Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Dutton's Battered Woman Syndrome
This article was very interesting. I never thought of the many contributing factors for Battered Woman Syndrome that as mentioned in the article is often overlooked in many legal cases. My classmates already mentioned a lot of them: their circumstances, the fact that they possibly grew up witnessing abuse, etc. The concept learned helplessness was used to describe women's lack of effort to leave or escape an abusive relationship or their failure or inability to take action to protect themselves and their children because they're not aware of other options. I think that this is true for some cases. Some women tend to stay in abusive relationships because they feel that there's nothing they can do about it and that they don't have any other option but to put up with everything. Possibly, they may be aware of other options or may have thought about it but decided not to take action, thinking that it will only make things worse. Like others, I'm happy that I never got to witness or experience a situation like this because I don't think I would know what to do especially if I have kids.
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Maybe if helplessness can be learned, so can empowerment? Do you see this happening?
ReplyDeleteI can see some women that are strong and able to get out of this relations but I can see others that is not that they don’t want to, but just imagine if they come from families where they had domestic violence or domestic abuse, they don’t know any better. Just like we can’t imagine how a person can live in relations like that, they experience the same; they can’t imagine living a life without violence. I have heard women saying that is not such thing like happiness or the perfect man (of course they should be a woman to be perfect j/k) but they have a hard time understanding how to live a life without violence. There are women that said that maybe relations have to be like that even if they didn’t come from families with violence. At the end just the victims have the decision of what to do. They can have all the support and orientation but they are the ones who have to decide what to do.
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