Unknown Speaker  00:01
Today is Saturday, April 14 1984. This conference at Barnard College is on the scholar in the feminist women and resistance. This workshop is going to be covering reproductive rights and resistance to violence against women. We have two speakers. Our first one is Joan Berlin, of the ACLU, who's going to be talking on resistance to sterilization in West Virginia. And our second speaker is Julie Duran and Barnard College is going to be talking on better women who killed her husband's new perspectives on self defense.

Unknown Speaker  00:39
Drone, and I'm going to talk today about some of the legal issues that pertain to battered women in particular, to better women have killed their husbands. So the New Yorker cartoon that someone said, they didn't say she killed me such a shock, which is an important distinction, because when the husbands are still alive in these cases, they become many respects more complicated. I regularly Act, as an expert witness on behalf of battered women who have shuttered or killed their husbands raises a number of dilemmas for me that I'm going to try and raise with you, partly out of selfish reasons to pursue these questions into to try and seek some resolution. This is a complicated kinds of situations where there are always at least two victims in this bedroom and people victimize for an extended period of time in most of these cases. And then there's a dead husband, who is in some sense, a certain victim, his life is over. So they're complicated situations, I hope we can explore some of that.

Unknown Speaker  01:46
Okay, I guess, false to me to start, and I hear from the people who are in the room that you may be came to hear, Julie. But here I am first on the program. And I'm going to tell you a somewhat arcane story, which maybe on its surface, doesn't have too much in common with the material that Julie is going to present. But I think that when you look more closely at it, and think more about it, that it is a story in peculiar with peculiar facts, but about stereotypes and power, and women's role. And it is very much an emblematic story of the problems that this conference is addressing. First, let me just tell you that that my name is Joan Burton, I'm a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, Women's Rights Project. And the focus of my work for approximately five or six years has been defending or prosecuting, I should say, employment discrimination, litigation brought by women who are denied employment or required to become sterilized because of chemical hazards in their work environment. And in all of these instances, the theory upon which the employer acts is that this kind of protection, and I will use that word in quotations throughout the morning, is necessary to protect the health and safety of the future fetus. Today, what I wanted to do, what I want to start with is something of a case study about a group of fairly ordinary West Virginia women. Now I don't know whether women in West Virginia are ordinary or not, they seem a little unusual to me in certain respects are different from most of the women that I hang out with. But they're blue collar working class women who are faced with a situation of the sort that I've mentioned, and talk somewhat about what their responses to this situation were. I frequently talk about this from a perspective of women's rights, Health Line labor relations and and the legal status of these cases. And I think today that what is more important to talk about is the personal choices made by various women and the kinds of forces so try and keep it on a more personal tone in and a more factual tone. But, of course, if at any point in which people want explore some of these other areas, I'd be happy to do that. The background, the facts of this situation, or what I will tell you are those facts as the women have explained them to me with some checking on my part, and so therefore, I'm going to be telling you things that I think are true, I should pray ethicist by saying that the company at issue in this case disputes many of these facts rather vociferously, since, as you will hear, there was never a trial of these particular facts. The truth will not be determined in any judicial forum. And this is only important from because in a legal situation, you know, you can't say that what you will allege is true, you just say that you think it's true. So I'm saying that we think this is all true. And I have relative confidence that it is true. And I it's one of the reasons I'm sorry, we didn't go to trial in case. I'm going to try and paint sort of a picture of life in a little corn northwest corner of West Virginia along the Ohio River Valley, and in particular, at a plant run by the American Cyanamid company and Willow Island, West Virginia. Until 1974, no women were employed in this plant whatsoever. It was a plant that had about 600 Male production workers, and they made a variety of chemical substances and paints and animal products, and this NAT surfactants, cleaning agents and so on. Work is pretty heavy, and some would say nasty work, it is a unionized plant. Union scale wages therefore pertain. It's one of many plants up and down this particular river.

Unknown Speaker  06:33
Anyway, it was an all male enclave until 1974. At that time, rumor has it that the company became aware of a pending investigation by the federal government to ensure compliance with certain contract provisions which require quality in hiring by federal contractors and the company they're upon, let out the words that it wanted to hire some women. And the applications flooded in until that time, none. Very few women even bother to apply because everybody knew there wasn't any point in it. And between 1974 1976 approximately 35 women were hired into this plant of approximately 550 men. No sooner did women get a foot in the door in Willow Island, West Virginia, then the company, medical department decided that the environment might be dangerous for women. And it's almost like a script out of a Middlebrooks movie where so all of a sudden, one of the Industrial Hygienist wakes up in the morning and says, Hey, there's women out there, they don't belong there. I don't know if you know that Mel Brooks bit, hey, there's ladies, this is how they discovered the difference between the sexes. But anyway, that it's that's what it reminded me of when I when I saw that document that reflected this fact. And then they began devising special programs to deal with these women because, of course, women didn't belong in this place. And there must be some reason why they shouldn't be there. The federal government told them, they had to be there, but they're wrong, of course. So we saw a development in 1976, and seven of have a policy aimed specifically at women production workers, and designed to protect them from the hazards. But of course, since you can't protect a woman any more than you can protect a man against his or her will. The focus of this was on the potential fetus. Early in 1978, these 35 or so women were called together in groups of between five and 12, and told about a new company policy. The elements of the policy were the following. Its purpose was to protect the face possible fears from chemicals in the environment, and work environment that these chemicals were not harmful to the workers, but that the fetus was particularly vulnerable, and that it was particularly vulnerable at the very beginning of pregnancy before a woman knew she was pregnant. That as a result of this problem that they had discovered, no fertile women would be permitted to work in any of these areas. That word identify there were eight out of 10 production areas. There was a discussion about the availability of birth control factor for husbands, vasectomy, and so on and all of these options were rejected by the company on a number of, I would say offensive grounds, one being that women would forget to take birth control or to use it effectively, that the fact of husband's vasectomy did not prevent a woman from becoming pregnant, and so forth. They were told that they would not The enough jobs available for all displaced women and that those who were not able to be placed in other jobs would be terminated. Even though Junior men, man was blessing already than than they were had jobs and departments which they could work in, they would not bump Junior man out of those jobs because the man wouldn't like it. And they were told that the government was behind this kind of approach to this problem. And that within a year or so there would be no women in chemical plants in the valley, and maybe even in the country. What became clear in the course of this discussion, and what every single woman sitting in the room understood was that the only thing that would qualify a woman to secure her job was sterilization. And there was in fact, a discussion about the methods available to surgically sterilized a woman and although the company doctor certs that he said that they shouldn't do that, he said, Oh, my God, don't do that. The personnel manager explained that company insurance would cover the procedure, and that they surely could find doctors in the vicinity who would perform such operation.

Unknown Speaker  11:18
Now, the women who are sitting in this room and listening to this announcement, prior to the time that they became employees of the American Cyanamid company, had been grocery store checkout clerks, waitresses, stock clerks, household workers, unemployed, on welfare. In other words, they were unskilled, largely uneducated, women, whose other employment options then working in factory were very, very limited. Some of them had worked in, in non union factories, textile factories, and done sewing, and things of that sort. Most of them had previously made minimum wage, if that waitressing jobs, for example, don't carry minimum wage. And that gives you some idea of the economic status and of the options that they could reasonably expect to be available to them if they did not have this job. And particularly if there were no similar jobs available. And I think, as I have heard over, over these many years, their rendition of this event that it was, in fact, enormously devastating to a group of women who finally had found some measure of economic security, and to whom that was very, very dear. Now, the people that we're talking about, didn't go to work at the American Cyanamid company, because they were feminists. And they didn't go to work there because they wanted to engage in non traditional employment. They went to work there, because it was the only thing that paid well, and they probably put in applications at every single plant up and down the river and Cyanamid happened to call them first. And I think for many of them, the fact of working in this very non traditional environment was a difficult life. And they received a lot of negative feedback in their community and from their families for this. And to the extent that they didn't receive the negative feedback from their families, it was because of the paycheck that was brought home. But it is not as though we were dealing with a group of women who set out to blaze a trail for feminism. And in and I'm not saying that as a put down, in fact, I say it very much with awe, because they did in fact blaze a trail that is very significant. And they did it in a very quiet way, with total lack of any kind of groping for word self-consciousness About they did what they had to do. And now the response to this situation that they found themselves in varied from from person to person, but there are a couple of things that I think ran through the group. One is a tremendous sense of self conflict. They import I can't emphasize too much the importance of fertility to this group of women you didn't matter whether they had kids or not. Being fertile was part of their definition of being female. This is not a group of women who would elect sterilization as a form of birth control, and it is not a group of women. For Whom the obtaining of a tubal ligation was a frivolous matter to them, it was all bound up in their sexuality. And the responses that we heard later were that after the sterilization, they no longer had sex with their husbands, they felt less of a woman, they felt that they had given up an essential element of their personhood. And they did not identify as women, some of them said they stopped wearing makeup, they stopped caring about their hair, they didn't care how they dress, they felt on feminine. You could have knocked me over with a feather on this one. I did not expect this response, but I understand it and it was a very deeply held very traditional value to them. From their families, they received very questionable support, they got there on the downside either way they went, because if they had to keep the money for families were largely dependent upon it. And on the other hand, the loss of fertility, as I have said, was a very devastating thing to these family units. Cause in fact, tremendous dissension among husbands and wives, to the extent that, that these people were married, there were a number of women who were widowed or divorced, what they got from their co workers was complete and total ridicule.

