Battered Women Quotes

“The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“We live in a world in which women are battered and are unable to flee from the men who beat them, although their door is theoretically standing wide open. One out of every four women becomes a victim of severe violence. One out of every two will be confronted by sexual harassment over her lifetime. These crimes are everywhere and can take place behind any front door in the country, every day, and barely elicit much more than a shrug of the shoulders and superficial dismay.”
― Natascha Kampusch, 3,096 Days

“There is not a woman born who desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for anyone who does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person from whom she takes it.”
― Susan B. Anthony

“The victim of encapsulating violence carries both the real fear and the memory of fear with her always. Together, they wash over her like an ocean, and if she does not learn to swim in that terrible sea, she goes under.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin

“And I want one day of respite, one day off, one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old, and I am asking you to give it to me. And how could I ask you for less--it is so little. And how could you offer me less: it is so little. Even in wars, there are days of truce. Go and organize a truce. Stop your side for one day. I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin

“In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived.
In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then.
In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women’s capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self and society. And each year she is stronger and there are more of her.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin

“In a shelter meant for battered women, there were only two reasons a person would decide to leave. One, she had decided to launch out on her own and begin a new life. Or two, she had decided to go back to the one who had hurt her. It happened all the time. Some women came here seven or eight times before they made the choice to give up on their marriages and refuse to live in a dangerous place.”
― Deborah Bedford A Morning Like This

“I want you to shave,” he repeated. “I like the little girl look.” It was then that June caught his meaning. “You mean...down...down there?” she asked.
“Yeah, down there.”
― Robert Davidson