By Karen Woodall: Since Theresa May’s announcement that men who shout at their wives could face up to 14 years in prison, the issue of coercive control has been in the media. Launched by a plethora of largely meaningless headlines, the idea that coercive control is a new offence which tightens the net around nasty men, protecting feeble victim women has been on our front pages recently.
Interpreted by women’s groups as being behaviour designed to control women’s freedoms, actually coercive control is defined as follows
Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.
Which pretty much makes this a gender neutral piece of legislation, meaning that it covers the behaviours of both men AND women. The problem of course is, that any piece of gender neutral legislation, when enacted in a gender biased field, ends up re-inforcing gender biased outcomes. Which means that this legislation ends up without a doubt, being about nasty men and defenceless women who are being bullied and nothing else.
What it is most definitely not interpreted as is ‘contact denial’ that pattern of behaviour which is both coercive and controlling in that it involves the systematic interference of a child’s relationship with a parent on a deliberate basis designed to cause harm and abuse.
So it is with sinking heart that I hear stories of FNF’ers attempts to have contact denial or parental alienation – a label it is often interwoven with, labelled domestic violence (because it is coercive control). Sinking heart not because denying a child a relationship with a parent to cause hurt and abuse to both child and parent IS NOT controlling and not coercive, but sinking heart because in the field we are working ins and am, the lack of sophistication in the father’s movement, in raising awareness of critical issues, always leaves me either cringing or despairing. This latest effort is again doomed to fail in my view, not because it doesn’t have truth in it but because it simply starts from a hopeless place. Like squaring the circle, as a policy initiative, contact denial as domestic violence is a non starter unless the underlying conditions that allow breaking of relationships between parents and children are changed. Asking policy makers who are steeped in stereotypes of bad dads and madonna mothers to accept that said madonna’s are capable of dishing out a dose or two of coercive control by withholding their starving wains from their brutish fathers, (and calling that domestic violence) is akin to telling them that Cinderalla was a right old witch who deserved what she got. It isn’t going to work, it simply won’t wash, it will, like so many of the attempts made to change things, die a lonely death like an old man shouting into the wind.
But that said, there is truth in the statement that denial of a relationship between parent and child on a deliberate and conscious basis, IS a pattern of coercive control. There is no doubt for example, in the work that we do, that alienation in a child often continues a pattern of behaviour which was present between parents before the separation. Father and mothers are alienated in this way and it is a dnamic which is very clear and persistent in certain groups of alienating parents. In order for us to recognise this as mental health professionals however, we have to first of all remove the ‘lens’ through which we understand domestic abuse or as we call it at the Family Separation Clinic, family violence.
It is this lens which causes the fathers movement to fail in trying to establish policy initiatives that raise the issue of denial of a relationship between parents and child. This lens is the feminist analysis of family and the violence that takes place in the family. This feminist approach, which is unashamedly political in nature, has been popularised over the years to mean that all men’s violence stems from their inherent privilege and all women’s violence is either non existent or, where it is provable, it arises either from mental health problems (caused by men) or self defence. To speak against this analysis is to be decried as either a victim blamer or violence denier, both of which are designed to silence critics. This version of analysis of domestic violence is accepted almost wholesale amongst social workers and family court professionals, even though it is, without a doubt both political in nature AND based upon such faulty statistical evidence that one can drive a horse and cart through it. That this approach to understanding family violence is both accepted AND unchallenged on a policy level by FNF’ers has never ceased to amaze me. Indeed there is even an FNF’er who appears to be publicly supporting feminist analysis of DV as a policy initiative in a convoluted and entirely incomprehensible strategy to improve outcomes for fathers. Little wonder squaring the policy circle and raising the issue of denial of contact as domestic violence looks like an eccentricity instead of the serious policy proposal it could and should be.
In order to achieve the goal of raising the issue of relationship interference and coercive control, one must first tackle the use of feminist analysis of domestic violence as the prevalent approach to understanding violence in the family. Family violence is a serious and long standing issue which has not, in all of the forty years or more been either stopped or ameliorated by the use of feminist analysis and feminist ‘treatment’ of the problem. That is because the feminist analysis is based upon a political construct, that of men’s inherent privilege and women’s inherent disadvantage. The correction of this being the reversal of the power hierarchy and the deliberate punishment of men by women in order to change who holds power and control. In the family sphere this most often hands control to women after separation and allows them to both dominate and drive the post separation relationship. In this arena, deliberate, conscious, moderate or even mild interference between the relationship the parent with no control has with a child is easy to achieve. This handing of power from men to women was a deliberate act by feminist policy makers and it worked to the degree that it gave women control over men but it failed in its entirety to arrest patterns of coercive control. That is because it is based on the concept of power over, not power between. In the feminist analysis, men’s power over women must be corrected by giving women power over men. In a non feminist analysis, power over is neutralised to become power that is held between, which leads to very different outcomes that include the whole family, something that is specially important for children and especially for the parents they need all through their lives.