Unknown Speaker  16:21
There were jokes in a in a plant, well, we'll just take you down to the shop and do it here, or there's a special at the vets have you been spaded yet, and so on. spaded was the word like with a shovel that was used. And so they received absolutely no support. Their union, as you can imagine, was predominantly male. There 35 women, and 550 men and union officials don't win elections, in that kind of a situation fighting for women's rights. to the community, these women were anomalies to begin with, they were not in the right place. They weren't doing what women are supposed to do. And now they found themselves well, just where they ought to be. You know, this is what happens to women who defy the norms. And now finally, of course, we come to the employer. Now I have a lot more to say about the employer than then the fact that they presented a policy which was coercive and against which women would of course resist. But what I really have to say about the employer is that what it was all about was money and power, and making a point subjugating a group. And assent in a sense says I have sifted through the facts and thought about the symbolism of them. What has come to me with some clarity after it was all over was that the point here was that if you want to take a place in a man's world, you women, then you lose your woman, you wanted man's job, okay, you can't be a woman anymore. And that was the message from the employer to the women. So what did these women do? Well, two of them couldn't stand it. Very early on. They said they couldn't stand the pressure. They knew they had to keep those jobs. And they were sterilized. Within a month after the policy was within a month after the policy was announced, one woman attempted suicide. She described her personal situation as the being the only thing that had that she'd ever been any good at was having children, she had five of them, and she said, I don't need any more. But I cannot tolerate the thought of never being able to have another. And at the same time, she was under the gun economically, her husband was disabled and out of work. Bank was foreclosing on your house, she couldn't lose her job. So she attempted suicide. And when she got out of the hospital, from that, she checked in and got sterilized. Another said that after each sterilization that she heard, she had, she'd started out saying, we're going to fight this, we can fight it. So after each sterilization, she went into the locker room and cried. And as they began to peel off, she realized that there will be nobody left to fight it. So she to succumb, which isn't now of the group of maybe 25 to 35, there were a group who had been sterilized for other reasons previously, and there were some who did not become sterilized. And there were a group of five who did in direct response to this policy. And I've looked for characteristics of those who did submit to the surgery and those who didn't I try and see if there's any way to, to sort that out. And I think that, that again, there are themes, but of course, there are personalities, and it's impossible to draw any, any clear conclusions. Biggest theme that jumps out at me is that the ones with the least seniority got sterilized. They were the ones who saw themselves out the gate First, they also happen to all be in the same department. And I think that there was some sense of, of their peers, having fallen away from them in terms of support. They were also women, by and large, who had tremendous economic pressures and responsibilities. There were some, usually, you know, in one case, I'm thinking of the most vocal opponent of the sterilization was a single woman who just said, Well, I'll get a job somewhere else, I'll move somewhere else, I don't care. She was a very independent woman, and very admirable, and her resistance, but she also was more fortunately situated in Somalia. So I suppose that if you stop and look at, at this group at this stage, you might wonder,

Unknown Speaker  20:58
did they resist and was their resistance successful, they certainly resisted in their heads, and they resisted in a very strong and emotional way. And their resistance was only partly successful, some were successful, others weren't. But it's hard to look at it in that abstract way, without looking at the resources that were available, because that played such a big part in the decisions. And in the short story, there isn't no resources were available. With regard to private lawyers, they saw some nobody knew what to do. Their union did the things that the union is supposed to do, but offered them no immediate assistance. Everybody everywhere they turned. People said, gee, we don't know that sounds awfully nasty, but we can't promise you you won't lose your jobs. They call government agencies that called senators, congressmen. And everybody said, Gee, well, we'll try and look into it. But nobody seemed to acknowledge the fact that the policy had a deadline on it, and it was a month away, and they had to make decisions and get on with it. And they couldn't afford or the way they saw it was they could not afford to lose their jobs, and then fight for them. They had no resources to fight and they had nobody who appeared to be willing to take up their banner, they wrote to women's groups, and again, receive sympathy, but nothing more. And so what we see here, as we had seen previously, with regard to their community and their families was that this is a very isolated group of women. Finally, I think that having submitted some of them to sterilization, and having ultimately lost in a very tragic way, what they had hoped to gain in the sense that the company narrowed the policy to the one division where these five sterilized women worked, you can ask yourself why that should happen, why eight out of 10 departments should originally be targeted for this. And then a whole bunch of women get sterilized, and they're all in one department. And then ultimately, that's the only department where they, quote unquote, need the policy. But without commenting on that, that's what happened. And then that department was closed within a year. So five women had surgery, submitted to sterilization in order to keep jobs which were then eliminated. And here they were having lost everything. And I think that this essentially brought them out of the closet, as it were, they had nothing more to lose. And they went public, they went to thinking that all that they needed was to have the public No. And somehow they would receive some support. So they went public, they went on the Phil Donahue show, I didn't have anything to do with it. But of course, there wasn't any public outcry. What ultimately happened. And what they came to decide was the only way to fight back was to file a lawsuit after the fact. And that is, of course, where we came in. And that was the ultimate form of resistance to them. And I think, from a lawyer's perspective, it should be the ultimate form of resistance in the sense that it is. It is such an imperfect way to resolve disputes that it is the last thing that people should try, and they should try everything else first. In this instance, I wish that they had tried it at the very beginning before any decisions had been made. And I wish that somebody had been a little bit more aggressive on their behalf, but that's really Spilt Milk. But here again, is another interesting story about the the success of resistance within a system, that judicial system in this country that is supposed to equalize and create justice. And in this case, which I feel I'm very emotionally bad for, for reasons of my own commitment over the years, but also the women who can't who are who are such admirable individuals

Unknown Speaker  25:13
in this instance, to the systems that led them down. And largely so because of the inability of the system to equalize the power between the powerless, and those with a great deal of money and power. From the beginning, it became clear that the defendants tactic was going to be to add, spend outlast and harass. Now, the ACLU is not a shoestring organization, we don't have a lot of money. But we're not, you know, I hope not that marginal, there are very few people who are in the position of these women who get the resources of a nonprofit organization like the ACLU, or the fund or any of the others to do this. And, and therefore, I mentioned that simply to contrast, what happens to other people who have to spend their own money. This tactic by any defendant with any amount of money can win almost immediately. Because we had some greater resources than the individuals would have had we were able to hang on. But there's no mistaking that they knew that if they spend enough money, they could beat us.

Unknown Speaker  26:37
Can you explain why that's?

Unknown Speaker  26:39
Yes, because litigation is very expensive. And because there is I mean, I can itemize the costs? Well, I can just tell you that the the out of pocket costs, not counting anybody salaries were approximately $140,000. And that doesn't count. I mean, there's a lot of costs we haven't paid yet. But you know, how many people and you know, lawyers don't give their time for free. Most of them. We do but, but most of them don't. And if you add to that, we calculate that that at a rate charged by most lawyers, this case would have cost more than a million dollars to litigate.

Unknown Speaker  27:26
And in addition, to which there are ways in which plaintiffs in this situation can be very significantly coerced, that I'm gonna get to that want to talk a little bit about the trial, or the it was an aborted trial. So in that respect, these plaintiffs were a little bit unusual. But I mean, I think that the interesting thing about this is that the defendants so clearly zeroed in on this as a tactic. I sat in depositions, day after day, after day after day to have a court reporter, you know, court reporters usually don't say anything, but to have a court reporter come up to me at the end of the deposition, say, What's going on here, these people trying to spend you into the dirt. And that's what was happening. Which isn't this I mean, you know, ultimately, I think, lest I sound too depressing, and the story has some very depressing aspects to it, and some, and to very uplifting aspects to it. I mean, ultimately, we gave them a hell of a run for the money. And we, I think, one something very important for these women. They did not come out of this on the downside, from their point of view, from my point of view, it's very depressing, because I don't think that very many people have the resources that they had. And I worry very much about the people who are out there who are struggling to deal with these problems without any assistance, as I know, these women, you know, had none. So those were the problems with the litigation, simply the expense, the time, the money. When we finally came to the trial, what we heard was that the women's sexual histories and lives were going to be explored at trial. This is very coercive thing to them that their former husbands and lovers and so on, had been contacted, and they had been called to be witnesses. They, the point being that what we said about men with vasectomy women who marry men with vasectomies is true. In other words, these women were fooling around, and therefore, you couldn't trust them not to be pregnant, and so on. And then, of course, we had disappearance of witnesses, three witnesses who had been unemployed for over a year, who who were listed on a list that was filed with the court and given to the defendant suddenly got offers of jobs and related industries within a week after their names appeared on their list, and those jobs would have taken them out of the jurisdiction of the court. We had problems with judges who saw this big fat gigantic case and who didn't want to deal with it because it was too much trouble. And then what we got at the suggestion of the judge. So it's I think, you know, there's no way to attack this, but it's a very difficult situation for individuals was something called an offer of judgment, which nobody, you know, who's not into this in an arcane sort of way would know what it is. But an offer of judgment is a procedure, which is written into the federal rules by which a defendant in a lawsuit can offer a judgment to a plaintiff in the plaintiffs favor. And if the plaintiff doesn't take it, and doesn't win as much, the plaintiff has to pay all the defendants costs. It is an avowed sell an open way to coerce settlements. The trial judge suggested that the company make the offer of judgment to the group of women, they did make the offer of judgments with a group of women and the women faced with the prospect of continuing to be spent into a you know, it was really less a matter of spending into the ground because they weren't spending their money, it's a matter of the fact that litigation could take another four years and that they wouldn't see a penny, they were all unemployed. You know, the company had all of the cards in this particular deck. And they accepted it. And it was the rational thing for them to do. And it was disappointing, but nonetheless, a victory for them and money in the bank for them where the future held much uncertainty. And whereas previously, they were not in a position to accept uncertainty, they they had to take the burden hand, quite frankly, that settlement provided $200,000 For the women, I think that coming for the 11 women, right, coming from a New York court environment. It was a shockingly low amount in West Virginia, it's not so low, I mean it and they were very pleased with it. They thought it was public vindication. And I agree with him, because they live where they live. And this is this is the perspective within which one should see it.

