Here we give stiff penalties to people who drink and drive, especially people who kill or injure people while they are drunk at the wheel. The law says that they are responsible for whatever they do in a car while they are drunk. I think the same should apply to men who drink and batter. More positively, I am amazed at the change in attitudes to drinking and driving. While some people still do it, the idea of a designated driver who does not drink but who drives for the rest of the people who are partying, has made its way into the popular culture. Surely we could make the same sort of change in attitudes to violence. (NIFL Women and Literacy List, 19.9.2000)

What counts as violence is contested terrain. This reframing of drinking and violence provides an example of how to change the discourse and to reveal the possibility of shifting recognitions about violence.

Silence is not neutral

A recognition that silence is no safer than opening up issues - it too gives a message - is an important awareness for moving into assessing practically how to break silences about violence. The frames of "it's too big," "it's safer not to open it up," "I don't know what to do so it's better to do nothing" all operate on the assumption that doing nothing is safer, a way of doing no harm, wiser than risking doing the wrong thing. Recently, I have noticed that when I speak about my growing awareness that doing nothing is not neutral, those who were speaking about doing nothing as the wiser choice begin to take careful note and speak as if perhaps they might be prepared to think about taking action.

I frequently tell the story Kate Nonesuch told me of her lesson that doing nothing sends a strong message.

This instructor reported that when she checked in with a woman student to see if a male student's behaviour was bothering her, the woman remarked that she had seen the instructor watching the interaction. The student said that because the instructor did nothing immediately, she had assumed that meant that the instructor thought the man's behaviour was acceptable. This is a powerful reminder that if an instructor does not take action when she sees violence - such as harassment in the classroom, or a woman's bruises - students witness that silence and lack of action and take a message from it. (Horsman 1999/2000)