macy salzberger

In the 1980s, anti-violence movements sought consistent enforcement of the law in cases of domestic violence. While laws existed that criminalized assault and battery, those laws were not consistently enforced in the context of intimate relationships. In the context of these movements and policy efforts, “domestic violence” essentially functioned as an identifier for a set of already criminalized behaviors. What distinguished this set from other criminalized behaviors was that, historically, given that the violence took place in private rather than in public, it was not seen as worthy of or subject to criminal prosecution.

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Now we see acts domestic violence as distinctively wrong or harmful; it seems to be wrong or harmful in a different way than other forms of violence. However, not all acts of violence that take place in the home seem to have that distinctive moral profile. A burglar who attacks someone in the home is not a perpetrator of domestic violence. Further, a spouse who beats their partner on the street isoften considered to be a perpetrator of domestic violence. The domesticity of “domestic violence,” then, refers to a kind of intimacy involved between individuals rather than a physical location. But are all instances of violence between individuals who are intimate appropriately called “domestic violence”? Is a wife who slaps her partner in response to a degrading remark thereby a perpetrator of domestic violence?  

 

 I argue that we ought to narrow our use of “domestic violence” to refer to acts of violence that serve to coercively control victims in a domestic context. It is a feature of the way that human beings relate to one another that opportunities for coercive control are facilitated by intimacy. In domestic violence, the perpetrator has intimate knowledge of the victim. They know their strengths and weaknesses, their dreams and their fears. With this intimate access, perpetrators of domestic violence are better able to exploit their victim’s vulnerabilities. Thus, I argue, what’s morally distinctive about domestic violence is not that the perpetrator and victim live under the same roof, but rather that the intimacy of the relationship enables the perpetrator to undermine the victim’s freedom.

 

 Unlike the control an employer might have over their employee, perpetrators in an intimate context have pervasive control over the victim’s life.An employer can coercively control their employees, but after work hours, employees are free to pursue meaningful relationships. A perpetrator of domestic violence, by contrast, often controls the victim’s social life. Because our social lives are a source of meaning, in becoming alienated from their social lives, victims lose part of what makes their lives worth living. In conceding to perpetrators victims may also lose their self-respect. Under the threat of violence from their perpetrator, victims may even wrong others. Both by losing respect they ought to have for themselves and in wronging others, victims suffer moral damage. I argue, then, that domestic violence is distinctive for at least three reasons that are often overlooked: because the freedom of victims is undermined, because victims are alienated from sources of meaning, and because victims suffer moral damage.

 

One natural response to the recognition of domestic violence's moral profile is to increase our efforts to further criminalize and prosecute domestic violence. However, further criminalizing domestic violence may also exacerbate its harms. For example, although the victim deserves to be free from abuse, her abuser may not deserve the treatment he will receive by the criminal legal system. In demanding the victim's complicity in subjecting the perpetrator to the violence of the criminal legal system, the victim can suffer further moral damage.  In providing an account of the meaning and moral significance of domestic violence, I give policymakers a better understanding of what is at stake in their decisions.