Should we stop talking about “violence against women”?

• In 2021, 113 feminicides were counted.

  Murders that fit into the modest term of "violence against women".

• Several feminist associations want to replace this term with that of “sexist and sexual violence”.

• For the linguist Véronique Perry and the author Rose Lamy, the challenge is to stop naming the victims to focus on the culprits and the system that maintains this violence.

In 2021, 113 men killed their spouse or ex-spouse.

Or rather, to use the official communication, “113 women fell under the blows of their partner or ex”.

The difference is subtle, but it actually changes the prism under which we consider this famous "violence against women", a term that has been imposed for several years to group together harassment, sexual assault, rape and murder when a woman is the victim.

Victims with almost no executioner, victims because they are women, almost as if women were a category of victims.

This expression "maintains the victimization of women", is indignant Rose Lamy, feminist and author of

.

"We must stop naming the victim and make the perpetrators responsible", joins Véronique Perry, feminist linguist at the University of Toulouse Paul Sabatier interviewed by

.

For the two women, the main problem of this term is indeed to erase the men from the violence, in particular by the use of a passive form.

“It is said that alcohol and beatings killed Marie Trintignant, but it is her husband, Bertrand Cantat”, image Rose Lamy.

Objects of desire responsible for their unhappiness

By placing women first as victims, before placing men as perpetrators, the expression implicitly places the responsibility for violence on women.

Rose Lamy thus criticizes the recent prevention campaigns against GHB.

“There is not an article on the men who do this, what are their profiles”, she denounces.

In other words, while women are told to be careful with their drink or to use varnish that detects the presence of the drug, they are not looking for where the (future) rapist got the drugs, "which presupposes premeditation,” notes the author.

For the feminist, the use of a passive form with the very neutral verb “to do” is also problematic.

"We go shopping or we draw a picture, but we don't do violence," she illustrates.

"To kill, you need an intention, to hate, to despise, to go through stages of dehumanization", where the idea of ​​"doing harm" is almost an accident.

She doesn't mince words either on the campaign against “the dangers of the night”: “The night is immutable, it's lost in advance.

We live in the idea that it is inevitable”, and that the burden of protecting ourselves falls only to women.

A discourse that has not evolved since the 1980s, notes Véronique Perry, when people said "don't put on a skirt" at the risk of "passing for a tease".

And which even comes into contradiction with “an injunction to perverse femininity”, aiming to objectify women “for the pleasure of the dominant”.

Be beautiful, but too beautiful otherwise beware.

The linguist goes even further.

Hearing that a woman is the victim of violence because of her sex, “one imagines a woman of 20 to 40 years old, an object of desire”.

In the imagination of this violence, older women and little girls would then also disappear.

Just like transgender people, who are also excluded from certain counts of feminicides.

What term can be used to replace “violence against women”?

How, then, can we properly designate this violence?

In Spain, the term "macho violence" is used, notes Rose Lamy, who admits that "masculine violence" would probably be too committed and counterproductive.

In government formations, we use "sexist and sexual violence", argues Véronique Perry, who rather militates for "patriarchal violence", because stemming from the system of domination and allowing "to include children in the world of domestic violence. ".

But there again, the term can provoke an outcry.

If Véronique Perry proposes to “let these semantic variations coexist”, the two feminists agree on the notion of “sexist (and sexual) violence”.

A way to join "other types of systemic violence where we put the spotlight on the source of violence", such as racism, according to Rose Lamy.

Véronique Perry also sees in it a balance between a “more open designation of the victims”, while keeping the “theoretical background” of the “system” of domination.

We note, and we probably have a few articles to rename properly.

Paris

"In Paris, there are no large boulevards that bear a woman's name, only alleys"

Society

Women's Rights Day: Puy-de-Dôme police highlight men "without whom nothing would have been possible" (and there is an outcry)

• Sexism

• Violence against women

• Sexual violence

• Feminism

• Society

• women's rights day

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