The Trivialisation of Domestic Violence

In the past two days, much has been written about the public attack of Nigella Lawson by her husband, Charles Saatchi. Photos now circulating media outlets capture the celebrity cook in a moment of unmistakable fear and distress. It is perhaps emblematic of the culture and times we live in, that it takes something like this to happen to a celebrity to capture the world's attention on what is in fact, one of our most profound social problems. On another level, the colliding of fame, wealth, beauty and success with the ugly face of abuse exposes the prejudices and judgements we harbour about what domestic violence looks like. According to women's support organisation, Wire (www.wire.org.au) one in five women will be affected by family violence at some time during their life. According to a 2005 survey undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, incredibly, more than one million women had experienced physical or sexual assault by their male current or ex-partner since the age of 15 and 64% of women who experienced physical assault and 81.1% of women who experienced sexual assault did not make a police report.

I read today that Saatchi has received a warning from police over the incident. Saatchi has been reported as describing the incident as "playful tiff", over a heated discussion about the couple's children. Saatchi has reportedly said that he held Lawson's neck repeatedly to emphasis his point. We should remember that for most of the Western world (including Australia), it was not so long ago that marital rape was a contested notion, and a husband was considered entitled to engage in a bit of harmless horseplay in exercising his right to conjugal relations with his wife. Legal and social opinion has moved a long way from archaic notions of woman as property, but this episode shows that these attitudes are not dead and buried. Indeed, it is in our attitudes towards defining what constitutes abuse that we find the many silences that persist.

It is trite to say that there was nothing playful or benign about the exchange between Saatchi and Lawson. We bore witness to something that should not only shock us, but anger us. We should be angered by what Saatchi purports to do through his casual and dismissive language in describing the incident as playful tiff. Saatchi showed himself not only willing to inflict fear upon the person with whom he shares a home and a life, but also an utter lack of disrespect towards her. He did so flagrantly, and in his subsequent trivialisation of his conduct, he has sought to dismiss and silence, not only his critics but also his victim.