Politics and the Battered Woman

Jean Bethke Elshtain’s essay “Politics and the Battered Woman” [Dissent, Winter 1985] not only seriously misrepresents my book Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement, but it is a good example of an all too common tendency to discredit a political perspective by appearing to adhere to it. Although she poses as a sympathetic feminist critic, Elshtain refuses to acknowledge—indeed wants to refute—my main point...