Living with the Enemy: Bringing Domestic Abuse into Public View

Donna Ferrato's documentary photography has recorded instances of domestic abuse previously hidden within the home. Source: abuseaware.com

True or false: Domestic violence is not a problem in my hometown.

While some might believe this to be a true statement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that each year, 5.3 million women ages 18 and older are victimized by an intimate partner. One in four women faces physical, emotional, or sexual abuse during her lifetime. [1] Domestic abuse is a pervasive problem in this country. Hidden from public view for generations within the privacy of the home, documentation efforts within the last 40 years have cast a spotlight on these crimes.

In 1982, documentary photographer Donna Ferrato caught a glimpse of an abusive relationship on film.

I began to realize how he manipulated her into doing crazy things for his entertainment….Her husband patted her bare skin and told her she could feel confident walking around naked while her daughter’s friends were partying for Halloween….She was the only naked woman at the party in a house of teenagers.[2]

For the next nine years, Ferrato spent over 6,000 hours riding along with police officers as they responded to calls about domestic abuse. After securing permission to photograph, she would document intimate moments of family turmoil. In 1991, her images were compiled into a book, Living with the Enemy.

Shortly thereafter, a New York City women’s shelter approached Ferrato about mounting a benefit exhibition featuring 47 images from the book. With the success of the show, Ferrato was besieged with requests from around the country and the Living with the Enemy exhibition began to travel. From November 1991 to October 2006, art galleries, U.S. embassies, YWCA’s, and college campuses around the world hosted the exhibition. [3]

This documentary photograph by Donna Ferrato records sheds light on domestic violence in the home. Source: http://www.higherpictures.com

Ferrato’s works capture emotionally charged moments in bold, black and white images. Inspired by this project, Ferrato formed Domestic Abuse Awareness, Inc. as an advocacy non-profit. Describing the tension between her work as an advocate and a documentary photographer, Ferrato explained, “If I chose to put down my camera and stop one man from hitting one woman I’ll be helping just one woman. However, if I get the picture I can help countless more. By taking the picture I am defending the truth.”[4]

Public consciousness about domestic abuse has only surfaced within the last hundred years. In the early 1900s, blues music emerged as one of the first public spaces in which female artists began to discuss violence towards women. According to Angela Davis in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, “The historically omnipresent secrecy and silence regarding male violence is linked to its social construction as a private problem sequestered behind impermeable domestic walls, rather than a social problem deserving political attention.” Blues artists like Bessie Smith and “Ma” Rainey brought such domestic troubles into public light, often through complicated and often satirical lyrics such as the following lines from “Sweet Rough Man:” “He keeps my lips split, my eyes as black as jet/But the way he love me makes me soon forget.” [5]

Despite these blues references to violence within personal relationships and the home, domestic abuse did not surface as a national issue until the 1970s. As second-wave feminists advocated that the personal was the political, women publicly began to share stories of their physical, emotional, and sexual victimization. [6] Through events such as the Take Back the Night protest walk that started in 1975, violence within the home has gained critical, public attention. [7]

Ferrato’s work has provided the intimate, graphic depiction of domestic abuse that early protests lacked. Living with the Enemy is now accessible as a book, traveling exhibition, and section on the Domestic Abuse Awareness, Inc. website. Through Ferrato’s photographic work paired with her first hand account of years documenting domestic abuse, advocates for domestic abuse victims can point to graphic representation of the societal problem hidden within the home. A picture is worth a thousand words, but Ferrato’s work is worth protecting 5.3 million lives.

[1] National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003.

[2] Bachevanova, Svetlana. “INTERVIEW : Donna Ferrato.” FotoEvidence, January 24, 2011. http://www.fotoevidence.com/interview-donna-ferrato.

[3] Ferrato, Donna. “Abuse Aware.” Domestic Abuse Awareness, Inc., n.d. http://www.abuseaware.com/daa_inc.php.

[4] Bachevanova, “INTERVIEW : Donna Ferrato.”

[5] Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Vintage, 1999, 28-32.

[6] Ibid., 25.

[7] “Take Back The Night – History.” Take Back the Night, n.d. http://www.takebackthenight.org/history.html.

