Survivor Injustice

Starred review from June 26, 2023
Jezebel staff writer Cheung (A Woman’s Place) delivers an insightful overview of contemporary American women’s ability to control and protect their own bodies. Drawing from interviews, statistics, and reportage, Cheung argues that there is an insidious correlation between intimate violence against women and government policy. Conservative legislation restricting women’s reproductive rights, for example, is redolent of tactics commonly used by abusers, such as forcing their partners to carry unwanted pregnancies or to have unwanted abortions. Though “economic sabotage... ranks among the top tactics used in abusive relationships,” Cheung contends that government programs and consumer regulations make it easy for abusers “to take out massive loans in their victims’ name,” tank credit scores, or attach their debt to their victims’ debt as a way to “entrap” a partner financially. Elsewhere, Cheung highlights contradictory criminal court cases in which some women have been jailed for not protecting their children from abusive partners, while others have been imprisoned for fleeing with their kids from abusive relationships. The author’s smart reframing of harmful government policies through the lens of intimate partner violence—she calls the U.S. government “the ultimate abuser”—is backed up by a wealth of detail and careful analysis. It’s an important contribution to the struggle for women’s rights.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
A comprehensive analysis of how American systems deny survivors of gender-based violence justice, comfort, and power. According to Jezebel staff writer Cheung, a survivor of sexual assault, domestic violence has long been considered a "private" and "apolitical" matter created and perpetuated by violent individuals. However, the author argues convincingly that the opposite is true. In reality, every aspect of America's political system--from the Senate, which grants disproportionate power to states with the highest rates of domestic abuse, to direct and indirect suppression of survivors' attempts to vote and the rampant criminalization and subsequent incarceration of survivors--imbues abusers with power and denies survivors the ability to participate in the most basic aspects of democracy. The silencing of these critical voices has serious consequences for the safety of all survivors. Cheung documents how survivors are forced to co-parent with their rapists or lose custody of their children to their abuser, enforced in the courts of judges often appointed by presidents with their own histories as abusers. She also discusses how economic insecurity often keeps survivors in abusive relationships, a pattern reinforced by gendered wage gaps that particularly affect women of color. "Domestic violence, in fact, is not just political," writes the author, "but quite literally a feature and consequence of greater systems of state violence: State and interpersonal violence are inseparable from each other, feeding each other in an endless cycle. Capitalist policies allow domestic abuse to thrive. Denied living wages and universal health care, many women are entrapped in abusive relationships because their abuser provides them health insurance, shelter, or money in general, and the state does not." Cheung's potent analysis, deep research, and compulsively readable prose coalesce into a refreshingly new, significant approach to ending domestic abuse. She is incredibly adept at blending anecdotal and statistical evidence into a clear global picture of a shockingly disturbing reality. An astonishingly original, powerfully honest vision for true survivor justice.

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