L'Express from June 20, 2005
by Elisabeth Badinter
In the studies and treatises on partner violence, the division of roles sounds like a given: men are perpetrators and women are victims. A reasonable assumption based on the facts and statistics when it comes to physical forms of violence, beatings, rape or murder. However, in the majority of the available works and the incantations derived from them, all types of partner violence - that of physical violence and that of words - are mixed together. This summation is also the basis of the only serious study carried out in France on this subject and published in 2001, the "Enquête Nationale sur les violences envers les femmes en France" (Enveff). From their results, a “global index” for partner violence was derived: 10% of women declare that they are victims of it. However, this frightening figure and the terminology used obscure the fact that three quarters of this "violence" consists of psychological aggression such as insults, slander or harassment. This raises the question: aren't men also victims of the psychological aggression of which they are so heavily accused? According to the study carried out for L'Express by the opinion research institute BVA, men and women declare to the same extent that they are victims of this relationship war, which one involuntarily hesitates when classifying into the "violence" category. This phenomenon is too serious to be left to a battle of words. Instead, it is important to stick to the facts: this is exactly the purpose of the debate led by the philosopher Elisabeth Badinter on this topic. We are publishing the talk she gave at an Amnesty International panel in Lyon on June 16th. This investigation is a major first. Asking women and men the same questions about the tensions that exist within their relationships amounts to a break with the dominant discourse about “partner violence.” The finding that men and women complain about each other about equally (and that men even have to endure twice as much insults as women) reinforces the discomfort I always feel, on the one hand, compared to the method usually chosen to report violence against women to speak, and on the other hand with regard to the conclusions that one draws from it.
First of all, the method that most institutions or associations rely on is a generalizing one: we are told that men's violence against women is universal. For example, in the Amnesty International brochure (2004) one reads: "All over the world, women suffer acts or threats of violence. This common fate extends across national, income, racial and cultural boundaries. At home as well as in theirs Living environment, in times of war and peace, women are beaten, raped and mutilated with complete impunity."
| A duel
It is clear from all the tables evaluated: relationship wars are waged by two parties. When asked by the BVA Institute about the tensions they have experienced in their relationship over the last twelve months, all French people aged 20 to 59 expressed the feeling that they had experienced at least one of the situations tested in this study. 44% of those surveyed had to listen to unkind comments from their partner about their own family or their friends. 34% felt degraded and criticized. 30% were subjected to jealous questions: "Where were you, with whom?" 29% experienced that others make decisions about significant expenses without taking their opinion into account. And 25% had to come to terms with the fact that he “stopped speaking, refused any discussion,” and was furious. It gets worse, but that's less common. 23% had to listen to unkind comments about their physical appearance ("You're ugly!") and 22% about their sexual behavior. 23% accuse their partner of expressing contempt for their opinions in private and sometimes in public (13%). But the most interesting thing is hidden elsewhere. The men cause a surprise. Like the women, they also claim to occasionally be hit on, treated badly and brought into disrepute. They feel bothered by their partner's jealousy even more often than women: 18% of them (compared to 12% of women) say that the other person prevents them from talking to other women (men). 34% of men (26% of women) say that the other wants to know who and where they were traveling with, 33% (27% of women) say that the other wants to make decisions about important expenses without taking their opinion into account. It is the women who are least hesitant to make critical comments about physical appearance. And they are by no means the last to use insults or insults: 15% of men say so, while 8% of women accuse their partner of it. Of course, these are statements that should be treated with caution. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that it is not easy for a man to admit that he feels psychologically under pressure. More women than men complain about some of the content asked: their partner "devalues them" (37%, compared to 30%) and is particularly quick to question their sexual skills (25%, compared to 19%). It should also be noted that women answer certain questions more pessimistically than in the "Enquête Nationale sur la violence envers les femmes en France" from 2001. The less gloomy framework of our survey, which is also smaller in scope, has undoubtedly contributed to the subject being addressed de-dramatize and express opinions freely. It shows very well that men and women are equally capable of exercising partner violence. On the other hand, it does not allow any statement to be made about all the disputes that escalate into something worse in a variety of ways - and mostly to the detriment of women. |
This approach uses a mixture of different types of violence, which are, however, very different in nature: violence in times of war and in times of peace. Violence exercised by states and violence exercised privately. The violence of the husband or partner, that of the sexual or moral harasser, the soldier or the black marketeer. There is also no distinction made between the Parisian woman who is harassed on the bus or train and the little Nigerien woman who becomes the victim of a sexual deal, or the Jordanian woman who becomes the victim of a crime in the name of honor. Psychological and physical violence. Violence in totalitarian, patriarchal states and violence in democratic states.
