"I am no one's property": Ownership and abuse in intimate relationships

"I Am No One's Property": Ownership and Abuse in Intimate Relationships

White supremacist, capitalist heteropatriarchy is the foundation of domestic abuse in the United States. Recognizing this, we may find it hard to understand why some abuse is perpetrated by people other than upper class, white, heterosexual men. In this essay, I explore how institutionalized racism, sexism, heterosexism, and the logic of capitalism shape abuse perpetrated by people from a variety of communities, in many types of relationships. Recently, I sat in a cafe with my friend Jan and told her about my research on abuse in lesbian relationships. Jan did not understand how I could be studying lesbian domestic violence. What was there to study? I told Jan about Claire Renzetti's(*) finding that rates of battering in the lesbian community may be comparable to rates of battering by heterosexual men, about 30% of couples. Like many people with whom I have discussed this, Jan did not believe me -- at first. She went home and contemplated the matter. At 3 a.m. she woke up with an anxiety attack and wrote me an e-mail, telling me that she herself had suffered abuse in 1/3 of her sexual relationships with women. She had never named what happened to her as abuse.

Why did Jan not recognize that she had been abused, even though she works professionally with battered (heterosexual) women? Why have many lesbians been slow to acknowledge abuse in our own community? Why have many domestic violence service providers failed to develop services for lesbian and gay survivors of abuse? There are many reasons. Many of us have embraced the idea that abuse is perpetrated solely by men against women as a tool of control in the patriarchy. Many feminist theories about domestic violence have focused (productively) on male power, male privilege, and male socialization. With this focus on male violence, we have often lacked a framework for thinking about women as perpetrators. We have sometimes failed to recognize how patriarchy is connected not only to violence against women, but also violence by women. We need to continue to condemn patriarchy, recognizing its profound role in all forms of violence, and at the same time fight abuse perpetrated by women against other women and against children.

To combat all forms of abuse, we need to recognize the interlocking ideologies that reinforce systems of ownership and oppression. Many ideological systems intersect in domestic abuse. White supremacy, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, and capitalism set up people of color, people who are differently-abled, queer people, women, children, the elderly, and workers as objects of property to be controlled, used, and discarded when they hold no value for their oppressors. This is the root of domestic abuse and other forms of abuse.

By focusing on how social structures contribute to domestic violence, I do not mean that individual perpetrators are not accountable for their behavior. Although our social institutions teach men to use violence and other forms of abuse to control women, individual men can abstain from violence. Likewise, white people can fight racism, and straight people can act in solidarity with queer communities seeking civil and human rights. Although social systems may support and perpetuate abuse of many kinds, individuals with privilege can refuse to comply with oppressive systems and work to change systems of inequality.

Ending the gender system as we know it would move us much closer to a free, nonviolent society. Families, schools, religious institutions, and the media train men from an early age to expect women to serve men's needs. These same systems prepare men to control women in multiple ways, including through violence. Most children from two-parent households are raised by straight couples locked into a gendered power structure that systematically disempowers the female partner. Because of gender inequality, both straight and queer children often grow up learning that intimacy means danger for the vulnerable gender. Many children see their fathers abuse their mothers and learn that people who are victimized by a family member can expect no assistance, while a perpetrator can expect no negative consequences. Clearly, the gender system is a fundamental force that sets the stage for inequality and abuse in all types of intimate partnerships.

When children learn to view intimate relationships as systems that advantage one party, and disadvantage the other, children see gender at work in a special way. Our gender system does not simply set up one gender as less powerful than the other gender. In fact, one gender is constructed as the property of the other. This has great significance in a society that is based on ownership, accumulation, the market, and neocolonialism. One group treating another group as property has been a key aspect of many forms of oppression. If one person views another as a possession, s/he believes s/he has the right to the obedience, services, deference, and even respect of this piece of property. The view of a human being as a possession, rather than a full person with the right to self-determination, is the foundation of many oppressions, and also the foundation of abuse. As long as we have an economic and social system that makes some people owners who dictate the terms of work or relationships, while other people are simply factors of production or servers, the logic of ownership and abuse will be embedded in our lives.