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Biopower and Battered Women

Jessica Bargar

January 31, 2008

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Edna Ballington’s desire to protect her only child from the man who had abused

her throughout their marriage resulted in her strangulation death. A beating from a

candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives sent his wife to the Emergency Room.

Janet Taylor was asphyxiated with a t-shirt after failing to heed her ex-husband’s

warnings that he would “kill [her] if [she] didn’t come home.” These cases are far from

being isolated. Estimates from the American Medical Association (AMA) state that

“nearly one quarter of women in the United States – more than 12 million – will be

abused by a current or former partner some time during their lives” (Flitcraft et al 6).

Furthermore, the AMA estimates that “52% of female murder victims were killed by a

current or former partner” (Flitcraft et al 6) and that between 22% and 35% of women

who come to emergency rooms each year are there because of incidents of domestic

violence. Forty percent of women who are physically abused by their partners are first

battered when they are pregnant, and their children are sometimes born with broken

bones and ruptured organs (Schneider 2000).

The ongoing pervasiveness of domestic violence in American society, which is

documented in news reports and addressed on a yearly basis in the legislature of South

Carolina (and other states with poor records), shows few signs of lessening. For domestic

violence-related homicides, South Carolina is ranked sixth in the nation; 50 were

perpetrated last year, and 40 had female victims (Blakeney 2008). South Carolina has

been chosen as the state whose laws and media will be examined in this paper because it

consistently has one of the highest rankings for domestic violence as well as one of the

highest rankings for the number of women killed by men each year.
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Foucault’s concept of biopower, which emphasizes the self-regulation of the

individual according to society’s norms, is a useful mechanism for understanding the

pressures that battered women face in the media and the legal system. The ownership and

control of battered women’s bodies is reinforced in 3 areas: by the batterer, by the media,

and by the legal system. News coverage of domestic violence suggests normative

measures such as seeking women’s shelters and confronting an abuser in court as

solutions to battering. One of these ‘solutions,’ the legal system, serves as a reflection of

the dominant attitudes and concerns among lawmakers, which are inadequate.

Relationships between the batterers, the media, and the legal system reinforce key

messages about the victim’s role in the battering and re-victimize them. By framing the

victims of domestic violence as unwilling to self-regulate to society’s standards,

rhetorical undercurrents of biopower in the media and the legal system excuse the

inadequate measures taken to protect victims and their interests.

Biopower

Foucault gave the name of “biopower” to the methods by which governments can

exert social control over their subjects (1975). “Biopower is not… the subjugation of a

docile population, but consists instead in the subtle, ubiquitous and continuous promotion

of self-discipline,” according to Lee and Jackson’s analysis (2002, 117). The societal

employment of the forces of biopower inherently relies upon the willingness of the

individual to self-regulate. The development of the sciences during the 19th century,

particularly psychiatry and medicine, is referenced as a turning point; “a normalizing

society is the historical outcome of a technology of power centered on life” (Foucault

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1984, 266). These fields provide “experts” that are able to affect how individuals

perceive themselves, thereby exerting power over others’ bodies (Lee and Jackson,

2002).

Foucault speaks of biopower as a result of the process by which a practice

becomes taboo and then is reintroduced to society. In this process, greater society attains

the power the individual had in performing the newly taboo practice and constrains it in a

normative way that can be profited from, either economically or politically (Foucault,

1975). In this way, an individual’s actions can be regulated by the government in a

seemingly legitimate and non-coercive way. An example of this, cited by Foucault, is the

power over life and death. This power was held by the head of the family and known as

patria potestas in ancient times. As government developed and man left the warlike state

of nature that Hobbes describes, the power of death became the power of the sovereign

ruler. This power became further regulated, requiring justification by the sovereign in

order to kill subjects. This process of adapting the power over life and death changed

from personal initiative to being controlled by the government, to being regulated even

within the government (Foucault 1984).

It is from this process that biopower emerged; “this death that was based on the

right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social

body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life” (Foucault 1984, 259). As the focus of power

shifted from death to life, new mechanisms of control were necessary to ensure the

prolonging of the state’s control over its people. This shift from power over death was

pragmatic; “death is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it” (Foucault 1984, 261).