In a non feminist analysis of family violence we look at patterns of transgenerational behaviours in both men AND women and we examine the ways in which power over and power between parents influences the way that they make post separation arrangements. When we look at violent behaviours we look at the roots of this, at rage behaviours and the lack of brain development, of learned behaviours and learned helplessness and we assist families to put in place not blame and an exchange of power dynnamics but learning and healing and behavioural change. When we analyse parental alienation using a non feminist DV model, the route to repair for the whole family becomes possible instead of the routine parentectomy which is prescribed and carried out by those who use feminist approaches.
That is not to say that we do not safeguard, we do. That is not to say that we do not boundary our families, we do. But we also treat them and help them instead of condemning them. And for me, it is this that is the new policy initiative, not efforts to shoehorn ‘contact denial’ into a paradigm that created the very word ‘contact’ to cause fathering after separation to sound and feel to a child like something scary or not worth the effort.
To persuade people that ‘contact denial’ is an act of coercive control and therefore domestic violence also requires that the current court processes, which allow for the effective ending of a relationship between a parent and child based on allegations proven or otherwise of domestic violence are stopped. The willingness to end a child’s relationship with a parent based upon the current system of stopping the relationship first and then investigating, cannot be acceptable unless it is being carried out in the shadow of a feminist analysis of domestic violence which persuades us to accept that men are inherently dangerous. Family violence, however it is carried out, whether it is a one off event, situational, coercive or otherwise is a criminal act and should be heard in a criminal court rapidly, Whilst awaiting judgement, children and the parent who has been alleged to have been violent should remain in close relationship supervised, supported and faciitated. When the allegations have been heard, then decisions can and should be made about the nature of the ongoing relationship between the parent and child, with support given where necessary and help and assistance to bring about behavioural change put in place. Coercive controlling behaviour may require some intensive correction and safeguarding may well be necessary for a time, but the routine cutting and severing of relationships based on standard processes of eviction of the parent first and investigation second should not be allowed to continue. Triaging those relationships where there is immediate danger, using a differentiation route, allows for the immediate safeguarding of those most at risk AND prevents those families where repeat violence, separation, return and violence cycles are present from living on a roundabout of violence. These are the things that must change if coercive control patterns that prevent a relationship with a child after separation are to be recognised as domestic violence.
Finally, to convince the electorate that coercive control is more than bad men and oppressed women we have to raise the worth of fathers in their children’s lives, a worth which has to be upheld as distinctly different to that which is attributed to mothers. This in itself is an uphill battle and will become even more of a problem now that the Jennifer Mcintosh circus in the form of the Mindful Policy group has rolled into town. If ever there was a target for policy modernisation this is it. Having recently been made aware that the MPG are about to start training mediators, lawyers et al in the neuroscience of separated parenting (read Penelope Leach and her poisonous invective about preventing overnights with dad), this, is where any effort to change policy should be firmly located.
But will these things happen? Can the fathers movement strategise to prevent the UK heading down the Australian family law refom backlash road or will we, even before we got to say the word modernise, find ourselves bac down the alleyways of the past, a place where contact denial is justifiable act because anyone who does not see their children must have done something to cause it instead of what it often is, a pattern of coercive control which is designed to cause harm.
I no longer work in the charitable sector and I no longer work with government, I chose instead, with Nick, to walk away and work directly again with the families that need our help. In our world, where family violence is wrong and must be stopped, healing and teaching and changing behaviours is what helps families to end the transgenerational patterns of coercive control and non feminist/non political analysis is what makes the difference in our work. Ironically it was exactly this understanding of the field that I work in that caused a lawyer this week to accuse me of ‘spouting off’ with ‘clear political bias.’ In a field which is riddled with political bias, in which forty years of women’s political activism has effectively silenced, strangled and shunted fathers (and some mothers who are regarded simply as the unintended consequences of feminist policy) to the margins of their children’s lives, I consider it to be one of my greatest achievements to be able to do just that as well as continue to help families change and grow and heal.
