speaker 1: you know, pick up obviously if they're not in the
39:51
Speaker 1: same household anymore, and course of control, the violent episodes
39:56
Speaker 1: are usually more serious and more frequent, which is what
39:59
Speaker 1: you alluded to early.
40:00
Speaker 2: Right, So Chuck, I say, we take our second break
40:03
Speaker 2: and come back and talk about whether this whole thing
40:05
Speaker 2: is gender specific or not.
40:07
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it.
40:35
Speaker 2: So there's a just kind of a discussion or a
40:37
Speaker 2: debate about coercive control and whether it's gender specific and
40:41
Speaker 2: specifically meaning the husband dominates the wife, and researchers like
40:47
Speaker 2: Evan Stark, who coined the term coerceive control. Another sociologist
40:50
Speaker 2: named Kristin L. Anderson say yes, that's absolutely how it is.
40:55
Speaker 2: Some of them may even allow like it does in
40:58
Speaker 2: very rare instances, happened the opposite way, where the woman
41:02
Speaker 2: dominates the man. But for the most part, because of
41:06
Speaker 2: these social structures that coercive control takes advantage of to
41:09
Speaker 2: kind of hide in plain sight and seem normalish, that
41:14
Speaker 2: requires that it be a man dominating a woman.
41:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Livia helped us with this, and she did
41:22
Speaker 1: something that Lvia rarely does, which is sort of include
41:25
Speaker 1: her own speculation. And I totally agree that when Stark
41:28
Speaker 1: was doing his work sort of in the late seventies
41:30
Speaker 1: and early eighties or through the eighties, things were different.
41:34
Speaker 1: Dynamics were different, and women do have more access to
41:40
Speaker 1: institutional power these days, and the idea of just sort
41:44
Speaker 1: of traditional roles in the household are different these days.
41:48
Speaker 1: But from where Stark was coming from, I totally get
41:52
Speaker 1: where he would say, essentially that like even if violence,
41:56
Speaker 1: like if a woman hits a man, it's very very
42:00
Speaker 1: very rare for a woman to have the kind of
42:03
Speaker 1: economic control and financial control in the household. Maybe a
42:07
Speaker 1: better job, she came into it, more money, she's the
42:11
Speaker 1: one that owns a house that was just a lot
42:13
Speaker 1: more rare back then.
42:14
Speaker 2: Well. Plus also, Chuck, there's studies that show that even
42:16
Speaker 2: earning a higher income than your husband not only doesn't
42:21
Speaker 2: protect you from domestic violence, it actually increases your risk.
42:24
Speaker 2: There's a twenty twenty one Australia study that said that
42:27
Speaker 2: if you earn more than half of the household income,
42:30
Speaker 2: your risk of being a victim of domestic violence as
42:33
Speaker 2: a woman increases thirty five percent. So yeah, it really
42:37
Speaker 2: kind of supports the idea that this whole thing is
42:40
Speaker 2: based on these gender norms of a man dominating a woman.
42:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a sociologist named Kristin Anderson in two thousand
42:48
Speaker 1: and nine rot a paper that kind of supported that.
42:51
Speaker 1: Basically was like, one of the reasons that men might
42:55
Speaker 1: engage more in course of control or maybe even exclusively,
42:59
Speaker 1: is to devalue femininity and to boost up their own
43:03
Speaker 1: male ego. And in cases where and this isn't way
43:08
Speaker 1: before like eleven years four that when you cited, she
43:11
Speaker 1: was talking about the fact that when a woman earns
43:13
Speaker 1: more than her husband, that threatens a man's masculinity and
43:17
Speaker 1: that's when trouble happens.
43:18
Speaker 2: Yeah. So on the other hand, there are also studies
43:22
Speaker 2: that say, no, women actually do use coercive control. In
43:26
Speaker 2: some cases, it might not be as widespread and there
43:29
Speaker 2: might not be as much physical violence, but all of
43:32
Speaker 2: the other stuff like monitoring, isolating from support network, threats, humiliation,
43:38
Speaker 2: that is not gender specific, and it can go the
43:41
Speaker 2: other way, according to a twenty twenty two study in
43:44
Speaker 2: the UK, So it is it depends, I think, on
43:48
Speaker 2: how nuanced a definition of coercive control you want to give,
43:53
Speaker 2: whether it's kind of gender specific or not.