Biopower, rather than threatening an end to life, seeks to regulate life and use
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population control. These two goals of biopower mean that sex is the most important life

function from a power standpoint, and that law becomes regulative, rather than punitive,

in order to extend its power (Foucault 1984). Women are particularly affected by this;

“the hysterization of women, which involved a thorough medicalization of their bodies

and their sex, was carried out in the name of the responsibility they owed to the health of

their children, the solidity of the family institution, and the safe-guarding of

society” (Foucault 1984, 268). The importance of sex to a woman’s childbearing role

makes women more susceptible to the effects of biopower, which is seen in the obsessive

regulation of pregnancy, as well as the censure of battered mothers. The significance of

the mother role to the regulatory effects of biopower is that when women are battered,

they are not only victims of violence, but also irresponsible women. This is because the

mother role positions them both as the smallest unit of population control and as a means

of conveying societal norms to the next generation.

Foucault’s concept of biopower lends itself to the American perception of the

battered woman’s body. In cases of domestic violence, the batterer exercises power over

the body of the victim in a way that is taboo to greater society. However, the body is not

meant to be the victim’s, either. It is the individual’s choice to remain under the influence

of a batterer that is demonized, and the normative response that is presented to victims is

to rely on the court system to provide relief. The battered individual must present herself

to the court and submit to the ruling of a judge in order to demonstrate an acceptable

form of self-regulation. For victims, this may be unthinkable, and most drop the charges

they file against their abuser. For the 36,000 domestic violence victims in South Carolina
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who reported instances of abuse in 2005, only 1,900 cases were brought to court, and

only 1330 men were convicted (Dykes 2006).

The batterer is physically a legitimate actor in this scenario, but is ignored in the

process of normalizing the behavior of the “sick” victim. It is the responsibility of the

victim to act on her own behalf; the government will meet the victim to “cure” the social

ill only after the victim has overcome the obstacle of escaping immediate danger.

Many victims of domestic violence are all too aware of the folly of relying on a

judge to protect them. According to the AMA (2000) 22% of women murdered in 1990

were killed by ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands, and between 40% and 63% of homeless

women in New York were fleeing spousal abuse (Fine and Weis, 2000). Foucault states

that it is the individual, encouraged by society, who invests in his or her own body to

make it powerful, but that once that power is accumulated, regulations are leveled against

it (1975). In the case of battered women, it may be more accurate to clarify that point by

stating that it is the power they are perceived to have that is attempted to be influenced by

the agents of biopower.

Biopower is generally invested in the hands of the family doctor in the case of

domestic violence. The American Medical Association released a pamphlet entitled

“Diagnostic and Treatment Guidelines on Domestic Violence” in 2000 to instruct doctors

on proper protocol and to suggest questions to ask when dealing with potential victims.

The pamphlet repeatedly emphasizes the importance of doctors as a means of detecting

domestic violence, since they are a primary point of contact with victims of domestic

violence. It is important to stress that Foucault does not conceive of biopower as being a

negative force; it is the replacement to obedience at the threat of death. However,

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biopower does mean that the body is not considered completely sovereign to the

individual. Biopower emphasizes the regulation of the body and the protection of life, as

instructed by outside influences (Foucault 1975). Physicians play a positive role in a form

of regulation that is necessary. Unfortunately, physicians are not the voices that are most

well represented when cases of domestic violence are made public. Patriarchal voices

compete with the messages of health professionals in the popular media. In this way, the

bodies of battered women become a physical and metaphorical battleground over which

the state and the batterer seek power.

A Foucaultian analysis, using the concept of biopower, will be used to

critique the news coverage of a domestic violence homicide case in South Carolina. The

case chosen is relevant for its timeliness and the unusual amount of media coverage that

it go. Through close-textual analysis of the media coverage, parallels will be drawn to

legal issues and batterer justifications for violence, ultimately showing the underlying

attitudes that influence the public perception of domestic violence and its causes.

