The true pioneers are the ones you never heard of.

Those so far ahead of their time, that their ideas, dreams, and journeys terrified people. Those who society would try to cast aside, talk over, lock up, or destroy. For to be a true progressive, is not to be politically popular, in fact, by its very definition, it is the opposite. It is to be uncomfortable. And the ideas that Erin Pizzey espoused more than fifty years ago, were exactly that – and remain so today. It was Erin who opened the first women’s refuge on the planet, who wrote the first book on domestic abuse, and who set up what would become the oldest, largest and most powerful domestic abuse charity in the world. And yet, it was her insistence that men are victims too, in equal numbers to women, and that abuse was not “gendered” that cast her into the shadows for more than fifty years. It was the price she paid to be a pioneer, and no, it was not just her who paid it. So, what happens to those who talk about violent women, or abused men? Let’s find out… ~ Watch my new podcast with leading coercive control researcher, professor Nicola Graham-Kevan  Images by Getty, and Roger Perry on National Portrait Gallery, and Marketa Luskacova