Understanding the Body and Embodiment in the Context of Women’s Resistance to Intimate Partner Violence: A Scoping Review

Help-Seeking

The 39 articles that document help-seeking investigate how women reach out to others for assistance with IPV. These articles document women’s attempts to gain aid through either formal avenues such as the legal system, domestic violence shelters, religious organizations, or informal avenues such as friends and family members (Beaulaurier et al., 2008; Chantler, 2006; Davis & Taylor, 2006; Lewis et al., 2000). These articles look at the processes involved, with some suggesting that help-seeking is typically part of a broader pattern of resistance (Davis & Taylor, 2006; Pain, 2014b).

Covert Resistance

The 10 articles that focus on covert resistance examine how women resist violence by avoiding it through various means, such as temporarily removing themselves from the presence of their violent partner or acting strategically to minimize the likelihood that their partner will initiate violence. The reviewed articles suggest that women often avoid partner violence through calculated responses, which they have learned and developed over time based on their personal history with these men (Allen & Raghallaigh, 2013; Cavanagh, 2003; Sen, 1996).

Active Opposition

We characterized active opposition, discussed in 15 articles, as ways in which women directly challenged their partners’ authority in nonviolent ways such as by arguing, threatening to leave, and defying an abuser’s attempts at controlling them. This might either include attempts to help partners reflect on and change their behavior or establish and maintain explicit boundaries with violent men (Belknap, 2010; Cavanagh, 2003; Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; Sen, 1996).

Leaving

In our sample, 40 articles examine the conditions under which women decide to separate from a violent partner, such as following a shift in the intensity of a partner’s violence and/or if a woman’s material circumstances change. These articles also catalog the steps and stages through which women progress when they resist violence, suggesting that thinking, maintaining, preparing, and engaging in active resistance together may ultimately facilitate a woman leaving a relationship (Critelli, 2012; Hydén, 2005; Khoury & Wehbi, 2016).

Violence

Research further indicates that women resist violent partners through their own acts of violence, a strategy addressed in 27 of the sampled articles. In a few cases, articles describe women and their partners as engaging in mutual combat. However, in line with feminist research, the reviewed articles tend to conceptualize women’s violence as “fighting back” or attempting to regain control (Cavanagh, 2003; Rajah, 2006; van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). In the context of resistance, the sampled research typically indicates that when women resist partners through their acts of violence, the violence among intimates is asymmetrical—women are more frequent victims of partner violence than men and are more likely to be injured by such engagements (Johnson, 2006; Muftic et al., 2007).

While some articles focused on only one of the strategies mentioned above, most discussed two or more of them. Notably, none of the articles conceptualize resistance in a way that focuses directly on the body or embodied processes. This finding led us to investigate our third research question: What common themes emerge from an investigation of the role of embodiment and the body in the context of research on resistance to IPV?

Strength and Power

Another recurring idea appearing in these articles was the “inner strength” of individuals navigating violent relationships. Study participants in the sampled articles repeatedly describe themselves as being assertive or firm, using an embodied rhetoric that intertwines the concepts of physical capacity and emotional resilience (see Figure 2; van der Merwe & Swartz, 2014). In some cases, women engage in violent physical resistance against abusive partners or fantasize about doing so (Cavanagh, 2003; Muftic et al., 2007; Rajah, 2006; van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). But even among individuals who do not use resistance strategies involving literal violence, many described their struggles for agency as “fighting.” “I think [others] will tell you I am a fighter,” one study participant reports. “I’ll try and try to make things better for me and for my kids” (van der Merwe & Swartz, 2014, p. 203). Research suggests that women may enhance their energy and increase their motivation to oppose their violent partners by framing their resistance processes as combat or as a defense of other, more vulnerable family members such as their children (Belknap, 1999; Lewis et al., 2000, Pain, 2014b; van Schalkwyk et al., 2014).

The Sick Body

A few articles in this section looked specifically at injury and the chronic physical and psychological health problems victims develop as a result of their abuse, including disrupted eating patterns, stomach ulcers, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, fatigue, depression, and self-harm, which serve as an impediment to resistance (Ahmed & Elmardi, 2005; Crann & Barata 2016; Warner et al., 2004). By linking IPV to chronic health conditions, some papers suggest that women subject to violence must manage their health, but they may lack the capacity to do so because of their physical vulnerabilities. It is within the context of being physically diminished that women are left to oppose IPV.