Squaring the circle is not impossible but it requires a strategy in which the voices that speak are brave enough to face the truth of the multi-factored barriers that must change if coercive control is to include denial of a relationship with a child. Anything less is appeasement and whining into the wind and the families we work with deserve so much better than that.
Source
Interpreted by women’s groups as being behaviour designed to control women’s freedoms, actually coercive control is defined as followsAny incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.
Which pretty much makes this a gender neutral piece of legislation, meaning that it covers the behaviours of both men AND women. The problem of course is, that any piece of gender neutral legislation, when enacted in a gender biased field, ends up re-inforcing gender biased outcomes. Which means that this legislation ends up without a doubt, being about nasty men and defenceless women who are being bullied and nothing else.
What it is most definitely not interpreted as is ‘contact denial’ that pattern of behaviour which is both coercive and controlling in that it involves the systematic interference of a child’s relationship with a parent on a deliberate basis designed to cause harm and abuse.
So it is with sinking heart that I hear stories of FNF’ers attempts to have contact denial or parental alienation – a label it is often interwoven with, labelled domestic violence (because it is coercive control). Sinking heart not because denying a child a relationship with a parent to cause hurt and abuse to both child and parent IS NOT controlling and not coercive, but sinking heart because in the field we are working ins and am, the lack of sophistication in the father’s movement, in raising awareness of critical issues, always leaves me either cringing or despairing. This latest effort is again doomed to fail in my view, not because it doesn’t have truth in it but because it simply starts from a hopeless place. Like squaring the circle, as a policy initiative, contact denial as domestic violence is a non starter unless the underlying conditions that allow breaking of relationships between parents and children are changed. Asking policy makers who are steeped in stereotypes of bad dads and madonna mothers to accept that said madonna’s are capable of dishing out a dose or two of coercive control by withholding their starving wains from their brutish fathers, (and calling that domestic violence) is akin to telling them that Cinderalla was a right old witch who deserved what she got. It isn’t going to work, it simply won’t wash, it will, like so many of the attempts made to change things, die a lonely death like an old man shouting into the wind.
But that said, there is truth in the statement that denial of a relationship between parent and child on a deliberate and conscious basis, IS a pattern of coercive control. There is no doubt for example, in the work that we do, that alienation in a child often continues a pattern of behaviour which was present between parents before the separation. Father and mothers are alienated in this way and it is a dnamic which is very clear and persistent in certain groups of alienating parents. In order for us to recognise this as mental health professionals however, we have to first of all remove the ‘lens’ through which we understand domestic abuse or as we call it at the Family Separation Clinic, family violence.
It is this lens which causes the fathers movement to fail in trying to establish policy initiatives that raise the issue of denial of a relationship between parents and child. This lens is the feminist analysis of family and the violence that takes place in the family. This feminist approach, which is unashamedly political in nature, has been popularised over the years to mean that all men’s violence stems from their inherent privilege and all women’s violence is either non existent or, where it is provable, it arises either from mental health problems (caused by men) or self defence. To speak against this analysis is to be decried as either a victim blamer or violence denier, both of which are designed to silence critics. This version of analysis of domestic violence is accepted almost wholesale amongst social workers and family court professionals, even though it is, without a doubt both political in nature AND based upon such faulty statistical evidence that one can drive a horse and cart through it. That this approach to understanding family violence is both accepted AND unchallenged on a policy level by FNF’ers has never ceased to amaze me. Indeed there is even an FNF’er who appears to be publicly supporting feminist analysis of DV as a policy initiative in a convoluted and entirely incomprehensible strategy to improve outcomes for fathers. Little wonder squaring the policy circle and raising the issue of denial of contact as domestic violence looks like an eccentricity instead of the serious policy proposal it could and should be.
In order to achieve the goal of raising the issue of relationship interference and coercive control, one must first tackle the use of feminist analysis of domestic violence as the prevalent approach to understanding violence in the family. Family violence is a serious and long standing issue which has not, in all of the forty years or more been either stopped or ameliorated by the use of feminist analysis and feminist ‘treatment’ of the problem. That is because the feminist analysis is based upon a political construct, that of men’s inherent privilege and women’s inherent disadvantage. The correction of this being the reversal of the power hierarchy and the deliberate punishment of men by women in order to change who holds power and control. In the family sphere this most often hands control to women after separation and allows them to both dominate and drive the post separation relationship. In this arena, deliberate, conscious, moderate or even mild interference between the relationship the parent with no control has with a child is easy to achieve. This handing of power from men to women was a deliberate act by feminist policy makers and it worked to the degree that it gave women control over men but it failed in its entirety to arrest patterns of coercive control. That is because it is based on the concept of power over, not power between. In the feminist analysis, men’s power over women must be corrected by giving women power over men. In a non feminist analysis, power over is neutralised to become power that is held between, which leads to very different outcomes that include the whole family, something that is specially important for children and especially for the parents they need all through their lives.
