He Hurts Her Body in a Thousand Ways Without Laying a Hand on Her

We need to expand our view of what counts as physical violence

Dr Emma Katz is widely regarded as the world’s foremost academic expert in her area of study — how coercive control impacts on children and young people.

Emma specializes in the harms caused by father-perpetrated coercive control, as well as children’s and mothers’ resistance and recovery. Read more in her book Coercive Control in Mothers’ and Children’s Lives, published by Oxford University Press.

Welcome

Thank you for reading this post — and for your support for Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz.

The reason I write is always to provide you with detailed insights into coercive control, written in the most accessible way possible — and like all posts you receive from me, this post aims to expand our current thinking, taking you the reader to new levels of awareness.

After you have finished this post, you will have a new way of thinking about what counts as physical violence.

Our current thinking about what counts as physical violence is limiting — and expanding it really matters

There are certain “gotcha” statements and questions that are commonly directed to victims-survivors:

“He wasn’t physically abusive”

“He didn’t hit her, right?”

“Did he ever actually strike you though?”

What is the purpose of such statements?

Frequently, the purpose behind them is to minimize the actions of male domestic abuse perpetrators.

Expanding the category is essential because of the importance given to physical violence

Expanding what counts as physical violence is essential, partly because of the importance given to physical acts when domestic violence is discussed.

The way the public views “physical violence”

It is true that there has been some progress in public awareness that domestic violence doesn’t just mean physical violence. In many countries, the public is certainly more aware than it used to be that domestic violence also includes psychological and emotional abuse, financial abuse, stalking behaviors and more.

However, physical violence is still usually seen as the most serious form of domestic abuse. It’s the thing that might tip people over the line into seeing that what a perpetrator is doing is dangerous and unacceptable. It’s the thing that might make people, and especially victims-survivors, feel like they have permission to stop talking about “relationship problems” and to start talking about “abuse”.

Once physical violence is recognized, victims-survivors might feel justified in leaving, something they didn’t feel justified in doing when the abuse was “only emotional”.

Where there is physical violence, people will often start advising the victim-survivor to “run”.

So the category “physical violence” is key — but currently it is seen in too minimal a way

There are many ways in which perpetrators cause bodily harm to victims-survivors without physically attacking them.