ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how abused women have come to be situated in passive ways through a dominant narrative about their positioning in violent relationships. The dominant narrative of abuse is one that relies heavily on already circulating stories about womanhood. The chapter focuses on the discourses of pathology, deviance and stereotypical femininity to describe women's positioning in violent relationships. It draws on qualitative interviews with women to show that women engage in a number of strategies that involve talking against dominance as they author stories about intimate partner violence (IPV) and their subjectivities in relation to the violence. Women's interviews were examined through a thematic narrative analytical lens to consider the extent to which they talk against dominance in their stories of violence victimization. The chapter uses examples from interview data to magnify how women: narrate victimization, reconstitute respectable personhood, and speak intersectionally.
