September, France. We recorded almost 100 women dead explained by domestic violence. News, lawyers, and feminists want to understand this number. Is the juridic system failing ? Or maybe police don’t make their job ? All the answers brought are too simple for a question which is so complex. Most of the explanations, guiding our criminal politic of this phenomenon, is that domestic violence is the consequence of inequality between men and women. All in the street of Nantes and all the big cities, we can read the feminists stickers : « Silence kills », or « mysoginism kills every 48 hours ». All the answers are responding to the social variant of the problem and everybody seem to be so convinced that domestic violence is first of all, a will to kill a women, a « feminicid », in accordance with the new neologism. But domestic violence is not only a social issue, it is also an individual, psychological issue. Indeed, all issues should be treated in a bio-psycho-social way : not only social, not only biological, not only psychological, but a three-dimensioned question, which every dimension covariate with others.
So the question we want to debate here, far away from the debate of inequality between men and women, far away from the barren dichotomy of « women » equals victims, and « men » equals « aggressor » is the following : can we say that domestic violence is about a gender violence, a hate of the other sex ?
To debate this question, we will define exactly what is violence and from this definition, we will try to take a step aside to bring a new understanding of domestic violence.
Roure & Duizabo (2003) define violence as a behavior corresponding to an “externalisation of an individual’s interior statement following a dysfunctional process of emotions, difficulties of adjustment. This externalisation is produced by an aggressive, or even a dangerous behavior.”. Violence has always been the same global purpose : submit one other, see the other one like an object and not a subject with the same rights as oneself.
The term “violence” is always accompanied with a qualitative : sexual violence, physical violence, verbal violence… demonstrating that violence can be used in many ways to deny other as subject.
An other point of view useful to understand what is violence, is to distinguish between violence, aggressivity and aggression. At first, aggressivity is seen as a normal behavior to assertive, to defend one’s limits and needs. This aggressivity, like anger, is a signal to other to advert that a line has been crossed. So aggressivity is a foundation of a respectful and normative system between humans. Aggressivity may become pathological if the individual can’t adapt, can’t make a compromise with his environment. The only answer will be aggression. In consequence, pathological aggressivity becomes violence, resulting in repetitive agressions.
These distinctions in mind will guide our reflection to make the difference between conjugal conflict and conjugal violence. Many institutions are cautious when a woman files a complain to conjugal violence and are tempted to see this more likely as a conflict. But according to Tournier (2012) in a banal conflict, the two parts are respected, recognized and heard. In this way, conflict can reinforce bounds between the two parts, refurbishing the relation. Whereas in domestic violence, one of the parts takes the power over his partner. There is a constant oppression preventing from free will. There is no more co-responsibility, no more possibility to discuss. It’s a hold up of freedom where the partner-victim experiments guilty, fear, intimidation, humiliation, economical and affective dependance, withdrawal and moreover has many losses like self-esteem, dignity, and security.
This firth part make us note that violence is not cause to the sex of the partner, but of a dysfonctionnal behavior.
Feminist cause, the first to engage in the fight against domestic violence, has a real positive effects, with more society’s awareness about this growing phenomenom and victims are more free to talk about it. But negative effects are that they highlight only the socio-cultural variant, neglecting the psychological part of the problem. Even nowadays, sensibilisation campaign often show caricature of domestic violence, where the aggressor is a man extremely violent and the woman is a poor little thing, powerless and defenseless. This stereotyped vision of the victim can be an obstacle, the real victims who can be more combative but unlistened by authorities because they are not in the stereotype of the victim.
If violence is a behavior, everybody can behave like this, as women as men. In my opinion, the neologism “feminicid” and all the campaign led by feminists that we see in the street, is a mistake. Sure, women are concerned by the majority of domestic violence. But violence, and so domestic violence, is above all a violence to an other one, a will to possess, to destroy an other, whatever the sex. It’s what studies about LGBT domestic violence can show : the homosexual couple can be concerned by violence too (Pam Eliott, 1996 ; Hirigoyen, 2019, p.159), and there are a lot of men violented in silence by their women, but they can’t talk because they have a double pain : being violented by their partner, and being violented by all stereotypes of virility. In consequence, they see themselves less as victims and don’t complain.
The profile of the aggressor can be resumed as : a threat’s feeling of their own identity when they experiment too much proximity with their partner. They feel as distorted by this intimate relation, so they seek for an entire control of the partner to minimize the threat, becoming threatening and distorting. There are many other motivations to be violent : a lack of the sense of responsibility for exemple, so aggressor will always accuse the partner. This argument shows us that the mechanisms observed in the perpetrator of violence is not only social. When there is actually violence, I don’t think the aggressor says to himself/herself “oh it’s a woman, I hate her and I will beat her”. Of course, there is a cultural reinforcement which stigmate women more as victim, but the heterosexual model is a majority and can explained that women are more victims too. And maybe if there was more homosexual couple, we would observe the same ratio of violence to man and woman. And to finish, we see that perpetrators of violence are not only violent in their couple, it’s a dysfunctional of relationship with everybody, and not the women are the victims in this situation.
To conclude, I think that if there is an important cultural reinforcement with the image conveyed about the woman for several decades, the essence of violence is only an emotional and relational dysfunction, and it can be explained by many mental disorders too. Many men, who are not violent, feel stigma of the masculine identity, and attribute this tragedy to a “feminicid” is to my mind, a large risk that sexism is overthrown of women on men, as we can see of social network when we learn the death of an other women, men are insulted of “assholes”, of “shit”, etc…Many men feel attacked in their masculine identity. Despite the tragedy, nobody should being violent, even it’s verbal.
Bibliography :
Tournier J.-L. (2012) L’enfant exposé à la violence conjugale. Edition De Boeck Supérieur : Bruxelles
Pam Elliot JD (1996) Shattering Illusions: Same-Sex Domestic Violence, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 4:1, 1-8, DOI:10.1300/J041v04n01_01
Roure L. et Duizabo P. (2003) Les comportements violents et dangereux. Edition Masson : Paris
The words I have learned :
To be cautious : être prudent
File a complain : porter plainte
Withdrawal : renfermement, repli sur soi
Perpetrator of violence : auteur de violence
A growing phenomenon : un phénomène croissant