Lived Realities and Formula Stories of "Battered Women” This article talks about how there has been a formulaic story attributed to battered women’s testimonies. In the title of this piece battered women is written in parenthesis because the author, Loseke believes that women are being trapped into taking the role of the defenseless woman who was a victimized by male violence. Loseke studies the behaviors at 4 different battered women’s support shelter organizations and pays close attention to the verbiage used amongst the residence during group discussions. In these group discussions we see that the mediator will try to keep the women talking only about their physical abuse experienced. If the conversations begin to digress, the staff member will redirect the discussion to the more formulaic, socially accepted story line of the “battered women” and the “abusive man”. The formula story talked about in this article is one that points to the accepted concept of gender in society. The gender binary we have says that men hare stronger, faster, bigger, taller, and smarter. The gender binary also says that women are delicate, vulnerable, passive, and weak. Therefore these formula stories that are so popular, practically encouraged, highlight the perceived differences between the genders and dramatize the role of the defenseless woman and the powerful aggressive male.
In “Vunerability and Dangerousness The Construction of Gender through Conversation about Violnce” Hollander does research on what people perceive as potentially violent by conducting focus groups. The data recorded from these focus groups overwhelmingly show that people see men as potentially violent and women as more vulnerable to violence. Another question asked was in the focus groups who was seen more as a protector. The majority of responses said that men are generally see as protectors