Basics about violence

Violence is often used to get power and control over another person.  We usually think that violence is about anger, passion or loss-of-control, but often the person is choosing when to lose control.  There is usually a pattern where violence:

• Is one-sided—one person is harming another, one person is more afraid of the other; even if harm is on both sides, there is usually a pattern of who is more harmful, who gets most harmed and who is most scared
• Attempts to control others—used to get someone to do something or stop doing something, even if it doesn’t work
• Takes advantage of privilege—a person using their power and privilege to control someone with less power
• Continues in a pattern—interpersonal violence isn’t usually a single outburst or loss of control. It is usually a pattern of many (sometimes subtle) acts of different types of violence
• Is used for a purpose even if it doesn’t look like it—even when interpersonal violence looks completely out of control, it is usually purposeful. For example, if someone is only violent to their partner or child, and keeps it together at work and around everyone else, then they aren’t losing control—they are choosing when to use violence.  Other signs that violence is being used to control are: only hurting someone who won’t tell or be believed, hitting places that won’t bruise or bruises won’t be seen, waiting until no-one is around to see the violence, being calm and friendly to others
• Follows a cycle—the ‘cycle of violence’ starts with 1) build-up of tension, leading to 2) violence, leading to 3) calm, which might include apologies and remorse until tension builds again. The cycle may take hours, days, months or years, but usually gets shorter over time
• Increases over time—once someone uses violence, they tend to use it again. If violence continues it usually becomes more serious and more often.

What can make someone more vulnerable to violence?

Violence is related to power.  Power can be thought of as political structures—some groups of people are favoured and valued more in our political and social systems, while other groups have less access to power (they are marginalised).   People who are marginalised are more vulnerable to violence because they are an easier target, because they are less likely to be protected or more likely to be blamed.  They may be isolated and have fewer places to go to for help.  Sexism, colonisation, ableism, poverty, ageism, etc, affect access to power, and mean that domestic violence and sexual assault is most often committed by men and against women, Māori, people with disabilities, poor people, young people, recent immigrants, queer people, etc. 

The following is an exercise adapted from Raising our voices: Queer Asian women’s response to relationship violence to help think about the relationship between privilege and violence.  You might want to do this exercise as a group or by yourself. 

Exercise: The relationship between prejudice/ privilege/ oppression and interpersonal violence

How does your status as:

• A woman or girl
• A non-white person
• A person with a physical disability
• A person with a mental disability
• A recent immigrant
• A person without permanent residency
• A person who doesn’t speak English
• A person from a marginalised religion
• A person who cannot read or write
• A lesbian/gay/bi-sexual/pansexual/queer person
• A transgender person
• An intersex person
• A poor person
• A person whose job or income makes you vulnerable to prejudice or arrest
• A person without income
• A person without a home
• A person considered unattractive
• A person without connection to family, friends or community
• A person with a criminal conviction
• A person with marginalised political beliefs
• An elderly person
• A young person or child

(And any combination of the above)

…become used as part of the abuse?

…prevent you from knowing where to get help?

…make survival difficult or impossible if you leave the person abusing you?

…lead to more abuse by those who are supposed to help you?

Interpersonal violence is violence that occurs between:

• People in an intimate relationship (dating, partners, exes, parents of a child, etc)
• Whānau
• Friends
• Household members
• Neighbours
• Co-workers
• Members of an organisation (church, community organisation, sports club, etc)
• Acquaintances

Because these relationships of violence may also be relationships of love, companionship, friendship, loyalty, dependence and even survival, the dynamics of violence can be confusing to understand and change.

Interpersonal violence is any form of abuse, harm, violence or violation between people.  It includes actions that harm someone, control someone or get someone to do something (the power and control wheel is a common way of showing this as a system, where the threat of physical and sexual violence allows other forms of violence to be used for power and control over someone).  Examples include:

