Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do

- This book won the Stella Prize in 2020, and no wonder. It’s such a well written and powerful work that it simply takes your breath away on virtually every page. It's easily the most extraordinary non-fiction book I’ve read in many years - and I’ve read a lot  of them. 

- Hill makes it clear from the start that she's investigating the wider issue of ‘domestic abuse’, not the narrower one of ‘domestic violence’. Most abuse is psychological and emotional rather than just physical.

- She examines all the usual theories why abused women don’t 'just leave', and it's very enlightening. ‘In the 1980s and ‘90s 'Stockholm syndrome', 'battered woman syndrome' and 'learned helplessness' became the dominant models for domestic abuse experts and lawyers’. Surveys show ‘fear of destitution’, well ahead of ‘fear of violence’, was the leading reason women were afraid to leave their abuser. Financial abuse was also prevalent. Abusers were ‘controllers, exploiters, schemers’.

- It does require a bit of commitment this book, because its content is ugly. Hill rubs your nose in it. But that’s what gives it enormous power. The many examples Hill provides of abuse are horrific and heartbreaking. 

- Broadly, there are two categories of abusers according to well-regarded researchers: ‘Cobras’ and ‘Pitbulls’. The Cobras are cold and calculating, always in control. The Pitbulls are paranoid and reactive, their anger building slowly and then exploding.

- But why are men violent towards women? There are two broad theories: the ‘feminist’ model and the ‘psychopathology’ model. The feminists are confident that ‘it’s not pathology, it’s society’. But the deeper question remains: what is happening in the abusers' minds? Hill believes there is a need to integrate both viewpoints. She is relentless and exhaustive in examining in detail the academic and professional literature and data. 

- The issue of the patriarchy is central: men’s power over women, and some men’s power over other men. ‘And some of them are looking to their own home as a place to restore their lost power. The essence of patriarchal masculinity....is not that individual men feel powerful - it’s that they feel ENTITLED to power’. 


- Regarding the smaller cohort of female perpetrators, Hill interrogates the academic research, which is often flawed. There is too much false equivalence. ‘Male victims of female perpetrators are almost never at risk of being killed’.

- I found the chapter on the children affected by the abuse heart-wrenching. They are too frequently treated appallingly by so-called legal professionals and the courts - against all evidence and sense, thrusting the kids back into sole custody by their abusive father. Why the system doesn’t fuck the living bejesus out of these vicious perpetrators and throw them in jail is beyond me. And treat the women and children with the respect they deserve. It obviously makes me so angry. And it makes Hill angry as well.

- The inadequacy of police procedures are laid bare. ‘Why should coercive control - the most dangerous kind of domestic abuse - be invisible to the criminal justice system?’ ‘It’s time that Australia got serious about protecting victims and made coercive control a crime'. 

- ‘For women with children...no system is as punishing - or as dangerous - as the family law system.’ Hill details horrific stories about decisions from judges against the mothers and children and in favour of the abusing father, and they're utterly heartbreaking. ‘Only a royal commission can reveal what is going on with the family law system, why it is happening and what we must do to change it - and change it for good’. ‘...violent incidents are happening more frequently, and becoming more severe’.

- There is a chapter at the end called 'Dadirri', an Indigenous term meaning 'inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness'. It is one of the most powerful in the book. The vicious treatment of Aboriginal women and men by racist police and other authorities is beyond belief. The story of Tamica Mullaley from Broome, her father Ted, and her 10 month old son Charlie who was brutally raped, beaten and killed by her former partner, will bring you to tears. 

- There are ways to lower the rates of abuse. In the small city of High Point in North Carolina  and in regional towns like Bourke in NSW, ‘focussed deterrence’ is working. Community groups, including the police, legal authorities, pastors, mental health and other support groups, have come together and collaborated to strengthen their efforts to significantly reduce offences. The focus is on collaboration and coordination, and in both communities the results have been astounding.

- Hill ends on an optimistic note: ‘If we were to become really serious about ending domestic abuse, and devote the resources necessary to do it, the results could be spectacular. It would, in my opinion, be one of the greatest nation-building exercises in Australia’s history’.