"Abusive Partners Register" proposed

Via the Observer newspaper comes news that Jacqui Smith is planning to inform women that their boyfriends have a history of violence against women. The information about these abusive partners would be stored on a register similar to the Sex Offenders' Register (which already stores the details of rapists as well as paedophiles).

In some ways it is difficult to be against this idea. Particularly as a man, I feel conscious that any objection I might make will be spun as "men defending the privilege of other men to abuse women". Also, domestic violence is hideous and any measure that can realistically address the issue should be considered.

If it weren't for the fact that this government has already introduced so many measures giving the police access to our private lives, then I would probably be willing to let this one slide. But, as the Observer article highlights, allowing them to monitor (and police!) the romantic (and sex) lives of adults is very disconcerting indeed.

The article also highlights some other areas of concern:

The idea of the state interfering in adults' love lives will be highly sensitive, raising new questions over privacy and over whether any genuinely repentant offenders would be able to leave their pasts behind. After a series of errors by the Criminal Records Bureau, where job applicants were wrongly accused of having a criminal past, there will also be concerns over the potentially devastating consequences of mistaken identity.

...

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, questioned whether police had the resources to monitor the relationships of serial perpetrators.

Another point besides these that worries me is that ultimately this is of a kind with the fallacy of "Why didn't she just leave him?" As if human beings are rational about the emotional decisions they make! Ms Smith told the Observer, "Arguably there is a duty of care, if you know that this guy has already beaten up women, to consider whether you should warn the next woman." As though that information will automatically make someone reconsider their emotional responses, or necessarily stop them making a mistake. Lord knows, I have seen what I was getting into with bad situations (not violent, but certainly not healthy either) and still gone right ahead and done it. Why should we expect that knowing it in advance would have any good effect? Indeed, there is a danger that instead of giving a victim the tools to escape when she needs to, she may end up blaming herself (after all, it must be her fault, because they warned her and she didn't listen...) and on an emotional level feel she deserves the punishment as a result. And heck, I imagine we're all familiar of the script of a person falling in love, hir friends all warning hir against the new partner, and the warnings all being rejected (I suppose at least the usual "you're just jealous" line wouldn't work with the State) - until suddenly the awful truth (that hir friends were right all along) becomes painfully clear to the victim.

Incidentally, how would it work to warn someone that the person with whom they're just beginning a relationship happens to have had previous convictions for domestic violence? Do a pair of police officers just turn up at the door/your workplace and say, "We have some information for you"? Is it in the form of an official letter? A telephone call? (I imagine that an email might conceivably end up being labelled as spam and go unread!) What sort of an impact would any of those things have on someone - someone who is potentially vulnerable emotionally? Considering that there is some evidence that certain people repeat patterns in their emotional lives, it is at least possible that some of the women who are warned about violent partners may have had abusive partners in the past as well. On the one hand, such women probably need advising more than most about their partner's violent history, but equally, unless that advice was delivered incredibly sensitively, I can imagine it being an immense blow to a person's self-esteem. If she has, for example, just got back onto the dating scene after recovering from a previous abusive relationship, what would such a warning do to how she sees herself, and her ability to find a decent partner?

Then there's the question of how this sort of law would be treating women in general. There is a sense of an overbearing parental presence to this law, that makes it seem like all women, no matter how old or young, are seen as children who aren't able to deal with the world alone but need Mummy or Daddy looking over everything to make sure they don't get hurt. It is notable that, although Ms Smith mostly uses non-gender-specific terms like "partner", "offender" or "perpetrator" to refer to the violent one, the victim is always referred to as being a woman. Now, I know that there is not equivalence, and that men are MUCH less likely to be victims of spousal/partner abuse than women are. That's not really my point, but rather, the idea that women are victims in the eyes of this government. It seems to me that, although women often are victims of the crimes that Ms Smith has sought to address with her anti-prostitution legislation, and now with this new scheme, what this government, and Ms Smith in particular, are doing, is fetishising women's victim status - her victim status is, to the people making these laws, the only thing about a woman that makes her valuable.

Finally, there is the fact that this govenment has actually cut funding to those organisations who try to give practical help to women escaping from abusive relationships, or indeed, wanting to get out of prostitution. It's like they don't want to spend money on the hard work that actually helps, but want to find a short-cut through legislation to make it all magically disappear. There are some fine words in the article about plans to "study new ways of preventing sexual assaults, including changing male attitudes to consent" (clue here - women have similarly fucked-up ideas about consent at the moment - those surveys showing that a third of people think a woman is partly to blame for her rape don't show much difference between women and men on the issues of consent. We need to change attitudes across society!) However, the suggested methods don't inspire me with much confidence (and this government really does not seem to understand much about changing attitudes for the better on any subject).

So all-in-all, I do oppose the suggestion.

As a final word - on a BDSM forum I read, there is some debate as to whetehr this will affect BDSMers. A lot of commenters think that, as BDSM is completely distinct from abuse, that it won't have any effect. I wish I could be so confident, but since this government (and many radical feminists whose ideas they seem keen to adopt) don't seem to see the difference, I think it is at least possible that some kinky folks' lives could be fucked up by this too. However, I don't think it's likely.