In a non feminist analysis of family violence we look at patterns of transgenerational behaviours in both men AND women and we examine the ways in which power over and power between parents influences the way that they make post separation arrangements. When we look at violent behaviours we look at the roots of this, at rage behaviours and the lack of brain development, of learned behaviours and learned helplessness and we assist families to put in place not blame and an exchange of power dynnamics but learning and healing and behavioural change. When we analyse parental alienation using a non feminist DV model, the route to repair for the whole family becomes possible instead of the routine parentectomy which is prescribed and carried out by those who use feminist approaches.
That is not to say that we do not safeguard, we do. That is not to say that we do not boundary our families, we do. But we also treat them and help them instead of condemning them. And for me, it is this that is the new policy initiative, not efforts to shoehorn ‘contact denial’ into a paradigm that created the very word ‘contact’ to cause fathering after separation to sound and feel to a child like something scary or not worth the effort.
To persuade people that ‘contact denial’ is an act of coercive control and therefore domestic violence also requires that the current court processes, which allow for the effective ending of a relationship between a parent and child based on allegations proven or otherwise of domestic violence are stopped. The willingness to end a child’s relationship with a parent based upon the current system of stopping the relationship first and then investigating, cannot be acceptable unless it is being carried out in the shadow of a feminist analysis of domestic violence which persuades us to accept that men are inherently dangerous. Family violence, however it is carried out, whether it is a one off event, situational, coercive or otherwise is a criminal act and should be heard in a criminal court rapidly, Whilst awaiting judgement, children and the parent who has been alleged to have been violent should remain in close relationship supervised, supported and faciitated. When the allegations have been heard, then decisions can and should be made about the nature of the ongoing relationship between the parent and child, with support given where necessary and help and assistance to bring about behavioural change put in place. Coercive controlling behaviour may require some intensive correction and safeguarding may well be necessary for a time, but the routine cutting and severing of relationships based on standard processes of eviction of the parent first and investigation second should not be allowed to continue. Triaging those relationships where there is immediate danger, using a differentiation route, allows for the immediate safeguarding of those most at risk AND prevents those families where repeat violence, separation, return and violence cycles are present from living on a roundabout of violence. These are the things that must change if coercive control patterns that prevent a relationship with a child after separation are to be recognised as domestic violence.
Finally, to convince the electorate that coercive control is more than bad men and oppressed women we have to raise the worth of fathers in their children’s lives, a worth which has to be upheld as distinctly different to that which is attributed to mothers. This in itself is an uphill battle and will become even more of a problem now that the Jennifer Mcintosh circus in the form of the Mindful Policy group has rolled into town. If ever there was a target for policy modernisation this is it. Having recently been made aware that the MPG are about to start training mediators, lawyers et al in the neuroscience of separated parenting (read Penelope Leach and her poisonous invective about preventing overnights with dad), this, is where any effort to change policy should be firmly located.
But will these things happen? Can the fathers movement strategise to prevent the UK heading down the Australian family law refom backlash road or will we, even before we got to say the word modernise, find ourselves bac down the alleyways of the past, a place where contact denial is justifiable act because anyone who does not see their children must have done something to cause it instead of what it often is, a pattern of coercive control which is designed to cause harm.
I no longer work in the charitable sector and I no longer work with government, I chose instead, with Nick, to walk away and work directly again with the families that need our help. In our world, where family violence is wrong and must be stopped, healing and teaching and changing behaviours is what helps families to end the transgenerational patterns of coercive control and non feminist/non political analysis is what makes the difference in our work. Ironically it was exactly this understanding of the field that I work in that caused a lawyer this week to accuse me of ‘spouting off’ with ‘clear political bias.’ In a field which is riddled with political bias, in which forty years of women’s political activism has effectively silenced, strangled and shunted fathers (and some mothers who are regarded simply as the unintended consequences of feminist policy) to the margins of their children’s lives, I consider it to be one of my greatest achievements to be able to do just that as well as continue to help families change and grow and heal.
Squaring the circle is not impossible but it requires a strategy in which the voices that speak are brave enough to face the truth of the multi-factored barriers that must change if coercive control is to include denial of a relationship with a child. Anything less is appeasement and whining into the wind and the families we work with deserve so much better than that.
Source
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