Welcome to the New Chump Lady Site!

I don’t know what’s changed that “f*ckwit” can be fully written out in posts but I like it. Congrats on the successful launch and all the other milestones!!

For the resource list under the category of domestic abuse, I highly recommend Don Hennessy’s How He Gets Into Her Head: The Mind of the Intimate Male Abuser (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16655370-how-he-gets-into-her-head).

I’ve read nearly everything on DV and this book contains actually valid and actually groundbreaking/refreshing (to me) assertions which is a rare (to me) combination. Here are a few excerpts which particularly impressed me:

p. 42
In an abusive relationship the target woman will reveal her expectations of a prospective partner and the skilled offender will become that person. Skilled offenders are the ultimate con men. Any woman who moves from one abusive relationship into another is convinced that she is naive or stupid. The reality is that in her attempt to avoid further abuse she tends to explain her caution in terms of her previous experience. This explanation is sufficient to give the next offender guidelines as to how to present himself.

p. 43
Olivia is also a good case study in that she reveals in her journey the evidence that normal therapy is unhelpful when engaging with women who are suffering intimate abuse and who continue to be controlled by their abuser. The exploration of the woman’s life-story is unnecessary. The in-depth analysis of her fears is counterproductive. The ignoring of the covert tactics of the abuser is dangerous. Olivia was always mentally and psychologically capable. If she had a fault it was in her desire to see the good in everyone. Counselling and psychotherapy can very easily burden women like Olivia with more blame. She may be led to believe that she was naive or stubborn. She can expand her guilt because she did not act sooner. She can increase her sense of self-loathing as she has it confirmed that she had some role to play in her own abuse. I have met many clients who have been in therapy and who find no relief from the mental anguish of their abuse.

One reason I rarely run into new news on DV is because non-victim-blaming DV research never gets enough funding (probably for the same reason that female social science researchers tend to drop out of publishing), so new insights on abuse that aren’t merely conjecture or recycled are mostly going to come from front lines advocates like Hennessy and/or victims themselves. Another reason why Hennessy’s insights struck me as refreshing is that, though Hennessy’s book is not brand new (2012), it tends not to come at the top of most domestic abuse survivor reading lists, which are usually topped by books like Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That and pop psych material on narcissism.

But I’d tend to trust Hennessy’s work more than Bancroft’s now that Lundy Bancroft is facing multiple allegations of abuse both from women he worked with as well as at least one former partner ( https://cryingoutforjustice.blog/2025/01/30/lundy-bancroft-is-a-predator/ ; https://kateanthony.com/podcast/episode-319-when-the-healer-harms-speaking-out-against-lundy-bancroft/).

That’s another little suggestion I’d like to make about a resource list: rather than outright “cancelling” prolific DV experts and authors who’ve been credibly alleged to commit abuse themselves such as Bancroft and forensic researcher Donald Dutton (co-author with Susan Golant of the groundbreaking The Batterer), I think their works should be listed but flagged with notes about the allegations against them and also the fact that, as we all know, abusers tend to specialize in wearing sheep’s clothing and playing rescuer/hero/savior/ally.

But some of these predators do a damn good job of playing this role and may even be using themselves as lab rats which suggests that some of their insights are “confessional” and are not only valid but have a certain value as long as their work is presented with serious caveats.

As far as the objective value of Bancroft’s work, I found none of his insights to be original and mostly seemed mined from the work of his predecessors at Emerge, the first domestic batterer intervention program in the US founded in 1977 which itself was largely built from the works of spearheads like forensic expert Evan Stark and wife and fellow researcher Anne Flitcraft. Yet Bancroft does not adequately credit these resources if he credits at all and so creates a dead end where survivors cannot do a deeper dive into decades of forensic research that fuel Bancroft’s assertions.

The one unique value I can see for Bancroft’s book is that it presents the valid ideas of others in a massively dumbed down, almost “children’s primer” tone which might make it more accessible to survivors whose bandwidths have been cramped by ongoing trauma and immediate peril. But beyond that, many others have written far better and more original works.

Anyway, food for thought as they say.