Women may be afraid of strangers, but it's a husband, a lover, a boyfriend, or someone they know who is most likely to hurt them. â€œA woman is abused every fifteen seconds and four women are killed each day by their intimate male partners.â€ (Yahoo) The battered woman is codependent, or promiscuous, or a bad wife, mother or a girlfriend, in short she is asking for it! Even if any of those opinions were true, isnâ€™t freedom from physical harm our birthright? Doesnâ€™t it go for every person? Calling his wife or his girlfriend a â€œslutâ€ or a â€œbitchâ€ does not give a man the right to hit or rape her, let alone send her to the hospital for repair!
One of the questions most often asked is â€œWhy doesnâ€™t she just leave?â€ The answer to that question is, fear of the abuser, being humiliated, having other people find out what happened and to be alone. Also having to deal with social stigma, guilt, financial problems and role expectations. Domestic abuse is a high-stakes game of control, and batterers are expert players. Both the batterer and his victim may have grown up in homes which they were physically abused or witnessed abuse. Each has taken unclear lessons. The man, who may have seen his father beat his mother, learns that aggression is a sign of manliness. For her part, the woman may believe the abuse is her fault, having seen her mother take on the blame and possibly her grandmother before that. "Many theories have been developed to explain why some men use violence against their partners. These theories include: family dysfunction, inadequate communication skills, provocation by women, stress, chemical dependency, lack of spirituality, and economic hardship.â€ (Goode 24). There is no single personality reason that causes domestic violence. People with such disorders have a damaged ability to feel guilt, remorse, or anxiety.