Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

["Kaplan, Claire (cnk2r)" <>]

I thought this email would be of interest to list members. If you plan to 
respond, please email Linda, not me.
Claire

Date:    Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:38:55 -0500
From:    Linda Green 
<>
Subject: APPEAL to rally in support of feminist community-based anti-violence 
practice

Hello,
This is an alert which is I hope will reach feminists and allies in the 
academy and feminists and allies in the community alike. It is an appeal to 
feminists in the academy to advance research that supports feminist and 
anti-colonial community-based anti-violence work against intensifying attacks 
which are disqualifying both those practices and feminist and anti-colonial 
accounts of violence against women. In the past I have been heard cautioning 
against the appropriation of community-based knowledge and advocating for 
activist-led research (against university-led research) that documents and 
promote community-based practices. I continue to sound these cautionary 
notes. And I also see a clear role for feminist academic and student 
researchers in supporting of the continuation of feminist and anti-colonial 
practices. Feminists in the academy are well positioned given their location 
in universities to support community based practice against the growing 
threats posed by high profile anti-feminist researchers and lobbyists. Many 
feminists in the academy have the tools to formulate a wall of evidence and 
argument to respond to these threats.

The work of psychologist Don Dutton (and a considerable number of others who 
think like him) provides a clear and present example of the rising threat to 
feminist (and less visibly but no less so anti-colonial) antiviolence work 
both in Canada and the US. Dutton uses piles of so-called evidence to support 
his argument that feminist antiviolence practice is unethical and that it may 
be a form of malpractice. Yes, he says this in those very words! Dutton 
argues that  feminist accounts of violence against women don't deserve to be 
called social theory since feminism is an ideology that doesn't account for 
much that we might ask about violence, and over generalizes based on what is 
he claims are only a minority of cases of violence against women. Dutton's 
appeals to those in psychology to overturn feminist "ideology" with a revival 
of psychology and science are apparently starting to work on some of those 
who have been feminist allies in the past.

This all spells bigger trouble. Dutton got a lot of airtime with his 2007 
book Rethinking Domestic Violence, but he's been producing work of this kind 
for years. The timing on this should be a concern because in Canada we have a 
government that may actually be willing to be convinced by this stuff. In 
Canada, Dutton's findings are being used by REAL Women to lobby government to 
withdraw funding from feminist antiviolence work.

It may interest those in law to learn that Dutton's work also questions legal 
practice in this area. One can only guess that he may begin working on (and 
turning the heads of) some of those in law, as he appears to be doing in 
psychology.

I want to point out from the outset something that I didn't see when I first 
began thinking about, namely that Dutton invites us to deploy a hegemonic 
white feminist lens in response which marginalizes antiracist and 
anti-colonial practices. In countering his claims and the influence of his 
work, this invitation must be refused.

For a longer list of Dutton's publications (although this is not an 
all-inclusive list): http://www.drdondutton.com/listof.htm

A few recent examples:

The gender paradigm in domestic violence research and practice. Part 11:
The information website of the American Bar Association. Aggression and 
Violent Behavior.

Dutton, D.G. (2008) My back pages: Reflections on thirty years of domestic 
violence research. Trauma, Violence and Abuse, 9 (3), 131 -143).

Dutton, D.G. & Corvo, K. (2007) The Duluth Program: A flawed and data - 
impervious paradigm. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 22 (6), 658 -667.

Dutton, D.G. (2007). Rethinking Domestic Violence. University Of Vancouver, 
British Columbia: British Columbia Press.

Dutton, D.G., & Corvo, K. (2006). Transforming a flawed policy: A call to 
revive psychology and science in domestic violence research and practice.
Aggression and Violent Behavior 11, 5, 457-483.

Dutton buries his readers under mountains of evidence that he uses to argue 
among other things that most intimate partner violence is bilateral and that 
in most cases women are aggressive themselves and choose aggressive partners 
(i.e. they ask for it). Dutton uses also draws evidence from a number of 
official Canadian and US social surveys to argue that most violence is 
bilateral, only a minority of couples (about 10%) in which violence occurs 
are male dominant, extreme violence occurs in an smaller percentage of 
couples, and women are  responsible for a good proportion of that extreme 
violence.

