[jstarfish]

I'm sorry to hear about your experience, but the definition you yourself quoted plainly states:

> treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.

Domestic violence comprises more than just battery by someone who happens to be a family member.

[nailer]

> forcibly interfering with personal freedom.

Forcibly. If there's no force there's no violence.

Psychologically abusing someone does not involve the use of force.

> Domestic violence comprises more than just battery by someone who happens to be a family member.

Agreed, thankfully nobody defined in the conversation defined domestic violence this way.

Again: domestic violence most include violence, i.e. the use of force.

Why are people trying to hard to redefine words?

[jstarfish]

> Forcibly. If there's no force there's no violence.

I get where you're coming from but enough men figured out that when wife-beating became illegal, they could continue to torment their wives and exes through passive-aggressive, explicitly nonviolent acts enough that the laws were expanded and the definition changed.

The redefinition happened at least 20 years ago and has since propagated across multiple disciplines (law enforcement and psychology inclusive). Even publishing revenge porn falls under domestic violence statutes now.

Yes, it no longer meets the strictly-literal definition of violence. It is what it is. Rather than arguing it here, consider adapting to the times or taking your grievance to the Department of Justice (https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence):

> Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.

[neura]

This is a far stretch in trying to hang on to the last thread of the definition of violence.

Why can't you just use the term "domestic abuse" and stop supporting the misuse of well defined words?

Do you think that if you and others use the term "domestic violence" to include non-physical abuse that it just magically changes the existing definition? Why would you even want to support that when there's clearly another term that's both in general use and clearly fits what you're attempting to refer to, by definition?

[nailer]

Repeating for a third time so you can hopefully read it and actually respond when you hit ‘reply’:

Claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence

I’m not responsible for all of humanity: you should want a clear definition and separation of violent and non violent abuse so why don’t you handle this yourself rather than asking me?

“get with the times” is ridiculous. vague legislation is bad whether it’s new or old. Likewise a lot of progress has obviously been bad much like other progress has been good.

I’m actually not really interested in your replies any more, since you’re not actually responding.

[thiht]

Victims of non physical domestic violence also need money, police time, and medical attention (yes, they do!). So I'd argue that widening the definition of domestic violence actually increases the visibility of the cause. More people are concerned, directly or indirectly.

> “get with the times” is ridiculous

It's not. Language changes all the time for better or worse, and trying to change it back is just not possible. You're wasting your time if you're trying to make your definition the correct one instead of the one that's widely accepted, even if your definition made more sense (I don't have an opinion on that).

Language is a reflection of society, and whether you want it or not, society has decided that physical domestic violence and non-physical domestic violence are the same thing, which we call domestic violence. You can fight words or fight for a cause, your choice.