Toyota Throwback

It seems that Toyota is looking to fashion a new image for itself after the company’s recent legal issues.  Their new television commercial for their popular Avalon model harkens back to a time when products were thought to be safely and solidly built.  The commercial features an extravagant Art Deco train station set that is arguably representative of any time period between the 1930s and early 1960s.  The locomotive is a streamlined Hudson which was popular in the mid 1930s.  The song, Mr. Sandman, was a hit in 1955.  The first time I saw it I was mesmerized by the beautiful set and bouncy music.  Upon closer viewing though I was struck by what was actually playing out.  The actors and actresses are not just beautiful people enjoying their luxurious new car; they seem to be awkwardly constructed modern stereotypes placed within a false historical situation.  The actors are blatantly representing a situation that didn’t exist.  A white couple and an African American couple enjoying a beautiful new car within the context of the created time period present a situation at odds with itself. 

While Toyota seems to have worked so hard to rewrite racial history, the women remain completely unaltered.  The white man is shown driving the car with his prototype wife beside him.  And while he promotes the newest technology (“I got mine with voice activated navigation”) his wife follows it up with a statement about getting to go to the city…presumably to go shopping.  What do commercials like this say to young people, especially young girls, about women in America during this time period?  Is the commercial actually passively condoning past sexual discrimination since the actress seems to thoroughly enjoy her constructed identity?  What does this commercial mean to young individuals who did not personally experience this time period in America?

The Pill Turns 50

There’s no such thing as the Car or the Shoe or the Laundry Soap. But everyone knows the Pill, whose FDA approval 50 years ago rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we’ve argued about ever since.[1]

This weekend, I ran across an article on Time.com memorializing the 50th birthday of the birth control pill. While not talked about in much detail during our readings, giving women authority over their reproductive system had dramatic consequences for heterosexual sex lives and the demographics of the American family. While such a shift in social attitudes did not occur immediately, by the 1970s, couples were marrying later and having fewer children, while women were increasingly interested in pursuing careers outside the home.

As with any major social change, the Pill was not universally accepted. The Vatican strongly rejected the use of any form of artificial birth control with the publication of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, and many African-American leaders in the Black Power movement equated the use of birth control to “black genocide.”[2] Despite opposition, however, two-thirds of Catholic women were using birth control by 1970, and many black women fought for access to contraception. As the Time article states, “when contraception was put under a woman’s control, it put many other things under her control as well.”[3] This newfound sense of power might very well have appealed to women without regard to race or religion.

Looking at my own family history, it’s not hard to see the impact of birth control on families. My paternal grandfather was one of eleven children, and my maternal great-grandparents had four children in five years (if my great-grandfather hadn’t been killed while my great-grandmother was pregnant with their fourth, I’m guessing there would have been many more siblings). The trend continued even into my parents’ generation; after my maternal grandfather died, my grandmother remarried a widower with nine children from his first marriage. Granted, coming from a Catholic background, my data might be a little skewed, but families of that size are nowhere near as common as they used to be. Out of all my (step-)aunts and (step-)uncles, no one has more than four children. I’m one of two. While I have no plans to go around asking about birth control usage at the next family get-together, it’s clear that birth control had a major impact on American families, even moderately conservative ones like mine.

I find the quote that begins this post (and the Time article) incredibly interesting. We can simply call the Pill “the Pill,” and everyone knows what pill we’re talking about. I’m hard-pressed to think of another product that has that degree of recognition. Given our fascination with the Gosselins, Duggars, and other so-called “mega-families,” the introduction of series like MTV’s “16 & Pregnant” and “Teen Mom,” and the ever-present debate over the extent and type of sex education in schools, it will be interesting to see if and how use of the Pill changes over the next several decades.

[1] Nancy Gibbs, “The Pill at 50: Sex, Freedom and Paradox,” Time website, 22 April 2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.

