ew books of modern times have had as greatan impact in law, in popular culture and in understanding, as has thisone. We have all heard of the "Battered Woman Syndrome,"which originated with this book. Later feminist writings on thesubject credit Prof. Walker for establishing the contemporary feministtheory and jurisprudence on "Domestic Violence," which theyinvariably depict as violence by a man against a woman. Every womanwho has obtained mitigation in punishment for an act of violenceagainst her mate by pleading the "battered woman syndrome"is a direct beneficiary of Dr. Walker's feminist advocacy andresearch.
Unfortunately, no one seems to have ever performed any critical analysis of this work, at least in public. Seldom in modern times has any work had such great impact, yet received so little scrutiny. This is (or should be) astonishing, although it is not difficult to discern the reason why. Given the pressure to conform to "political correctness" at most colleges and universities, any serious objection raised to such a cornerstone of feminist research would unquestionably be career-limiting, if not grounds for actual dismissal. Neither in psychology, nor in law, has any significant questioning of Walker's research occurred. It is doubly difficult to question a work on this subject without seeming to be "unconcerned about violence" or "hostile to women," even if the work is found to contain major errors and misrepresentations. Despite all protestations to the contrary such accusations will inevitably be made. Nonetheless, given the political significance of the issue, and the degree of emotion and animosity being generated by the debate, a critical examination ofThe Battered Woman is long overdue.
Where did Prof. Walker obtain the sample of women she uses for her study of "battered women"? Did she perform some careful selection to obtain a representative sample? Indeed not. She simply interviewed those women who contacted her in the course of her giving speeches, radio and TV interviews, and appearing in news stories, on the subject of her research into "battered women." She is aware that this represents a problem: "This is a self-volunteered sample. These women were not randomly selected, and they cannot be considered a legitimate data base from which to make specific generalizations" [introduction, p. xiii]. Having noted this purely for the record, she then proceeds to utterly disregard her own caveat, and develops a long list of generalizations derived from this so-called "research." She presents us with a list of "myths" about "battered women," all of them drawn from the self-volunteered sample above. Some of the supposed "myths" will be discussed in detail below. Now, they may indeed be "myths," or they may on the other hand be true - but the point is one cannot conclude one way or the other, working only from a self-volunteered sample. And it is on this exceptionally shaky foundation that the entire feminist edifice of "Domestic Violence" advocacy is based, Walker's list of supposed "myths" and other claimed "findings" having taken on the status of unquestioned truth.
rof. Walker makes mention five times of thelargest-scale study of domestic violence yet undertaken, the NationalInstitute of Mental Health-financed survey of Straus, Gelles, andSteinmetz, later published as a book [Straus et. al., 1980]. She citesStraus et. al. approvingly as "the first epidemiological study ofbattered women undertaken in this country" (p. 20). This is aserious misrepresentation: it was a detailed study of "violencein the American family", not of "battered women". Sheuses findings from this study when it suits her purpose. However,nowhere does Prof. Walker see fit to tell her readers what the finalconclusion of that study is: that women initiate violence in intimaterelationships at least as often as men do [Straus et. al. 1980,pp. 36-40]. In fact, the study found that "The number of wiveswho threw things at their husbands is almost twice as large as thenumber of husbands who threw things at their wives. The rate forkicking and hitting with an object is also higher for wives than forhusbands." Overall, however, the researchers found that"there is little difference between the husbands and wives inthis study."
So the conclusions reached by the study that Prof. Walker mischaracterizes as "the first epidemiological study of battered women" are dramatically different from what she wants us to believe. Scholars do not consider it ethical when citing authorities to selectively refer only to those portions of a work that confirm your position, while concealing from your readers the fact that the authority you are citing reaches a conclusion in substantial disagreement with yours. The accepted scholarly practice would be for Prof. Walker, having invoked the authority of Straus et. al. to bolster certain of her arguments, to note that those authors have reached a conclusion substantially different from hers, and then to explain why she believes her conclusion is correct and theirs is not.