This approach also assumes a kind of continuum of violence by placing the threat of a slap in the face in marriage and the stoning of an adulteress on the same level: "The hand on the butt in the subway, catcalls in the street, punches, beeps -swearing, humiliation by partners, forced marriages, raped girls, etc." (Collectif national pour les droits des femmes, 2005). There are no distinctions made, but rather a list of completely different actions that are more like a general store where everything and nothing takes on equal importance: from verbal attacks to the exertion of psychological pressure to physical assault.
Finally, it seems to me that people don't take the statistics very seriously, and even less take their sources or their interpretation. The Amnesty issue reads: "At least one in three women has been beaten, forced to have sex or treated violently in one way or another at some point in their lives" (Population Reports, N° 11, Johns Hopkins, School of Public Health , December 1999). What does “treated violently in this or that way” mean? This imprecise phrase means that only one thing sticks in people's minds: that one in three women is beaten or raped.
Worse still, there is a report on the Internet that "almost 50% of women worldwide have been beaten or physically abused by their partner at some point in their lives." According to the Council of Europe, domestic violence is the leading cause of death for women aged 16 to 44 - and cause of disability, even before cancer or traffic accidents. These claims by Spanish feminists from 2003 are quoted everywhere, especially in the Council of Europe report. Was I the only one who was startled when she read this? The statistics from the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) say for 2001 that 2,402 women between the ages of 16 and 44 died as a result of cancer!
The National Survey on Violence against Women in France (Population & sociétés, January 2001) puts forward a global index of 10% for intimate partner violence directed against French women, which, curiously, is made up of: insults and verbal threats (4.3%), emotional blackmail (1.8%), exertion of psychological pressure (37%), physical attacks (2.5%), of which repeated (1.4%), rape and other forced sexual practices (0.9%). Journalists and politicians translate: 10% of women in France are beaten. Year after year on March 8th, we hear this false claim without anyone thinking about taking a closer look at the numbers or correcting them.
Fourth illustration of the promotional use of statistics: in 1980, two researchers, Linda MacLeod and Andrée Cadieux, published a report on beaten women in Quebec, citing the number of 300,000 beaten women and 52 women murdered by their partners or ex-partners. For 24 years, the "300,000" became the headline of the feminist movements in Quebec; until the Institut de la statistique du Québec published a study worthy of the name in 2004, which counted no more than 14,209 women who described themselves as victims of partner violence. As for the 52 women murdered by their partner or ex-partner in Quebec, the publication of the Sécurité publique du Québec for the years 2000-2001 lists 14 women and 7 men murdered by their partner. Linda MacLeod admitted her mistake in 1994. She defended herself by saying: "I had no doubts about that number because it represented a reality that was underpinned by those women and men who worked on the front lines. That was a valid assumption." I'm not questioning the good faith of these researchers, but I can't help but think that what they're looking for here is less the truth than the confirmation of pre-existing assumptions. Male violence is offset by omission; the numbers are inflated until they are completely distorted, as if they expressed an unconscious desire for global condemnation of the opposite sex. The goal here is no longer to condemn violent men, but - in my opinion - men in general.
This is why I am dismayed at the United Nations' use of the term gender violence, which is adopted by Amnesty. It is a term that comes from the work of the most radical Anglo-Saxon feminists from the 1980s to 1990s. What does “gender-based violence” mean? Does this mean that the use of violence is a specific characteristic of the male? That masculinity is defined by the dominance and oppression of the opposite sex? That women don't know how to use violence?
The choice of terms is fundamental. Because if you introduce this concept of gender violence, you arrive at a dual definition of humanity with the opposition between tormentors and victims, or between evil and good. I think you're making a double mistake here. On the one hand, the term “gender-based violence” does not seem well-founded to me. On the other hand, the chance for change is lost by generalizing male violence without the slightest qualitative, cultural and political distinction.