Unknown Speaker  32:21
At and, and at the same time, there was no way of knowing, even though we knew we would win this case, there was no way of knowing how much a trial judge in a backwater in West Virginia would value loss of stare up fertility, let's say going to say to a woman who's 39 and has four kids, they did you a favor, honey. What's you're going to say to a woman who had five kids and a year later had to have a hysterectomy, for medical reasons. You didn't lose anything, you weren't going to have another kid that year were you. So we feared that there would be total lack of appreciation of the real significance of this act. And that in terms of putting a monetary value on the loss that these women had suffered, we would we couldn't encourage them to continue to go for it. We could not say that they would get any that they would do any better. And in fact, I did the law, we're trying to try and figure out how much for sterilizations had had obtained in terms of legal judgments. It's pretty pathetic when you you know, like in one kg, one terrible case a woman got $1. But it is an irony that the same economic disparities and circumstances which forced these women to get sterilized in order to maintain their economic security forced them to accept what may well have been an inadequate judgment, also to protect their economic security and to take what they could get to assure themselves a very, very basic subsistence level. So I think for them, what conclusions I could draw from this is that the fact of resistance was terribly important. The fact that they didn't just take it. One woman told me when you know, the case settled, like in the courthouse, we were ready to go with such witnesses as we're left sitting in court. One woman said just the fact that I was in court, and they saw I was there and that I was going to testify. That was enough that made it all worthwhile. And I think that it took tremendous courage for them to do what they did. I think that they did receive public vindication. I think that they did put blaze a very important path for other women who will not be compliant and future. I think that they showed this company that they can't take it for granted that people who have no power will will just accept what they have to say. on a level that interests me more than that. And then I think the inability of the justice system to cope in a in a fair handed way with this is a very depressing fact of life and that it does deter and suppress resistance when that's what it's supposed to encourage and that it does. So with the complicity of judges and lawyers. I can say that since I'm a lawyer, and I wonder if it hadn't been women wouldn't have been saying, because I can't help but think that one reason for the intractable position in this situation, both the company in this community and the families and everyone else, was the fact that these women refuse to subordinate themselves to the fact of their childbearing role. And I think that that's what the company was saying to them on that you're important, essential role is having babies. And they refuse to accept that. And I think that that's an essential explanation for much of what happened in this case. So let me open it up.

Unknown Speaker  36:03
I think was one of those days everybody raised their board, although the issue is very different. And I knew about the case. But there was never any

Unknown Speaker  36:11
attempt to develop the kind of campaign around

Unknown Speaker  36:18
Do you mean that kind of campaign in the sense of the of the fundraising media

Unknown Speaker  36:23
going? nationwide?

Unknown Speaker  36:26
There was a big attempt? They didn't fire? Oh, you want me to do it now? Okay, I've been asked to, to why there was no attempt to as there wasn't a Silkwood case, to have a campaign of public awareness and so on. There certainly was an attempt to go to every possible funding source to go to the press. I don't understand the resistance of the press to this issue. But the straight press isn't into it. They are all saying, Oh, what about those fetuses? You know, I'm always reminded of Barney Frank statement that, you know, we act as if life begins at conception and ends at birth. That's, you know, there's there is this sense that well, if the company is right about the hazards, and let me just say, I can be glad to discuss this with you at some time in the future. They're not right. That if the company is right about the hazards, then this is the right thing for them to do. And those women were just stupid. I said, Well, what about the fact that they didn't want to have children that they were, you know, planning pregnancies and all this sort of stuff? No, no, well, what but they might get pregnant, you never know the, you know, the abortion clinics are full of women who were planning pregnancy. I mean, this is the kind of response that we got to MIT. I have written about 400 letters is some hyperbole, but not a lot to the New York Times.

Unknown Speaker  37:52
Or capital standard,

Unknown Speaker  37:54
that they know, I think that they are that they have a plant, which is a very hazardous place, not particularly more hazardous to fetuses than others. It's a dirty joint, they should have cleaned it up. Their their comment that men and women are safe is just off the wall. From my point of view, that's my beef with the American Cyanamid company. My basic premise is not that chemicals are safe, and that fetuses are not vulnerable, but that they aren't particularly more vulnerable than human beings who are alive and hopefully well today. And that the this this solution to the toxic workplace of getting rid of fertile women. It's just not a solution. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  38:46
In the sense that, you know, as soon as you began speaking, the first thing I thought of was, was, you know, is it true that it would be this is it true that that's possible without also a danger?

Unknown Speaker  38:58
And did anybody ever say,

Unknown Speaker  39:01
instead of saying,

Unknown Speaker  39:03
Well, of course, people said that. And

Unknown Speaker  39:08
initially, I don't mean, oh, it became apparent, but I mean, was that ever? Was that ever gonna ever come to surface as an option? In the beginning,

Unknown Speaker  39:17
the women, of course, said that they said, if it's dangerous for us, it's dangerous for the men, why don't you clean it up? You know, and and the answer to that was the same as similar to the answers about birth control as well, we just can't do it. We don't know what level is safe for the fetus. We assume that there's no safe level for the fetus. But you people, you're okay, we've got you all squared away, and you're fine. I mean, you know, this was not a rational dialogue. But I'm not I'm not sure. I know that I answered your question about the Silkwood thing, except that I think we that we just had not as sexy an issue and we had an issue as to which the traditional press is Pretty weary Mendota pregnant.

Unknown Speaker  40:02
That's right. What about the insurance video versus with just the

Unknown Speaker  40:08
push and push and VVT? Yeah been asked about the T's and their FIQ best as I understand it, there is no nothing to support the conclusion that Bdts pose any sort of particularly adverse effect to pregnant women or to pregnancies. There are health hazards associated with DDT use, they are largely involve eyestrain and posture problems and lack of inadequate lack of adequate equipment, lack of rest, curious and muscular strain back strain, all that kind of stuff, no problem pregnancies. And there's nothing about the radiation that's been connected with any reproductive people who are

Unknown Speaker  40:49
aging or women. Before, do you think in terms of court cases, how the results of court may determine is it going to be similar as this one where they're

Unknown Speaker  41:03
not and people are?

Unknown Speaker  41:05
People are going to be turned off? Because they're women involved in those two men?

Unknown Speaker  41:10
You mean, on the reproductive hazard saying? Well, I think that ultimately, that's where both the courts and federal agencies back off? What What if there is this, this hyper susceptibility to some chemical at some, in some circumstances, and they're very, very nervous about that. But what I view this, as is another example of manipulation of science, to serve a predominant male ideology. Now there you have it, it's the cat is out of the bag, I think that the science is being distorted in a very, you know, not necessarily intentionally malevolent way. But the point here is the manipulation of women once again, because of their biology. And ultimately, that's what we keep getting back to, we think we make strides and employment discrimination. And they're going to get us on biology, because that's the one thing we can't change. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  42:08
acceptable to the company for the women to say that they would accept whatever risk

Unknown Speaker  42:13
I've been asked whether or not,

Unknown Speaker  42:15
you know, sign some sort of disclaimer or whatever.

Unknown Speaker  42:20
I've been asked whether or not the company would have accepted whether the women could have accepted the risks of their employment or signed waivers? No, the answer to that is because the company claimed that the women could not waive the rights of future children, and that they had a moral duty to protect those future children.

Unknown Speaker  42:39
Follow that up? What's the relationship between sterilization and the claim of children and voluntarily saying?