The Voice of the Male Batterer

Many public perceptions of abused women seem to be in common with those of

another interested party: the batterers. Often, victims of domestic violence do not feel

safe speaking to others about their experiences (AMA 2000), which allows others to

speak of victims’ experiences in their own terms. Anderson and Umberson (2001)

conducted a study throughout 1995 and 1996 in which they interviewed 33 men who had

been convicted on domestic violence charges. The men were participating in a program to

rehabilitate batterers, and were recruited for the study during orientation meetings, in
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order to reduce the amount of influence that the counseling sessions would have on their

responses to questions about past acts of domestic violence (Anderson and Umberson

2001).

Anderson and Umberson found that batterers “constructed their violence as a

rational response to extreme provocation, a loss of control, or a minor incident that was

blown out of proportion” (362). Several gendered aspects were found in the

rationalizations provided by the men. “They [the men] depicted their violence as rational,

effective, and explosive, whereas women’s violence was represented as hysterical, trivial,

or ineffectual,” (Anderson and Umberson 363). One interviewee from their study

describes reciprocal violence from his partner this way: “She has got no control. She sees

something and she don’t like it, she’ll go and pull my hair, scratch me, and [act] paranoid,

crazy, screaming loud, make everybody look at her, and call the police, you know. Just

nuts” (365). Batterers used this framing of events to establish their lack of control over

the situation, removing agency for their actions.

Furthermore, the men claimed that the women were responsible for the violence

inflicted upon them, citing past relationships that were not classified by battering, as well

as their partner’s perceived personality flaws or “controlling” natures (Anderson and

Umberson 2001). Several of the men even stated that they had convinced their partners

that the battering was their own fault; as one said, “I got her to accept 50/50 blame for the

reason why she actually got hit” (Anderson and Umberson 368). Although the men were

questioned in detail about the “controlling” actions that their partners displayed, none

were able to cite specific behaviors that they considered “controlling” (368).
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Despite the fact that the study participants overwhelmingly shifted the blame for

their actions by implicating their partners of provoking the violence, the four men in the

study who suffered reciprocal violence from their partners prevented the women from

being arrested with them (Anderson and Umberson 2001). Anderson and Umberson

concluded from this that “when batterers ‘protect’ their partners from arrest, their

oppressor becomes a powerful criminal justice system rather than a woman” (370).

Ironically, the men blamed their own arrest upon gender bias in the criminal justice

system, stating that the word of women was more powerful than their own testimony

because of the way in which the laws were written (Anderson and Umberson 2001).

These contradicting messages from the men served two purposes: to establish the power

of their masculinity, despite reciprocal violence from women, and to portray themselves

as victims of the masculinized criminal justice system (Anderson and Umberson 2001).

Berns (2001) writes of this same phenomenon in the American media, calling it

“patriarchal resistance.”

There were recurring themes of female responsibility, as well as male

victimization by the criminal justice system, found throughout the interviews with the

batterers, and Anderson and Umberson also found that the participants in the study

“gendered violence through their depictions and interpretations of violence” (362) by

using language that emphasized traditional notions of masculinity and femininity.

Furthermore, the batterer’s use of violence to re-establish a perception of gender roles

was effective, particularly since the men were able to convince their battered partners that

they (the women) were to blame. Although the blame assignment had a notably
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contradictory nature, it served to reinforce beliefs of masculine dominance, while

excusing the “rational” actions of the batterers (Anderson and Umberson 2001).

These claims reflect the modes of ritualistic scapegoating. Burke (1989) describes

several ways in which a ritualistic scapegoat may be framed as worthy of “sacrifice.” One

is that the scapegoat may be labeled an “offender against legal or moral justice, so that he

“deserves” what he gets” (294), and another is that the scapegoat may be prepared by a

fatalistic approach to his or her fate. The batterer who forced his wife to accept blame for

her abuse falls into the first category, while the second mechanism of ritual scapegoating

is more commonly found in media coverage, particularly coverage of domestic violence

homicides. Berns’ findings in the media reflected many of the same attitudes about

domestic violence as those expressed by batterers, although they were framed slightly

differently. In a study which included articles found in men’s and political magazines

between 1970 and 1999; she found that 81% of those surveyed included the patriarchal-

resistance perspective.

