ARTICLES:

If anything good comes out of our national obsession with the O.J. Simpson trial, it will be a heightened awareness concerning domestic violence. We certainly could use better information than we have now. To cite one common misperception: I have frequently heard it said that 95% of the victims of domestic violence are women, and I have no problem with that figure, as provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. But I do have a problem with the assumption that 95% of the perpetrators are men. Unfortunately, it's not so.

That women sometimes abuse women comes as no surprise to most lesbians, many of whom have seen evidence of such behavior. But somehow we always manage to deny the problem. "This is the family," we say, "and you don't tell."

Lesbians are consistently clear among ourselves about the identity of the One True Enemy--the defenders and enforcers of compulsory heterosexuality. They are the ones who abuse us. To keep ourselves safe from the onslaught of their hatred, we cultivate a sense of loyalty to our own community, which we have come to regard more and more as a family. Unfortunately, as we create that family, we are influenced by our families or origin, which are sometimes brutally dysfunctional. And just as traditional families may perpetuate dysfunction by hiding it, we hide ours--not only from others but also from ourselves. The very acts of violence we would vilify in a heterosexual context become acceptable within the lesbian family, tolerated in the name of protecting the lesbian community.

Our heterosexual friend complains to us about her boyfriend's abusive behavior. She says he won't let her talk to anyone but him, he yells at her and calls her names, he makes her feel crazy all the time, he isolates her, he threatens her, and he terrorizes her with words. We tell her to ditch him. Our lesbian friend tells us about her girlfriend's abusive behavior, describing it in exactly the same terms, and we tell her it's a difference in relationship style. We listen to our father berate our mother, and we tell her she shouldn't put up with it. We listen to a lesbian berate another lesbian, and we think, Well, she didn't hit her. We hear about a friend's having been raped by a man, and we want him in jail at least and preferably dead; we hear about a woman raping another woman, and we figure it was just a fantasy gone awry.

Even if we recognize lesbian behavior as abusive, we look for a way to excuse it. Again, a double standard applies: When a woman says a man is abusive to her, we don't care if he was battered as a child. We don't care if he always apologizes afterward. We simply condemn him. And we do not question her. But when a lesbian says another lesbian is abusive to her, we are skeptical. We want to know her definition of abuse. We desperately seek a way to let the abusive woman off the hook--at the expense of the abused.

By contrast, where another type of dysfunction is concerned--alcoholism and drug addiction-- intervention has become a norm in many lesbian family circles. The lesbian who abuses alcohol or drugs is encouraged to attend a 12-step program. Those family members who are closest to her begin the process of understanding and labeling their own codependent and enabling behavior. We've shown straight people, who already knew about our alcohol problems, that we can clean up just as well as, if not better than, they do. We have learned that with careful attention and consistent work, the cycle can be broken, the dysfunction turned around. But that is where our desire to intervene in bad behavior ends and our enforcement of secrecy begins.

Lesbians perceive ourselves without power in the majority culture. As we have retreated into our lesbian family, some of us have sought and found power through abusiveness. And the rest of us have learned well the acquired sense of helplessness that primes us to collude with the abuser. Lesbians who long ago stopped enabling the alcohol abuse of their lesbian friends and lovers persist in enabling physical a
motional abuse by making excuses for it and by declaring it to be a family secret.

What then is the secret in the lesbian family? Is it that abuse happens and goes unchecked? Is it that we're so tired of being oppressed that we want to oppress? No. These are symptoms of the true secret, which is that some of us who celebrate the joy of loving women actually hate women. We hate women because we believe them to be weak, inferior, oppressed, and victimized, and we don't want to be like them. We have internalized the sexism in the culture to the point where, within our lesbian family, we seek to be better than women. And so we must become manlike in our attitudes: Throw down the apron and pick up the gun.

The irony is that as we protect our abusive sisters, as we argue on their behalf, as we deny the reality of lesbian battering in any form, we are destroying our family. And the lesbians who know the truth but who do not speak out are as guilty as the abuser. Their silence is as violent as the fist.