Constructing the Battered Woman

IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN thirty years since feminists opened the first battered women's shelter in the United States. Feminist organizing has enhanced the safety of many women. Yet, despite organized and individ ual resistance by survivor activists and other feminists, batterers continue to abuse women. Many of those women are still unable to obtain the resources necessary to escape violence. Scarce funding, lack of access to political and social resources, and the entrenched capitalist, white supremacist heteropatriarchy of the United States impede the U.S. femi nist antiviolence movement. Developing robust, effective feminist organi zations in a patriarchal society presents a formidable challenge to women's movements. Feminist organizations frequently reproduce classist, racist, heterosexist, ableist, and sexist organizational forms and practices. In this article, which draws on my interview research, I contend that shelter workers are likely to perceive women abused by women rather than by men as not fitting their model of the real battered woman. Such percep tions may lead workers to marginalize lesbians and bisexual women.' Racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, and other forms of oppression are institutionalized in complex ways in feminist organiza tions. Whatever their political commitments, workers in complex organi