The Media

Foucault (1975) describes the phenomenon of biopower and its non-coercive

property as being “the usual strategic development of a struggle” (56). The consistency of

the patterns of rationale for domestic violence between individual batterers and the media

show the nature of the struggle that is being developed. The power of the male batterer

over his victim is being challenged, and the media is one of the forums in which

“surveillance and control” is being used to establish normative behaviors to counteract it

via the introduction of normalization. Berns argues that there is a two step process used
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by the media to mitigate the actions of abusers: the first, which she named “degendering

the violence,” was to reframe the issue as being unrelated to gender, and as an issue of

“human violence” instead; the second, “gendering the blame,” was to employ victim

blaming and cite the physical and emotional ‘weakness’ of women as the cause for their

abuse (Berns 2001). “Gendering the blame” is very similar to the fatalistic approach of

preparing a scapegoat that Burke describes.

The power of the public over the body of the abused can be seen in the questions

that many journalists have asked. Repeatedly, they question why she stays and why she

allows this to happen to her. The victim carries the responsibility for her abuser’s actions,

and there is the implicit suggestion that she belongs to society and that she is failing it by

staying with her abuser. The battered woman is failing to self-regulate, and therefore, not

holding herself to the normative standards of society. Battering is framed as a problem

with the woman because society distinguishes women from men for their childbearing

qualities (Schneider 2000). The significance of this distinction is due to the central role

that women have to the two modes of biopower: population control and teaching their

children normative behaviors. Therefore, when a woman is abused, it becomes a concern

of society if she gives birth to a child with ruptured organs or teaches by example that

abuse is acceptable. According to Schneider, when a mother stays in an abusive

relationship, she faces condemnation for her ‘choice’ of romantic love over her duty to

her children, which is framed as selfish. Since the onset of pregnancy frequently

coincides with the beginnings of abuse in a relationship, the censure of battered mothers

is cause for concern.

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Erica Olson is an example of a South Carolina woman caught in this struggle. The

last memory that Olson’s 6-year-old daughter has of her mother is witnessing the 25-

year-old being murdered by her boyfriend, Christopher Ellis. A mother of two, Olson was

also found to be pregnant at the time of her death. In the months prior to the attack, Olson

worked at National Health Care, and was saving portions of each paycheck in order to

return with her children to the West Coast, where her mother lives. In the short two years

that Olson lived in South Carolina, she had been pushed down the stairs, had her car

windows smashed, been hospitalized repeatedly for injuries inflicted by Ellis, and fled to

a women’s shelter. Other times, she had kicked him out of the apartment, only for him to

break in. In their final altercation, Ellis stabbed Olson 25 times in the chest.

The case of Erica Olson seems as if it should be framed differently than the

general media coverage; after all, she had taken action to escape her boyfriend’s abuse.

However, the articles written in the aftermath of her murder did not sway from the

attitudes that Berns observed in her study or from Burke’s notion of the ritualistic

scapegoat. Initial reports of the slaying implied that Olson had reciprocated the violence,

and that it was the result of a “dispute that turned violent” (Smith 2006), implying that

she was at fault for her own death - the first means of ritualistic scapegoating. A popular

study, which states that men and women commit acts of violence against each other at

equal rates, is recognized to have made a serious flaw: in it, there is no distinction

between an attack and an act of self-defense (Berns, 2001).

Also, the statistics quoted in each article relating to the Olson case were gender

neutral, deemphasizing the percentage of domestic violence performed against women.

“Degendering the problem,” as Berns terms this, is done in several ways by the news
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media. Like the male batterers interviewed by Anderson and Umbertson, many of the

articles Berns studied claim that the emphasis on men as abusers is due to bias in the

criminal justice system, and the magazines frequently reference studies that discuss

reciprocal violence. The “degendering of violence” in the Olson case was partially

corrected when her 6-year-old daughter told police that Ellis, the boyfriend, had inflicted

his own wounds and it was discovered that only one weapon had been involved. This was

granted additional validity by the media when it was found that Ellis had previously spent

time in jail after stabbing another man in the back after the end of a verbal altercation

(Smith 2006).

To add credibility through a woman’s voice, articles on “human violence” are

frequently assigned to female reporters (Berns, 2001). All 6 articles covering the Olson

case were written by female staff members of the Anderson Independent-Mail. The

assignment of women to articles about domestic violence results in implications of

female complicity to the attitudes being conveyed in the news coverage. If a man were to

condemn or criticize the actions of a battered woman, he would be under more scrutiny

than another woman would be. It is implied that women inherently know and understand

the struggles that other women undergo and that their interpretation of these struggles

will be more accurate than a male voice.

