Women and shock

It would be too easy to replicate the patriarchy's judgement that women who stay in abusive relationships are 'masochistic'. That is untrue. Quite distinct from this patriarchal perspective is Judith Lewis Herman's view that we all grow up with a need for caring, concern and solidarity with others. In the case of children who do not have these things, or who only have them sporadically and insufficiently (as in, for instance, the case where a certain minimal level of care is mixed with a high degree of abuse), the child will protect himself from succumbing to shock as a result of parental abuse by entering a state of denial or "dissociation".

Note here that this strategy DOES NOT have a masochistic purpose. The denial of the parent's abusiveness is not a form of pleasure seeking, but a means to prevent the onset of shock which could result in mortality. To suggest that children would dissociate in order to gain pleasure is to apply another level of abuse to children who have been abused.

Women, too, may be in a state of denial about patriarchy much of the time. They dissociate from their experiential knowledge by denying what that could tell them about the nature of the world they live in. They don't do this because they are masochists (although doing so could perpetuate a situation where they continue in painful relationships). Rather, they dissociate because they are using emergency measures to protect their minds from succumbing to extreme shock.