Battle Cries. Hillary Potter
against their batterers at greater rates than White women.22 Finally, all of these perceptions of White women were grounded in the basic impression that Black women are emotionally stronger than White women. Accordingly, it is difficult for Black women to view themselves as victims of any of life’s problems and to incorporate this idea into their identities, particularly when they compare their and other Black women’s life histories with those of White women.
Increasingly, in the intimate partner abuse literature, the term “survivor” is being co-opted to describe battered women.23 Jennifer L. Dunn writes that this term is becoming preferred over “victim” because “[f]raming victims as ‘survivors’ constructs a different, less pathetic and more reasonable battered woman embodying the cultural values of strength rather than weakness, and agency instead of passivity.”24 In her study of Black women who were physically and/or sexually abused, Traci C. West chose to use the term “victim-survivors” to describe these women in order to “rhetorically remind us of the dual status of women who have been both victimized by violent assault and have survived it”25 Lee Ann Hoff26 and Edward W. Gondolf and Ellen R. Fisher27 argue that battered women are not simply helpless victims but heroic survivors who are skillful women employing calculated strategies to protect themselves and their children. “Even in the midst of severe psychological impairment, such as depression, many battered women seek help, adapt, and push on.”28 Indeed, the women in my study tended to fall within the description of the survivor, as opposed to that of the victim, when considering the extant research on the increasingly preferred and more appropriate term for battered women. To describe the women in my study as survivors would be more in keeping with their views of themselves than describing them as victims.
I contend, however, that “survivor” suggests that the battered Black women’s struggles have concluded and that these women are no longer in need of assistance. The women I spoke with were indeed still in need of advocacy—or, at least, acknowledgment of their abuse—from family, friends, clergy, the Black community, and activist allies. In addition, the term “survivor” in the context of woman battering refers to women’s identity as one who has been abused by an intimate partner. It does not adequately allow for how a battered woman truly identifies herself and has a strong influence on how she views herself. This is particularly important when considering women of color. As is particular to my investigation, battered Black women are confronted by many other forms of oppression aside from being abused by an intimate partner. These women repeatedly reflected on their devalued position in general society, which often included encounters with sexism, racism, and classism. At the community and familial levels, the women recognized that within this community, although they are viewed as the mainstay of the Black community,29 they face sexism from Black men,30 discrimination based on skin tone,31 classism from middle-class and higher classes of Blacks,32 and intellectual bias from Blacks who have achieved advanced educational statuses.33 Hence, the pressures from the outside, White-dominated society are not always relieved by interfacing with the Black community and Black family because of the prospect of internal strife within these in-groups. In the face of these countless pressures and stressors, the women in my study showed great fortitude and resistance. From their standpoint, battered Black women are resisters.
In part, I compare the use of the term “resister” to Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz’s definition, in their work on gun use as a form of “armed resistance,” of the use of force by victims of crime as acts of self-defense. Regardless of the outcomes of their research on the use of guns and their lack of support for organized gun-control, their work provided a seemingly peculiar fit to explain battered Black women’s response to their batterers. Battered Black women have often not been recognized as “true victims,” and they use terms reminiscent of street or stranger violence to describe their acts of resistance. The responses from the women in my study are different from the descriptions of many White women who experience intimate partner abuse. Taking these factors into consideration, it is not problematic to reach beyond intimate partner violence research into street or stranger violence research to draw on such findings and to develop a more suitable model. Kleck and Gertz contend that:
The traditional conceptualization of victims as either passive targets or active collaborators overlooks another possible victim role, that of the active resister who does not initiate or accelerate any illegitimate activity, but uses various means of resistance for legitimate purposes, such as avoiding injury or property loss. Victim resistance can be passive or verbal, but much of it is active and forceful.34
Another source for building my theoretical model on battered Black women’s responses to abuse and domination in their lives is West’s research detailed in her book, Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics. West interviewed women “victim-survivors” of male “intimate violence,” which includes not only intimate partner abuse but sexual abuse (rape) during either childhood or adulthood and perpetrated by acquaintances and strangers. She also analyzed written narratives depicting violence against Black women slaves. Although West’s emphasis is on a “theo-ethical assumption of the presence of powerful divine resources available to us for resisting the forms of dehumanization leveled at black women,” she provides a secular, sociostructural view of violence and domination against Black women and their resistance efforts.35 West’s main contention is that even when confronted with severe “intimate and social violence,” women undeniably engage in endeavors of resistance. She argues that even though resistance does not guarantee healing, it does provide a space where healing can take place. As depicted in her choice to use the term “victim-survivor” in describing Black women who have suffered intimate violence, West suggests an integrated approach to understanding these women’s resistance. She concludes that “a resistance paradigm for African-American victim-survivors must include the roles of both victim and agent. These roles should be configured in a resistance framework that allows them to exist as alternating and overlapping dynamics.”36
Starting from the standpoint of Black feminist criminology and building on Kleck and Gertz’s conceptualization of victims of (typically stranger) violence and West’s focus on resistance efforts by Black women who have been abused, my evaluation presented throughout this book has led to the theoretical model of dynamic resistance to describe the challenging situations confronting Black women who have been battered and their resulting responses. The multiple meanings of the term “dynamic” are equally applied to the women’s resistance efforts. Being dynamic can mean that something is ever changing and can have the ability to change or adapt, as opposed to being static (fluidity). Being dynamic can involve taking an active stance, as opposed to a passive one (vitality). Being dynamic is an indication of passion and strength, as opposed to disinterest and powerlessness (intensity). A dynamic (used not as an adjective, but as a noun) can also entail interaction with other things or other persons, such as the dynamics between the parties in an intimate couple or the dynamics between Black women and the criminal justice system. These elements of fluidity, vitality, and intensity and the interactional aspect of social and political organisms that explain the term “dynamic” are all functioning within the model of dynamic resistance.
Although a battered Black woman can encompass a multifaceted self, five major aspects of such women include (1) race (Black or African American); (2) gender (woman); (3) sexuality; (4) socioeconomic status (often low-income and undereducated, although there is increasing representation in the higher classes); and (5) experiences with intimate partner abuse. The first three characteristics are considered part of the women’s identity, while the fourth characteristic, socioeconomic status and education, may or may not be endemic to battered Black women’s identity dependent on the extent to which they consider these factors to be part of their identity. However, the fifth item, experiences with abuse, is framed as a “descriptive” characteristic following bell hooks’s argument that the “battered woman” term
is used as though it constitutes a separate and unique category of womanness, as though it is an identity, a mark that sets one apart rather than being simply a descriptive term. It is as though the experience of being repeatedly violently hit is the sole defining characteristic of a woman’s identity and all other aspects of who she is and what