Learning to Talk About Domestic Violence

A system that requires us to risk further retaliation when we report being in danger enables and engenders further violence.

No one knows what to call us. For decades, centuries, we were simply women, and our fate was a symptom of this condition. Beginning around the 1970s, we were “battered women,” which became “victims,” which in turn has mostly given way to “survivors.” The thing we have survived has variously been called “wife beating,” “domestic violence,” “abuse,” and “intimate partner violence,” which are hopelessly outdated, euphemistic, vague, and narrow, respectively.

Naming the harm seems like an academic concern, but it mirrors the real and sometimes literal annihilation we face when we report the violence we have endured. My problem with the metamorphosis from “victims” to “survivors” is that it’s classic empowerment rebranding that confers no power, a distinction without a difference. It also excises the harm entirely: A victim is someone who has suffered an injury, while a survivor is someone who has overcome. The vertiginous swing from “victim” to “survivor” enacts a shift in emphasis from vulnerability to strength, and the particularities of experience—the times we were beaten, demeaned, belittled, manipulated, threatened, strangled—can be lost in translation.

I’ve told my own story to three therapists, two lawyers, one judge, my family, seven intimate partners, a handful of cops, a room full of yoga instructors, dozens of bureaucratic strangers in the Kings County Family Court system, two volunteers on a crisis hotline, several physician assistants taking my medical history, close friends, not-so close friends, and near-strangers. My story is the story of the man who used to beat the shit out of me. There is some variation depending on the audience, but usually those are the words that I use. The past imperfect tense of “used to” suggests, accurately, that this was an action occurring regularly over a period of time. “Beat” seems both more serious and less particular than other possibilities, like “hit” or “strangled” or “kicked into broken glass.” “Shit” functions as an intensifier, but it also makes the telling more conversational; “he beat me” lands in a way that is qualitatively different from “he beat the shit out of me.” In my experience, “he beat me” elicits fretful silence. “He beat the shit out of me” doesn’t always kill the conversation. For a long time, it felt like the most important thing about myself. Hi, I’m Sarah, and my ex-boyfriend used to beat the shit out of me. What’s your name? The brutality I weathered had eclipsed everything else.

There was a night when we were walking home from a bar—myself and the man who used to beat the shit out of me—and he backhanded me across the face so hard I spat blood for blocks. I don’t remember if we were arguing, or if he was just angry, and, really, it doesn’t matter. After a few minutes of walking in silence, my tongue hiding in the coppery pocket between my cheek and my teeth, a cop pulled up alongside us, no siren, no lights, and asked if everything was alright.

I stood and waited to be answered for, because what could I say? Actually, Officer, as you no doubt saw, this man just hit me in the mouth, and it’s not the first time. I mean, if he’s willing to do that out in the open, just imagine what he does behind closed doors. And, forgive my presumption, but I’m sure that you saw it. Let’s be honest, sir, it’s not exactly typical for you to be stopping a straight white couple walking down the sidewalk in a “nice neighborhood.” But you want me to say it. With him standing right next to me. I know he’s wearing a fancy watch and expensive shoes, but really he’s a monster who hits me, kicks me, chokes me—well, “strangles,” technically. You “choke” on food, but your boyfriend “strangles” you until your body floods with animal panic.

I locked eyes with the cop and tried to summon all of the force in my body to say telepathically, “Help. Please.” I was hopeful in the reckless way that only white cis women ever get to be, believing that cops existed to help people in trouble. I didn’t know at the time that not only are cops demonstrably bad at bringing abusers to justice, but that studies show over a third of cops are themselves abusers. The man who used to beat the shit out of me said that we were fine, just walking home, that we lived about a quarter of a mile away. The cop wished us a good night, and I watched his taillights recede down the road until they vanished.

A victim is someone who has suffered an injury, while a survivor is someone who has overcome.