“Gendering the blame” focuses on the vulnerability of women to attack, which

relates it to the foreshadowing of fate that makes up the second means of providing a

ritualistic scapegoat. Articles, even those in women’s magazines, minimize the liability of

the batterer, instead emphasizing the responsibility of the woman to escape or cope with

the abuse (Berns 2001). The process of “gendering the blame” was also apparent in the
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media coverage of Erica Olson’s death. The opening line of one particularly fatalistic

article reads, “Erica Olson had a gift for helping others, but she fell short of being able to

help herself” (Smith 2006). Later in the same article, the journalist questions why Olson

did not leave her abuser. In this question lies the implication for another: “why did she

fail.” One article comments, “the attempts she made at being her own savior came too

late” (Smith 2006), implying that a perceived hesitation by Olson is to blame. There is

the inference that Olson should have known better and that she should have been able to

help herself. This is reinforced by suggestions for battered women to go to shelters or

seek aid from friends at the end of some of the articles. While fatalistically pointing out

the vulnerability of abused women to their fates, the news media also implies that they

are responsible for them. Interestingly, the fact that Olson had sought shelter in a

government-sponsored shelter is only mentioned in one of the articles. The normative

voice in the media coverage of the murder emphasizes the need for battered women to

save themselves, despite the difficulty Olson found in achieving just that.

This is biopower rhetoric in practice; battered women are framed as the sole

determiners of their own fates in relationship and the physical and emotional power of the

other actor in the relationship is ignored. Cases of women who are abusers are

emphasized, while female victims are held responsible for their own injuries and deaths.

Berns cites one particularly atrocious quote on victims of domestic violence: “if women

are not expected to think and act for themselves, if their self-esteem is in shambles and

their dependency is characterized as feminine, the fault cannot be laid at the feet of men’”

(Sherven and Sniechowski, qtd. in Berns 2001, 271). As evidenced in Berns’ findings, the

media hold women responsible for the violent acts of others against them.
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Another theme found throughout the media coverage of the Olson case is her

allegedly positive attitude in the face of severe physical abuse prior to her death. One

article states that, “she just made the best of a bad situation” (Smith 2006). A friend is

quoted as saying that “you would never know that anything was going on” (Smith 2006).

This is surprising, considering that Olson had charged Ellis with criminal domestic

violence two months prior to her death, that a coworker was familiar with Olson’s plan to

save money to move back to be with her mother, and that other coworkers had urged

Olson to leave.

The media coverage of the Olson case is atypical only in the sense that the case is

covered at all; few domestic homicides are considered newsworthy enough to escape

confinement to the obituary pages. It is the brutality of the Olson case, which the coroner

called “one of the most violent deaths I have seen in recent years” (Smith 2006), which

ensured its coverage in her hometown.

The uniformity of the rationale for domestic violence between individual batterers

and the media show the nature of the struggle that Foucault depicts via biopower. The

power of the male batterer over his victim is being challenged by victim’s rights

advocates, and the media is a means of providing “surveillance and control” of the public

perception. The media shifts responsibility for the actions of the batterer to the victim by

implying that the victim is “sick” and has actively chosen their fate. This message is

being used to establish normative behaviors (i.e. seeking aid from the courts or ‘just

leaving’) among a group of people whose “choice” to be battered affects future

generations. This explains the emphasis on the urgency of seeking women’s shelters in
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the media coverage of the Olson case, as well as the narrative of saving oneself (which is

essentially Foucault’s concept of power through self-regulation).

The Mousetrap in the Legal System

Despite good intentions, questioning possible victims of domestic violence and

providing women’s shelters only goes so far; effective state laws are crucial to helping a

victim after disclosure. Olson is noted to have spoken about Ellis’ abuse to the staff at the

pregnancy center she regularly went to during her most recent pregnancy. However,

South Carolina law has been slow to react to the pervasiveness of domestic violence

within its borders. Domestic violence did not become a felony until 2003, and then only

the third offense was considered felonious; it is still not classified as a violent crime

(LeBlanc 2002). The fines leveled against first-time offenders may be suspended if the

batterer completes a 26-week treatment program (Blakeney 2008). Battering’s lack of

distinction as a violent crime holds serious consequences: the charge may be removed

from police records because batterers can choose to go into trial diversion programs

(LeBlanc 2002). Furthermore, prior to 2002, victims of domestic violence were only able

to request a restraining order in the county in which the abuse had taken place (LeBlanc

2002).