Immobilized by Fear

The reviewed research offers an in-depth exploration of the intense anxiety and fear experienced by IPV-involved women, as well as the physical manifestations of these emotional states. Across the sampled articles, women describe their perpetual sense of imminent danger as they attempt to anticipate their partners’ outbursts of abuse, which often seem random and unpredictable (Allen & Raghallaigh, 2013; Belknap, 1999; Cavanagh, 2003; Hydén, 2005; Lazar, 2008; Pain, 2014b). One author notes that the most predominant topic of conversation in her interviews about IPV is fear, “an emotion that [dominates] the women’s lives completely” (Hydén, 2005, p. 175). Women in several studies describe their fear as a constant or continuous experience from which they have no relief (Allen & Ragahallaigh, 2013; Belknap, 1999; Lazar, 2008; Pain, 2014b). Even women whose partners are occasionally violent describe living with a “palpable sense of terror” (Beaulaurier et al., 2008, p. 242).

To better explain their negotiation of constant threats, women in the sampled articles often reach for physical metaphors, which help them gain purchase on emotional and embodied experiences that are difficult to conceptualize and comprehend. One study participant compares her relationship to “living in a war zone” (Nash, 2005, p. 1428). Several women use embodied images to convey the considerable care they need to navigate their relationships safely. One participant describes interacting with her partner as akin to “living in a glass house and having carefully to calculate your every move, your every noise, your every breath, so as not to crack the glass [….] because you know that if the glass cracks, you will get hurt” (Pyles et al., 2012, p. 87). Women describe interacting with their partners as “walking on eggshells” to avoid triggering their partners’ violence (Belknap, 1999; Pain, 2014b). In the face of danger, the study participants locate their fear and anxiety in specific parts of their bodies, describing feeling either “a knot in [the] stomach” (Pain, 2014b, p. 132), “a pressure in [the] chest” (Hydén, 2005, p. 183), or sensations of heat and cold flowing throughout their bodies (Pain, 2014b).

Hydén (2005) posits that intense fear may itself represent a form of resistance, “a force which makes the woman notice that what may happen is something she doesn’t want to see happen” (p. 172). This emotional and physical response is a form of tacit knowledge that allows a woman to clarify her understanding of the abuse and her desire to escape or push back against it. Fear is an immediate and involuntary rejection of the partner’s violence, which may pave the way for future acts of more conscious resistance. Thus, “fear is the resistance offered by those who are presumed to be powerless” (Hydén, 2005, p. 172).

Fear and powerlessness may also be experienced physically as an inability to move or act. Even women who attempt to use various active resistance tactics can become “overwhelmed and immobilized” during a violent incident, with their feelings of powerlessness eventually overcoming their feelings of agency (Macy et al., 2007, p. 558; Thomas et al., 2014). These immobilization sensations may linger long after the incident in question and even after a woman has left an abusive partner. One woman living in a shelter describes being “paralyzed with fear” when she first arrived there, still expecting that she might experience violence at any moment (Hydén, 2005, p. 173). Helsel (2015) notes that this paralysis may be rooted in the nervous system’s “freeze” response to trauma. Although the victim may appear helpless to an outside observer, this response preserves energy that may be needed later and may have been developed to avoid or buffer against immediate suffering. Like Hydén (2005), Helsel (2015) interprets a “freeze” response as reflecting “the coreness of the self,” a crucial source of embodied knowledge about danger and a survival skill rather than a pathology (p. 686).

Shame and Stigma

Women who experience IPV frequently report developing intense shame and damaged self-esteem. The reviewed articles find that women’s resistance processes are closely shaped by how they view themselves and the extent to which they have internalized ideas about being responsible for provoking their abuse (Cavanagh, 2003; Pain, 2014b).

In some cases, this stigma is closely tied to normative expectations about appropriate behavior in relationships with victims being uncomfortable disclosing abuse for fear of being judged or ostracized by members of their communities. As Hien (2008) explains, “cultural perceptions and their related symbolic violence, including notions of morality, chastity and virtue, silence women and constrain their ability to speak out about abuse” (p. 185). In this view, women who reveal their victimization disgrace themselves and their family members. Leaving a violent partner may also result in the loss of other meaningful relationships and, crucially, potential support (Belknap, 1999; Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; Pain, 2014b).

In addition to impacting women’s relationships with others and their social status in their communities, IPV often has profound psychological and emotional repercussions regarding women’s self-perception. Research participants in multiple studies describe the internalized shame that develops due to continued abuse (Allen & Raghallaigh, 2013; Belknap, 1999; van der Merwe & Swartz, 2014). “The characteristics about themselves that women reported included being worthless, useless and inadequate, dirty or contaminated, and as deserving the abuse they endured,” note van der Merwe and Swartz (2014, p. 201). Throughout the sampled articles, the word worthless recurs as do metaphors of uncleanliness (Belknap, 1999; Hydén, 2005; Pain, 2014b; Sharp, 2014; van der Merwe & Swartz, 2014). The conflation of uncleanliness and worthlessness positions the body as a contamination site, reinforcing abusers’ framing of IPV as invited or deserved. Such framing may discourage women from challenging or leaving their violent partners (Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; Pain, 2014b).