Call it a double bind or a catch-22: If I want to be protected from the person who is beating me, I need to tell the police, but if I go to the police for protection, I will be beaten. Heads you win, tails I lose. I was, by all appearances, invited to speak but in fact compelled to remain silent, the violence being done to my body compounded by the impossibility of speaking about it. Built into this act of silencing is a cloaking mechanism; a deft pretense that, in fact, no silencing is happening at all (the cop did ask me if anything was wrong). A system that requires us to risk further retaliation when we report being in danger enables and engenders further violence, all under the guise of support.

And this experience is common: being asked to speak up while a hand tightens around our throats. I felt it again years later when I finally decided to file for an order of protection against the man who used to beat the shit out of me. At Kings County Family Court, I was asked to detail the incident or incidents that caused me to petition for protection on an 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper with lines on the front and back. What could I say? Should I choose the most violent incident? The most recent? The form called to mind high school exam questions, five paragraphs on the Teapot Dome scandal, not an account of years of interpersonal terrorism, but I did my best, laying out everything I could remember about a night when our neighbors heard me shouting for help and called the cops. He had knocked me to the ground and started kicking me, boots still on, as I cowered on the floor. A crush of officers had swarmed our apartment, the only woman among them asking me over and over, “Did he hit you? Did he hit you?” as the man who used to beat the shit out of me was questioned within earshot in the next room. What, I wonder, was I supposed to say other than “No?”

I wasn’t sure that would be enough for a judge, and there were no guidelines on how or what to write, so I kept going, trying to prioritize the incidents that were most verifiable, my writing getting smaller, curving up at the margins as I ran out of space.

I waited a few hours for someone to call my name, and eventually, I was brought back to a cubicle where a man in a cardigan handed me a typed and translated version of my statement. It was much shorter, not at all descriptive. I wanted to tell the man that I’d misunderstood the assignment, that I could have written this way if I’d known that was what they wanted. The typed account was true, but I had been replaced by “the petitioner,” and all the lurid details I’d felt embarrassed but compelled to include had been sanded smooth into legal jargon. It wasn’t that he’d “kicked me until a bruise the size of a softball bloomed purple on the underside of my thigh,” it was “third-degree assault committed by the respondent.” I read the statement, mouthing to myself the words that were mine, but not mine, and signed. I had been erased from my own assault. If it didn’t bear my full legal name and date of birth, I would not recognize the final order of protection I was granted as my own. My experiences were entirely absent. But from the start, the order was more talisman than text; I’m not sure I even read it in its entirety before tucking it safely away.

When the court grants an order of protection, the protected person is required to carry it with them at all times. This is in case the order is violated, and they need to call the police. Put differently, we carry our orders of protection so the cops don’t automatically think we are full of shit when we tell them that we are in danger. I was more than a little insulted that two stapled sheets of paper with a raised seal carried more weight than my word. The document I toted on my person for two years, folded into eighths to fit inside my wallet until the dyed red leather bled pigment onto the paper and the corners lost their sharpness, was designed not to support my word but to supersede it. Once more, my voice was silenced—strangled, if you like—by a process purporting to protect me and others like me.

The order lists the things the man who used to beat the shit out of me was now barred from doing: He must “refrain from assault, stalking, harassment, aggravated harassment, menacing, reckless endangerment, strangulation, criminal obstruction of breathing or circulation, disorderly conduct, criminal mischief, sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, forcible touching, intimidation, threats, identity theft, grand larceny, coercion, or any criminal offense” against me. I can attest from experience that repeated readings only render this list more bewildering. Why, for instance, include both “harassment” and “aggravated harassment?” What is the difference between “strangulation” and “criminal obstruction of breathing?” Aren’t we all (at least theoretically) barred from committing “any criminal offense?” We might reasonably read this as the justice system telling on itself: My order makes plain that we—survivors, victims, battered women, petitioners—must already have a judgment in hand before the law can actually protect us.