It is not difficult to see why she failed to do this: she has no credible statistical data whatsoever. Indeed, you will not find the title or complete description of Straus et. al. anywhere within Walker's book, nor that of any other paper or book mentioned in the text. The lack of footnotes, a bibliography, or indeed any scholarly references make it difficult, if not impossible, for Walker's readers to ascertain the accuracy of her use of her sources, or to learn more about the subject from independent sources. An optimist might conclude that such unscholarly omissions were unintentional.
rof. Walker, of course, will not deal withany complicating factors such as women battering men: in her book the"battered" are always women, and "batterers" arealways men. In fact, she states explicitly: "I am aware that thisbook is written from a feminist vision. It is a picture of whathappens in a domestic violent act from the perspective of only one ofthe two parties. The men do not have equal rebuttal time"[introduction, p. xvii]. As such, this work is explicitly unsuited tobe used as a guide for the formulation of law, which must be impartialto all parties, and must give equal consideration to the rights andinterests of each. Indeed, Prof. Walker's own admission cited aboveprovides more than ample justification for the courts to strike downall "battered woman" statutes, not merely because theyrepresent "junk science" in the courtroom resting on invaliddata, but because they are explicitly biased, a violation of the"equal protection" clause.
o be sure, the women here interviewed tellharrowing tales of physical and psychological abuse. But nowhere doesProf. Walker address the question of whether or not the accounts aspresented are objectively true. They represent, as she has noted, thewoman's side of a possibly violent altercation. We do not know whetherthese events actually occurred as described, nor do we know what theman would have said were he given the opportunity to tell hisstory. Perhaps he would say that the woman was exaggerating or eveninventing the incidents, or perhaps he would say that the womaninitiated the violence. But verification of abuse has never been aconcern of Prof. Walker. Indeed, she employs a very simple criterion:"Early on I decided that a woman's story was to be accepted ifshe felt she was being psychologically and/or physically battered byher man ... Battered women themselves are the best judges of whetheror not they are being battered. I soon learned that if a woman hasreason to suspect she is battered, she probably is"[introduction, p. xiv].
This raises an immediate problem in terms ofmethodology, as serious scholars do not accept the results of studiesbased upon self-reported effects or results, in the absence ofindependent corroboration. If people tell a medical researcher thattaking laetrile cured their cancer, the research is worthless unlessit is established with reasonable certainty that they did indeed oncehave cancer, and that it has in fact been cured. Imagine thereviewers' comments on a doctor's paper which stated "I decidedthat my patients were the best judges of whether or not they had beenhealed of cancer, so if they felt they had been healed by laetrile, Iaccepted their account." Yet this is exactly the methodology thatProf. Walker expects us to accept. (What is remarkable is that untilnow she has not been disappointed, a truly astonishing avoidance ofcritical thinking by scholars and jurists alike). This problem ofnon-verification compounds Walker's first problem of the self-selectedsample, taking a sample that starts off being unreliable, then byaccepting anecdotal accounts raising it to the quantity unreliabilitysquared. This latter problem would, once again, taken by itself,completely suffice to exclude Prof. Walker's study from seriousscholarly consideration.
One should notassume that "battering" is necessarily a violent physicalact. In fact, Walker admits to constructing "an expandeddefinition of battering behavior as both physical andpsychological" [introduction, p. xv]. She explains that"Most of the women in this project describe incidents involvingpsychological humiliation and verbal harassment as their worstbattering experiences, whether or not they had been physicallyabused." While it is surely to be conceded that psychologicalabuse can indeed be harrowing, it is vastly more subjective thanphysical abuse, and its presence can be much more a matter ofdispute. It is also absurd to depict this as something that menexclusively do to women. Surely almost all of us can claim to havebeen "psychologically battered" by a partner at one time oranother. It is also well-known everywhere, except perhaps in feministcircles, that throughout recorded history men have frequentlycomplained of being "henpecked", "nagged","berated," "scolded," "criticized,""carped," "castrated," or "caviled" bytheir wives (to use but a few terms in widespread use).