Unknown Speaker  42:52
Well, I what I thought you were asking was whether instead of sterilization, the women could have assumed the risk of their employment and signed waivers saying that they wouldn't sue the company.

Unknown Speaker  43:03
Because the company, your response is that the company said that they could not waive the right to keep

Unknown Speaker  43:08
your children No, no, no, no, they couldn't waive the rights of future children to sue the company. In other words, if a if a child is ultimately born, and it has a birth defect, which the child then claims results from the mother's workplace exposure, a waiver previously signed by the mother would not bind the child. In a general proposition that's probably true. As a matter of realities just sort of way up there in the in the stratosphere. Some simply because they fortunately haven't been any cases like this. We don't know of any cases. As an aside, going back to the scientific support for this theory. We know about a dozen cases of children of male workers who have sued employers, because they claim that exposure to chemicals has harmed father sperm and that that was transmitted to the offspring.

Unknown Speaker  44:00
The company give you a reason for not

Unknown Speaker  44:02
suggesting that many others.

Unknown Speaker  44:06
Did the company give a reason for not for suggesting that men not have their secondary they claimed there was no hazard to men? That again, is, is from our perspective, false because OSHA has found that in this case, we were dealing with LED poses an equal threat to the reproduction of both males and females and at equivalent levels of exposure. So there was no

Unknown Speaker  44:28
threat to women, there was no threat to them, either.

Unknown Speaker  44:32
That's what the company says. Right? That's what the company say. No threat to the OVA and no threat to the sperm, but to the fetus post conception that in utero. That's where the line is drawn in all of these policies. They claim that pregnant No, no, no, because you could get pregnant and not know that you were pregnant and all that damage could be done in the first six weeks and you want to know about it.

Unknown Speaker  45:01
With my follow up a little bit further, because this is me related to the argument that people make when they talk about the issue of abortion, and the idea that the fetus is a person somehow my own mind, I'm very confused. Because it seems to me that the policy that was allowed to stand says the woman does not have as much validity as much respect as a fetus does.

Unknown Speaker  45:29
I think that that's right. I think that there's a fetus fetal supremacy theme lurking here, that the that that the life of the fetus of the health of the fetus has given more value than health of the parents. The company denies that saying that the workplace is safe. For adults, it is simply because of this hyper susceptible fetal organism that these policies exist. I believe in my own analysis, not only this company's policy, but the other policies that have been implemented by other companies, that the universe is very carefully defined in the sense that the science is interpreted to suggest that there is not a great likelihood of injury to a future born child from preconception injury to either parent. And that the only likely source of injury is to in utero exposure. Now, there's, that's very convenient argument to people who want to get rid of women, because only women have that in utero problem. So when you define away the problem of preconception injury, which is what these companies have done, and they've defined a way, the problem of workplace injury to adults, then all you have left is this in utero? That's where I think the manipulation of the science comes in most strongly. As an interesting aside, and but but perhaps more responsive to your question about, you know, how can I say this no hazard to the to the workers, and are we talking about a real fetal supremacy problem here. At the same time that this company and many other companies had policies of the sort that I have described. They argued in public comments to OSHA for increasing exposure levels for workers on the ground that there was no known provable hazard from a variety of chemicals. In particular, with regard to lead, they proposed a blood lead level, which OSHA ultimately found would cause severe lead intoxication, including neurological damage and workers. So I believe that there's a very strong record of a double standard in regard to the degree of care afforded to the worker and the degree of care afforded to the fetus. Where the fetus is concerned, what we have consistently seen as a zero risk approach, no risk, no matter how small will be tolerated. What we see with regard to all other types of possible injuries, is we refuse to recognize that any risk exists until you have proved it down to the last, you know, Scintilla. until everybody's dead.

Unknown Speaker  48:23
That's right, until everybody's dead, right?

Unknown Speaker  48:29
A few most of them were laid off.

Unknown Speaker  48:32
Why have you recruited? You wouldn't

Unknown Speaker  48:34
hit the desert. And so I ended when I'm when recruits and women so they would love to hear you say that?

Unknown Speaker  48:44
Well, um, I think that this is speculation on my part, but I think that the company had to hire some women in order to survive a particular federal investigation, and they had to keep them there for a couple of years because their policies were being reviewed. They didn't want them there. They didn't like them there. They didn't need them. Here's another aside, when the same chemicals are used in female intensive industries, guess what women don't get excluded. And they weren't a part of their their primary workforce. And that when they came up with this idea of how to get rid of them, you know, they went ahead with I don't think that their vision of this changed at all over the years, but they're pragmatic. They don't want to lose their federal contractors. And then of course, once Reagan was reelect was elected. When Reagan was elected, there was no incentive to alter this policy because there hasn't been any OFCCP enforcement and there won't be preparation

Unknown Speaker  49:48
for the lawsuit. If you find the

Unknown Speaker  49:50
actions of man who were workers in the plan, husbands or lovers or the women who were involved change in any way.

Unknown Speaker  49:58
Did you lose I've been asked whether or not after the lawsuit was begun, and we engaged in preparation and attitudes of other people change towards the, towards the women, hard to say because, of course, there was some individual variants. And there were some men who came around, we had no way of polling. The workers were the the women always had a certain number of supporters among their colleagues at work their male colleagues, and and there were some families who were supportive. I think that there was some change, but how big a change? I can't really say, you know, the funny thing was that the women were sort of damned everywhere they turn when they finally got something out of this, some people said, Oh, we were just in it for the money. So, you know, other said, Well, you know, you must have been right. Meanwhile, the company is announcing that the settlement doesn't mean anything, it's no admission of guilt or liability. Or harassment? Yes, I believe that this is a question as to harassment of female miners in West Virginia, I believe that they have had a lot of trouble in the in the coal industry. In West Virginia. I'm not intimately familiar with that. But in fact, what I've heard about that is an entirely different kind of problem, which is that when women do get pregnant, and they do need job transfers, because of certain certain other job duties are very difficult to perform during pregnancy, the employers refuse to give it to them. There's a number of ways to skin a cat, you know,

Unknown Speaker  51:50
mentioned that for you. And that is when I assume belong to an office in Romania. And it's specifically optimized. I think it's a good coach to do what was actually him. And he's going back to what she has to bear as you change it all. To you. This is an issue that I would think is clearly

Unknown Speaker  52:09
Yeah, the union of the International is, is very good on safety and health issues, and very good on this issue. And, and OCA Dottie. And the local people were, I think, you know, over the head. And what they did was they sent off inquiries to their international, what do we do about this, and they sent a letter to the employer, saying, give us a list of the chemicals and specify the policy and blah, blah, blah, I mean, you did all the things they should have done. But in order to stop this thing, that, you know, was snowballing, somebody had to get in there with very aggressive action. And nobody did that. And I don't know, I'm not faulting those people. I'm, you know, I'm very sad that it worked out that way. But it was a very sophisticated and difficult problem at the time for people to sort out and it still is for most people. You know, it seems open and shut to me, but you share my perspective on it. That's fine.

Unknown Speaker  53:29
It occurred to me, as John was describing this case, that while the specific topics that we're discussing are quite different, that a lot of the themes that underlie these issues and the way we think about them, are shared. And I'm going to do what I think is a sort of theoretical discussion of some of the underpinnings of attempting to determine when action is just and when it's not, and then talk to you about some of the cases of battered women who've killed their husbands. And I invite your participation at any point along the way, since defining justice is a rather substantial undertaking, and I would appreciate help. Whenever a power imbalance exists for some period of time, between individuals, groups or nations, efforts by the less powerful to create a power balance, or to create justice to produce justice, take on the properties of moral activity, we start to think about our values. That is, in addition, the oppressed and the oppressors as well may think about their actions in terms of right and wrong in terms of entitlement, that which they deserve by virtue of some valued belief system. Those kinds of notions come to mind. Nonetheless, it's still the case that acts of violence that are perpetrated against an oppressor or an abuser. Maybe understood not only as acts of justice, but as acts of revenge. And the distinctions of subtle the social history. And the context in which an act of violence occurs, will determine its meaning will define it as just or vengeful, and we allow justice in this society, we're not big on revenge. These issues of definition, play important roles in world politics and within nation's judicial systems. And they determine the circumstances under which the use of force is seen as necessary as sufficient or as excessive, for example, to do world politics in about three sentences. If one believes that the British have acted as intolerable oppressors in Northern Ireland, then the violence of the Irish Republican Army constitutes the work of freedom fighters, and they define themselves that way. If one sympathies lie with the British, then they're terrorists. As we name them, so we comprehend justify vilify their actions. And from El Salvador to Beirut, to the border between Iraq and Iran. People are fighting wars against perceived oppression, fighting righteous wars, where violence is enacted to produce justice. In America, like in other countries around the world, though, we will not only do battle with ideologically named enemies, will also experience violence and our families. We may become engaged in violent interchanges with our spouses, our children, our parents, or siblings. And because the deeply held values associated with intimate relationships within the family, are often a microcosm of the values for relationships in the larger society. The battles that occur within family systems can be analogized to Holy Wars, the kinds of holy wars that permeate our shared culture and shape our collective ideologies about righteous strife. The line separates act of justice from acts of revenge. The use of power and access to resources mirrored the causes of societal violence parents out power their children, a form of class based inequality, embodied in generation based differences and access to valued resources. Men typically out power their wives families reflect gender based inequality that we see in the larger society. Guns are tremendous power equalizers. In violent interchanges. Assaults perpetrated from behind, or while the ultimate victim is asleep, may also function to compensate for differences in physical strength, size or agility. According to the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Reports, statistics, approximately 750 women killed their husbands during 1982. In case you're interested about an equal number of husbands killed their wives. That is a recent change, a change with the advent of guns in the home, that used to be that husbands killed their wives much more frequently than wives killed their husbands. With regard to these women,

