Janet Evanovich Quotes

The dynamic of how women and men are meant to interact, for those of us who are looking for a heterosexual relationship, is very broken, and it leads to a lot of really dysfunctional relationships, abusive and otherwise.

Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.

There are endless new variations on how to hurt a woman physically, emotionally, financially, and socially.

I read 'Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them,' and I found frightening pieces that related to... my own life.

A relationship can be deeply damaging without anyone leaving marks on you. So many people - especially young women - end up trying to maintain those emotionally abusive relationships because we don't think it's that bad and that we are really some of the lucky ones because we haven't experienced 'real' abuse.

This attitude of how society views women as chattel - that's the biggest thing to overcome. When I first started a stake in the issue of relationship abuse, I got really beat up by the Christian right because I was interfering in what was a personal family affair. It's a "family matter." That's why I wish we'd drop the phrase "domestic violence." It sounds like a domesticated cat. It is the most vicious of all crimes - to be abused by someone you had a relationship with! Because then you blame yourself.

When a man has been consistently battering his wife, he shouldn't expect a bouquet of roses from her the morning after he promises to stop.

My husband worked on Wall Street and was an Ivy League graduate as well. In our world, we were the last couple you'd imagine enmeshed in domestic violence.

Family violence is a criminal act; perpetrators, while often former victims themselves, need to accept culpability.

Guilt is one side of a nasty triangle; the other two are shame and stigma. This grim coalition combines to inculpate women themselves of the crimes committed against them.

And of course we are familiar with the English common law rule of thumb that said a man could in fact use a stick no bigger than his thumb to discipline his wife and family.

When I was married to an abuser, he'd tell me he wouldn't have to get so angry if only I'd be less demanding, more supportive, more understanding. I hid the truth from everyone, especially myself.

I'm very disturbed by violence against women when it is violence.

Rape has been used as a tool of war. Similarly here, rape has been used as the ultimate humiliation.

What is harm for some women isn’t harm for another. Some women accept beatings and insults as a joke, while others do not.

Rape has been normalized. Rape is in our culture. Gender based violence is part of our whole patriarchal culture. It happens all the time…. There is silence because of fear, because the perpetrator has the power one way or the other/

No one can doubt that the sufferings of the sober, virtuous woman, in legal subjection to the mastership of a drunken, immoral husband and father over herself and children, not only from physical abuse, but from spiritual shame and humiliation, must be such as the man himself can not possibly comprehend.

Abusive relationships go on and on. You're in it for so long that it can almost be impossible to see it for what it is. That just becomes your life. We get used to and adapt.

Domestic violence is much more prevalent than people realize.

I know just about everything that really goes on with domestic violence.

Domestic violence and violence against women in general seems to be a big problem everywhere in the world. It seems to me this problem comes from stress, pent up anger, frustration, and all kinds of negativity within human beings.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

As a child, I heard in my home doctors and ambulance men say, 'Mrs. Stewart, you must've done something to provoke him.' 'Mrs. Stewart, it takes two to make an argument.' Wrong. Wrong! My mother did nothing to provoke that - and even if she had, violence is never ever a choice that a man should make. Ever.

It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it.

You can definitely become a victim and let people completely destroy your life.