There wouldthus seem to be at least as much evidence of "psychologicalbattering" of men by their wives, as of the reverse. Yet Walker,steeped in her feminist advocacy, seems not to even realize that byexpanding the definition of "battering" so dramatically shehas opened the door to many questions that could ultimately undermineher position. If one depicts "verbal harassment" as"battering" in this age of feminism, then it would seem tofollow that when a woman preaches feminist doctrine to her husband,she is "battering" him. But Prof. Walker is never troubledby complications: for her, men batter, and women are battered - it isas simple as that.
nother novel form of "battering"Prof. Walker discovers is "working late." She describes thecase of a woman who admits physically attacking her husband:"there is no doubt that she began to assault Paul physically,before he assaulted her. However, it is also clear from the rest ofher story that Paul had been battering her by ignoring her and byworking late, in order to move up the corporate ladder, for the entirefive years of their marriage" [p.98]. Using this logic, shetransforms a violent woman who admittedly hit her husband in the headwith a glass when he came home late from work, then rammed a chairinto his leg, to become a victim of his "battering." Surelythis represents an example of logic stood on its head. If this type ofargument is accepted, then a man who physically abuses his wife coulddefend his actions on the grounds that she was "ignoring him andworking late", and failed to make him his dinner.
Like many feminists, Walker seems not to be trying to improve marriage, but rather to destroy it. The principal fault she finds with the psychiatric treatment of battered women thus far is that "Psychotherapy has generally emphasized the value of keeping families intact whenever possible. In working with battered women, however, psychotherapists must encourage breaking the family apart" (p.230). Remember, of course, that she has expanded the definition of "battering" so dramatically as to include virtually every woman as "battered". After visiting one of the early shelters for battered women, she writes "I was struck by what a beneficial alternative to the nuclear family this arrangement [communal housing and child raising] was for these women and children" (p.195). Reading Walker's constant put-downs against the family, one is struck with the impression that her advocacy of the use of shelters as a tool for breaking up families is not accidental. Marriage seems to be the target, and the accusation of "battering" her tool of choice for dismantling it.
rof. Walker promulgates the old, shopwornrule of thumb hoax, here stated as the supposedly"century-old right of a husband to beat his wife with a stick"no thicker than his thumb"" [p. 12]. Exactly where inthe law this alleged "right" is supposed to exist, she doesnot tell us, nor are we told the source of the quote she givesus. This supposed 'rule of thumb law,' while cited widely in thefeminist literature, is nonetheless entirely bogus. For years,feminists have been cribbing from each others' writings concerningthis supposed wife-beating "law," nobody apparentlybothering to check whether or not the claim has any foundation inreality. [For a detailed refutation of the "rule of thumb"hoax, see Sommers 1994, p. 203- 7.] Remarkably, Walker further informsus that "In some states, the "stick rule" remained onthe books until quite recently" [p. 12], which raises anextremely interesting question: given that there never were any"stick rules" in the first place, where did Prof. Walker getthe factoid that some states had only recently repealed them? Thisclaim has the appearance of having been simply made up. Given thecentral role Prof. Walker later played in promulgating thenow-infamous "Superbowl battering" hoax [Sommers, 1994,p. 189], unsupported statements in her writings must be viewed withextreme suspicion.
It is quite apparent that one of Walker's principal objectives in writing this book was to overthrow the psychological theory of "feminine masochism" as an explanation for why women remain in violent relationships. The theory of "feminine masochism" has a long history in psychology, being discussed in the writings of Freud, Karen Horney, H. Deutsch, S. Rado, and many others [Horney, 1935]. The problem is, however, that Prof. Walker does not argue against or refute that theory, but merely proclaims it to have been disproven. This is her "Myth No. 2: Battered Women are Masochistic" (p.20). Unfortunately, nowhere in her proclamation of its myth-dom does she cite any evidence establishing its falsehood. She simply replaces the previously accepted explanation with her own explanation that women are victims of "learned helplessness," a theory that would seem to run entirely counter to the general thrust of feminist claims of womens' inherent strength. If Walker's theory of "learned helplessness" is correct, it would seem that all hopes for eventual sexual equality would be impossible; given how easily even an intelligent woman can be dominated and taught to be helpless, one would logically expect this submissive tendency toward helplessness to carry through into the business and social world as well. Walker does not attempt to resolve the apparent contradiction.