There are a small handful of vigilant academics who are following and taking 
work like Dutton's on and I am appealing to feminists and also students 
looking for research/thesis topics to join them in doing so because I (and 
others) believe that together with concerted action on this, part of what is 
needed is a veritable wall of counter evidence and counter argument to fight 
Dutton's growing influence and the influence of his peers. Molly Dragiewicz 
at UOIT is one of the feminists who has taken the fight on in the last few 
years. She and Walter Keseredy and a handful of others have taken up the 
fight and are continuing to push back. Ed Gondolf published an article 
recently presenting the evidence for Duluth against Dutton and Gondolf's has 
been working in this area for years.
Feminists in the antiviolence movement have been discussing the kinds of 
arguments Dutton presents for forever and have been pressing for organized 
action on this - they are pressing now for this now also. (For a list of 
those who have joined the fight whose work I am aware see the end of this 
message). It concerns me that I'm not seeing more published feminist 
criticisms of Dutton emerging since the threat  his work poses is all too 
real.

I see an opportunity for feminists and their allies in the academy - 
academics and students both - to rally in countering the research of Dutton 
and others whose work is taking a similar tack. In so doing, in critiquing 
the use of evidence, in critiquing the tools of data collection that produce 
such findings, in pressing for and demanding changes in those data collection 
tools so that the findings produced reflect women's realities, and in 
fighting the authority claimed by Dutton based on his location in the academy 
with their own authority based on that location, feminists in the academy can 
join the fight to hold the space open for frontline feminist violence work, 
which is in so many ways besieged today.  A paper Mandy Bonisteel and I wrote 
(link below) discusses some of the challenges.
http://www.crvawc.ca/documents/ShrinkingFeministSpace_AntiViolenceAdvocacy_OCT2005.pdf

And I must repeat the cautionary note I sounded above, which is that Dutton 
invites us back into a hegemonic white feminism that marginalizes antiracist 
and anti-colonial practices in our narrow focus on gender alone in discussion 
of community-based anti-violence practices. In countering Dutton and others, 
this invitation to reoccupy a hegemonic white feminist position and deploy a 
hegemonic white feminist analysis must be refused.

Dutton, D.G. & Corvo, K. (2007) The Duluth Program: A flawed and 
data-impervious paradigm. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 22 (6), 658 -667.

2008 *Dutton, D.G. (2008) My back pages: Reflections on thirty years of 
domestic violence research. Trauma, Violence and Abuse, 9 (3), 131 -143).

The Duluth Model is being targeted for attack as a very visible example of 
feminist community-based practice in violence against women. Dutton argues 
that Duluth is only a relevant model for work with a small minority of women 
and that since psychological factors account for most violence, psychotherapy 
other psychological couple/family interventions are indicated. In some of his 
work he uses the findings of psychotherapy literature to argue that a 
feminist account of violence against women doesn't allow those working with 
perpetrators to form a therapeutic bond, which is according to the 
psychotherapy literature indispensable to positive outcomes in psychotherapy. 
I've heard this argued locally too from some of those who  promote a 
narrative therapy approach to work with
batterers - this is something which is becoming increasingly common.

The issues are recognized as serious enough in the United States that 
recently there was a discussion online about the theoretical basis and 
research evidence that supports the Duluth model. I could in another message 
post information about that discussion and a short list of a few references 
which are examples of feminist and profeminist work that refutes Dutton and 
the arguments of others like Dutton who would if they could reduce the 
credibility of and support for feminist antiviolence practices.

Linda Green


____________________
Linda Green



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about this issue, contact me directly by phone at the number below. If you 
received this email in error, please delete it immediately and notify the 
sender.

Claire N. Kaplan, Ph.D.
Director, Sexual & Domestic Violence Services
Manager, Sexual Assault Program Coordinators List
UVA Women's Center
PO Box 800588
Charlottesville VA 22908-0588
http://womenscenter.virginia.edu/sdvs
434-982-2774 / 434-982-2361