Forging Violence Against Women: Documents,Regimes of Family and Intimate-Partner Abuse

Abstract

This article examines how legal texts can be read to broaden our understanding of intimate-partner violence in the United States. Documents, as repositories of the way institutions remember for the public, can provide insight into how people, and in this case, female victims and state actors, define this particular type of violence against women. These documents demonstrate how kin, household and family are both involved and implicated in this highly gendered and targeted aggression. The data presented should factor into new definitions of intimate-partner abuse, because they illustrate how the surrounding network of family members, along with providing help to women that are victimized, may also be at risk of being harmed by men that batter their wives and girlfriends.