rof. Walker's explanation of her"learned helplessness" theory sounds rather confusing:"For example, when a woman begins to nag at a man after she knowshe has had a hard day at work, she can justify her belief that shereally deserved the battering she anticipated all along because shestarted it. Although she appears to be masochistically setting up herown victimization, such behavior may well be a desperate attempt toexercise some control over her life" (p.50). So, what appears tobe masochistic behavior - provoking an angry man until he beats her -is according to Prof. Walker actually a form of empowerment. Why anon-masochistic "battered woman" does not instead prefer toexercise control over her life by leaving the dangerously agitated manalone, she does not explain. Nor does Prof. Walker think that a womanwho "nags" her husband is anything but a victim, while a manwho employs "psychological humiliation and verbalharassment" against his wife is supposedly "battering"her (introduction, p. xv). A woman can be only a victim, while a mancan be only a villain, no matter what each may actually do.
Nowhere does Prof. Walker attempt explain how the predictions of the theory of "feminine masochism" are different from those of her theory of "learned helplessness," or discuss which facts are supposedly better explained by her theory than by the older one, although even if she did the argument would be inconclusive, given the invalidity of her sample. Nonetheless, she should have tried. By contrast, Dr. Karen Horney's discussion of what she terms "The Problem of Feminine Masochism" [Horney, 1935] is overwhelmingly more scholarly than Prof. Walker's mere dismissal. Dr. Horney describes each of the major formulations of the theory of "feminine masochism" in the psychiatric literature, giving full references. She discusses the merits and weaknesses of each, weighs nature/nurture arguments, and concludes that insufficient information exists to come to any definitive conclusions on the subject.
Prof. Walker, on the other hand, seems never to have encountered the problem of inadequate information, nor to have been troubled by doubt over the possible inaccuracy of any of her conclusions. Perhaps the most striking feature ofThe Battered Woman is its overwhelming certitude, in the face of its highly questionable underlying data. The theory of "feminine masochism" may perhaps be false, but its falsehood is not established by anything in this book. Walker merely proclaims that theory, long a thorn in the feminists' side, to have been refuted, and one feminist author after another has pointed back to Walker's triumphant refutation of the theories of Freud et. al concerning "feminine masochism." None of them seems to have noticed that Prof. Walker's supposed refutation is entirely without substance. They would leave us puzzling the unsolved mystery of why substantial numbers of women - including even very many who espouse feminist principles - quite actively seek out relationships with highly-dominant and sometimes abusive men, scorning the hordes of mild-mannered "nice guys" who proclaim their acceptance of feminist doctrines. At least the old theory of "female masochism" gives us some insights into this otherwise-inexplicable phenomenon.
nother of Walker's supposed"myths" is "Myth No. 4: Middle- Class Women Do Not GetBattered as Often or as Violently as do Poorer Women"(p.21). This is related to "Myth No. 5: Minority Group Women areBattered More Frequently than Anglos" (p.22). As with the othersupposed "myths," we are not shown exactly how and why theyare "mythical": we are simply informed that they are. At thevery least it would be necessary to present some sort of statisticalanalysis to substantiate claims such as these. Of course, nostatistics are presented, and even if they had been they would beinconclusive owing to the invalidity of Prof. Walker's sample. Shesimply informs us that she saw examples of battering all across thesocial spectrum, then leaps to the unwarranted conclusion that thereis no relationship between socioeconomic status and battering. This isas illogical as if one were to observe that Cadillac ownership hasbeen seen in all socioeconomic groups, including the very lowest,therefore there is no relationship between wealth and Cadillacownership.