The relationship between social network responses and women’s resistance

Social interactions influence women’s responses to IPV (Belknap, 1999; Critelli, 2012; Davis & Taylor, 2006; Pyscher, 2017; Warner et al., 2004). Some of the reviewed articles suggest that because violent men attempt to control how others perceive violence, members of a woman’s social network may neither recognize the reality of IPV nor acknowledge a victim’s attempts to oppose it, often in service of protecting her children (Belknap, 1999; Critelli, 2012; van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). According to Morris (2009), however, the fact that “mothers and children connect positively needs to be uncovered, named and described in detail, for [women] to carry strength to oppose the tyranny of perpetrators’ ‘truths’” (p. 424). Once IPV is acknowledged, family and friends sometimes actively intervene, which helps some victims revise how they think about and resist IPV (Crann & Barata, 2016; Pyscher, 2017). The articles that discuss linkages between social interaction and women’s responses to partner violence generally argue that resistance “is a complex process of active choices, evaluation of results, and negotiations with self and others” (Warner et al., 2004, p. 38). Rather than use an incident-based approach that focuses on specific acts of resistance, this perspective recognizes that individuals’ perceptions of and responses to violence are fluid processes shaped by social engagement with others (Belknap, 1999; Mills, 2016; Warner et al., 2004). While taking a dynamic approach, research in this area presumes that resistant thoughts and actions are related but independent. A woman thinks about and then actively responds to violence shaped by her interactions with others (Belknap, 1999; Warner et al., 2004).

Emotion in embodied resistance is the second theme we identified in the articles we grouped under the category “interactive body.” These articles examine how social interactions influence women’s emotional experiences, which contour their resistance. In some cases, when interactions with significant others elicit women’s positive emotional responses, these engagements help women develop the strength and motivation to resist IPV (Belknap, 2010; Cavanagh, 2003; Crann & Barata, 2016; Davis & Taylor, 2006; Khoury & Wehbi, 2016). Some of this research reports that women may consciously seek out positive social interactions to alter their emotional experience and enhance their capacity to oppose violent victimization (Belknap, 2010; Cavanagh, 2003; Crann & Barata, 2016; Davis & Taylor, 2006; Khoury & Wehbi, 2016).

Other research that fits the subtheme of emotion and the interactive body suggests it is the sum total of women’s interactions over their lifetimes that shape their capacity for resistance. These articles assume that people possess an embodied way of being in the world, which they have acquired over countless social interactions (Helsel, 2015; Pyscher, 2017). For example, research rooted in trauma studies argues that the body retains a memory of past violent interactions, which prompt individuals to act in a self-protective manner (Helsel, 2015). As explained by Helsel (2015), when threatened, the “body remembers and thus activates a trigger through the senses—an image, a feeling on the skin, a sight, a familiar smell”—even when conscious memories of victimization have faded (p. 4). Helsel (2015) further suggests that body memories, which can serve as a site for resistance, may be excavated with therapeutic guidance. Other researchers take a sociologically informed view and suggest that some individuals develop a “resistant habitus” or practical orientation to resist victimization in response to exposure to violent encounters over their lifetime (Pyscher, 2017; Rajah, 2007). As explained by Pyscher (2017), “if the social and psychic shaping effects of familial domestic violence define the earliest experiences of a girl, [she may] use the same cultural knowledge as performances to navigate and, at times, resist violating experiences” (p. 401).

Transformative Processes and Identity Change

While construed in different ways, the reviewed research generally conceptualizes women’s identity as self-labels that answer the question: “Who am I?” A woman’s identity is integral to her resistance and the personal transformations associated with it. Articles point to three ways in which the body and embodiment are involved in women’s acts of resistance in the context of identity change. First, articles suggest that transformative resistance involves rejecting a negative self-conception in favor of a positive one. For some women, the practice of taking up new activities that engage the body, such as through acts of self-care or beginning new hobbies, helps women develop a positive self-image, which facilitates their resistance (Belknap, 1999; Crann & Barata, 2016; Critelli, 2012; Davis & Taylor, 2006; Hydén, 2005; Profitt, 1994; Sharp, 2014). In many cases, these changes involve women reclaiming facets of themselves, which they had either denied or sacrificed to sustain their violent relationships. Many of these articles are careful to note that processes of identity change are grounded in a woman’s life circumstances wherein the extent to which a woman may alter her sense of self and resist is informed by her social, economic, and cultural circumstances (Campbell & Mannell, 2016; Critelli, 2012; Gill & Rehman, 2004).

