Intimate partner violence is characterized not only by physical violence, but also sexual, emotional, and mental violence through the use of threats (Understanding Intimate Partner Violence, 2011). In Black and Blue, Anna Quindlen delves into the mind of a woman who faces intimate partner violence in her everyday life. Fran, or Beth, and her son attempt to get away from Fran’s abusive cop husband. While Black and Blue is a fiction novel, its points about intimate partner violence hold true in many cases such as the breaking of traditional gender roles, high levels of stress, alcohol overconsumption, and learned behavior.
Traditional Gender Roles This seemed to be a reoccurring theme throughout Black and Blue. Since Fran was a nurse in a hospital and made more money than her husband, a police officer, she felt as if he hit her a few times because she could possibly be seen as more successful than him. “‘Hey, Frances Ann,’ he said, doing our taxes… ‘you make more money than I do.’ And a shiver went through me. I could read his voice as well as I could read an X ray” (Quindlen, p 68). Fran knew that Bobby felt emasculated because she made more money than him, which made her afraid he was going to hit her. Research shows that the more educated a woman is, the more liberal her thinking is. If her partner is conservative thinking about the social status of women are more likely to abuse someone with a liberal thinking, like Fran has in the novel (Jewkes, 2002). Men who
Although this is very devastating, this is not the first instance of domestic partner homicide occurring in the United States. About three women are killed everyday in the United States by current or former relationships.Violence against women affects many women across different cultures, race, ethnicities, etc., however in America, African-American women make up about half of female homicide victims even though they make up 13 percent of the population (O’Hara, 2017). Additionally they are victimized by domestic violence 35 percent more than white women (O 'Hara, 2017).We see how violence against women connects to the paternalistic roots, and also intersects with race being that African-American women are exposed to violence at a much higher rate than white women.
Black women experience a lot of things in life differently from others, because of their intersectionality of being not only a woman, but also black. They are a double minority and they feel this double minority through many different aspects within their lives. The aspect that black women deal with differently, is domestic violence. Black women experience and deal with domestic violence differently than white women, and anyone who else experience domestic violence. Through this paper I would like to explain this difference that black women face when tackling domestic violence due to the “family secret”, but also how it effects children within the black community, how it can affect the entire community, and lastly why black women should let go of the “family secret” to not only better themselves, but to better the black community. They experience a different struggle than other victims call the “family secret”. The “family secret” is in general, keeping the secret of domestic violence within the family because it is a family issue. The “family secret has destroyed families and caused many deaths within the population of black women. Other than these problems of holding this so called “family secret”, I want to speak on the effects this has on the black community, such as, how black women who do not speak on their issues of domestic violence continue a cycle of violence within young black girls. Black women need to speak on their issues of domestic violence, instead of
The passage which is called "Dr. Blue" by Anne Panning is a story written in 2nd person which takes place in a hospital where your mother is not feeling well. Throughout the story, the family (minus the mom) seems to be getting closer to one another as they spend time with each other, from going to the dollar store for necessities to eating at a fast food restaurant. They rarely ever done this with each other. But due to the current circumstances they were facing with the mom being ill in the hospital, they go out and spend time together more often.
The task assigned is a review of the book Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen. I will provide examples and summarize the main concepts of the book to include Intimate Partner Violence, Battering, and Intimate Terrorism. I will reference the text Family Violence, Across the Lifespan by Ola W. Barnett, Cindy Miller-Perrin, and Robin D. Perrin in order to support my theoretical claims. I will select a critical part of the book and explain why it was challenging to read and understand based on my perspective, and then select a character to analyze using one of the theoretical perspective. This book is sad and disturbing, the punishment inflicted on Fran by her husband Bobby Benedetto is unacceptable and
A safety plan is an essential tool for people to use to assist women or men in domestic violence relationships. A safety plan helps explore and map out options and ideas to promote safety when domestic violence or family violence has occurred. This could prevent careless actions from happening such as not knowing where to go, or becoming the aggressor. Taking these precaution can help save the lives of women or men in an event of a violent episode of rage or frustration. It is important for the victim to strategize what are their alternatives and identify triggers of what causes the violence, in order to prevent it from happening. A safety plan needs to be tailored to the individual needs and should promote safety at any moment of altercation. A safety plan encourages building a trustworthy relationship that may help the victim coupe with the situation by exchanging thoughts and ideas. This relationship is an essential resource for the victim, as violence could happen at any time. A safety plan could encourage many women to finally get the boldness to leave their partners, but there are certain resource women need to be successful. In the novel “Black and Blue” Frannie Benedetto suffered horrible abuse by her police officer husband, Bobby. Frannie finally get the valor to leave him when she realizes that her abuse will never stop, no matter how good she is to her husband. Fran decide to runaway with her son Robert. She takes on the identity of someone
Domestic violence, alternatively referred to as Intimate Partner Violence, is defined by the Department of Justice as “a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner.” While domestic violence is commonly thought of as only physical or sexual abuse, domestic violence can also be emotional, economic, or psychological. Domestic violence has remained constant in society throughout history, even though over time society’s response to the issue has changed. While domestic violence affects everyone regardless of race, gender, age, etc. it is estimated that approximately 90% of all victims are women. For the purpose of this paper, I will be focusing on
The article constructs domestic violence as an issue of gender, race and socioeconomic status. Women are identified as the “majority” of victims (Taylor 2014). Consequently, the article conceptually represents domestic violence as events of intimate terrorism where one partner violently terrorizes the other partner to gain complete control over the relationship, which is entirely perpetrated by men (Johnson 2012). With that said, Johnson (2012) points out that majority of domestic violence is situational couple violence, where both the man and the