43:56
Speaker 1: Yeah. In that twenty twenty two study, just to be clear,
43:59
Speaker 1: was when they have found women who have been the
44:05
Speaker 1: perpetrator of intimate partner violence in those situations, they are
44:10
Speaker 1: more likely than their male counterparts to have used course
44:13
Speaker 1: of control rather than physical abuse, which is a big distinction.
44:18
Speaker 2: It is, for sure. But then one other thing that
44:20
Speaker 2: has come out of research too is that this can
44:22
Speaker 2: also occur in same sex couples, that one can dominate
44:26
Speaker 2: the other, which also kind of undermines the idea that
44:28
Speaker 2: it's gender specific.
44:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
44:33
Speaker 2: So there's a big push to say, Okay, we've got
44:35
Speaker 2: this whole domestic violence battered women's syndrome defense going, let's
44:41
Speaker 2: you know, what about the women who don't show up
44:44
Speaker 2: to the er with a broken arm or a black
44:46
Speaker 2: eye or something, but their lives are still completely controlled
44:50
Speaker 2: and just destroyed by their husbands. How do we get
44:55
Speaker 2: them out of those situations? And some people are like, well,
44:57
Speaker 2: let's figure out how to outlaw coercive control, and some
45:00
Speaker 2: places have as a matter.
45:01
Speaker 1: Of fact, Yeah, for sure, there have been some states
45:05
Speaker 1: that have passed some laws about course of control, some
45:09
Speaker 1: countries that have taken action, and they all kind of
45:11
Speaker 1: work in myriad ways. In the UK it is defined
45:15
Speaker 1: as a crime, which is great. In the United States,
45:18
Speaker 1: like California, they made it. This is interesting, they made
45:22
Speaker 1: it a civil violation as part of their the Family
45:25
Speaker 1: Code of the state, so you can use it. It's less
45:28
Speaker 1: like a crime throw a person in jail, and more
45:31
Speaker 1: use it civilly to get a restraining order maybe, or
45:36
Speaker 1: if there's a custody dispute or something. It can be used.
45:39
Speaker 1: And we should draw a clear distinction here. It's like
45:42
Speaker 1: it's obvious, I think, but this is not. This has
45:45
Speaker 1: nothing to do with like BDSM, which can involve dominating
45:51
Speaker 1: someone very specific instructions and control on you know, sexual
45:57
Speaker 1: behaviors in the bedroom as a completely different things. And
46:00
Speaker 1: then what we're talking about here.
46:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's willing, there's no coercion involved, even it's
46:05
Speaker 2: like simulated exactly. Yeah, And Livia cited this California case
46:10
Speaker 2: that where a woman was able to use coercive control
46:14
Speaker 2: where she did not suffer any physical violence, but was
46:17
Speaker 2: controlled by her husband, like who gave her pages and
46:20
Speaker 2: pages of instructions on how to do everything from wash
46:23
Speaker 2: the dishes to those of the time right exactly. This
46:26
Speaker 2: guy actually did it to what time she was to
46:30
Speaker 2: wake up and get out of bed, and every day
46:32
Speaker 2: at eight thirty pm, they had a standing appointment where
46:35
Speaker 2: he would go over how she did that day and
46:37
Speaker 2: there would be the threat of punishments or something like that.
46:39
Speaker 2: And I couldn't find what the punishments entailed, but that's
46:43
Speaker 2: how she lived. And she finally escaped it by getting
46:45
Speaker 2: a restraining order based on that, and that was a huge,
46:49
Speaker 2: huge case that came out of California, and so other
46:52
Speaker 2: places are like, oh, we can do this. Other advocates
46:55
Speaker 2: are like, wait, wait, wait, we should be careful with
46:58
Speaker 2: this because there's already a history of abusers using anti
47:03
Speaker 2: abuse laws against their victims. Like when the cops show up,
47:07
Speaker 2: very often the abusers are the more convincing of the two.