My order of protection also spells out that these things must not be done to me, as though I’m the factor that makes these actions a violation of law, and the man who used to beat the shit out of me is free to continue being criminally violent otherwise. The logic here is that an abuser is a specific rather than a general threat, that the man who used to beat the shit out of me is only a danger to and around his victim.

I didn’t know this when I sought one, but protective orders sometimes incite the violence they supposedly prevent. Of the women murdered after already obtaining orders of protection, a fifth were killed within forty-eight hours of the order being granted. Twenty percent of “survivors” are murdered within two days. So, for those keeping score, if all goes according to plan and we are found to be believable witnesses to our own suffering, we are issued toothless documents that may, in fact, put us in greater danger of being killed.

There are no comprehensive statistics on the women who never petitioned for protection, of those who were not taken seriously by the police or the court, or who abandoned the process before receiving the all-powerful two stapled pages. The same goes for the unknown number of queer women bullied, threatened, or confronted with cops who couldn’t conceive of one woman being abused by another and refused to file reports. Likewise, we can’t know about the women who were unable to get leave from work to spend several days in court, women who were afraid to petition the court because of their immigration status or criminal record, and women who were financially dependent on their abusers and could not imagine leaving. There is even less reported on the trans women and nonbinary folks who have been harassed, terrorized, denied access to shelter or support services, or who were themselves arrested or violently attacked when they went to the police seeking help. And this is to say nothing of the untold multitudes who never even considered that the legal system would protect their interests or their bodies in the first place.

The logic here is that an abuser is a specific rather than a general threat.

If these processes fail us, if they are alienating and unsuccessful, one might note that the framework is new; after all, only since the 1970s has domestic violence been a crime, seen as warranting intervention. The problem, though, is ancient. Consider the myth of Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philomela is raped by her sister Procne’s husband, Tereus. Tereus, fearing Philomela will rat him out, cuts out her tongue, imprisons her, and tells Procne that her sister has died. Philomela, muted and mutilated, weaves her story into a tapestry and has it delivered to Procne, who immediately springs into action, killing her son and feeding his remains to Tereus in revenge. The women pray to the gods to escape Tereus’s wrath, and both women and Tereus are transformed into birds.

This myth is sometimes read as testament to the power of truth and a warning to those who would silence their victims: You can cut out our tongues, but still, truth will triumph. I don’t read it that way. I don’t find optimism in a story that escalates and spreads familial violence. What strikes me is not that Philomela uses tapestry as testimony, or that two women team up to exact vengeance. I’m more interested in the subtle moment of recognition between the two women. The tapestry, Philomela’s woven affidavit, is brought to her sister, Procne, who immediately and unequivocally understands its meaning. Procne looks at a tapestry and sees violence. This means that either Philomela is a shockingly photorealistic weaver, or that Procne herself has experienced violence, too. After all, her own husband is a rapist who cut out his sister-in-law’s tongue rather than risk consequences of his behavior.

This moment of near-miraculous recognition is not the stuff of myth. It’s surprisingly common among survivors: our secret handshake as alumni of a society none of us ever wanted to join. It isn’t a model to strive toward. The goal isn’t for there to be more people who recognize one another by their matching scars. The real goal should be clear, but just in case: It’s no scars at all.

There is, though, something precious in feeling yourself understood without needing to explain or justify. We hold stories inside us that feel bigger than our bodies and demand constant modulation to fit each circumstance as it arises. Keep your wits about you in front of the cops. Try not to cry, or they’ll think you’re unstable. Don’t go into all the prurient details with a new partner, or you’ll scare them off. Make sure that your parents don’t worry too much about you. Choose your words carefully. It’s a story we tell and retell, write and weave, and can’t ever exorcise, even when we are relieved of our tongues. I’m not hoping for there to be more people who believe us because they’ve been there, but for more audiences who can make space for the stories that feel too unruly to tell, who don’t require us to agonize over finding the magic words that unlock their trust. Instead, when you see my tapestry, you might simply believe.