• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Myriam Gurba

  • About
  • Blog & News
  • Books
    • Letter to a Bigot
    • Mean
    • Painting Their Portraits in Winter
    • Dahlia Season
  • Magazine Work
  • Events
    • WORDS OF REVOLUTION; WORDS OF SOLICE: A BLUE STOOP VIRTUAL FUNDRAISER
    • Particulate Matter–Felicia Luna Lemus in conversation with Myriam Gurba
    • After American Dirt: Criticism as Liberation
    • P&P Live! Maria Hinojosa | ONCE I WAS YOU with Myriam Gurba
    • “The Real American Dirt: Roberto Lovato in conversation with Myriam Gurba”
    • The Chicano Rebellion Reconsidered 50 Years Later
  • Store
  • Contact

abuse

Coercive Control

March 13, 2020 by Myriam Leave a Comment

coercive control

Content Warning: Sociology. Language. Misogyny.

I miss teaching so I’m going to use this thread as my classroom. I want to discuss a term I dislike versus a term I prefer. I dislike the term domestic violence. I prefer coercive control. Here’s why.

I became a battered woman after a man trapped me in what some people euphemistically term a “relationship.” I reject that euphemism because it implies that he and I engaged in a consensual romance. That was not the case. My batterer prevented me from fleeing by using threats, violence, surveillance, stalking, and micro-regulating my day-to-day life. For three years, an “or else” proviso hung over me. It hangs over every battered woman: Stay or this man may kill you.

The threat of femicide hangs over every battered woman.

In this US, men murder four female partners a day and men often kill after a woman flees. If we follow the headlines, we’ll notice that these misogynists frequently have two letters in front of their “romantic” status: ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, ex-fiancé…

Forensic sociologist Evan Stark argues that the domestic violence model fails to capture the true scope of harm perpetrated by batterers. The DV model focuses on discrete acts of violence, a punch here, a slap there, a threat here.

This model obscures the totality of the crime, ignoring the *effect* of the batterer’s actions, the *environment* he engineers. That environment is a cage tailor-made for the battered woman. Stark argues that instead of looking at what batterers do to women, we ought to consider what batterers *take* from women. They take our freedom. They create a hostage-like situation that they *force* us to endure.

Enter coercive control. Coercive control re-frames the battering of women as a liberty crime.

The batterer’s aim isn’t to inflict occasional violence during “interpersonal conflict.” The batterer’s aim, and make no mistake, coercive control is a *gendered* crime facilitated by male privilege, is the total domination of another human being.

Coercive control results in the subjugation of women in private life and it involves a technology of its own. I’ll be discussing this technology in a follow up thread.


This post originally appeared as a thread on Twitter. Click below to read the original thread and any comments.

Content Warning: Sociology. Language. Misogyny.

I miss teaching so I’m going to use this thread as my classroom. I want to discuss a term I dislike versus a term I prefer. I dislike the term domestic violence. I prefer coercive control. Here’s why.

— Myriam Chingona Gurba de Serrano (@lesbrains) March 4, 2020

Filed Under: News Tagged With: abuse, coercive control, domestic violence

Footer

 

Copyright © 2019 - 2020 Myriam Gurba.