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The Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies

Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation (2012) and Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women (1996) and editor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working toward Freedom (with Alice Kim, Erica Meiners, Jill Petty, et al., 2018).

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Beth E. Richie; The Effects of Violence on Communities: The Violence Matrix as a Tool for Advancing More Just Policies. Daedalus 2022; 151 (1): 84–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01890

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In this essay, I illustrate how discussions of the effects of violence on communities are enhanced by the use of a critical framework that links various microvariables with macro-institutional processes. Drawing upon my work on the issue of violent victimization toward African American women and how conventional justice policies have failed to bring effective remedy in situations of extreme danger and degradation, I argue that a broader conceptual framework is required to fully understand the profound and persistent impact that violence has on individuals embedded in communities that are experiencing the most adverse social injustices. I use my work as a case in point to illustrate how complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization. In the end, I argue that understanding the impact of all forms of violence would be better served by a more intersectional and critical interdisciplinary framework.

Rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship, public policy analyses, and the most conscientious popular discourse on the impact of violence point to the deleterious effects that violence has on both individual health and safety and community well-being. Comprehensive justice policy research on topics ranging from gun violence to intimate abuse support the premise that the physical injury, psychological distress, and fear that are typically associated with individual victimization are directly linked to subsequent social isolation, economic instability, erosion of neighborhood networks, group alienation, and mistrust of justice and other institutions. This literature also points to the ways that structural inequality, persistent disadvantages, and structural abandonment are some of the root causes of microlevel violent interactions and at the same time influence how effective macro-level justice policies are at responding to or preventing violent victimization. 1

The most exciting of these analyses have emerged from the subfields of feminist criminology, critical race theory, critical criminology, sociolegal theory, and other social science research that take seriously questions of race and culture, gender and sexuality, ethnic identity and class position, exploring with great interest how these factors influence the prevailing questions upon which practitioners in our field base their practice; questions such as how to increase access to justice, the role of punishment in desistance, the factors that lead to a disproportionate impact of institutional practices, and the perceptions about, and possibilities for, violence prevention and abolitionist practices. 2 Discussions about the future of justice policy would be well served by attending to this growing literature and the critical frameworks that are advanced from within it.

In this essay, I will attempt to illustrate how discussions of the effects of violence on communities are enhanced by the use of a critical framework that links various microvariables with macro-institutional processes. Drawing upon my work on the issue of violent victimization toward African American women and how conventional justice policies have failed to bring effective remedy in situations of extreme danger and degradation, I argue that a broader conceptual framework is required to fully understand the profound and persistent impact that violence has on individuals embedded in communities that are experiencing the most adverse social injustices. I use my work as a case in point to illustrate how complex community dynamics, ineffective institutional responses, and broader societal forces of systemic violence intersect to further the impact of individual victimization. In the end, I argue that understanding the impact of all forms of violence would be better served by a more intersectional and critical interdisciplinary framework.

Following a review of the data on violent victimization against African American women, I describe the violence matrix , a conceptual framework that I developed from analyzing data from several research projects on the topic. 3 I do so as a way to make concrete my earlier claim: that the effect of violence on communities must be understood from a critical intersectional framework. That is, my central argument here is an epistemological one, suggesting that in the future, the most effective and indeed “just” policies in response to violence necessitate the development of critical far-reaching systemic analysis and social change at multiple levels.

Violent victimization has been established as a major problem in contemporary society, resulting in long-term physical, social, emotional, and economic consequences for people of different racial/ethnic, class, religious, regional, and age groups and identities. 4 However, like most social problems, the impact is not equally felt across all subgroups, and even though the rates may be similar, the consequences of violent victimization follow other patterns of social inequality and disproportionately affect racial/ethnic minority groups. 5 When impact and consequences are taken into account, it becomes clear that African American women fare among the worst, in part because of the ways that individual experiences are impacted by negative institutional processes. 6

While qualitative data suggest that there is a link between social position in a racial hierarchy and Black women's subsequent vulnerability to violence, the specific mechanism of that relationship has yet to be described or tested. 7 However, despite new research that examines the effects of race/ethnicity and gender in combination, there has been a lack of systematic analysis of the intersection of race and gender with a specific focus on the situational factors, cultural dynamics, and neighborhood variables that lead to higher rates and/or more problematic outcomes of violent victimization in the lives of African American women. 8