There is good reason to believe that these two "myths" really are true, but Prof. Walker sees no need to make make a serious attempt to deal with any objections. For example, Richard J. Gelles, drawing from the NIMH study of which he is co-author, writes that "families living in large urban areas, minority racial groups, individuals with no religious affiliation, people with some high school education, families with low incomes, blue-collar workers, people under 30, and families where the husband was unemployed had the highest rate of marital violence" [Gelles, 1979, p. 141]. Gelles and his co-authors offer statistics to back up this statement, while Prof. Walker, disputing them, offers none; we are simply instructed to believe her. Nonetheless, Walker's Proof by Fiat clearly meets all required standards of feminist scholarship, because the "mythical" nature of these statements has become an unquestioned fact within the Canon of subsequent feminist literature.
ne might rightly harbor the suspicion thatthese "myths" are proclaimed as "myths" out ofideological necessity rather than solid evidence. Feminist ideologyhas, after all, strong links to egalitarian socialism, and oftenproclaims itself quite explicitly to be anti-hierarchal. In fact,Walker even states that feminist principles "mandate that no oneperson take a leadership role but that leadership be shared amongnumerous women" (p.197). Therefore any perception that domesticviolence is more prevalent among those of low education andsocioeconomic status runs counter to what the "correct"conclusion is supposed to be; affluent and respected white males areregarded as the principal source of evil in society. In fact, severalof the incidents Walker describes portray high-income, high-statushusbands and fathers in a Jekyll-and-Hyde pose: highly respected bysociety, at home they are secretly abusive and vindictive. A"corporate executive's wife" claimed "my husband wasmore powerful than the court"; according to another her brutalhusband "was on the medical school faculty" (p. 175); athird claims that her politician husband "pushes himself day andnight to get his [social] programs through... but shut off the TVcameras and he's mean and nasty" (p.165).
While such individuals may well exist, statistics indicate that domestic violence is at its absolute lowest in this high-income, high-status group. During the 1980s, such Jekyll-and-Hyde depictions of successful white males who led hidden lives as secret abusers would be invoked frequently by "recovered memory therapists" to justify belief in their otherwise-unbelievable "recovered memories of abuse" by seemingly respectable and loving fathers [for example, Bass and Davis, 1988].
These supposedly "recovered memories" are actually confabulations ("false memories") suggested by therapists and feminists, which has led to recriminations, family breakups, and even incarceration for thousands of innocent persons [Ofshe and Watters, 1994] . Were it not for the widespread acceptance within certain circles of the Jekyll-and-Hyde depiction of affluent and respected husbands - a depiction that runs counter to the data presented by Gelles - these so-called "recovered memories" would never have achieved their widespread acceptance, thereby sparing thousands of individuals and families a great deal of anguish, suffering, and loss. Bass and Davis [1988, p. 476] favorably citeThe Battered Woman, p. 476], calling it "a major contribution," and recommending it for its "practical recommendations for "the way out" " (i.e., family dissolution). Whether Prof. Walker's Jekyll-and-Hyde stories have any more objective validity than the "rule of thumb" deception or the "Superbowl battering" hoax is impossible to say, but it seems unlikely. Considering how neatly they confirm Walker's political bias, one would be wise to view these depictions with maximum suspicion.
n interesting paradox is raised byProf. Walker's insistence that battered and sexually abused women have"lucid recall of the details of acute batteringincidents. Battered women were always able to recall the details ofsuch violent incidents. They remembered every word spoken and everyblow delivered" (p.74). At about the same time that this wasbeing written, other feminist authors were developing theories thatclaim exactly the opposite. Supposedly, horrid memories of beingphysically and sexually abused get completely "repressed,"to be uncorked later and brought to the surface [for example, Bass andDavis, 1988]. This allows the supposed perpetrator to be prosecutedand/or sued. Now, both of these theories cannot be true: memories ofviolent victimization either are always subject to "lucidrecall", or else they can be "repressed" until it isconvenient to remember them.
