Not All Violence in Relationships Is "Domestic Violence"
![handle is hein.journals/brklr86 and id is 49 raw text is: Not All Violence in Relationships Is
Domestic Violence
Tamara Kuennent
INTRODUCTION
The occurrence of violence between intimate partners is
a fact.' Domestic violence, however, is something different.
According to practitioners, as well as anti-domestic violence
activists and advocates, domestic violence is a pattern of acts
that may (or may not) include physical violence, perpetrated by
one person in an intimate relationship for the specific purpose of
gaining power and control over the other.2 When anti-domestic
violence activists and feminist legal academics use the term
domestic violence, we refer to this social construct.3
Despite this discerning construct, requiring both a
pattern and a motive, the term domestic violence has come to
be synonymous with a single act of physical violence in an
t Professor of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law. I wish to
thank Rachel Camp, Alan Chen, Courtney Cross, Deborah Epstein, Michele Gilman,
Laurie Kohn, Chris Lasch, Jessica Miles, Natalie Nanasi, Steve Pepper, Govind Persad,
Jane Stoever, and the DU Law faculty for invaluable comments and edits, and
particularly Natalie Spiess for her diligent and thorough research assistance.
1 I acknowledge that my use of the word fact in an article about social
constructs might be distracting. The notion that violence is a fact rather a highly
contested construct, in and of itself, is the subject of many articles. For the purposes of
this article, I do not opine on what the term violence means but start from the premise
that it is a human activity that has been documented throughout history. What I am
interested in are how and why the public understands its existence as a social problem
at this particular juncture in time.
2 Domestic violence (also called intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic abuse
or relationship abuse) is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and
control over another partner in an intimate relationship. What Is Domestic Violence?, NAT'L
DoMEsTIc VIOLENCE HOTLINE, https://www.thehotline.orglis-this-abuse/abuse-defined/
[https://perma.cc/7Z65-EWRW]; see also infra Part II for further discussion.
3 See, e.g., Elizabeth M. Schneider, Domestic Violence Law Reform in the
Twenty-First Century: Looking Back and Looking Forward, 42 FAM. L.Q. 353, 356 (2008)
('The core concept is the exercise of power and control .... ); Edward S. Snyder & Laura
W. Morgan, Domestic Violence. Ten Years Later, 19 J. AM. ACAD. MATRIM. LAw. 33, 33 n.2
(2004) ('Domestic violence' occurs when one intimate partner uses physical violence,
threats, stalking, harassment, or emotional or financial abuse to control, manipulate,
coerce, or intimidate the other partner.).
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Not All Violence in Relationships Is "Domestic Violence"
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