Decoding Coercive Control: Unveiling Its Connection to Alpha Male Ideals with Dr Emma Katz
In the latest podcast episode, "Decoding Coercive Control: Unveiling Its Connection to Alpha Male Ideals," Rihanot and Tiaraoluwa dive into the intricate web of coercive control and its surprising ties to extreme alpha male ideals.
Dr. Emma Katz, an expert guest, provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics that fuel this harmful behavior, exposing its impact on both men and women, as well as on families and relationships.
In this episode, they explore how certain ideals associated with extreme alpha masculinity, such as dominance, aggression, and the need for unwavering control, can contribute to coercive control dynamics within relationships.
Read and listen to the full episode below.
Rihanot Ojo-Oba:
Welcome, everyone to the monumental moment of the counter narrative. I am Rihanot Ojo-Oba, and I'm here with my co-host, Tiaraoluwa Fadeyi. We discuss coercive control and domestic abuse.
Tiara, this discussion demands our attention and marks the beginning of a meaningful dialogue, isn't it?
Tiaraoluwa Fadeyi:
Today we are honoured to have an esteemed guest with us, Dr Emma Katz, a globally respected expert in coercive control, domestic violence and domestic abuse. Dr. Katz, thank you so much for being here.
Dr. Emma Katz:
Oh, thank you.
Rihanot Ojo-Oba:
Dr. Katz. For our listeners who might be hearing about coercive control for the first time, please shed more light on this topic and tell us about your work in this area.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So people often wonder, what is this phrase, "coercive control"? What does it mean? What I say is that coercive control involves situations where an intimate partner or family member is subjecting another person, their spouse, their child, or a member of their family to persistent wide-ranging controlling behaviour.
So they're not just being a bit controlling about some things. They're being very controlling about a number of things, and they're backing up their control with the continual threat of punishment. So if you don't comply with what they want, if you don't obey their control, they'll do something to you that's really distressing, and that might be physical violence but it might be other things as well. It might be harming your children, or it might be subjecting you to economic and financial abuse, taking your money away from you, or not giving you enough money to live on, or it might be making you do something sexual that you don't want to do.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So there can be many different ways that the perpetrator punishes the person who they're trying to control. And a person who's experiencing coercive control just can't live their life in the way that most people in their community can, because they—the perpetrator—are stopping them from having normal levels of freedom and autonomy that they would expect for a member of their community.
So the perpetrator is controlling all sorts of aspects of their daily life. And this is incredibly harmful. It's not what a healthy marriage or family should be like at all. So, the perpetrator by coercively controlling another person is attacking their human rights, is attacking their personality and their individuality, because they're not allowing that person to be who they really are. They're just keeping them under constant control and constraint, and they're kind of attacking the person's very soul, the essence of them.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So it's very harmful, very destructive, very abusive, but it's often hidden because—often we think of, you know, domestic violence just as hitting. But coercive control can be about so much more than that. As I say, it's this attack on your very autonomy, your freedom, your sense of self. So it's very destructive.
And what I've been doing as a researcher—I'm a university academic, so I talk to victims and survivors as part of my research, and I find out how this has been affecting them, and I find out the kinds of things that perpetrators have been doing to them. And I've written a book, you might be able to see the book just behind my shoulder there. It's the first ever book on how perpetrators harm their wives and their children.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So most perpetrators of coercive control are men, although it can be perpetrated by women, but that is much, much rarer. So my book focused on situations where the males are the perpetrators and they're abusing their wives or their partners and their children.
I also write a blog, it's called Decoding Coercive Control with Dr. Emma Katz. So if anyone's interested in tracking down that blog and reading it, just Google that or Google Emma Katz's blog. It'll come up. Katz is spelled KATZ. I always say that otherwise people spell it like the animal (laughs). So yeah, I write this blog.
Tiaraoluwa Fadeyi:
In your book “Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives”, you referenced Evan Stark’s argument that our criminal justice and social responses to domestic violence are failing victims because domestic abuse is hardly recognised except it involves acts of physical violence to the victim or survivor.