One would expect that such a conflict intheories would make for a lively debate, with different feministstaking sides and vigorously defending one theory or theother. However, this seems to not be taking place. In fact, I am notaware of a single feminist writer or theorist who has even pointed outthis fundamental contradiction in contemporary feminist teachings, letalone try to resolve it. Perhaps it is in the"noncompetitive" nature of feminism to avoid head-on clasheslike those that occur in the "linear thinking" that we findin "male-dominated" subjects such as mathematics, science,and philosophy. If so, feminists are doomed to preach nonsenseforever, as they have no method for separating correct theories fromerroneous ones.
he Battered Woman is unsatisfactoryas a serious work, and completely unacceptable as a foundation forfamily law. First, it is profoundly unscholarly. Without objectiveverification of the incidents herein described, they are nothing morethan hearsay. Second, the book does not even pretend to be objective:the woman's side, and only the woman's side, is presented, when it isundeniable that in a large percentage of cases, the woman initiatesviolence against the man. Third, Prof. Walker's expanded definitionof "battering" that includes verbal abuse does not evenaddress the issue of female verbal abuse of men. Fourth, there is noreason whatsoever to believe that Prof. Walker's sample of"battered women" is in any way a representative sample,and even if it were, she presents no statistics to support herconclusions. In fact, most of her conclusions are utterly unsupportedby any kind of data, and are simply pronouncedexcathedra.
One is not "in favor of violence" for insisting that statements being made on the subject of domestic violence in academic circles must conform to reality, and it will not in any way assist the victims of violence to have the facts of their situation misrepresented. Not only are male victims of domestic violence currently being virtually ignored, but the single greatest category of domestic violence is also being all but ignored: that between siblings [Straus et. al., p. 83]. The current absurd overemphasis on adult female victims not only ignores men, but seriously distracts from efforts that might prevent or assist victims of the most frequent type of domestic violence, sibling violence. Indeed, these misrepresentations will backfire, as is already happening in the wake of the "Superbowl battering" hoax that Prof. Walker was largely responsible for starting, resulting in future female victims confronting ever-increasing degrees of disinterest and disbelief. The best way to solve any problem is to understand it as accurately as possible, and the best way to help victims of domestic violence is to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about their situation.
ll research citing Walker uncritically istainted and must be disregardedin toto. All so-called"legislative reforms" based upon Walker are unacceptablybiased, factually unsound, and violate the requirement for equalprotection of the male sex. Any man who is insulted by misleading andinaccurate wholesale accusations against his sex, as well as any womanwho possesses a sense of fairness toward the opposite sex, must view awork like this with a sense of revulsion.
Similarly, any femaleacademic who would profess to be a good scholar must absolutely rejectProf. Walker's work on grounds of methodology alone. The time is rightfor a new, and this time objective, analysis of the serious problem ofdomestic violence, one free of ideological bias, and firmly groundedin sound scholarship. To draw up new legislation and social policiessolidly grounded in objective facts would be the very best thing thatcould happen to help solve the serious problem of domestic violence.
Horney, Dr. Karen, M.D.: "The Problem of Feminine Masochism", inFeminine Psychology (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1967, p. 214). First published 1935.
Gelles, Richard J:Family Violence (Beverly Hills, Sage Publications, 1979).
Ofshe, Richard and Watters, Ethan:Making Monsters False Memories, Psychotherapy, and Sexual Hysteria (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1994).
Sommers, Christina Hoff:Who Stole Feminism? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
Straus, Murray A.; Gelles, Richard J.; and Steinmetz, Suzanne K.Behind Closed Doors Violence in the American Family. (New York: Anchor Doubleday Books, 1980.)
PS: I find it amazing that within a week or two from the time that Walker outraged her feminist colleagues by agreeing to testify for the O.J. Simpson defense, she found her license to practice psychology in serious jeopardy. Whatever shortcomings she may or may not have had in her private practice seemed not to be an issue until that time. This would seem to testify to the astonishing degree of power wielded by the feminist orthodoxy within political circles today.