The personal is political – and economic: Rethinking domestic violence.

Source: (2007) Brigham Young University Law Review. 2007(2): 387-450.

The domestic violence movement is no exception. … The domestic violence movement developed into largely a legal movement ensconced within the criminal justice system. … The domestic violence movement itself has suffered a
loss of momentum as criminal justice policies have emerged as the primary intervention strategy. … Indeed, this scholarship has suggested that the convergence of interests between the domestic violence movement and the criminal justice system has been largely illusory. … Indeed, the dominant cultural norm of work pervades systems of national morality. … Individual and household characteristics and domestic violence … In an ironic use of terminology, some have described men’s lack of control in their responses to the loss of identity that arises out of events such as a plant closing as a socially constructed type of “learned helplessness,” the very concept used to describe battered women’s inability to exit from abusive relationships. … The gender dimension to workplace violence adds yet another consequence for domestic violence as these experiences are reproduced in households, as norms established in one venue carry over to the other. (author’s abstract)