A Woman’s Place

What is a woman’s place? The image of the 1950’s housewife that proliferated media during woman’s liberation as an anti woman’s lib sentiment argued that the woman’s place was the home. The argument continues today, even with the advances made in the struggle for woman’s equality, the year 2010 still sees a belief in prescribed gender roles. Reuters published an online article on Sunday March 7th which reported that in as survey of over 24,000 adults over 23 countries, 1 out of every 4 people surveyed believed that the woman’s place was in the home. The survey asked people from each of the 23 countries to agree or disagree with the idea that women should stay home. Overall, a majority of 74% of the people surveyed did not believe that women should all stay home, however the surprise came in the breakdown of who did. The three countries with the smallest number of people agreeing were Mexico, France and Argentina with 9% agreeing and 91% disagreeing. Comparatively, the US had 25% agree and 75% disagree. It was also reported that across the board people aged 18-34 were more likely to admit they believe women should stay at home than in older generations. In countries like India where over half of those surveyed believed women’s place was in the home, gender does not seem to be a factor as men and women answer the question the same way, nearly equally. Growing up in a liberal state, going to a very liberal college and entering into a field where the majority of my colleges will be women, I find this survey a reminder that my experiences are somewhat unique. And as much as I would like to believe that the ‘big battles’ we discussed before have been won, this is a reminder that those wins are not necessarily universally felt.

Ward and June in Trouble

The feminist movement.  What images come to mind when you hear those words.  More than likely they are images such as the one below.

It seems that the history of the women’s liberation movement we remember is largely one of public demonstration, political action, and leaders, such as Betty Freidan.  Of course, it is always easier to remember things that occurred on a public stage to be covered by news media.  What is more difficult, but perhaps more revealing of the outcome of the movement, is an examination of how the feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s affected the marriages and home life of its participants.

In her book Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, author Sarah Evans explores both the public and private roots of the women’s liberation movement.  She writes, “both in the home and outside it, women experienced themselves in new ways, discovering their capacities; yet they remained enclosed in the straightjacket of domestic ideology.”[1]  While it is clear that this “straightjacket of domestic ideology” was strong, Evans does not answer how home life changed during this period when women across the country began struggling to take the “straightjacket” off.  What is missing from this text are the personal stories of married women and their changing relationship with their husbands and children.  Did the women’s liberation movement damage home life or improve it?

Evans notes that as the movement grew during the 1970s that a “critique of family and personal life” became the “very cornerstone of its existence.”[2]  If a “critique of family and personal life” was now driving the movement, Evans only gives one example of how this affected the relationships between husbands and wives at this time.  The story comes from a suburban housewife named Jan Schakowsy who recalled that “by the time my husband walked in the door all hell would break loose.  He was responsible for all the evils of the world and especially responsible for keeping me trapped.  What kind of person was he?  Didn’t he understand?”[3]

To what degree these feelings played themselves out across the country is unclear.  What is needed is a comprehensive study of both statistical information and oral histories if we are going to determine the effect of the women’s liberation movement on marital and family relations during this time.  History told through the story of people’s most important relationships is compelling and in this case is a story that needs telling.

[1] Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left. (New York: Vintage, 1980), 11.

[2]ibid. 217.

[3]ibid. 228.

Does the Good of the Many Outweigh the Good of the One?- Dr. Spock

Ok, I know starting this post with a reference to Star Trek is a bit risky, but I think Dr. Spock actually raises a wonderfully valid concept for this week’s topic. Women in the civil rights movement, particularly black women were faced with this conundrum on a regular basis. The civil rights movement was focused on gaining racial equality, and in that struggle women were instrumental in bringing that dream to fruition, often, some say, at the cost of their own goals for woman’s liberation. Stories of women putting aside their agenda for the good of the civil rights movement can be seen throughout the records of activists groups and rallies. The stories of women like Ella Baker, who saw “no place… to come into a leadership role” and felt that “harmony within the movement received higher priority than personal ambition” [1], show that there were feelings of separateness between the movements for some women. Yet other like Sandra Baxter and Marjorie Lansing found that “black women have come to see themselves as a special interest group fighting to overcome the twin barriers of racial and sexual discrimination.” [2]For these women the two movements were linked with sexism and racism being inseparable forces of prejudice one did not have to weigh the good of the one against the good of the many, they were inseparably linked. [3]

Pauli Murray born in Baltimore and raised in Durham, North Carolina, fought both racial and gender inequalities all her life. She is most notably remembered for her attempt to enter North Carolina’s all-white university which gained national news. Her attempt, though unsuccessful, gained the support of the NAACP and created a lifelong friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. Though unable to gain entry to the North Carolina school, she was admitted to Howard University and then University of California to become a civil rights lawyer. She was also accepted to Harvard Law School but when her gender was discovered the invitation was revoked.