• Physical violence or threats, such as intimidating body language, using or threatening pushing, slapping, hitting, beating, kicking, strangling, pulling hair, holding down, locking in a room, driving dangerously, keeping someone awake, leaving someone in a dangerous location, using a weapon
• Verbal and emotional violence, such as yelling, name-calling, put-downs, humiliation, always being right, making someone feel crazy (this is sometimes called gaslighting)
• Isolation, such as making it difficult for someone to make friends, keep up relationships, see family, stay connected to community, go to work, go to school, go outside of the home, talk to other people, look at other people, make phone calls
• Sexual violence, such as making someone participate in sexual activities against their will, making someone do sexual acts that they do not want to do, making someone see pornography against their will, making unwanted sexual remarks, looks or gestures, sending unwanted sexual text messages (sexting), calls or emails, sharing sexually revealing private photographs;  for children, sexual violence includes any form of sexual activity with a child, showing them any kind of sexual content, any sexual comments or looks
• Economic or financial abuse, such as keeping financial information from an intimate partner, controlling income, gambling or abusive use of credit cards, leaving too little money for financial survival, taking cheques, cards or money, taking out loans or bills in a partner’s name, stopping someone from studying or working
• Controlling property and pets, such as destroying property especially if it is emotionally or financially valuable, controlling documents such as ID, passport and immigration papers, controlling car keys and transport, threatening or harming pets
• Stalking, such as sending text-messages, emails or calling repeatedly, following someone at their home, workplace, school or other places where they might be, monitoring someone’s emails or text-messages, taking someone’s identity and getting into their bank accounts, email accounts or other private spaces, leaving notes and messages repeatedly or in a harassing way
• Using privilege to control someone, such as using put-downs, abusing someone based on prejudice/ discrimination/ oppression, threatening to report someone to child welfare, WINZ or immigration, ‘outing’ someone (telling others something that may hurt their relationships)
• Using their lack of privilege to control someone or to excuse violence, such as using lack of power to justify abusive behaviour at home, in the relationship, or in the workplace, making it someone’s responsibility to “make up for” social barriers or discrimination, making a contest about who is more oppressed, using experiences of discrimination to justify abuse and violence, using mental illness as an excuse for abuse and violence, using one’s disadvantage or abuse during childhood as an excuse for violence
• Threatening things someone cares about, such as threatening to damage someone’s work, housing, or reputation, threatening to hurt a person’s friends, family or pets, threatening to take someone’s children.

These forms of interpersonal violence have other names too: domestic violence or intimate partner violence, sexual assault or abuse, sexual harassment, family violence, whānau violence, child abuse, elder abuse, and self-harm. 

Common forms of interpersonal violence

NOTE: These definitions and categories are simplified and adapted from Incite! Women of Color Against Violence Gender oppression, abuse, violence: Community accountability in the People of Color progressive movement

What about self-harm? Can this be a form of violence?

Self-harm isn’t usually abuse.  A person who has been harmed may harm themselves to feel better or out of hopelessness and despair.  Aggressive self-harm is a form of abuse. 

Aggressive self-harm is using self-harm (or threatening to) in order to manipulate or control others.  For example, to:

• coerce someone back into a relationship
• pressure someone to maintain contact
• get someone to do something they don’t want to or that may hurt them
• distract people from abuse or violence.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell who is being harmed and who is the person doing harm.  It is uncommon for violence to be equal (mutual).  It is much more common that one person is using power and control over the other.

No-one outside the relationship can know exactly what is happening, but there are questions you can ask to help work out what is going on, and from there work out how to intervene and support change.

Questions to ask when it’s hard to tell who is violent

• Who is more afraid?
• Who starts the violence?
• Who ends up getting harmed?
• Who is changing and adapting to meet the other’s needs or moods?
• Who is more vulnerable?
• Who is using violence for power and control (abusive violence)? Who is using violence to try to get safety or integrity in a violent situation (self-defence)?
• Who always has to win?

Interpersonal violence damages individuals, communities and societies.  The effects can be devastating.

One in three women will be physically or sexually assaulted by a partner in their lifetime.  One in five girls and one in ten boys report being sexually assaulted.  Around half of murders are committed by family, and three quarters of reported assaults on women are by family.  The police receive a complaint about family violence every 5-6 minutes—more than 40% of frontline policing is responding to family violence (even though three quarters of family violence incidents aren’t reported to police).  

(from It’s not okay and the NZ Family Violence Clearinghouse)

In more than nine out of ten reported assaults on women, it was someone the woman knows.

(from the NZ Family Violence Clearinghouse).

Interpersonal violence is common.  We are all affected by it.

How violence can hurt the person being harmed

• Physical injury or death
• Disease, unwanted pregnancy, chronic conditions due to prolonged injury, abuse, and emotional stress
• Emotional damage, which some describe as more hurtful and longer lasting than physical harm
• Depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts and attempts
• Losing self-respect, self-esteem, self-belief
• Feeling shame and guilt
• Losing sense of identity or meaning
• Feeling hopeless, despairing or exhausted
• Losing ability to trust
• Feeling guilty for disappointing family, friends, community and others
• Fearing bringing danger to others—children and other whānau, co-workers, friends, etc
• Losing income, home and financial security
• Losing ability and energy to make decisions, take care of others, do effective work, be happy and healthy, contribute to the community or live a spiritual life
• Losing ability to think clearly, plan for the future, be safe
• Losing love or good feelings for the person causing harm.