Unknown Speaker  58:28
did you give us a statistic on making 82 for husbands

Unknown Speaker  58:31
killing wives, it's about the same, it's about the same. It's like 49% 51%. With regard to these women, some pled guilty and did not stand trial. Some denied any involvement whatsoever and pled not guilty on that basis. Others pled not guilty by virtue of some form of diminished capacity like temporary insanity. Crimes passionate defense is not popular with battered women. Others pled not guilty by reason of self defense. And that's really what I'm going to talk about most directly. They affirm the act, but claim justification. In essence, they acknowledge responsibility for the killings, but contended their acts were just not vengeful. Even laws that have afforded women, little protection from violence in their homes, extend the right of self defense, or the defense of their loved ones to women who kill while under attack, provided their counter attack is not excessive, that they employ the amount of force necessary to stop the assault but no more. Nor are they obliged to retreat during an assault in their own homes. However, all of those things taken into account one of the cases that involve women who've endured repeated brutal assaults at The hands of their husbands who are told tomorrow when I wake up, I'm going to kill you and kill their husbands while they're asleep. Or while no assault is ongoing. Susan Jacoby wrote a book called Wild justice, the evolution of revenge that I would recommend to these issues interesting. And in that book, she wrote about the case of Francine Hughes, who's chronically abusive ex husband, who had moved back in with her, threatened to kill her if she continued to take classes at a local community college. He also took all of her college books and set fire to them. Following this threat, Francine poured gasoline around the bed while he was asleep in it and lit it. The jury acquitted her on the basis of temporary insanity. She spent six weeks in a psychiatric facility and was released, Jacoby noted, it would be extremely difficult for any jury, mindful of the traditional definition of self defense as a response to imminent deadly force to acquit a woman who set fire to asleeping man, however brutal the men may have been in the preceding years or hours. This caveat notwithstanding, some women with such life experiences or similar life experiences are pleading not guilty by reason of self defense. And increasingly, especially since the publication in 1979 of Lenore Walker's book called the battered woman, experts in the area of psychology and sociology, are contributing to the trial process. Ultimately, I believe such experts speak to the concerns that distinguish justice from revenge. Jurors are likely to acquit a woman they believe, has acted to restore or to affirm justice, they're equally likely to convict a woman proceed as a vengeful killer. Would that be that? Jean Harris is an example of that. And people who do lots of work on women's self defense cases, think that her trial was not well managed, and she may in fact go to trial. Again, she's just retained a new attorney may try it again. In any event. Conceptually, I think the distinction between justice and revenge provides the framework for expert testimony. And what I'm going to suggest to you is that acts of deadly force, committed with an awareness of alternative courses of action are probably revenge. In the absence of perceived alternatives, a perceptual absence that can be best understood as a psychological consequence of the husband's chronic violence, and an intense fear of imminent or future life threatening violence.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:16
The woman's actions may be construed as just now with that general principle in mind, I would like to describe to you a case of a battered woman who killed her husband. Doris, which is not her actual name, was indicted and tried for the shooting death of her husband of approximately 30 years. They had married when she was 18. And although he had not been abusive with her prior to the wedding, he began to beat her during the first year of their marriage. They had moved from Wyoming to a suburban community outside of New York, and had two children. In spite of the middle class neighborhood in which they lived in the climate. Their house was not centrally heated. Doris husband was a very heavy drinker, and got drunk every night after work. Every morning, he would wake up, stumbled to the front door and vomit on the front porch. Every morning Doris cleaned it up. It starts his habit to prepare his dinner so that it'd be ready as soon as he got home to eat by herself before he arrived to serve him his dinner and to go to bed. This way, she could minimize the time together, reduce the likelihood that he would beat her and maintain the sense that she had some control over her life. On occasion, she did try to fight back when he assaulted her once she stabbed him with a kitchen knife as they were fighting. He was hospitalized as a result, but chose not to press charges. On another occasion, she tried to leave him with their two young children relatively early on in the marriage. After spending a week with a friend she came home with no job skills and no way of supporting herself or her children. She felt that this was her only alternative Due to return home, the only work for pay she did involve crocheting and selling Afghans, and she was severely beaten for spending that money on a bed for her son without her husband's permission. One night during the winter of 1980 doors, filled the fireplace with wood and went to bed. Her husband came into the bedroom, kicked her, pulled her hair and screamed that she'd not put enough wood in the fireplace. Doors tried to talk him down, but his anger did not subside. She ran to the bedroom of their 25 year old son and asked for help, but he refused to become involved. Her husband continued to threaten her. He took a rifle that he kept beneath the bed all the time and loaded it in a drunken rage. He told her, I have to go into the backyard for a few minutes. Don't move just lie there. When I'm good when I come back, I'm gonna kill you. Their backyard that was filled with remnants of large pieces of equipment, tractors, bulldozers, unusual stuff for suburban neighborhoods. But he went into the backyard and was talking, she thought to these pieces of equipment, and she could hear him yelling and talking to himself into the tractors. She stayed in bed. For several minutes, she just lay there as he had told her to do. Then she picked up the rifle, which he had already loaded, walk to the back door, although their house had a front door. And as her husband approached the house when he was about six feet away from her, she fired the rifle once shooting him through the heart. Doors pled not guilty by reason of self defense. She testified that she had believed that if she had not killed her husband that night, he would have killed her. She believed she had acted in defense of her life. She perceived no alternative besides the course of action she took not that I'm suggesting that she took rather than chose this course of action, as I regularly suggest to juries, fear inhibits rational cognitive activity. Doris is fear during those minutes was overwhelming. Further prior to her husband's parting threat, Doris had attempted to employ strategies that had worked previously. To reduce his level of violence. She tried to talk him down to elicit her son's aid, she could not reach him. She felt that his rage had taken him beyond her. There was a look in his eye like she had never seen before. Something that battered women in this situation commonly report. She believed that the danger that he presented to her that night was not routine. She had plenty of experience with his routine violence, but it was truly life threatening. Who would know better than a woman chronically exposed her husband's violence when his violence has moved beyond his normal range into a domain that is life threatening? This crucial determination may have saved our son's life that night.

Unknown Speaker  1:08:16
But as the District Attorney suggested repeatedly, what about the front door? Why didn't Doris use the time allotted her by her husband's trip into the backyard to escape through the front door? Not a particularly rural area neighbors close by? Why didn't she run rather than stay in a situation that she saw as one in which she had to kill or be killed? The objective presence of this option left the motive for Darcis act open to question. If she perceived the alternative of running as viable for her, then the rifle shot that she fired at near point blank range can best be understood as revenge as repayment for years of her husband's brutality. If the option was not subjectively experienced by Doris, if the years of oppression and violence in her own home, had reduced her sense that she could leave and make it on her own, or even that she could affect a successful escape. Then she had no real choice but to protect herself. Though the assault was not ongoing at the time the doors fired. The imminence of her husband's assault was a psychological and not a physical reality. Doris was acquitted in the death of her husband on the grounds of self defense. This verdict reflects the jurors acceptance of a non traditional definition of self defense and their acknowledgement that the cumulative psychological Till effects of living in chronic fear of violence could reduce a woman's ability to perceive alternatives as viable or genuinely to perceive them at all. Yet the play was not based on a diminished capacity was not based on the notion of temporary insanity, but on the defense of oneself within a relationship characterized by pervasive oppression and injustice. Once an abusive relationship is so defined, and personal experiences are connected to the condition of the polity, the patriarchy than the process of distinguishing between a white aspirants as an act of justice or as an act of revenge can occur. Nonetheless, battered women who killed their husbands struggle with this distinction. They feel guilty about their acts, and are often their harshest judges. Others struggle with this distinction as well distinction between justice and revenge. Jurors struggle with it. Their friends, their families, they occupy rather unusual roles. They are widows, they mourn the loss of their husbands. But they're also the ones who bring about their widowhood, and neither they nor their friends or families know quite what to do about that. As an expert witness, in this case, is a psychologist who studied family violence, I also struggle with the distinction between justice and revenge. Ultimately, perhaps the difficulty with achieving resolution with attempting to make the distinction between justice and revenge, and with reconceptualizing self defense rests with the nature of violence and its pervasiveness in the larger society. I find it difficult personally, to suggest that there must be situations in which violence is the only means for restoring justice and that the absence of perceived alternatives should be sufficient to foster the belief that violence is just. However, my personal feelings not withstanding, violence within and outside of family systems is prevalent, and its potential for achieving valued ends, like the defense of one's nation once ideology, or one's life is widely acknowledged. Thus, the reality of publicly legitimized violence provides a context within which jurors and others work to determine when violence enacted by battered women who killed their husbands is just questions.