These unanswered questions led to the years of fieldwork that informed the development of the violence matrix. I was interested in broadening the understanding of violence by analyzing the contextual and situational factors that correlate with multiple forms of violent victimization for African American women, incorporating the racial and community dynamics that influence their experiences. I was also concerned about the ways that state-sanctioned violence and systemic oppression contributed to the experience and impact of intimate partner abuse and looked for a way to incorporate “ordinary violence” and “the injustices of everyday life” into an analytic model. I offer this conceptual approach as a potential epistemological model because it proposes to enhance the scientific understanding of violent victimization of African American women by looking at gender and race, micro and macro, individual, community, and societal issues in the same analysis, whereas in most other research, rates of victimization are described either by gender or race, and typically not from within the contexts of household, neighborhood, and society.

More specifically, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence typically understood to be associated with household or familiar relationships are usually studied as a separate phenomenon constituting a gender violence subfield distinct from other forms of victimization that are captured in more general crime statistics. 9 The more general research that documents crimes of assault, homicide, and so on does not typically isolate analyses of the nature of the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, even if it is noted. As a result, gender violence and other forms of violent victimization against women are studied separately, and their causes and consequences, the intervention and prevention strategies, and the needs for policy change are not linked analytically to each other. This leaves unexamined the significant influence of situational factors (such as intimacy) or contextual factors (such as negative images of African American women) on victimization, and on violence more generally.

Prior to describing the violence matrix, readers may benefit from a brief overview of the problems that it was designed to account for. African American women experience disproportionate impacts of violent victimization. 10 As the following review of the literature shows, the rates are high and the consequences are severe, firmly establishing the need to focus on this vulnerable group. The goal is not to suggest it is the only population group at risk or that racial/ethnic identity has a causal influence on victimization, but rather to look specifically at how race/ethnicity and gender interact to create significant disproportionality in rates of, perceptions about, and consequences of violence, and to develop an instrument to collect data that can be analyzed conceptually and discussed in terms of contextual particularities.

Assault . According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2005, Black women reported experiencing violent victimization at a rate of 25 per 1,000 persons aged twelve years or older. 11 In an earlier report, Black women reported experiencing simple assaults at 28.8 per 1,000 persons and serious violent crimes at 22.5 per 1,000 persons, twelve years or older. Black women are also more likely (53 percent) to report violent victimization to the police than their White or male counterparts. 12 Situational factors such as income, urban versus suburban residence, perception of street gang membership, and presence of a weapon influence Black women's violent victimization. Other variables are known to complicate this disproportionality, most notably income, age, neighborhood density, and other crimes in the community like gang-related events. However, few studies note or analyze their covariance. Additionally, reports after 2007 detail statistics on violent victimization for race or gender, but not race and gender; therefore, numbers regarding Black women's experiences are largely unknown.

Intimate partner violence . Intimate partner violence is a significant and persistent social problem with serious consequences for individual women, their families, and society as a whole. 13 The 1996 National Violence Against Women Survey suggested that 1.5 million women in the United States were physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year, while other studies provide much higher estimates. 14 For example, the Department of Justice estimates that 5.3 million incidents of violence against a current or former spouse or girlfriend occur annually. Estimates of violence against women in same sex partnerships indicate a similar rate of victimization. 15

According to most national studies, African American women are disproportionately represented in the data on physical violence against intimate partners. 16 In the Violence Against Women Survey, 25 percent of Black women had experienced abuse from their intimate partner, including “physical violence, sexual violence, threats of violence, economic exploitation, confinement and isolation from social activities, stalking, property destruction, burglary, theft, and homicide.” Rates of severe battering help to spotlight the disproportionate impact of direct physical assaults on Black women by intimate partners: homicide by an intimate partner is the second-leading cause of death for Black women between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. 17 Black women are killed by a spouse at a rate twice that of White women. However, when the intimate partner is a boyfriend or girlfriend, this statistic increases to four times the rate of their White counterparts. 18 While the numbers are convincing, they are typically not embedded in an understanding of how situational factors like relationship history, religiosity, or availability of services impact these rates. 19