Turning Points

Turning points are transitional moments that indicate alterations in women’s fundamental assumptions about IPV. During these “critical moments” or “moments of truth,” women’s understanding of their circumstances shifts dramatically, which mobilizes them to resist IPV (Belknap, 1999; Hayes, 2013; Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; Pyles et al., 2012; van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). In many cases, turning points mark women’s transition from the assumption that they can and/or should maintain their relationships in their current form to an understanding that they can no longer do so. Our review of the research suggests that these moments also involve the body in a variety of ways. One embodied trigger for a turning point, for instance, is a sense of physical and psychological fatigue that leads a woman to reevaluate the costs associated with IPV (Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; van Schalkwyk et al., 2014). Research that associates fatigue with transformative change demonstrates that coping with violence is a physically and emotionally draining experience, which likely demands change when women reach the end of their endurance (Belknap, 1999; Pyles et al., 2012). For some, this involves explicitly recognizing the totality of the damage that their partners have inflicted through violent acts, facilitating a change in women’s emotional stance towards the relationship (Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; Pain, 2014b; Pyles et al., 2012). As one research participant explains, “I just suddenly thought I don’t have to put up with this…. I think I must have been subconsciously getting more and more angry […] I think I just got so angry that the anger overrode being scared” (Pain, 2014b, p. 140). In their fatigue, some women finally come to recognize that they cannot change their violent partners (Cavanagh, 2003; Crann & Barata, 2016).

Situations of extreme physical threat also facilitate transformative resistance (Khoury & Wehbi, 2016; Pain, 2014b). In one article, a respondent recounts, “During the final attack he made, many bones in my throat were shattered, and I could not talk for some time, but I got my voice back” (Pyles et al., 2012, p. 88). In the aftermath of the physical attack, this respondent equates the physical process of getting her “voice back” with regaining her sense of agency (Pyles et al., 2012). Another woman explains that women who experience violence “are like sponges. We can only absorb so much abuse, and then it starts to roll off” (Belknap, 1999, p. 401). This metaphor, which describes violence as being taken in by the body, explains how victims may reach a point of saturation, which triggers a transformation in their responses to violence.

Institutional actors and transformative resistance

Women may adopt new practices and interpretive frameworks across various institutional contexts, which promote new responses to violence. For some women, going to counseling provides cognitive and emotional tools that prompt them to alter their responses to IPV. As one woman explained to Pain (2014b), “[I] sort of felt quite depressed, but then [….], it’s like suddenly the whole of your life opens up, and you realize that your life doesn’t have to be like this forever, and it’s really exciting and happy” (p. 19). Receiving treatment allows women to overcome psychological difficulties and change their feelings, facilitating a transformative context for action.

Domestic violence shelters offer another context that facilitates change. In addition to the reprieve from victimization, shelters provide women with a supportive environment that can enhance women’s self-esteem and feelings of security and instill in them a renewed sense of hope and optimism (Chantler, 2006; Critelli, 2012). The opportunity to speak with similarly situated others also facilitates transformation. In the context of support groups, women may be able to promote self-agency when they “recall and recognize acts of resistance, talk about them [….] with other women, and envision effective strategies to protect oneself against future threats, violence, and abuse” (Warner et al., 2004, p. 23). This may be especially true in programs that draw on feminist consciousness-raising principles (Davis & Taylor, 2006; Warner et al., 2004).

Other articles we reviewed suggest that interactions in institutions and social service settings do not merely encourage women to change. Instead, they sometimes mandate it. To get the help that they need, women who are victimized by IPV may be compelled to alter how they think and comport themselves. For instance, Villalon (2010) explains that Latina battered immigrants who successfully sought US citizenship “were compliant, tidy, constant, resolute, autonomous, responsible, deferent, considerate, secretive, lenient, and redeemable [qualities that suggest] they promised to become good citizens” (p. 558). As this example suggests, if women’s embodied resistance deviates from institutional expectations, such as by including acts of violence committed even in self-defense, then women may be held accountable. While such restrictions may be imposed on all individuals who seek help with IPV, women who do not meet normative standards of ideal victims most likely will be prompted to change their embodied ways of being (Pyscher, 2017; Villalon, 2010). Recognizing that some forms of embodiment are more desirable than others in the eyes of service providers and institutional actors, women may consciously alter their embodied practices when interacting with individuals from whom they seek help (Pyscher, 2017; Villalon, 2010).

Finally, the reviewed articles point to changes that women undergo in light of religious and political activities. Religious involvement prompts some women to rethink and change their intimate relationships (Piedalue, 2017; Sharp, 2014). In contrast, severing religious ties helps other women embrace new ways of thinking and acting in the context of IPV (Davis & Taylor, 2006). Also, the context of political activism foments women’s oppositional consciousness (Gill & Rehman, 2004; Profitt, 1994; Téllez, 2008). In each of these cases, mechanisms for change include entertaining new ideas, embracing new cognitive frameworks, and developing new feelings, which serve as a platform for transformative resistance (Gill & Rehman, 2004; Piedalue, 2017; Sharp, 2014; Téllez, 2008; van der Merwe & Swartz, 2014).