However, it is not only laws such as these that serve to endanger battered women;

battered mothers face scrutiny in the courts that frequently condemns them for the acts of

their partners. Hedda Nussbaum, made famous by the death of a child at the hands of her

abusive husband, was roundly criticized for her failure as a mother to protect her

daughter from the man that she could not even protect herself from. Unfortunately, in
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some states, women who do not interfere when their children are also battered end up

with jail terms. Their ‘complicity’ in the crime that their partners commit, which is

expressed by their emotional and sometimes physical inability to confront the common

attacker, condemns them. Says Schneider (2000), “the mother, not the father who

commits the violence, is likely to be held responsible for child abuse or neglect either

because of her presumed failure to protect her child or because of her silence” (153).

The Dilemma

What, then, must the woman truly consider when she decides whether to stay or

leave an abusive relationship? In South Carolina, if she presses charges, the abuser may

face no jail time; there is no mandatory retention time, and many batterers are released

immediately after booking. Furthermore, although second and third offenses may require

jail time, officers rarely have the means to verify whether the batterer is a repeat offender.

This is also impacted by outdated records.

There is also the concept of the unknown. Leaving a batterer is not a guarantee of

safety; women are frequently killed by ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands after leaving an

abusive relationship. Furthermore, many women are at least partially financially

dependent upon their partners, and find themselves homeless and jobless when they leave

an abusive relationship. Part of the nature of abuse is the isolation that many victims face;

the severity of this can range from literally being held in captivity to reduced contact with

past acquaintances because of shame or embarrassment (Flitcraft et al. 2000). This

isolation may mean that the abuser is the only close human contact that the victim has.
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Leaving an abusive situation is daunting for many women because they are unconvinced

that doing so will improve their state of living, and they are right to be skeptical.

Ultimately, when the state relies on biopower, it is exerting a measure of control

over the population through a seemingly legitimate means of regularization – the medical

field. However, the nature of biopower, which is reliant on self-regulation to the

standards of normalization set by “experts,” allows the government to be laissez-faire

concerning policies. In many cases, individuals do self-regulate to meet the expected

norms. However, the loss of power over their own bodies denies battered women this

ability.

When the forces of biopower seek to heal the battered “sick,” they fail to attend to

the true sickness that is perpetuated through them; the media, the medical profession, and

the legal system confuse which party is truly sick and aid the oppressor. A woman may

be freed from an abusive relationship due to the interference of her doctor, but the abuser

can, and often does, go on to abuse others. A fine or 30 days in jail will not change the

psychology of a batterer, and the few programs that treat batterers rarely remove the men

from the relationships in which they are abusive. Furthermore, batterer treatment

programs are not compulsory; they are an option that may or may not be presented as an

alternative to jail time.

The fight over battered women’s bodies takes place between the parties of the

batterer, the government, the media, and the medical field. On one hand, the woman is

urged to take action; on the other, she is told that she is helpless. Battered women are

caught between two forces; those of biopower (expressed by the government and the

medical field) and those of patriarchy (the batterer and the media). Battering is a cross-
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section of these forces, and the result is that both place more responsibility upon the

victim for the batterer’s actions. In perpetuating the stigma of the “sick” victim and

reiterating the mindset of the batterer, the media and the legal system create further

obstacles to the normalization and self-regulation that they condemn battered women for

failing to achieve. For this, the ritualized scapegoat of Burke’s metaphor fulfills its

purpose to the bitter end: it dies.

Works Cited:

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Berns, N. (2001). Degendering the Problem and Gendering the Blame: Political
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(2008). Criminal Domestic Violence. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from South Carolina
Bench Book for Summary Court Judges Web Site: http:// www.
sccourts.org/summaryCourtBenchBook/HTML /OffensesE.htm