47:11
Speaker 2: And if you have a he said, she said, and
47:13
Speaker 2: you're a male cop who kind of thinks that you
47:15
Speaker 2: know a woman's place actually is in the home, you're
47:17
Speaker 2: probably going to believe the abuser, or in other cases,
47:23
Speaker 2: you're gonna arrest both people just to be sure. So
47:25
Speaker 2: that means that a victim of abuse is likely to
47:28
Speaker 2: get arrested for being abused if the cops come out.
47:32
Speaker 2: And so because they have a history of already using
47:35
Speaker 2: the existing laws, course of control is even harder. It's
47:38
Speaker 2: even squishier to prove or to see your witness, So
47:41
Speaker 2: it may be even likelier that a victim of abuse
47:44
Speaker 2: will end up going to jail because their abuser accused
47:46
Speaker 2: them of doing the abuse.
47:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a case in Australia sort of a
47:53
Speaker 1: you know, a really spot on example of how awful
47:58
Speaker 1: this can can get when you're you know, coming to
48:03
Speaker 1: the front door as a police officer and there's something
48:06
Speaker 1: that's happened there. This woman's name was Tamika Malayley, a
48:11
Speaker 1: witty Indigenous woman who was attacked by her partner Mervyn Bell.
48:16
Speaker 1: Cops show up. She's trying to get the cops to
48:20
Speaker 1: talk to her father to try and like verify that
48:22
Speaker 1: this stuff is going on. The cops aren't listening. She's
48:26
Speaker 1: arguing with the cops and then allegedly spit on them
48:31
Speaker 1: or spit at them, and so they arrest her. She
48:35
Speaker 1: goes into custody and while she was in custody, her
48:38
Speaker 1: partner kidnapped and killed her baby.
48:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. It caused a huge national reckoning about you know,
48:44
Speaker 2: cops believing not just women, but especially marginalized women and
48:48
Speaker 2: women from marginalized communities who do not get the benefit
48:52
Speaker 2: of the doubt compared to say, like a white woman
48:54
Speaker 2: in the same exact situation. And so that's another example
48:58
Speaker 2: of them being like, Okay, should we really outlaw this
49:00
Speaker 2: stuff and make it easier for the abuse to be arrested.
49:06
Speaker 2: But it's still it seems to be up in the air,
49:09
Speaker 2: you know, which way to go. But I feel like
49:11
Speaker 2: people are going more toward outlawing course of control than
49:14
Speaker 2: saying like whoa, whoa, we shouldn't do that.
49:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, criminalizing is one thing. A lot
49:21
Speaker 1: of the other things that researchers have pointed to that
49:23
Speaker 1: can help, you know, just an episode like this, for example,
49:27
Speaker 1: public awareness on stuff like this, encouraging friends and family
49:33
Speaker 1: to sort of pay attention to that kind of thing
49:36
Speaker 1: rather than just like looking for bruises or whatever, or.
49:39
Speaker 2: Being like, yeah, husbands get jealous. That's just what husbands do,
49:43
Speaker 2: and like explaining it away.
49:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, providing resources to help people because you know, we
49:50
Speaker 1: mentioned that, especially with course of control. A lot of
49:53
Speaker 1: times there are in situations where they they will leave
49:55
Speaker 1: with nothing, so resources so people feel like they can
49:59
Speaker 1: leave with nothing and still survive is very very important.
50:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then improving women's like position in society overall
50:08
Speaker 2: would help a lot. If women were treated more equally,
50:11
Speaker 2: not just on paper, but culturally as well, that would
50:14
Speaker 2: solve a lot of these problems.
50:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
50:18
Speaker 2: So there has been some progress. The Violence Against Women
50:22
Speaker 2: Act of nineteen ninety four was passed and since then
50:25
Speaker 2: in domestic violence, non fatal domestic violence in the United
50:28
Speaker 2: States fell sixty three percent, and intimate partner homicides fell
50:32
Speaker 2: from twenty two hundred to sixteen hundred and forty for
50:35
Speaker 2: female victims eleven hundred to seven hundred for male victims.