Kindly tell us about other forms of abuse that perpetrators employ in keeping their victims under their thumbs and harming them without any physical evidence?
Dr. Emma Katz:
Oh, that's wonderful to hear that you found them in, you found those blogs enlightening. Yes. so I'm really passionate about communicating my research with the public so it doesn't just sit on some dusty shelf at a university, but it really gets out there into the world and hopefully makes a difference. And, and many people have said that my, my blogs and my book have helped them to understand what they've been through or what one of their loved ones has been through.
So it might be that you are the parent of somebody who's been through coercive control or the sister or the brother. And so you want to understand what they've been through and you want to know how to support them better. So yeah, I hope my work is useful for many different audiences, both victims and survivors, and the people who care about them and also might be working with them.
Dr. Emma Katz:
You know anyone who, who might come into their life and, and try to, to offer them help and support. Yes, people often call coercive control death by a thousand little cuts. But those cuts may be psychological and social and economic and sexual rather than simply physical. So there are so many tactics that perpetrators use.
Actually, if you think about it, it's really hard to take away somebody's freedom and autonomy. People don't want to give up the kinds of freedom and autonomy that are normal in their society, in their community. They don't want to have less freedom and autonomy than their peers. So perpetrators actually have to use a lot of abusive tactics to take away your freedom and autonomy. 'cause Just using a couple of tactics won't be enough to carry out, the really terrible thing that they want to do to take away your autonomy.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So perpetrators can be physically violent, but they're not always, and some of them don't use any violence at all. But when they do use violence, it's important to realize that it's not because they're angry or because they're passionate or because they have some good reason for it. It's because they want to control you and they want to scare you into total submission. So that's why they're using violence. It's nothing to do with anger. They might seem angry, but they're angry because they're not getting the extreme levels of control that they want. That's why they're angry. So it's all about this desire. They have to carry out this, this extreme level of control. Perpetrators also use a lot of psychological abuse. They try to convince you that you are crazy, that you are oversensitive, that you are dramatic, that you are making things up.
Dr. Emma Katz:
They'll tell you that, and they'll tell you that things that you know happened didn't happen. And they'll tell you things that you know didn't happen, did happen. And so you start to doubt your own sanity. They will call you horrible names and make you feel bad about yourself and lower your self-esteem.
They'll guilt trip you and make you feel as though you are the one causing the problem in the marriage, not them, and that it's you who's being unreasonable. And that if only, and they'll make you feel that if only you did more to please them, then this abuse would stop. Except it wouldn't because perpetrators are never satisfied, and they will always find more reasons to be abusive.
Perpetrators use a lot of economic and financial abuse. So if they have a partner who is working, who's perhaps earning quite a lot of money for the family, maybe even the higher earner will exploit the person economically.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So they will expect them to pay for everything while the perpetrator contributes very little. Or they will expect the partner to do full-time working, but also to do all of the housework and the childcare as well. And again, the perpetrator's just contributing a lot less. Or they might discourage you from working and you might have had a career, but they tell you to give it up and they make you financially dependent on them.
And then you are, you are trapped. And then you, you don't have the independence of having your own income. They like to isolate you. So they often stop you from engaging with your family or your friends, and they can be quite subtle about that. So they'll say things like, "if you really loved me, you wouldn't want to see your family in French. You'd only want to spend time with me".
Dr. Emma Katz:
So they make it like about a test of love and commitment rather than just outright ordering you not to go. Or they say things like, "your family doesn't really love you, or your family is bad mouthing you and is saying bad things about you behind your back" so you shouldn't see them. Or they'll say, "your friends are no good, or your friends are flirting with me", or they'll just make up lies.