How violence can hurt people doing harm

• Losing respect, love and friendships of people harmed and people who see the harm
• Growing fear, anger and hatred of people harmed and people who see the harm
• Losing closeness and meaningful relationships with people
• Losing the ability to trust and be trusted
• Fearing that others will find out
• Fearing that loved ones will leave
• Fearing being alone
• Fearing turning into violent people
• Feeling guilty and ashamed for harming others
• Losing self-respect, self-esteem, self-belief
• Feeling hopeless, despairing or exhausted
• Feeling trapped.

How violence can hurt children (whether directly harmed or witnessing violence)

• Physical harm or death
• Emotional harm
• Sexual harm
• Physical, emotional and other developmental harm because caretakers can’t pay attention to their needs
• Physical disease caused by constant stress and worry
• Emotional harm seeing people they love and depend on being hurt or harming others
• Emotional harm caused by constant fear, stress and worry
• Emotional harm caused by feelings of fear and love for those doing harm
• Emotional harm caused by feelings of love, disappointment in, or disrespect for those who are being harmed
• Unfair expectation to side with the person doing harm or the person who is harmed
• Unfair burden to comfort and protect others from harm
• Increased risk of community harms including sexual abuse, community violence, substance abuse due to lack of protection
• Increased risk of self-harm including cutting and substance abuse
• Increased risk of harming others, including children and animals
• Learning that family and home are unsafe and dangerous
• Learning that love is violence and harm
• Learning that family members and community do nothing to stop violence
• Learning that violence gets you what you want, bullying and using violence
• Learning that bad things happen to people who are vulnerable or lacking in power
• Fearing losing their parents, home or people close to them
• Difficulty in school because of constant worry about violence
• Difficulty having healthy relationships with friends
• Feeling guilty, shamed, helpless or depressed
• Learning secrecy
• Blaming themselves.

How violence can hurt close friends, family and community

• Living with fear of violence and the people involved; physical, emotional, sexual, economic and spiritual harm caused by violence
• Violence accepted as normal
• Stress and worry about the people involved in violence
• Shame about being close to violence, or having friends or whānau involved in violence
• Losing community to division and conflicting loyalties
• Physical danger
• Threat to income, security or well-being
• Feeling guilty about not stopping the violence
• Losing people who are involved in violence, including their ability to be good friends or family members, healthy members of our communities and organisations, good co-workers, neighbours, comrades
• Feeling hopeless and despairing.

We may not recognise interpersonal violence because:

Survivors don’t want to talk about it

• Many people think it is shameful to be hurt by interpersonal violence. People who are being hurt may want to hide it, and people who suspect someone is being hurt may not want to ask
• People doing harm often threaten further harm if the person they hurt tells anyone
• People who are being hurt may not talk because they think they deserve what is happening or did something to cause it. Or they may fear other people blaming them.

Community members would rather not see or challenge the violence

• Many think that violence is acceptable or okay in certain situations, or that keeping the family together is more important than the safety and wellbeing of family members
• Many hope that the violence will go away if it is ignored
• Many are afraid that challenging or intervening in violence is dangerous
• Many consider interpersonal violence as private, between two people
• Many question and criticise the person being hurt and their behaviour to make sense of the violence and justify doing nothing about it.

Society doesn’t want to recognise it

• Many are unaware of violence, so they don’t see it
• Many justify violence as ‘discipline’ or ‘tough love’, or excuse it as jealousy
• Society normalises, glorifies and romanticises violence, and often doesn’t see it as harm
• Many think violence only happens if someone has put themselves at risk
• Many think violence can’t be stopped or prevented
• Many think that violence is part of life.

We bring our biases to how we make sense of what is happening.  We are influenced by personal experiences, histories and the ways we have seen interpersonal violence play out in our communities and social networks.

This can lead to confusing feelings.

Think about your own experiences about violence . . .  How could they influence you?

• Do you have a personal experience of violence?
• Did you experience or witness violence as a child?
• Are you angry at yourself for being hurt? For hurting others?  For standing by when someone else was getting hurt?
• Are you angry at others for being hurt?
• Did your experiences of harm end well? End badly?
• What lessons did you learn about violence? How might they influence you now?

Take some time to reflect about your experiences and beliefs and how they might positively or negatively influence you now.

How can your experiences or beliefs make you especially useful or knowledgeable?

How can your experiences or beliefs make some roles difficult for you to take?

Do you need your own support to be part of an intervention?  What would that look like?

Common confusing questions especially for allies

• What if the person harmed is annoying or hard to sympathise with?
• What if you like the person doing harm more than the person they hurt?
• What if the person doing harm is your friend or whanaunga?
• What if you get angry at the person harmed? What if you get angrier at the person harmed than at the person who hurt them?
• What if you think you are putting too much pressure on the person doing harm?
• What if you wish everyone would just forgive and forget?