50:39
Speaker 2: So there is there is, like you know, progress being made,
50:44
Speaker 2: but there's still a long long way to go unfortunately.
50:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, that is cases of physical violence.
50:53
Speaker 1: They don't have studies like that on course of control,
50:56
Speaker 1: which is part of the problem.
50:58
Speaker 2: Yep, you got anything else.
51:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we should encourage people. There is a
51:03
Speaker 1: National Domestic Violence Hotline. It's open twenty four to seven
51:08
Speaker 1: In English and Spanish, it's one eight hundred. I guess
51:11
Speaker 1: just eight hundred these days. Chose how old I am
51:14
Speaker 1: nine seven two three three eight hundred seven nine nine
51:18
Speaker 1: seven two three three. I can't imagine how hard it
51:21
Speaker 1: is to make that phone call. But if this episode
51:28
Speaker 1: speaks to your life in a specific way, then please
51:33
Speaker 1: seek help and reach out to a friend or family
51:36
Speaker 1: member for help to help you pick up that phone
51:39
Speaker 1: if that's what it takes.
51:41
Speaker 2: Agreed, Chuck, We'll put in thanks for saying that too.
51:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and whatever country you're in most likely has some
51:48
Speaker 1: sort of hotline, so we can't list them all here,
51:51
Speaker 1: but please look into that.
51:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to know more about coercive control,
51:57
Speaker 2: start reading about it on the internet. There's a growing
52:00
Speaker 2: body of research about it, and it's fascinating and repellent
52:03
Speaker 2: at the same time, but hopefully it's going to improve
52:06
Speaker 2: lives across the board. And since I said that, it's
52:09
Speaker 2: time for listener mail, I'm.
52:13
Speaker 1: Gonna call this documentary documentary recommendation for you, my friend.
52:19
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, I like that.
52:20
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I've been listening for a long time. Love
52:22
Speaker 1: what you do. Never really thought i'd every reasoned email,
52:24
Speaker 1: but this felt to kismet. It's kind of a fun coincidence.
52:29
Speaker 1: My roommate and I just watched the documentary The World
52:31
Speaker 1: Before Your Feet last night, and in the movie there's
52:35
Speaker 1: a lot of trash on the streets of New York,
52:37
Speaker 1: and we were just curious about the trash issue and
52:39
Speaker 1: the whole situation. We'd both been to New York, but
52:42
Speaker 1: it had been a while, so we forgot how bad
52:43
Speaker 1: it was. Midway through that episode of Yours Now and
52:47
Speaker 1: Josh said, I wish there was a way to see
52:49
Speaker 1: what was there. I knew I had to write in
52:51
Speaker 1: because this is probably a documentary that he would enjoy nice.
52:54
Speaker 1: In the doc Matt Green has a goal to walk
52:58
Speaker 1: every street in New York City. In the dock, he
53:01
Speaker 1: has followed around on parts of his journey by the documentarian,
53:04
Speaker 1: and he tells stories about New York City and its
53:06
Speaker 1: history throughout the journey. He also writes comprehensive blog posts,
53:11
Speaker 1: and in those posts he writes about New York's history
53:14
Speaker 1: and what buildings and spaces used to be. So, whether
53:18
Speaker 1: you want to watch the doc or read the blog post,
53:20
Speaker 1: there's an answer to your curiosity, and that is again.
53:24
Speaker 1: It's called The World Before Your Feet and that is
53:28
Speaker 1: from Tia.
53:30
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Tia, I appreciate that. I will definitely
53:32
Speaker 2: go check that out. It is right up my alley
53:36
Speaker 2: walking every street in New York. Man, I'm still wrapping
53:38
Speaker 2: my head around that one.
53:39
Speaker 1: Pretty cool.
53:41
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to be like Tia and recommend
53:42
Speaker 2: a documentary, please do, especially if it has nothing to
53:46
Speaker 2: do with ancient aliens. You can wrap it up, spank
53:49
Speaker 2: it on the bottom, and send it off to stuff
53:50
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
53:56
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
53:59
Speaker 1: more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
54:02
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.