National Summit on Domestic Violence in API Communities: Summarized Proceedings

San Francisco June 28 & 29 2002

WHAT DOES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN LOOK LIKE IN OUR COMMUNITIES?
Huma Dar’s powerful poem brought the realities of anguish and fear straight into the room. Chic Dabby presented two models: the spiral of violence in women’s lives and the coiled spring of violence; and the analytic frameworks of patriarchy and gender oppression that inform our work. Advocates representing the Hmong, Japanese, Hawaiian, Korean, Lesbian, Indonesian, Pakistani, Chinese, Filipino, Transgender, Cambodian, and Vietnamese communities enumerated the specific forms of violence their women face. Mimi Kim presented findings and questions for future consideration from her report “Innovative Strategies to Address Domestic Violence in Asian and Pacific Islander Communities: Examining Themes, Models and Interventions”.

ROUNDTABLE: Discussion Questions

• What kinds of analyses [patriarchy, sexism, racism, feminism, other ‘-isms’] do you use to do your anti-violence work?
• Which of these analyses do you bring to your community? What works: why and why not?
• Strategy question: How do programs/advocates deal with conservative community members? – how do you decide about bringing them along or not, when to do so, who should approach them, balancing confrontation with politeness.
• Strategy question: How are we affected when our sense of safety [through direct or veiled threats] and integrity coming under attack? How does it affect our interventions?
• How do we discuss gender oppression, gender equality and equity with our women?

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & CULTURES OF PATRIARCHY
Mallika Dutt showed her award-winning music video Rhythms of the Mind and linked anti-violence struggles to a human rights framework. The compelling images and messages of liberation from violence were simply inspiring. Sujata Warrier elaborated on traditional and contemporary views of culture, questioning who defines ‘culture’ and justifies its practices. Val Kalei Kanuha stripped away the claims that colonization is to blame for domestic violence and strengthened her argument by drawing parallels between the strategies of colonizers and those used by men to justify violence against women. Leti Volpp analyzed the use of the ‘cultural defense’ in the community and in the courts by raising questions about our role in spreading notions of culture and negotiating between sexism and racism.

ROUNDTABLE: Discussion Questions

• How does our own understanding of culture impact the work we do on violence against women? Are there ways in which a reconceptualization of the term as outlined by the panel enhance or detract from the work?
• How do we talk about culture both within our own communities, in other API communities and with non-Asian communities? How does our position as an “authentic insider” impact the awareness of our cultures?
• How and when do we begin to debunk and resist explanations that privilege ethnicity over gender?
• How does change occur? Does it lead to changes in the patriarchal structures that contribute to violence against women?
• How do we work with the issue of cultural defense in the legal arena? How do “cultural” explanations work for the victim and for the perpetrator? Can we use these explanations for one and not for the other? How does this impact our attempts to come to a universal understanding of violence against all API women as well as for particular API communities?
• How do we critique our own inscriptions in the structures of power as we discuss the issue of violence against women in our own communities?

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RELATED HOMICIDES
Chic Dabby framed the extent of the problem by enumerating the range of killings and deaths that are conceptualized as domestic violence related homicides, and the harm done to children and surviving family members. Shamita Das Dasgupta discussed how culture should not be implicated in gendered homicides and described her research on domestic violence homicides in the South Asian community. Judy Chen talked about institutional and community responses to homicides or threats of homicide; fatality reviews; understanding fatalities in the context of systems failure and community complicity; and recommended changes in systems, community responses, and advocacy strategies. Leni Marin and Debbie Lee gave examples that simultaneously emphasized community organizing and system accountability.

ROUNDTABLE: Discussion Questions

• What kinds of domestic violence related homicides are you hearing about in your ethnic &/or geographic community? What are the trends?
• What do we do in our interactions with the criminal legal system, especially about “cultural defense” claims?
  • When the perpetrator[s] are batterers/abusive family members?
  • When the perpetrator is a battered woman?
• How does your agency handle requests for “cultural defense” “expert“ witnesses?
• From a research point of view, should domestic violence related homicides be “counted” as API even when the killer is API but the victim is not; or only when the victim is API [regardless of killer’s ethnicity]?
• Do you engage in community organizing following a homicide? What sort? What are the positives and negatives?
• What is the impact on survivors, other women you are working with?
• What’s happening to women who kill their abusers?
• What’s happening to women who attempt mother-child suicide?
• What do you think about the media coverage – in the mainstream and ethnic press following domestic violence homicide in your community? What are the advantages and disadvantages of typical coverage?

CHILDREN, YOUTH & THEIR ABUSED MOTHERS
Performances by the Young Asian Women Against Violence Project dramatically showed the effects of intra-familial violence on our youth. Chic Dabby conceptualized the issue as that of “our failure to protect”; asking where power and powerlessness rest and shift within the family; and described the violent landscape within the home. Grace Huang presented the political landscape outside the home taking up policy issues re: TANF, the Green Book, marriage promotion, and fatherhood initiatives. Emma Catague and Pusi Sa’au described a model program that relies on community organizing and family participation. Beckie Masaki summarized our successes in building interventions at systemic, familial and advocacy levels centered on mothers and their children.

ROUNDTABLE: Discussion Questions

• Are we addressing the issue of kids witnessing abuse effectively in our communities? If not, why not?
• What is the relationship between children and parents like in violent homes?
• How are children used by batterer[s], by systems, by their mothers?
• What would mother-focused, mother-empowering interventions look like?
• When you make a report to CPS; how do you engage the mother?
• How do the current proposals encouraging marriage affect battered women and kids in the API community?
• Are the models of "husband/wife" reflective of what API families look like?
• How are the immigrant restrictions on TANF, other benefits affecting our families?
• Are the TANF Work programs user friendly/ culturally relevant/ provide language access? How do these programs affect women who are pre-literate?
• What would a TANF program that would really help API battered women out of poverty look like?

Back to Publications