Murray was prolifically active in the campaign to end inequality. A member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) she was a proponent of Gandhi’s non-violence movement and believed that the tactic could be adopted in America for the civil rights cause. Her association with Eleanor Roosevelt, Thurgood Marshall and Phillip Randolph put her on a black list with Cornell University, who saw her affiliations to be too radical, and thus in the McCarthy era unsuitable for employment. [4]

Along with her attempts to break down social, political and racial boundaries she was an active proponent for women’s rights. In 1963 she wrote to Philip Randolph that she was “increasingly perturbed over the blatant disparity between the major role which Negro women have played and are playing in the crucial grass-roots level of our struggle and the minor role of leadership they have been assigned in the national policy-making decisions.” [5] In 1977 she became the first African American women to be an Episcopal priest. Her efforts to fight inequality saw no gender boundaries and her example has prompted the creation of a Durham based program to promote understanding in the community. The Pauli Murray Project is hosted by the Duke Human Rights Center and provides opportunities for community members to share their stories and hopes to collect those stories for the community on this site. There is no denying that to many, the civil rights movement was separate from women’s lib, but for women like Pauli Murray race and gender discrimination were one battle. Murray found a way to fight both battles, where the needs of the many coincided with the needs of the one.

[1] Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 282.
[2] Ibid 276
[3] Ibid 274
[4] Duke Human Rights Center, “Pauli Murray Project”, http://paulimurrayproject.org/.
[5] Duke Human Rights Center, “Pauli Murray Project”, http://paulimurrayproject.org/.

“My Baby Left Me All Alone”: Blues Men and Relationships

After reading about how relationships were a popular subject for female blues singers, I wondered how their male counterparts approached the subject.  How did they feel about infidelity, love, and the opposite sex? Expecting to have to search hard for examples, I was surprised to find many male singers of the era broaching these topics.

Robert Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen” provides an interesting perspective in relation to many of the female songs we read about.  It begins with Johnson bemoaning the loss of “the woman I love,” a glimpse into the aftermath of a breakup. However, rather than dwelling on his own bad fortune, Johnson goes on to acknowledge his own wrongdoing. “Oh, she’s gone, I know she won’t come back/I’ve taken the last nickel out of her nation sack,” he sings, admitting openly that he stole money from the woman he supposedly cared about. Furthermore, he expresses sympathy for the sexual double standard applied to women: “When a woman gets in trouble, everybody throws her down/Lookin’ for her good friend, none can be found.” Despite the emotional hardness associated with masculinity, “Come On in My Kitchen” is a surprisingly sensitive, regretful song mourning the loss of a lover.

Two Worlds, Two Identities: Tradition and Womanhood in Bread Givers

At first glance, I assumed that this week’s topic (immigrant communities) would be primarily a study of class, race, and religion. Therefore, it surprised me that upon completing Bread Givers, my strongest reaction came from a gendered perspective. Because of my perception of Judaism as fairly liberal in regard to women’s issues, I had not considered the situation of the Smolinsky women and others like them. Not only did they face the discrimination of a mainstream America wary of the influx of immigration, but they also contended with a still-powerful traditional mindset that dictated a very specific place for women within the family structure. The three sections into which Bread Givers is divided represent Sara’s rebellion against outside perceptions of her as both an immigrant and a female, and her ultimate acceptance of these circumstances—though only on her own unconventional terms.

Is Feminism Dead?

"It's A Small World, But Not If You Have To Clean It" by Barbara Kruger (1990)

Barbara Kruger’s 1990 piece provides a satirical look over the white picket fences of suburban America in the 1950s and 1960s.  What is this young woman doing as she peers through her magnifying glass?  Why, inspecting for dirt of course!  This image of woman as dirt detective addresses the plight of the suburban housewife; the empty, dead feeling a married suburban woman felt as she lived only to serve her husband and children.

Women’s issues such equal wages and equal job opportunities were propelled to the forefront in the 1960s with the help of feminist authors such as Betty Freidan and women organizations like the National Organization of Women and New York Radical Women.  However, one of the most influential movements addressing important women’s issues was The Feminist Art Movement.

