Domestic Violence – Rory Miller

I don’t write about domestic violence, because I don’t feel I know enough about it.  I know, I know, that doesn’t seem to stop most ‘experts’ in any field… but, flippancy aside, understanding violence is important.  Misinformed people get hurt.  Passing bad information, even if it makes you feel good, victimizes the people who listen.  (My beef with current bullying programs is that by refusing to acknowledge what works and trying to come up with a palatable solution, the programs not only create victims but an environment designed to enable bullying.)

And an aside.  Criminals are exceptionally manipulative.  One of the things that every Corrections Officer must learn is how to determine the real intent of even a simple conversation.  “What does this guy want?”  When  someone is trying to make you afraid, e.g. “Bullying is rampant and the scars will affect you for the rest of your life.” And simultaneously says, “You must not respond physically.” You have to ask yourself, why does this person want me to be both afraid and passive?  What does this person gain by trying to make me more of a victim?

That’s an aside.  DV has come up a couple of times lately, asking where it fits into the Social/Asocial model.

The answer is “many places.”

A taxonomy is a classification or naming system.  The same things, like plants, might have many different taxonomies.  The Linnaeus’ taxonomy, what most people think of as the latin names, was originally based on details of morphology though much of it has been confirmed by DNA research.

But that’s not the only taxonomy for plants.  You can also divide them by ornamental or edible and the ornamentals can be subdivided by tree/shrub or low growing; low growing by annual or perennial; late or early bloomers; and then by color.  This taxonomy may be more useful for someone designing a yard than Linnaeus’.  And an herbalist will have a different division of plants- calmative, purgative…etc.

By my model, DV isn’t just one thing.  Like many crimes, you can get to the same actual crime from different motivations.

So, scenario one: