| Abstrakt: |
This chapter explores the efforts of feminist service providers to assess whether a relationship is abusive, the power dynamics within a relationship, and who the victim and the perpetrator are. Feminist service providers are aware that the patterns, contexts, and experiences of women in abusive lesbian relationships are different and varied. Yet most often, they rely on certain assumptions about abusive power dynamics based on understandings from feminist theorizing of heterosexual relationships. The gender-based analysis of violence that is captured in the power and control constellation is intellectually compelling because it makes some sense out of the extent of violence against women in an oppressive culture. In another example of staying with known assumptions, participants in each focus group spoke about the concept of mutual abuse and the difficulties they have encountered in defining abuse when examining different dynamics. Here, power is explored as relational and suggests that women can occupy more than one subject position. Rather than attaching a fixed identity of victim or perpetrator to individuals, this discussion explored how power operates in their actions. Challenges to the dominant power and control constellation are often quickly shut down because of institutional forces that further support and entrench the ideology while working against the emergence of counterdiscourses. |