The Feminist Art Movement began in the late 1960s and paralleled the Feminist Movement occurring at the same time.  Many women used art to claim ownership over their mind, spirit, and body.  The movement addressed issues of men’s perception of women’s bodies, a male dominated art world, and worked towards making women artists more visible in art history discourse.  The exhibition Women Artists of America: 1707 – 1964 at The Newark Museum in New Jersey, 1965 was influential in bringing women artists to the forefront of art history studies.

In 2007 the LAMOCA did a large exhibition presenting an historical overview of the role art played in the Feminist Movement.  WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution focuses on the crucial period of 1965 – 80 in which the majority of feminist activism and artmaking occurred internationally.  The exhibition is no longer showing, but the exhibition catalogue is still available for purchase.

The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum has a strong mission committed to teaching, exhibiting, and preserving feminist art.  The center is home to Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party (1974-1979).  This instillation is made of three long tables arranged into a triangle. There are 39 settings throughout the tables, representing 39 vaginas of 39 historical and mythical figures. 999 women’s names are inscribed upon the Heritage floor which the table stands on. Through this piece we see a woman artist giving women a voice in a history. The discourse of history was so commonly written by men of power about men of power. The Feminist Art Movement sought to expose this fact and change it. More pieces of this nature can be found through the center’s online Feminist Art Database.

Some Post-Modernists ask the question, “Is Feminism dead?” I don’t believe so. Reproductive rights, same-sex marriages, and the fight for equal pay are still hot button topics within today’s world. The growing commitment to collecting and promoting Feminist Art is indicative of the fact that feminists still walk among us. Institutions such as The Feminist Art Project at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey and the Sackler Center for Feminist Art remind us that feminists are continuing to use art as a catalyst for social change.

Desperate Housewives of the 1950s and 1960s

          Betty Friedan’s 1963 publication of The Feminine Mystique ensured women that they were not alone in suffering “the problem that has no name.”  During the 1950s and 1960s, society had deemed women’s role as wife and mother, insular and alone.  Society said that they should have been happy and content as housewives, eager and delighted to wash yet another load of laundry and cook yet another meal for her family.  This was not the case and many women sought psychiatric help to find a cure for whatever this problem was that they were feeling, but could not put their finger on.

          Some doctors blamed education as the source of female unrest.  Women were going to college, but their ultimate goal was to find a husband during their years of study to go on to what was considered the ultimate career: housewife and mother.  Unhappiness, through this theory, came from women becoming educated and then having no outlet for their intellectual thoughts.  They sat at home reading the newspaper and staying up-to-date on the world around them, but it made little difference as they had no forum in which to discuss current issues.

            Other psychiatrists and physicians were certain that the problem women were facing must be a sexual one.  When husbands came home from a long day of work to his wife who had worked hard within the household, both partners were too tired to keep up a healthy sex life.  This caused in some women a “sexual hunger” that doctors felt was the root of their problem.  It seems more likely, though, that a woman who sits at home all day in her quaintly furnished prison with no one but her children to talk to is starved for attention of any sort, not necessarily sexual.  When her husband comes home in the evening, she is probably likely to have a chance to spend time with someone her own age and discuss world events; yet, if he is too tired to give her the attention she craves, she is left feeling more empty and alone than before.

            How were women supposed to cope with such anxieties?  By the mid-sixties, Women’s rights groups such as the New York Radical Women (NYRW), the National Organization for Women (NOW), and the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWC) began taking a stand so that female voices could be heard on important women’s issues and the portrayal and demands of women in American society.  During this time, women’s history, or “gender studies” courses and programs sprang up across the country despite hesitation from educational institutions who felt that history education should only address patriarchal issues that exclude women from the record.  Some believed that women’s issues were limited to sex and the home and should not be intermingled with politics and economics.  What they neglected to realize was the fact that women were, and still are, the country’s biggest consumers who would have the most knowledge on marketing trends.  Through the efforts of these groups, women facing “the problem that has no name” were able to get out of their houses and into the public sphere where they could voice their opinions and share their intelligence, finding their personal identities that were locked up in a broom closet for so many years.