Slip-ups in a couple's life are not a sufficient argument to speak of "terrorizing the partner".
In promoting the belief that violence is not a specific characteristic of one gender, I turn to the phenomena of partner violence in Western democracies, where one can assume a more nuanced and scientific approach to this question.
First observation: the studies available to us, both in France and in Europe, especially those of the Council of Europe, seem to me to be incomplete in many places and therefore biased. They are incomplete because they only record women as victims. It was consistently and consciously decided not to want to know whether there were male victims. The justification given for this omission is always the same. It consists of two arguments: we have no statistics, but we have good reasons to believe that 98% of partner violence comes from men (see Marie-France Hirigoyen in L'Express of April 25, 2005: "The men? The they were not questioned. By definition they are assigned the role of the aggressor: they are in 98% of cases."). As far as violence against women is concerned, it is merely a legitimate defense against the violence primarily perpetrated by men.
Second observation: in the absence of definitive work, the most questionable figures are circulating. Example: In France, are 6 women killed by their partners or ex-partners every month (i.e. 72 per year), or 400, as was said in the television program Le Droit de savoir on TF1? And how can one assess the extent and significance of this phenomenon when the statistics from the judiciary and the police do not distinguish between women who died as a result of intimate partner violence and those who died as a result of other circumstances?
Given this situation, I would like to show that violence has no gender by shedding light on some aspects of female violence that are rarely talked about. With regard to female partner violence, we must, as usual, rely on work from North America to see more clearly, and in particular the recent study by Denis Laroche for the Institut de la statistique du Québec, whose statistics were published in February 2005 by the very feminist Conseil du Statut de la Femme du Québec were approved. As far as I know, this is the first comprehensive French-language study of partner violence that addresses both male and female violence. It is also the first study to distinguish between serious violence and minor violence, which comes in the form of a list of 10 situations of physical violence, ranging from the threat to the actual act. This contains four basic pieces of information: in the last five years before the study, 92.4% of men and 94.5% of women declared that they had not been affected by physical violence. In 2002, 62,700 women and 39,500 men in Quebec described themselves as victims of intimate partner violence (including all types of violence). There are differences between the acts of aggression suffered by men and women. Women are more likely to be victims of serious physical violence than men. Of them, 25% were beaten (compared to 10% of men), 20% were almost strangled (4% of men), 19% were threatened with a weapon (8% of men). Seven times more women than men have been victims of sexual assault. On the other hand, according to Canadian studies, men and women are in no way inferior when it comes to psychological “violence”.
From the American psychologist Michael P. Johnson (2000), the Canadians adopted what I consider to be a fundamental distinction between two types of partner violence: “terrorization of the partner” and “situation-related violence”.
Serious violence that occurs in a context of "terrorizing the partner" is defined by the desire to destroy the partner in every way (mental and physical). This violence is mostly carried out by men.
On the other hand, most of the men affected become victims of their partner in a context of "situational violence", which either arises from the woman's self-defense or from mutual violence, or is the result of a power struggle between the two partners. The concept of "interactive violence" is introduced here, which is crucial for understanding a large part of partner violence.
It is therefore clear that women, even if the majority of them are victims of violence, especially physical violence, also carry out this violence when they are in a physically or psychologically dominant position.
To see this for yourself, you have to look at the violence committed by women against the most vulnerable. First of all, towards children. Although this topic is rarely addressed, some studies give food for thought. The most recent report by the ODAS (Observatoire national de l'action sociale décentralisée, which oversees social assistance for children), published in December 2004, puts the figure at 89,000 children at risk in France, of which 18,000 children are abused.
The 2002 activity report of the emergency number for abused children indicates that 76.2% of abuse is caused by parents, of which 48.8% is attributable to mothers and 27.4% to fathers, although these figures are probably in reality lie higher. Finally, the Unicef report (2003) on the deaths of children as a result of maltreatment in rich countries refers to the death of 3,500 children under the age of 15 every year. The report does not provide precise information about the ratio of fathers and mothers responsible for the deaths of their children. But it would certainly be wrong to assign this blame to just one of the two sexes.
