Book Recommendation: Coercive Control by Evan Stark

I'm almost finished reading Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life by Evan Stark.

I found it to be validating and enlightening.

The author goes into detail about how coercive control ends up trapping women in their lives. He gives many, many examples. He states how it's an attack on a woman's personhood, autonomy, freedom, and liberties. He talks about how men personalize coercive control to their partners, there's not necessarily a one-size fits all on the controlling behaviors. How it can be hard to see from an outsider's perspective, which can be even more isolating on the victim. How sexual inequality enables and makes coercive control effective on women.

Some of the commonalities I read:

What he does: regulating what the woman does, say, wear, whom she sees, and where she goes. Isolating her. Surveillancing her. Monitoring her. Invading her "safe spaces." Disallowing her autonomy. Disallowing her being around or doing anything that provides her that autonomy. Intimidating her. Threatening her. Using physical violence. Using degrading or demeaning language. That the controlling/regulating behaviors escalate - it's never enough. Jealousy. Possessiveness. Unpredictability.

How she feels: anxiety and fear in her daily life. Fear and anxiety about small and big decisions, going places, what she wears, who she sees. Altering her daily routines to appease him. Altering her daily routines to feel safe. Visiting family or friends to get away. Him taking more and more of her time and energy. Lack of ability to focus. Startled easily. Feeling like she is always about to do something wrong. Feeling pent up rage. Finding small ways to disobey/reassert her autonomy. Losing jobs. Lack of social life. Instability. Life projects not worked on. Struggling to find safe spaces.

Here is the brief intro on Amazon:

"Evan Stark, founder of one of America's first battered women's shelters, shows how "domestic violence" is neither primarily domestic nor necessarily violent, but a pattern of controlling behaviors more akin to terrorism and hostage-taking.

Drawing on court records, interviews, and FBI statistics, Stark details coercive strategies that men use to deny women their very personhood, from "beeper games" to food logs to micromanaging dress, speech, sexual activity, and work. Stark urges us to move beyond the injury model and focus on the real victimization that allows men to violate women's human rights with impunity.

Provocative and brilliantly argued, Coercive Control reframes abuse as a liberty crime rather than a crime of assault and points the way to bringing "real" equality for women in line with their formal rights to personhood and citizenship, freedom, and safety."

There was a lot of good information in the book. A good read if you're interested!