Unknown Speaker  1:12:55
I had a question. Could you go back to the beginning? I understand you clearly. You said something about that. We as a people survived or not being over then we allowed justice

Unknown Speaker  1:13:10
with the question. The question is, I think I may be reinterpreting a little bit. Sort of how we react as a society to revenge is that whether or not we excuse it,

Unknown Speaker  1:13:25
if I knew that we were not vengeful. Now I'm just agree with that. So I wanted to hear more clearly.

Unknown Speaker  1:13:31
I'm not suggesting that we're not vengeful, I'm suggesting we don't give it social approval, that Jacoby gives an interesting example in her book, actually, she reviews hearings that were held by concentration camp survivors, talking about what they would like to have happen to the SS guards who had been present in a Nazi concentration camps. And with only one exception. They talked about just wanting to restore justice, that they didn't really want revenge. They didn't want these people to be tortured. And only one person got up in front of this committee and said, I want revenge. And everyone's supposed to No, no, no, we want to restore justice. So it's notion that we don't provide social approbation. For vengeful acts, people who are committed to restoring justice are, at least in terms of the way they describe their activities, engage in a different sort of process than people who are attempting to secure revenge. I also think an additional distinction is that if you want to restore justice, then you'll do things to create a balance and stop. Vengeful activity often takes people beyond that. It's not enough to get even when revenge is the nature of the activity.

Unknown Speaker  1:14:55
To say that I feel that I think the society the American society, in general Hello is eventful society, and may not may give lip service to the idea of justice, but certainly in many activities is very approving of violence in many different forms. I just wanted to offer to you also common factors games come at a conference in November. And you seem to be speaking toward that point to that in some contestants, who is a president who is a presser that there is a distinction to be made between response and self defense, and what might not be considered violence.

Unknown Speaker  1:15:41
There's there's a distinction that can be made between self defense and violence. But often acts that are intended to defend oneself involve violence. That isn't to say that they're the same as violence perpetrated for different reasons. But the firing of a gun in that reductionistic. Moment is equivalent. It's the context in which it occurs that determines whether or not we say it's okay. It is okay to defend oneself. Right protected under law, it isn't okay to just shoot somebody.

Unknown Speaker  1:16:22
Did you test your framework with a different learning style sound familiar? And exclusive? Yeah, that's a little different, because he actually pursued the two manuals and shot them and at trial, she was defended by male term segment and the fact she didn't know what you're doing. And actually at the trial, she ended up getting off and screaming, I killed those two people, because they liked my job that one person, I wish he or the other. And Ben Norton killed during social, I feel that will turn careful psychological tests and choose the jury, and we got attitudes about race and one self defense. And that, that seems to strain the distinction between Revenge. And I'm wondering, perhaps maybe two, that we should try to try out more expensive than the definition. We get, it seems like a pyramid thinking. The best we can do within a framework, most acceptable security, but that that other cable can actually do what I would feel

Unknown Speaker  1:17:45
have a right perspective, our perspective on the European countries, there is no perception. There's no objective, as long as you can prove that we didn't consider in your or couldn't consider any other alternative. But the logic is that we have a clear representation of what we

Unknown Speaker  1:18:19
do. It's a very long question to try to repeat for the purposes of this tape. No, that's all right. I'm not completely satisfied with this distinction between justice and revenge that I'm trying to draw. I'm working toward a distinction. The Garcia case is distinct from cases involving battered women in a number of respects, because she isn't a victim of chronic ongoing abuse, and she does go out and engage in an active pursuit. She is also the victim of the power structure that is not responsive to her initially. And issues of jury selection, in cases like these, I think have to be held for a separate kind of concern and the attitudes of the people to whom you present your case are important, but I don't think they'll function to define the legal strategy taken, you'll choose the jury based on the strategy, not vice versa. And I think that in many cases, these distinctions get to be very hard distinctions to draw. And I think that there are cases in which ultimately definitionally we find ourselves in a position position where we do say that revenge is okay. Where we do make determinations that the injustice done, this woman was so great that it is appropriate for the legal system to support her in that activity. But then that functions to say what she did was just She's just been acquitted in a court of law. That is a difficult conceptual framework to establish when her life is not in imminent danger. And she's acting to restore justice in a way that looks a whole lot like an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:20
For nine to up at the general that interview day prediction, God is very vengeful, and high for nine to two. And it was explained to me at one time that the general notion before this was that not an eye for an eye, but both well, any injury death. And the idea of the development of an eye for an eye was justice, rather than revenge. In other words, it was a stupendous step forward in that. And

Unknown Speaker  1:20:55
an eye for an eye at the very least, is a balanced, no shot.

Unknown Speaker  1:20:59
stablishing justice.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:03
Classic before that, one can use the word class.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:10
But I think these questions come in to the death penalty, capital punishment generally, separately, that all together,

Unknown Speaker  1:21:18
what, what is

Unknown Speaker  1:21:20
justice and revenge.

Unknown Speaker  1:21:23
I think they're also relevant to John's presentation about what one does in the presence of a company that's requiring sterilization. They're pervasive issues, which is part of what makes them so difficult to define

Unknown Speaker  1:21:39
the struggle you brought up initially, because I struggled, I believe,

Unknown Speaker  1:21:45
dealing with the concept of justice, or finding reformation of justice. And I'd like to know, either from your own personal view, or from the view of other people that you now have this girdle, how much you feel that the unspoken assumption by many, many people, including battered women sad is that they have either contributed to cause Well, or in some way perpetuated

Unknown Speaker  1:22:15
that violence.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:16
And that that is a deep part of that struggle to advance against them. And I think part of that

Unknown Speaker  1:22:22
struggle is to

Unknown Speaker  1:22:25
do to say yes, or violence is justified when somehow beside you, you believe that she could have done something about preventative earlier on either

Unknown Speaker  1:22:38
or that if she did.

Unknown Speaker  1:22:43
I think that unspoken assumption can't be overlooked. It's different from the one time so

Unknown Speaker  1:22:52
the the assumption that, or the notion that battered women often feel that they're responsible for the violence perpetrated against them, is absolutely pervasive it, it characterizes their experiences in themselves throughout and the longer they remain in the relationship, the more elaborate their constructions of what it is that they've done to justify this abuse that they're receiving. It's one of the reasons why they're often their own worst enemies when they come before the criminal justice system. It is common, if not unanimously the case that when these women make statements to the police, immediately following the shootings, so within several days following the shootings of stabbings, that they tell what could look most easily be understood as their husband's side of the story. They go into the police station and they tell the stories that are self incriminating, even if it means that they've got to leave out details that are relevant to what transpired. So case of one woman she went to the police station after she had stabbed her husband and she said they'd been married for about three years. She said he came home and he told me that he didn't need me anymore, that he married me just to get a green card so we could stay in a country that he was tired of me and that he was going to leave me and so I picked up the machete and I hit him with it. That she neglected to mention in her initial statement that her left arm was broken. About an hour into this process. She complained to the police officer that her arm hurt, but she'd already made that statement. her sternum was badly bruised. They took her to Rikers Island, they gave her an examination they discovered she had a broken arm and she was quite bruised, and then she reported that she had stabbed her husband when he picked up their three week old infant swung by the ankles and threatened to throw him out the window of department. She'd neglected to mention that in her initial version of the story, she really told his version of the story. And so that those notions of taking responsibility for the abuse extend even after death, even after the death of the spouse, they still continue to take responsibility in a way that incriminates them when others would not. And once the full story came out, that woman was acquitted on the grounds of self defense. So that the issue that you're raising is a central one for why those women will often remain in those relationships, because they do feel a sense of responsibility for what's going on. But those are notions that are really hard to take away from them. And it's a two edged sword. Because if they're responsible, then they're in control,

Unknown Speaker  1:25:47
as a witness with the lawyers, that somehow district was struggling. Those are messages that well, you know, maybe she really could have left, maybe she really could have done something earlier on. I feel like I'm excusing violence in the restoration of justice was not really what I think I should be doing, because I know she did.

Unknown Speaker  1:26:16
I draw a distinction between the way I wish things were and where I think things are. I think that women, as a result of chronic violence experience a genuine psychological change. I wish they didn't, but I know they do. And while it's sort of philosophical dilemma for me to advocate, and in some respects, I end up being an advocate for the use of violence in these cases, when I testify on behalf of a woman who's killed her husband and self defense. I mean, I wish that they would not fight in El Salvador, I wish that they would stop what they're doing. There are a lot of things that I wish for. That doesn't make them so nor does it suggest that that alternatives will be perceived by the people engaged in those struggles. What I would like to be in what is are different things.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:20
What? Initial doesn't make any difference? On the same equal arguments, but the man doesn't make any difference? If you're going to pursue that,

Unknown Speaker  1:27:38
I mean, you're raising it, you're raising it.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:44
That is absolutely true. I understand that. And, you know, when you said she was accredited.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:55
You see, you're right. You're raising.

