by Deborah J. Cohan

About the author: Deborah J. Cohan is a counselor in a battering intervention program and occasional contributor to Off Our Backs, a feminist publication.

The concepts of gender, representation, and social control form a complex nexus of relationships that are ever present in my life. I spend most of my academic life researching the phenomenon of violence against women, specifically battering. And I devote my time as an activist to working to eradicate violence in the lives of women and children. I attempt to do this by being a counselor in a battering intervention program which aims to promote batterers’ accountability and women’s safety through counseling and education. Though I constantly attempt to merge these two worlds—the academic and activist—I find that I am most often simply struggling...