So that you start to distrust the very people who you previously trusted and who might be there to support and help you. So they isolate you and they leave you with no other perspective than them. So then you are not getting any kind of healthy perspectives from anyone else because they're, you are only kind of engaging with them and you're cut off from other people. They do a lot of monitoring and stalking, so they might put trackers on you.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So they know where you are at all times. They might do that without you even realizing. They might put spyware on your phone so that they're hearing your phone conversations without you even realizing. So there's a, there can be a lot of technological abuse as abusers take advantage of the latest technologies.
So there's so many different things that they do, and it's always done in quite a, in such a way that it makes you feel as though you've caused it and it's your fault. Perpetrators are so clever at packaging it as though it's your fault. Another thing they can do is they can attack you spiritually. So they can say, you know, "God would be on my side". You know, you, "Uf you don't obey me, you are displeasing God". They can attack your, your, your own sense of spirituality and your own religion and your own beliefs.
So you are undermined as a spiritual person as well. So they just attack like every single part of you. It's so, so harmful. And so even if they very rarely hit you or they never hit you they're doing so much harm. And so it is, for someone who's going through this, they have every right to feel very, very harmed. They have been very, very harmed.
Rihanot Ojo-Oba:
Dr. Katz, when abuse happens, society often blames the victims scrutinizing their behaviors and choices. Why do you think this victim blaming mentality persists, and can you shed light on why abuse occurs in the first place?
Dr. Emma Katz:
I think that of all the things you can kind of do day to day, getting into a relationship with a man is one of the most risky and most dangerous things because unfortunately, there was a really high number of male abusers out there.
And, and I'm not denying that there were female abusers too, but they don't tend to be anywhere near as high in numbers or to carry out the same severity of abuse. And, what you said there is very insightful that even if they don't physically kill you, living with coercive control is like a living death. It's like a soul murder. You are, you are walking around, but you're probably robotic and numb and feeling like you're on autopilot and, and you've just had to go that way to survive day to day. And, and yeah you can't be yourself anymore.
And what is a human being who can't be themselves? What does that leave you as? It's not a full life at all. It is like a kind of living death, a kind of zombie existence. And so this is why it's so important that I think cultures and societies start to become aware of this because it's a cause of great harm happening right under our noses. But we are really slow at the moment just across the whole world. We are really slow to recognize this.
Tiaraoluwa Fadeyi:
Given the prevalence of abuse, how can we effectively combat it and better protect women and children from becoming victims or survivors?
Dr. Emma Katz:
It's a really complicated question, what we can do to tackle it. But I think that we need both practical changes and cultural changes too. So I think firstly, at the moment, the vast majority of perpetrators totally get away with what they're doing. And they face almost no consequences. And they face almost no kind of blame or shame or censure from their communities for carrying out this horrific abuse against other human beings.
So if our communities could get to a place where they started to say to perpetrators, "your behavior is totally unacceptable. We do not accept this behavior. You must change. We demand that you change and we demand that you stop, we demand that you stop engaging in this behavior".
If that was treated seriously by communities, that would create quite a shift. And again, I'm saying this just to every country in the world, because I think this is needed in every country in the world.
Dr. Emma Katz:
Because it's not as though here in the U.K communities are so quick to tell perpetrators that their behaviors are unacceptable. We don't do that either. So I think there's that, but there's also the need for victims and survivors to have some means of escaping that are viable and possible. So they need assistance to be able to live somewhere away from the perpetrator safely with their children. And they need assistance to be able to start a new life.
They may have been economically really harmed by the perpetrator, so they have no money and resources left. So they need people to come in and give them the money and the resources to be able to start a new life. And, and I think it needs to be okay to be able to leave a marriage like this and not face a lot of criticism and pressure.
Dr. Emma Katz:
And for it to be seen that it's the perpetrator who ruined the marriage, not the victim, you know, the victim went into the marriage expecting a normal marriage, and instead they got this extreme level of abuse where they were treated quite differently from how they were expecting to be treated and differently from what was kind of sold to them at the beginning.