An epidemiological investigation is underway in France, which is being carried out by INSERM. Initial results indicate an underestimate of the number of children under one year of age who died as a result of maltreatment and who were classified as "sudden infant death syndrome" (see Journal de l'Inserm, May-June-July 2003). But who is responsible for the majority of care for infants in our society? Finally, I will content myself with mentioning the existence of female pedophilia, which was apparently discovered barely a year ago in the wake of the Outreau and Angers trials. I remind you that in the latter there were 29 women and 37 men in the dock. However, to date we have not had any serious investigation into this type of violence.
However, children are not the only weak creatures subjected to female violence. The mistreatment of the elderly is another issue in which this female violence implicitly plays a role. In 2003, the responsible minister put the number of abused seniors at 600,000. This familial abuse takes place at home. But regardless of whether this happens in families or in the relevant institutions: the majority of them are women who look after the elderly, just as they do the youngest.
There remains one topic that is still taboo and is only rarely investigated - especially in France: violence within lesbian relationships. A 1998 study by the Agence de santé publique du Canada concluded that there is the same level of violence in gay and lesbian relationships as in heterosexual relationships. If all types of violence are taken into account, one in four couples refers to violence in their relationship.
All these stupid but necessary figures show that one should not talk about gender violence, but rather about the “right of the strongest”. There is undoubtedly a single crime that is more likely to be blamed on men than on women: rape, which today in France is punished as harshly as murder. What remains is that both men and women can slip into violence when they hold a dominant position. The photos of Abou Ghraib in Iraq showed it, as did the participation of women in the genocides in Nazi Germany and Rwanda. It is obvious that in history men are predominantly responsible for physical violence. For thousands of years they have been the holders of all positions of power in the economy, religion, military, politics and family, that is, the rulers over women. However, with the increasing participation in power that develops under the conditions of democracy, it is inevitable that more and more women will abuse their dominant positions, that is, engage in violence in turn.
Furthermore, the concept of violence, as it is used today to describe any conceivable act regardless of its context, needs to be reconsidered. You cannot use the same word to describe an indecent gesture in a public place and rape. And neither for the numerous different situations listed in the studies on partner violence. An unpleasant remark, an insult, an inappropriate authoritarian action or even the threat of a slap in the face cannot be equated with a destructive attack on the other person. Slip-ups in a couple's life are not sufficient justification to speak of the "terrorization of the partner", which is of a fundamentally different nature and which many specialists today define as "a dynamic of the couple relationship in which one of the partners lacks the integrity and dignity hurting the other through aggressive, active and repeated behavior with the aim of controlling him". It also seems unreasonable to me to put violence against women in democratic states on the same level as that in patriarchal, non-democratic states. In the latter, violence against women is violence based on traditional philosophical and religious principles that contradict our own. It is these principles that must be combated. Only the education of women and their mobilization will put an end to this systematic imbalance that assigns all rights to one gender and all responsibilities to the other.
In our societies, however, violence against women contradicts our principles. It requires the criminal prosecution of its authors. However, contrary to those who believe that every society is structurally violent towards women, I think that it is above all an expression of a pathological psychological and social condition that requires care and a serious reflection on our priorities. The growing violence observed in Western societies, regardless of age, gender and social context, may be linked to a growing inability to conform to the constraints of existing obligations and to a disturbingly growing tendency to deny universal rights to be confused with individual wishes.
The winter of 2005 taught us that violence against children and young people in schools has increased sharply, across all age groups, from high schools to kindergartens, and that no social class has been spared. Irritability, rude behavior, insults and beatings have become an expression of banal aggressiveness, even towards those who are there to help and protect us, such as teachers or doctors. Between 1999 and 2003, according to the Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE), the number of French people who were victims of aggressive acts (insults, threats, beatings) increased by 20%. Under these conditions, the question arises as to why we are increasingly unable to endure frustration and manage our aggressiveness.
It is not our principles that are in question, but our upbringing. It is she who needs to be changed. For over thirty years, individual self-realization and the satisfaction of our desires have prevailed over respect for others and the rules of the community. This affects men as well as women and has nothing to do with what is happening in other regions of the world where the law is an oppressive yoke and individual self-realization is a meaningless concept. Basically, the meaning of the concept of obligation must be relearned in our societies, just as others must learn to demand their rights. By striving to mix these two contexts at all costs, one puts oneself in a position of powerlessness and also accepts injustice. By falling into the clamor of "gender-based violence" one is guilty of a new sexism, no more acceptable than the first.
Elisabeth Badinter