Sexual victimization . When race is considered a variable in some community samples, 7 to 30 percent of all Black women report having been raped as adults, and 14 percent report sexual abuse during their childhood. 20 This unusually wide range results from differences in definitions and sampling methods. However, as is true in most research on sexual victimization, it is widely accepted that rape, when self-reported, is underreported, and that Black women tend to underutilize crisis intervention and other supportive services that collect data. 21 Even though Black women from all segments of the African American community experience sexual violence, the pattern of vulnerability to rape and sexual assault mirrors that of direct physical assault by intimate partners. The data show that Black women from low-income communities, those with substance abuse problems or mental health concerns, and those in otherwise compromised social positions are most vulnerable to sexual violence from their intimate partners. 22 Not only is the incidence of rape higher, but a review of the qualitative research on Black women's experiences of rape also suggests that Black women are assaulted in more brutal and degrading ways than other women. 23 Weapons or objects are more often used, so Black women's injuries are typically worse than those of other groups of women. Black women are more likely to be raped repeatedly and to experience assaults that involve multiple perpetrators. 24

Beyond the physical, and sometimes lethal, consequences, the psychological literature documents the very serious mental health impact of sexual assault by intimate partners. For instance, 31 percent of all rape victims develop rape-related post-traumatic stress disorder. 25 Rape victims are three times more likely than nonvictims to experience a major depressive episode in their lives, and they attempt suicide at a rate thirteen times higher than nonvictims. Women who have been raped by a member of their household are ten times more likely to abuse illegal substances or alcohol than women who have not been raped. Black women experience the trauma of sexual abuse and aggression from their intimate partners in particular ways, as studies conducted by psychologists Victoria Banyard, Sandra Graham-Bermann, Carolyn West, and others have discussed. 26 It is also important to note the extent to which Black women are exposed to or coerced into participating in sexually exploitative intimate relationships with older men and men who violate commitments of fidelity by having multiple sexual partners. 27 Far from infrequent or benign, it can be hypothesized that these experiences serve to socialize young women into relationships characterized by unequal power, and they normalize subservient gender roles for women, although very little empirical research has been done to make this analytical case.

Community harassment . In addition to direct physical and sexual assaults, Black women experience a disproportionate number of unwanted comments, uninvited physical advances, and undesired exposure to pornography in their communities. Almost 75 percent of Black women sampled report some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime, including being forced to live in, work in, attend school in, and even worship in degrading, dangerous, and hostile environments, where the threat of rape, public humiliation, and embarrassment is a defining aspect of their social environment. 28 They also experience trauma as a result of witnessing violence in their communities. 29

For some women, this sexual harassment escalates to rape. Even when it does not, community harassment creates an environment of fear, apprehension, shame, and anxiety that can be linked to women's vulnerability to violent victimization. It is important to understand this link because herein lie some of the most significant situational and contextual factors, like the diminished use of support services and reduced social capital on the part of African American women.

Social disenfranchisement . Less well-documented or quantified in the criminological data is the disproportionate harm caused to African American women because of the ways that violent victimization is linked to social disenfranchisement and the discrimination they face in the social sphere. Included here is what other researchers have called coercive control or structural violence. 30 The notion of social disenfranchisement goes beyond emotional abuse and psychological manipulation to include the regulation of emotional and social life in the private sphere in ways that are consistent with normative values about gender, race, and class. 31 These aspects of violence against African American women in particular are conceptualized in the violence matrix, and include being disrespected by microracial slurs from community members and agency officials, and having their experience of violent victimization denied by community leaders. 32 African American women are also disproportionately likely to be poor, rely on public services like welfare, and be under the control of state institutions like prisons, which means that they face discrimination and degradation in these settings at higher rates. 33 These situational and contextual factors that cause harm are indirectly related to violent victimization and must be considered part of the environment that disadvantages African American women. From this vantage point, it could be argued that when women experience disadvantages associated with racial and ethnic discrimination, dangerous and degrading situations, and social disenfranchisement, they are more at risk of victimization. 34

The violence matrix ( Table 1 ) is informed by the data reviewed above and by my interest in bringing a critical feminist criminological approach to the understanding of violent victimization of African American women. It asserts that intimate partner violence is worsened by some of the contextual variables and situational dynamics in their households, communities, and broader social sphere, and vice versa. The tool is not intended to infer causation, but rather to broaden the understanding of the factors that influence violence in order to create justice policy in the future.