Violence is often used to isolate the person being harmed.  They may seem unreliable, over-sensitive, depressed, unpredictable, anxious, resentful or short-tempered.  These are common reactions to living with violence.  At the same time, the person hurting them may seem charming, fun, sincere, sympathetic to their difficult partner and easy to support.  They are not scared and stressed.  They are in control.

People being hurt often doubt their decision to change the relationship or leave the person hurting them.  Fear, guilt, self-doubt, love and pressure from other people means most people will go back and forth on what they think is happening, what they think of the person hurting them, and what they want to do.  This can be frustrating to people who are trying to help.

Many of us feel uncomfortable about confrontation and conflict.  Not wanting to get involved can lead to resenting the person harmed, and to feeling empathy for the person doing harm.  Likewise, many of us remember feeling shame for things we have done.  This can lead to feeling more sympathy for the person doing harm than for the person who has experienced their violence and abuse.

These feelings are common.  But they can lead to interventions that actually support violence, rather than reduce it.

Get real about your biases: Questions to ask yourself

These questions aren’t about judging you—everyone has biases.  By thinking about why you are reacting to the situation the way you are, you can see it better, and work out the best roles for yourself.

General Questions

• Do you like one person more than the other?
• Are you more connected to one person than the other (through work, neighbourhood, organisation, church, sports team, etc)?
• Do you relate to one person or admire them more than the other?
• Do you find one person more sympathetic than the other?
• Do you depend on or get something from one person more than the other? Do you fear that you have something to lose?
• Do you have biases about
  
  • gender or sex
  • race
  • class or income level
  • level of education
  • immigration status
  • sexuality
  • age
  • physical or mental ability
  • physical appearance or attractiveness
  • where someone is from
  • religion
  • politics
  • emotional, financial or other dependence?

Questions about the person harmed

• Is the person harmed acting angry, weak, manipulative or another behaviour you don’t like? Could it be because of repeated exposure to violence?
• Have you heard stories about the person harmed that make you like or believe them less?
• Do you think that the person harmed is so annoying that you can understand why someone would want to hurt them?
• Does the person harmed remind you of someone you think deserves violence?

Questions about the person doing harm

• Has the person doing harm been able to charm or influence people to excuse their violence?
• Does the person doing harm have a story that makes you feel sorry for them?
• Have you heard stories about the person doing harm that make you feel closer or more sympathetic to them?
• Does the person doing harm act better in public than in private?
• Do you like or admire the person doing harm so much that you don’t want to believe they are violent, or you want to ignore and make excuses for their violence?
• Does the person doing harm remind you of someone you like, so you want to believe they weren’t violent or they had a good reason?
• Do you depend on the person doing harm in some way? Could you be harmed or lose something if you don’t take their side?

How did it go?  What did you learn?

Violence is wrong regardless of who is more likeable.  Confronting someone you care about can be the best way to show that you care, and that you are by their side in a meaningful way.

Change views—help stop interpersonal violence by:

• Becoming aware of common and damaging reactions to violence.

Challenge yourself (or others) when you deny violence, like when you:

• Don’t notice that violence is happening around you
• Block out violence that is happening
• Think about violence as something other than violence (for example, as a bad relationship or fighting, someone being drunk and stupid or getting carried away)
• Don’t believe someone who tells you about violence
• Forget that violence is happening.

Challenge yourself (or others) when you minimise violence, like when you:

• Think or act as if the violence isn’t serious
• Compare the level of violence to ‘more serious’ violence, making the violence seem unimportant (for example, by saying no-one was seriously hurt, or that racism, poverty or state violence is worse)
• Don’t do anything to acknowledge or stop the violence
• Act as if the violence will go away if left alone
• Believe we have to accept violence as part of our culture.

Catch “victim blaming” when you notice yourself (or others) do things like:

• Thinking that the person harmed must have done something to cause it
• Thinking that it’s the responsibility of the person harmed to stop violence or get out of its way
• Thinking that the person harmed needs to take responsibility for asking for help
• Thinking that the person harmed doesn’t deserve help
• Thinking that the person harmed is as much the problem as the person using violence to threaten and control
• Believing stories that blame the person harmed.

• Refer people who need to know to this website. This includes people being harmed, people doing harm, friends and whānau, anyone who may get involved in helping to end violence. 
• Share the sections that will help people the most: for the person harmed it might be the section about finding support; for the person causing harm it might be the section about taking accountability
• Think about who you have a special connection with, for example, someone in your family, friendship or community, or organisations you belong to, and share this information
• If this is difficult to read, if English is not a first language, if someone does not read, or is in emotional crisis, then think about reading or explaining this to them, or finding other ways to share this information.  For example, translating into another language, video, youtube, drama, story-telling, explaining through pictures or other visuals
• If you create new ways to present this material, please share with us, so we can share your work.