Tag: Domestic Violence

The Constitution as a Homicide Pact

The facts of U.S. v. Rahimi reveal the gendered and destructive reality of gun use behind the illusion of abstract, idealized self-defense.

Every 14 hours in the U.S., a man uses a gun to kill his intimate partner. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable. But the Supreme Court’s conservative commitment to “life” is highly selective, to put it mildly, and tends to value women’s lives—including those of domestic violence victims—very little. We can expect the Court’s ruling to come down in June or July of 2024.

Access to Asylum Can’t be Treated as a Bargaining Chip in the Foreign Aid Debate

The Senate is feverishly debating the president’s $106 billion supplemental budget, which includes requests for additional aid to Ukraine and Israel, measures to counter China’s influence, significant humanitarian assistance funds, and border security. 

Republican negotiators have chosen to use the urgency of the foreign aid requests to squeeze concessions from the administration and Democratic senators around the asylum process itself.

Ms. Magazine’s Prison and Domestic Violence Shelter Program: Let Women on the Inside Know They Are Not Alone

Women in prison often spend 17 hours a day isolated in their cells, with no reading material except the Bible, or with only books and magazines they must share with hundreds of other women. And this past year has seen reading bans inside prisons grow at a more concerning rate than those in public schools and libraries.

If you would like the deep satisfaction of knowing you’re a part of letting women know they’re not alone, please make a tax-deductible contribution to the Ms. Prison and Domestic Violence Shelter Program.

Breaking the Silence Around Sexual Abuse: The Ms. Q&A With Maya Golden About New Memoir ‘The Return Trip’

Award-winning multimedia journalist Maya Golden’s searing but redemptive memoir, The Return Trip, takes readers on a harrowing journey. The book offers a no-holds-barred look into the sexual abuse that began when Golden was 5 and charts her course through a troubled adolescence and young adulthood. Along the way, she probes the long-term impact of repeated sexual violation and zeroes in on the ways religious institutions, educational systems, and familial denial continue to intersect and allow the perpetuation of violence.

Golden spoke to Ms. reporter Eleanor J. Bader before The Return Trip’s Nov. 14 release. Their wide-ranging conversation touched on the book as well as the work of the 1 in 3 Foundation, a group Golden founded to support survivors of sexual assault.

I Am the Woman the ‘Gender Critical’ Movement Claims to Protect. I Refuse to Be Their Pawn.

When almost 80 percent of rapes are committed by a perpetrator the victim knows, panicking about strangers lurking in loos is a dangerous diversion. Banning trans women from women’s spaces due to misguided safety concerns is not only nonsensical, it is cruel. I am incensed that the spaces I love are being weaponized to advance bigotry and exclusion.

Protecting women means protecting all of us and our right to freely express who we are.

SCOTUS Will Decide Whether to Give Domestic Violence Abusers Access to Guns

The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to consider the case of United States v. Rahimi, where the justices could strike down a longstanding, life-saving federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing firearms.

Imagine living with a violent, controlling partner, not knowing what you might face each time you enter your home. Imagine trying to protect yourself and your child in that situation, hang onto your job, and figure out how to get help. Imagine you reach out to a domestic violence program or the police get involved, eventually get legal representation and take the difficult step of showing up for a court proceeding that results in a domestic violence protective order requiring your abuser to stay away. And then imagine that they can nonetheless walk into a gun shop and purchase a firearm. How safe would you and your child be?

Allowing Domestic Violence Perpetrators to Carry Guns Will Worsen the U.S. Maternal Health Crisis

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Rahimi, a case in which the Court will decide whether the Second Amendment prevents the government from protecting survivors of domestic violence by temporarily disarming their abusers. Invalidating this law would exacerbate an already colossal maternal and reproductive health and rights crisis in the United States and have devastating consequences.

Violence against women is a pervasive problem globally, but in the U.S., the lethal combination of intimate partner violence against women and guns is staggering. The right to life and reproductive autonomy includes the right to live free from violence at the hands of intimate partners.

Bringing Domestic Violence Victims Back to Life

The first mass shooting of the modern era occurred in Austin, Texas, on Aug. 1, 1966. Before police killed him, Charles Whitman would be responsible for the murder of 17 and the wounding of 31. But the tower murders weren’t the beginning of the carnage.

The night before, while his mother and wife were sleeping, he had already stabbed them to death. Coverage of the campus massacre virtually eclipsed the women’s stories. But Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman, by Jo Scott-Coe, aims to change that.

Domestic Abuse Is Not Your Halloween Punchline

Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire dressed up as Johnny Depp, holding with a wine bottle, while her friend impersonated a very distressed Amber Heard—a reference to the pair’s heavily sensationalized defamation trial. You may recall when Heard broke down talking about the alleged sexual assault she endured at the hands of Depp using a wine bottle.

This is merely the most recent in a long tradition of people dressing up as famous women during their lowest moments. I’ve seen several people celebrating Halloween as a bald, disheveled Britney Spears; an inebriated Amy Winehouse; a dejected but alluring Marilyn Monroe; a bloodied Sharon Tate, paired up with her murderer Charles Manson. Why do the Bill Cosbys and Chris Browns of the world get away with it, while the victims get pelted with sticks and stones?

Domestic Violence Calls About ‘Reproductive Coercion’ Doubled After the Overturn of Roe

Reports of abuse involving reproductive coercion—actions that prevent someone from making crucial decisions about their body and reproductive health—nearly doubled in the yearlong period after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Reproductive coercion can take the form of any situation in which one partner is exerting power over another in a way that impacts their reproductive health: forcing someone to engage in sexual activity, refusing to use contraception, restricting a partner from seeing a healthcare provider, telling a partner they are not allowed to receive abortion care.