You know, nobody, no perpetrator lets you know on the first date that this is how they're going to behave. They pretend that they're so charming, they sweep you off your feet. They seem like your dream come true. They seem like a really good match for you. They're putting on a totally different face than their real one. So the victim didn't marry or get into a relationship with this perpetrator. They got into the relationship with the person the perpetrator was pretending to be.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So it's not their fault that the marriage didn't work. It's the perpetrator's fault. So I think there needs to be both practical and cultural avenues, escape routes for the victim and their children to be able to break free and to be able to exist independently financially outside of that marriage and that perpetrator.
So yeah, I think there's so much work to be done on all of those fronts. Got a long road ahead of us, but I think that's what needs to be done. Ultimately.
Things like, the practical stuff, you know, do you have a safe place to go to? Will you be able to live? You know, will you be able to live when you get there? Will you have enough money to live on? That's the kind of practical side of things, but also the cultural side of things.
Dr. Emma Katz:
You know, are you going to face so much blame and shame if you leave your marriage that you don't feel it's possible to do it? That's, so I think victims and survivors, again, all over the world can feel that way, that they're going to be blamed, they're going to be held to be responsible.
They're going to be told that they are failing in the marriage, and they need to be more forgiving more self-sacrificing, more accommodating rather than the perpetrator being told, "you have ruined this marriage with your abuse and you need to, you need to stop and you need to let this person be free now. You need to stop this heavy control over them".
Firstly, I think that perpetrators, what drives them is that they have a very high sense of entitlement. They believe that they have the right to control their partner and their children.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So they have a kind of faulty belief system. And they, when they put on that prince charming face in the early days of the relationship and sweep you off your feet, that wasn't their real self. In fact, they were being quite deliberate in calculating they knew exactly when the right time was to start introducing abuse. And it's usually when you are heavily entrapped, you know, when you are, when you are engaged or you are married or you are pregnant, or you've had a baby with them, they knew when the perfect time was to introduce the abuse and it's when you were entrapped.
So there's something wrong with the abuser's mindset. They believe that they're justified in this behavior. And of course, it doesn't help that often all their community will reinforce that they're entitled to, to behave in this way, sadly.
Dr. Emma Katz:
So, very few people will actually call them out and say, "no, you're not entitled to behave in this way. The person you are doing this to has human rights and you know, they're a person and you don't have the right to do this to them". So I would say that's one part of the question.
The other part about victim blaming, why do we victim blame? Well, it's a big question. I think. I think that we like to believe that the world is kind of fair and that good things will happen to good people and bad things will happen to bad people. That's called the belief in a just world. And when a victim comes along they're kind of challenging that because they're a good person that bad things have happened to. So we kind of don't want to believe that that's possible.
Dr. Emma Katz:
'Cause That's quite a scary thought. 'cause Then maybe bad things will happen to us too. So it's easier to blame the victim and say, oh, you can't be a good person. You must be a bad person. You must have done something wrong”. Because then, then it's a bad thing that's happened to a bad person. And then we can kind of think, "oh, okay, everything's all right with my view of the world".
I also think it's a question of power. I think that the victim is often the one with less power, and we want to align with and support the person who has more power, who's the perpetrator. So it's so much easier to blame the victim who's in a very powerless position rather than confront the perpetrator who's got a lot of power, who has social and cultural influence, who might be very well thought of in their community who, and their family might be very well thought of in their community.
Dr. Emma Katz:
We don't want to confront those power structures. So it's so much easier to blame the victim, but it's totally the wrong thing to do because the victim has done nothing wrong. And there's nothing wrong with the victim.
They might be suffering all sorts of like, emotional and, and difficulties because they've been abused, but that's completely normal when you've been abused. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. They just need support and love and understanding.
But for the perpetrator, the perpetrator has done something wrong. They've created this entire dynamic. None of this would've happened if it wasn't for the perpetrator's determination to impose this abusive behavior on their, their, their wife, their family. So it, that's, I think that's why we blame victims, but we shouldn't be doing it. We should turn our attention to perpetrators and say, "you've caused all this havoc and it's totally unacceptable. And you need to stop right now". So I think that's the reaction that I would love to see happening if, if things were to change in a positive direction.