Unknown Speaker  1:27:58
Great, great. First time.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:03
My God, it wasn't her first and only time she had stabbed him before. And she'd also fired that rifle before. Nonetheless, she was acquitted.

Unknown Speaker  1:28:14
Would you have a sense of agreement that not only perpetuated physical abuse of women that women take upon themselves, to blame for the circumstance. But I would suggest that almost anything, women are taught that they are to blame. When you say that you're working with young people and human sexuality, I think women are perceived to be responsible for whatever the results of that sexual relationship is. Women are perceived to be the responsible person in any of the breakdowns and relationships. And the responsibility for the physical battery is only a responsibility by extension of all the other clients and responsibility that we carry.

Unknown Speaker  1:29:04
I think that, that your point is well taken. And I think that women do assign themselves large amounts of responsibility. I think that one of the things that makes it so pernicious tendency is that it has real paradoxical qualities in terms of coping and managing one's life. Because to the extent that you assign yourself control, or responsibility for the things that go on around you, life is somewhat less overwhelming. Even if you're creating fictions about the reasons for abuse, if you're saying, Well, my husband beat me, because I prepared the wrong vegetable for dinner. And that really isn't why the fiction may serve a variety of functions for a woman who sees as her only alternative remaining in that relationship. And taking that from her is a difficult thing to do. A similar kind of process exists in in women who are raped survivors. You can suggest They were raped simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that it was the perpetrators activity that produced this victimization that they are no way responsible. It was not their style of dress or anything else that produced that event. And that may all be true, but it's a remarkably frightening thought. Because then the possibility of re victimization remains so high, so that the political and the personal don't always converge exactly as we might like them to.

Unknown Speaker  1:30:31
That because of the pervasive violence in society that that somehow the society has to develop structures to rationalize and make reasonable. I wanted to ask if there's any kind of psychological profile of women who find themselves in these marriages and don't get them? I know, some women do get the ones who don't have children, but

Unknown Speaker  1:31:03
is there a psychological profile of battered women who remain in abusive relationships? Lenore Walker's book, the battered woman, she interviewed about 150 battered women, and she lists characteristics, they tend to be traditionalists about family relationships, they tend to be low in self esteem. They think it's their job to keep the family together. In about a third of the cases, alcohol abuse is implicated. She goes on to list a number of characteristics that are typical of battered women. She's subsequent to the publication of that book, which was in 1979. She's gone on to do a lot of work with battered women who kill and has engaged them in extensive interviews, and is going to be publishing work shortly on the things that characterize those women. But one thing I would say about her work is that she suggests that battered women suffer from a kind of learned helplessness, that they come to believe that their actions are not, are no sensible way related to their outcomes, that they can prepare the right vegetable and still get abused, that they learned that their what happens to them is not contingent on their actions. It's my experience with battered women, and particularly battered women who kill that that's not a clear part of their psychology, so that there are aspects of her theoretical presentations about battered women with which I would differ. But certainly the changes in self esteem, and the changes in the ability to believe that one could make it on one zone do occur.

Unknown Speaker  1:32:44
It is the my experience, I would say that I know someone who can them quite well well enough to say bye. So I'm pretty common in their personalities. And it's been my experience that they'll they often have a commonality of what I would consider it an environmental one, like they might not be poor. Because certain sides of the screen, or traditional, you know, two things that I'd like to suggest that another question. Yeah, and the question is, is there anything similar in the profile of the bachelor because my experience has shown me that this is similar to experience something that although all the winds were very difficult, analogous to the point where there's store within stores could be interchangeable. You would sit there and think now wait a minute, he was it hate her husband? Who did that to her? Or was it her boyfriend at that time? What was because everybody says the same thing. And the most common thing shared by this is without psychologizing Just this just witnessing or hearing behavior is the relentlessness of the data, to get better at abuse, intimidate and dominate that woman, even after she could call from other countries to harass and threaten her call from other states who use the children the relentless Yeah, the one thing that I learned that all the counselors that I work with him on a condenser condenser every second

Unknown Speaker  1:34:15
if you leave him all the way over, because

Unknown Speaker  1:34:20
the man needs to be hooked into that kind of relationship. And it's not

Unknown Speaker  1:34:29
I mean, it's not, you know, like movies, where he just goes, you know, some disco finds. That isn't what's going on. And

Unknown Speaker  1:34:40
I would say that was unbelievable to me and I have learned this

Unknown Speaker  1:34:45
and it's also related to learning because I think that helps them almost more than anything else, to see them that they are gay or a syndrome that has nothing to do with the man in any way. I mentioned before that you get an expert testimony with 700 cases per year.

Unknown Speaker  1:35:17
How many experts are there after?

Unknown Speaker  1:35:19
How much can you study? Find out and the other? Are there we go and

Unknown Speaker  1:35:34
the question was about given the numbers of women who kill their husbands each year, which is about 750. Is there enough legal and psychological expertise out there to deal with these cases? And the answer is that I don't know. I've applied for grant from the National Science Foundation to find out, they have a division that deals with law in the social sciences. And I would like to know what's happening in cases where expert testimony is being used. Lenore Walker has testified in about 55 cases of battered women who've killed their husbands in the last five years, I've testified in about 15. And there are other people around the country who are doing this kind of testimony as well. Maybe we've hit 100 cases altogether. But even given that, I don't know the next step, which is what's happening as a result of the use of expert testimony. I know what's happening in my own cases. And in general, women who plead self defense are being acquitted. They're being acquitted. In New York and New Jersey. In New Jersey, the issue of expert testimony is just become very controversial, and is a case currently pending before the state Supreme Court as to whether or not expert testimony will be admissible before the jury, or whether or not expert testimony will be limited to advice to the judge prior to sentencing after the verdict has been rendered. So it's very controversial at the moment, and amicus briefs have been submitted. The decision is just waiting. I've also done it about three cases in West Virginia. Interestingly enough, we're juries make decisions in 45 minutes or less. I have never seen juries come back so fast and homicide cases. And they're quitting, they're in self defense cases as well. So I've only seen one conviction in a case involving a woman who killed her husband. And it was a very difficult case where she pursued him, she went to a bar, which he called the bar and he was there. And she went to the bar. And there were eight people in the bar. And she walked right up to him held the gun right up to his stomach and fired. In fact, the gun when the bullet went through her husband and to a man at the bar, sitting at the bar behind him. It he was so drunk, he didn't realize he'd been shot. He just continued to sit at the bar, she put the gun down on the counter or drink, sat there and waited to be arrested. She pleaded temporary insanity, but was convicted. But really keep up. But people came up to her after that case, and said, Why didn't you do it at home? We all knew that he beats her. Why did you come here in front of eight people and shoot? And she really couldn't answer that. Nor did she present herself as someone who was out of her mind which is a real tough dilemma for temporary insanity to suggest that someone moves into a brief period of temporary and Saturday and then comes back and is regular again. That's the kind of

Unknown Speaker  1:38:40
passion that men seem to kill there was

Unknown Speaker  1:38:43
a taxi driver

Unknown Speaker  1:38:48
I don't know if any cases where women have used the kind of passion defense and there are many women's will talk about their husbands having extramarital affairs and that kind of thing. And that seems to be okay with the common response to that is well, you know, time with her is time when I don't have to worry about him being around. And not not an alternative crimes passion response, but that may be idiosyncratic to the cases that I know. I suspect not because I haven't seen it in the literature either. But in any event,

Unknown Speaker  1:39:19
I have a question lest we think of this in too stereotypical fashion. Has anybody looked for comparisons between women who kill husbands and men who kill wives to see what some sort of psychology is going on in any of those cases? I mean, surely there are men who are into intimidate abused and so on by their by their wives.

Unknown Speaker  1:39:41
Out west where a community was abused by one

Unknown Speaker  1:39:44
Oh, yeah. The town bully right and everybody refused to testify about who killed him. I mean, is there any is

Unknown Speaker  1:39:55
there isn't there isn't much research around a battered men and on what happened against men who are intimidated by their wives. I'm certainly willing to believe that there are men out there whose wives are either sufficiently powerful physically or because they have guns and knives and threaten them, that they maintain them in positions of submission and that they frighten them. But I'm not aware of research on that topic or the use of expert testimony on behalf of men who killed their wives, and claimed that it was as a result of having been physically abused.

