This essay from Mattilda's Nobody Passes starts out with a brief history of the Battered Women's Movement, its emergence from the second wave of feminism and subsequent "victories" throughout the last forty years. What the author, Priya Kandaswamy, seeks to highlight is that in the process of trying to gain legitimacy and funding the movement kind of "sold out" from its original grassroots framework. In gaining government funding for social programs the movement has appropriated some the "language and goals of the state" therefore compromising some important factors. By creating campaign slogans like "domestic violence can happen to anyone" the movement reinforces the idea that domestic violence only matters when it starts happening to white middle and upper class women. Also, by portraying battered women as "innocent victims" it creates this ideal of the "good victim" that reinforces gender norms and creates an environment of having to pass and in turn marginalizes individuals on the bases of race, class, gender, and sexuality among other things. All in All, what the author aimed to point out is that the success of the Battered Women's Movement is due mostly to the fact that it no longer challenges "important principles of straight bourgeois society" but instead continues to perpetuate classist, racist, homophobic, and transphobic norms in dominate culture. I think this essay highlights the way the heteronormative structure can invade and continue to exact punishment on those outside of its form, even within one of the very programs that was initially intent on challenging those very norms. As well, in other essays by Dean Spade I've highlighted how the intersection of race, class and gender variant identities in folks leaves them incredibly vulnerable to domestic violence but they will more than likely be turned away from a shelter for the exact same reasons. I like this essay because it is a good example of how queer studies and feminist studies can lend themselves to each other to create a more inclusive understanding of an issue.