Rihanot Ojo-Oba:
Question before we wrap up, could you share a word of encouragement or positivity for women and children currently facing abuse but unable to leave?
Dr. Emma Katz:
Well, firstly, I'd say this happens to women across society. So, you know, you might be a woman who is quite wealthy. You might be a professional woman, you might have, you know, been in a very professional, respected job. It's nothing to do with your intelligence at all. So like I've known so many victims and survivors who are highly, highly, highly intelligent. So please don't blame yourself or think that this makes you a person who isn't intelligent because you've been through this.
It has nothing to do with intelligence at all. And the cleverest people, the most intelligent, capable, smart people can be subjected to this. Because perpetrators are very clever and manipulative and they know just what to do and when to do it. And it always takes us off guard 'cause we're not expecting it.
Dr. Emma Katz:
And I would say that if you're stuck in this sort of situation, I mean, you are fighting for your, your, your life not necessarily your physical life, but your psychological life, you know, your, everything that makes you, you, you are fighting for that every day. You are fighting to hold onto the person who you really are, to what matters to you, to what you care about every day. And that is, that makes you an incredible person.
I know that your views are probably says that you know, that you are all sorts of horrible things that you are, you are not adequate, that you are stupid, that you're useless. They are so wrong. They're just telling you that to keep you down. So you, in fact, the, the being able to live with this every day. nobody should have to do it.
Dr. Emma Katz:
And, and it should be brought to an end as soon as possible because it's, it's, it's beyond human endurance. But for the people who are enduring it and finding some way to survive each day. And, and they shouldn't have to do that. But for if they are you are, you are an incredibly strong person and, and you are more capable and have more skills than you probably ever realized, because it takes a tremendous amount of strength and skill to survive this every day and not go completely numb, robotic like to, to have your, you know, to have your soul just like die within you to hold onto any part of you is, is amazing in this circumstance. 'cause every part of you is being attacked and undermined. So you're so much braver and stronger than you probably have even, even considered or realized.
Dr. Emma Katz:
It is not your fault. You have not caused this. It's really unlucky that, this happened to you. But again, that's, that's not your fault. It's just sometimes bad things do happen to good people. I know we don't wanna believe that. I know that's a scary thought, but I firmly believe that's true. You didn't do anything to cause this. It's just very unfortunate that it happened to you. And yeah, I'm just sending you all my, my support and my care. And there are people out there who do understand you might have to look pretty hard for them 'cause they're, there aren't always many people who understand, but there are some people who do understand. You are not alone. There are other people who would understand what you've gone through and how you feel and how you've reacted. They'd understand it all.
It's been an honour to come on here with you. Yes, I do have a Twitter account, at Dr. Emma Katz, at Kat spelt KATZ. I also have an Instagram account as well, if you are more of an instagrammer than a tweeter. And that's at Emma Katz slash phd. So feel free to follow me on either platform. And yeah, I, I use both to try and raise awareness of these issues and, and spread support for victims and survivors.
Tiaraoluwa Fadeyi:
Thank you, Dr. Kat, for sharing your expertise and shedding light on this crucial topic. And to our listeners, remember, the knowledge is par and conversations like this can lead to change.
Rihanot Ojo-Oba:
Wow, what an eye-opening conversation t moments like this reaffirm the importance of what we are doing here on the Counter Narrative podcast.
Tiaraoluwa Fadeyi:
That's right, Rihanot. As we reflect on this discussion, let's turn this spotlight back to you, our listeners. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Do you have any questions for Dr. Katz or personal experiences you'd like to share? Connect with us on social media and let's continue this vital conversation.
Thank you all for joining us on another episode of the Counter Narrative Podcast. Until next time, keep questioning, challenge, and amplify your voices. Bye, guys. Stay curious, stay informed and remember your perspective matters.
Read and listen to the first and second episodes of the Counter Narrative Podcast!