Walter (1969) gave a comprehensive definition of violence as “destructive harm including not only physical assaults that damage the body, but also techniques of inflicting harm by mental or emotional means” (p. 24). However, in the context of intimate relationships, the definition of violence requires more aspects to be determined. The basic questions to be asked when defining domestic violence proposed by Hegarty, Sheehan, and Schonfeld (1999) in their article A Multidimensional Definition of Partner Abuse are 1) which relationships should be included as domestic? And 2) how should violence in domestic life be defined? To answer these questions, Hegarty et al. said that it is important to choose the appropriate definition that is most relevant to the purpose of the studies. Dutton (2006) defined domestic violence in his book Rethinking Domestic Violence as “any violence occurring between intimate partners (same sex or other sex, married or unmarried) and against children” (p. 3), but further said that he will only focus on intimate
In terms of the topic of domestic violence, the issue can occur to any person, regardless of gender, racial ethnicity, socioeconomic background, etc. Yet, there are certain individuals in the population that are more susceptible to intimate partner violence, particularly minority women. For Black and Hispanic women, there have been little studies regarding their response to violent relationships, with a majority of studies being geared toward Caucasian females. Along with being more susceptible to domestic violence, minority women experiencing varying cultural beliefs and values that can determine whether they decide to leave or stay in an abusive relationship. In study conducted by Lacey (2010), she found out that “marital status, presence
On average,in the United States, twenty people per minute are physically abused by their partner. Which if you make the math, that is more than ten million women and men. In the short story, “ It will look like a Sunset” by Kelly Sundberg, she effectively asserts her targeted audience which consists on couples and mainly young women in their late twenties who are in a relationship. Sundberg supports her assertions by appealing to ethical, emotional, and logical examples as well as using rhetorical strategies. The author's main purpose is to urge the readers to accept life is complicated and anyone who faces a similar situation should seek help because you may not be in the right state of mind to make the right decision.
“Domestic violence is a type of abuse by one or both partners in marriage, friends, family, dating or cohabitation” (Aziz & Mahmoud, 2010). There are many forms of abuse from verbal and emotional to physical that often escalates over time in intensity for the victim. Data from the criminal justice system, hospital patient medical records and mental health records, police reports, surveys and social services reports of thousands of women revealed that many are injured and killed as a result of violence from someone close to them. “The US Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) defines domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner regardless of race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender” (Robertson & Murachver, 2009). Researchers and the criminal justice system have not been able to agree on a clear definition to domestic violence which can range from physical injury, stalking, verbal abuse and humiliation, denial of shelter and access to money, and intimidation through aggressive behaviors. The definition of domestic violence may vary but the results from physical injury, mental and emotional trauma, and sometimes even death can last a life time.
Domestic Violence (DV) is a critical social issue that negatively impacts not only our own culture in America but as well as all other cultures around the world. Domestic Violence is a global issue reaching across national boundaries as well as socio-economic, cultural, racial and class distinctions (Kaur & Garg 2008). Domestic Violence is a serious problem that can be seen around every society from families of both developed and underdeveloped countries and of different backgrounds. Although there are various cases of domestic violence against men, children and the elderly; women account for the majority percentage of victims of Domestic Violence. This violence can take the form of physical assault, psychological abuse, financial abuse or sexual assault (Kaur & Garg 2008). Domestic Violence is a trend that is on the rise and will continue to plague our society if nothing is done on time to address this social issue.
Everyone is different with a unique set of values which shapes our beliefs and views that affect our personal behavior. Domestic violence can happen to anyone no matter the race, ethnicity, or social economic status. According to Babcock, Gree, and Robie (2004), domestic violence is a learned behavior and is defined by the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence (2014) “Is when two people get into an intimate relationship and one person uses a pattern of coercion and control against the other person during the relationship and/or after the relationship has terminated. It often includes physical sexual, emotional, or economic abuse.” When defining the parties involved in domestic violence disputes, a batterer and/or victim can be male or female. For the purpose of research results we will discuss the batterer being male and the victim as female. The process of understanding domestic violence includes understanding human behavior in the social environment and examining battering from a batterer’s perspective.
and green. Blue as discussed earlier was represented as the color of the God and other religious concepts, so the major incorporation of the color blue in the reliquary chasse indicated the spiritual significance it carried. Envisioning blue on the chasse unified people to Jesus Christ. Many of the reliquary chasse of the 12th century narrated a story; this individual one narrates the crucifixion of Christ. There are several key figures engraved throughout the exterior of the chasse, however since the crucial scene of the execution are shown on the front face of the chasse, that indicates that this chasse was primarily to be seen from the front rather than the sides. If viewed from the front, the top has three figures designed on it. In the center is the God the Father and on his either sides are two unknown saints. All three figures are represented in mandorlas however in different colors. The God of Father is displayed in the blue mandorla while the saints are shown in green mandorla. Here we can interpret a sense of hierarchy because the God of Father is shown in blue, which represents a divine color, however the saints are represented in green that is a mix of blue and yellow. So, blue still exists and represents divinity, yet the mixture of blue and yellow to produce a different shade of blue signifies that the God of Father is above and more important than the saints.
Domestic violence refers to abusive behavior in any relationship that is inflicted on a partner to gain or maintain power and control over another partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological. Domestic violence includes behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone. Domestic violence can happen to anyone, regardless of their race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender; and it also occurs in both opposite-sex and same-sex relationships; domestic violence also affects people of all socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels (Justice, The United States Department of, 2017). This topic has attracted a lot of discussion and research because of its dominance and complexity. This essay, therefore seeks to look at the causes and effects of domestic violence.