Unknown Speaker  1:40:30
Do you work with children as an expert witness to a child who has been abused? I think for many of us, those are some of the cases, cases very recently, very sad consequences on

Unknown Speaker  1:40:45
these these cases of kids who kill family members, I think a really I think that that's what's about to break with regard to issues of family violence, there is a Genki case. And that case out of California, where they set this guy to be a missionary after he killed his father, I was just involved in a case in West Virginia, which as far as we can tell, is unique in that this child rendered himself the only survivor of his immediate family, he killed both of his parents and both of his younger brothers. In addition, as far as we've been able to tell, and I became very involved in the case of this child who killed his family, there has not been a child in this country acquitted in a parricide case. Unlike women who killed their husbands and get acquitted, children are not acquitted in children, and that's what makes it that's one of the things that makes it especially interesting. Children have objectively speaking, even fewer options available to them than adult women, and yen in the janky case where there was sexual and physical abuse of the kids in the case in California, where there's physical abuse. In this case, in West Virginia, the kid just pleaded guilty to four counts of first degree murder, with the provision that the state of West Virginia would provide psychiatric care for him and treat him as a child, even after his 18th birthday, we deal with him in the juvenile criminal justice system rather than the adult criminal justice system, which was a good arrangement. But cases of parasite I think, are just about to start to receive the sort of attention that cases battered women have been receiving for about five years. And I think that the dilemmas that they raised are just fascinating and why these kids are never acquitted? is an interesting question. I think it might begin with honor thy father and thy mother. But I think it goes beyond that. And raises really interesting issues of justice and revenge, because those are not inherent inborn notions they develop in family systems, what's fair treatment of another human being.

Unknown Speaker  1:42:48
But also, all jurors are all adults. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:42:58
I agree in

Unknown Speaker  1:42:58
terms of quintiles or in terms

Unknown Speaker  1:43:01
of I, in addition to doing expert testimony, although I haven't talked about this today, because it raises a whole variety of other issues. I also consult with attorneys on jury selection. So they're the kind of thing that was done in the Garcia case. And we really make very substantial efforts to select a jury of these women's peers. However, I have seen black women tried by all white juries. I've seen them both acquitted and convicted, and instead in shootings, not killings. And it's a difficult issue to resolve ultimately, when it comes time to select the jury and to attempt to make determinations about who will be responsive. I don't know if I've answered your question. Did I call it a little?

Unknown Speaker  1:43:56
One thing I'm going to talk about what better income to cross class research shows very conclusively that it isn't in the game class. Doesn't work better in cross across all classes of battery?

Unknown Speaker  1:44:15
I think we just don't I think the truth is that we don't know what the relationship is between class and abuse, because I don't think we know how many women have been

Unknown Speaker  1:44:23
asking that question. myself. I would ask him if the end result as to who is convicted into it not convicted?

Unknown Speaker  1:44:31
I was wondering if this defense response of women and self defense responsive women in any class vary among working class people predominantly or does that occur across women?

Unknown Speaker  1:44:51
I don't know the answer about the relationship between class and using self defense to get oneself out of an abusive relationship. or to protect one's life, both of which occur if you kill an abusive husband. I think that the quantitative questions that get asked and they get asked regularly, you know, how much of this is going on? How many women are being abused? How much are they suffering? How many times do they hospitalized as a result of abuse? How many times do they call the police? I mean, all the corroborating evidence of cases where family violence is implicated. I think those questions function to defuse the qualitative issues. And I don't think anyone knows how many women are being abused. And I don't think anyone knows exactly how class relates to choices of strategy in the context of abusive relationships. I know of cases involving women who are clearly middle class economically or not financially dependent upon their husbands have no children to support, or the in one case, the only source of income for that family. And yet she remained with an abusive husband for 22 years and only shot him when he threatened her mother, their eldest, her elderly mother had moved in, she had been willing to tolerate years of abuse for herself. He threatened to kill her mother and she shouted.

Unknown Speaker  1:46:09
In addition to which the question of what the fences are, are proffered in the question of the success relates largely to the quality and kind of legal assistance, and that, of course, correlates generally to socio economic class. But there's a lot of other variables that you'd have to go into. I'm not sure that they're all that relevant, except to the extent that you might conclude from that that service, that legal services are not being adequately provided to poor people.

Unknown Speaker  1:46:41
So I can make a comment, and one of the hopes I have and I have no way of knowing is that the work is being done in educating children through Women Against Rape and or against child sexual abuse, teaching them strength strategies, and saying no and self identification, I think it could really be an enormous breakthrough on all of this because it's, it really could become generalized enough. The interesting thing in the educational field is where people are nervous about sexuality, sex education, they seem to be accepting this. And it's one way that Family Life Education, which includes everything is getting into the schools through the sexual abuse education. I think we should all be very supportive of that fair, if you haven't seen their material at all, simply marvelous modeling of being strong of saying no of knowing what your rights are for kids.

Unknown Speaker  1:47:37
There's a piece in MS Magazine this month on identifying the difference between for kids between touching and sets just spawned with wonderful book, a three part series on all things considered. You should be kept on saying over and over again. Right by her father, her grandfather and her uncle

Unknown Speaker  1:48:07
are 15 year. Suzanne, I'd

Unknown Speaker  1:48:11
like to ask you a question whether you had any clue as to early signs of the batterer? In other words, would you be any early signs that a woman might look for that a man is has this battering syndrome?

Unknown Speaker  1:48:26
I don't think I could say that is because the kind of it is very often the case that what you would consider signs would not be perceived as signs by the woman who finds herself in the battering position. It is true, that women who become battered do not recognize the same science for many reasons. I can't psychologize each person, I would say that they are you probably most likely traditionalist reasons. And I'm too. I mean, what would be very obvious and totally unacceptable to you might not be to that person who finds themselves might be seen as other like person who finds herself being battered. I would say that one thing that I can make a comment about which goes, which is with the reference to your question is that one of the things I've also learned and I have to say that all this is just in my own experiences is that and I always sort of like this is that the Hispanic women I deal with? It's so clear to them that it is a male female power difference. They absolutely see that more than what I would say the educated middle class woman does. Because lower because poor Hispanic women and do not have the sophistication of the Freudian vocabulary. They see it as absolutely male and female men are really macho. That's what they want to do. The reverse of that is that they also see it as being inevitable, and that there is no way to ever change it or do anything about that educated middle class woman who is has fallen victim to the psychological vocabularies, sees it as being something that she alone provokes. And so says much more isolated. But on the reverse of that is that what she wants to get out of it, seeing that she promoted in the first place, she also believes that it's within her power to change it and get out of it. So that she in a sense, is harder to deal with. Because she is the one who must say, it doesn't make any difference what you did, you didn't deserve to be hit. The Hispanic woman knows that she didn't do anything. She just thinks that's the way it is. Now, that is one difference that I could absolutely comment on from my experience. But in terms of you know, Can Can you can you see, can you select the guy up, it's really not like the

Unknown Speaker  1:51:11
secondary guy, I'm more interested in behavior, this is the way they're getting at the child abuse, you're not telling the children what to look for, except in terms of behavior, somebody puts your head, their hands down your pants, that's wrong. So the kid doesn't have to figure out is this a good person or a bad person or sick? The kid just knows that this behavior?

Unknown Speaker  1:51:30
I can answer that I would say that I would immediately question a person who says anything to me, in which he implies that I do not have a right that he has, that to me is a real signal. When when he does anything to imply I don't have a right that he has, then I say this is what you know, what, what can I

Unknown Speaker  1:51:50
see, I think I've worked with adolescent girls. And I'm interested and look at what where the line is, you see, between macho and exploitative behavior? I don't think there is one

Unknown Speaker  1:52:06
about rights rights by looking at

Unknown Speaker  1:52:09
case studies it is this person being exploited. And I think we have to

Unknown Speaker  1:52:13
help them look at because they don't know then ask them the question about why it's just you saying that there's something that I don't have a right to. And the other thing is that adolescent girls are the most difficult because at least I mean, I never know what's called Island Hell's Kitchen. And I see the street kids a lot the adolescents, and it's very upsetting to me. And it is true that with adolescent girls, they accept dominating behavior as proof that they are cared about. See, that means he really likes me, because he's always telling me what to do in 10 cares about me and something, this is very difficult to, especially with St. Kitts to disprove, you will have a hard time just proving that that's not true to a young woman who believes,

Unknown Speaker  1:52:56
I think, though, with your suggestion, you're going to have some trouble across culture. Because our communities are not made up of a monolithic culture. And I think you're absolutely correctly your analysis, a bad culture. My own background is African, Portuguese, and the same kinds of persistent issues would be there. And people would really believe that, in fact, men who have different rights than women, and it will be very hard to work against that mindset on the part of women, let alone on the part of men

Unknown Speaker  1:53:28
in this culture. In addition to which it may well be that a lot of people express their concern for others in ways that are in fact. And yes, you know, the story about the kid who gets punishment, the child who is generally ignored, or who does naughty things to be punished, just to be noticed a simplistic example of that.

Unknown Speaker  1:53:55
Danger. We talked about the psychology of either the victims or the batteries or the people involved, because at least when they come to trial, they come to trial as individuals. And there are real cultural differences. And I'm not in agreement that the batters are all exactly the same. I think that in part, getting together in groups tends to encourage a homogeneity of reporting, what's gone on, but I'm not convinced that they're all the same. And I think that keeping that sort of diversity in mind enables people to be more particularistic about thinking about that.