The Violence Matrix

The violence matrix conceptualizes the forms of violent victimization that women experience as fitting into three overlapping categories, reflecting a sense that the forms are co-constituted and exist within a larger context and in multiple arenas: 35 1) direct physical assault against women; 2) sexual aggressions that range from harassment to rape; and 3) the emotional and structural dimensions of social disenfranchisement that characterize the lives of some African American women and leave them vulnerable to abuse. Embedded in the discussion of social disenfranchisement are issues related to social inequality, systemic abuse, and state violence.

Consistent with ecological models of other social problems, the violence matrix shows that various forms of violent victimization happen in several contexts and are influenced by several variables. 36 First, violence occurs within households, including abuse from intimate partners as well as other family members and co-residents. Dynamics associated with household composition, relationship history, and patterns of household functioning can be isolated for consideration in this context. The second sphere is the community in which women live: the neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and public spaces where women routinely interact with peers and other people. This context has both a geographic and a cultural meaning. Community, in this context, is where women share a sense of belonging and physical space. An analysis of the community context focuses attention on issues like neighborhood social class, degree of social cohesion, and presence or absence of social services. The third is the social sphere, where legal processes, institutional policies, ineffective justice policies, and the nature of social conditions (such as population density, neighborhood disorder, patterns of incarceration, and other macrovariables) create conditions that cause harm to women and other victims of violence. 37 The harm caused by victimization in this context happens either through passive victimization (as in the case of bystanders not responding to calls for help because of the low priority put on women's safety) or active aggression (as in police use of excessive force in certain neighborhoods) that create structural disadvantage. 38

The analytic advantage of using a tool like the violence matrix to explain violent victimization is that it offers a way to move beyond statistical analyses of disproportionality to focus on a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between contextual factors that disadvantage African American women and the situational variables leading to violent victimization. Two important features of this conceptual framework allow for this. First, the violence matrix theoretical model considers both the forms and the contexts as dialectical and reinforcing (as opposed to discrete) categories of experience. Boundaries overlap, relationships shift over time, and situations change. It helps to show how gender violence and other forms of violent victimization intersect and reinforce each other. For example, sexual abuse has a physical component, community members move in and become intimate partners, and sexual harassment is sometimes a part of how institutions respond to victims. This theoretical model examines the simultaneity of forms and contexts, a feature that most paradigms do not have. 39 The possibility that gender violence (like marital rape) could be correlated with violence at the community level (like assault by a neighbor) holds important potential for a deeper understanding of violent victimization of vulnerable groups and therefore informs the future of justice policy.

A second distinguishing feature of this conceptual model is that it broadens the discussion about violent victimization beyond direct assaults within the household (Table 1, cells 1 and 2) and sexual assaults by acquaintances and strangers (cells 5 and 8), which are the focus of the majority of the research on violence against women. It includes social disenfranchisement as a form of violence and social sphere as a context (cells 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9). In this way, the violence matrix focuses specific attention on contextual and situational vulnerabilities in addition to the physical ones. More generally, this advantages research and justice praxis. This approach responds to the entrenched problem of gender violence as it relates to issues of structural racism and other forms of systematic advantage. Models like this therefore hold the potential to inform justice policy that is more comprehensive, more effective, and, ultimately, more “just.”

My hope is that the violence matrix will deepen the understanding of the specific problem of violence in the lives of Black women and serve as a model for intersectional analyses of other groups and their experiences of violence. I hope it points to the utility of moving beyond quantitative studies and single-dimension qualitative analyses of the impact of violence and instead encourages designing conceptual models that consider root causes and the ways that systemic factors complicate its impact. This would offer an opportunity for a deeper discussion around violence policy, one that would include attention to individual harm, and how it is created by, reinforced by, or worsened by structural forms of violence. It would bring neighborhood dynamics into the analytical framework and engage issues of improving community efficacy and reversing structural abandonment in considerations of potential options. Questions about where strategies of community development and how the politics of prison abolition might appear would become relevant. And in the end, it would advance critical justice frameworks that answer questions about what 1) we might invest in to keep individuals safe; 2) how we might help neighborhoods thrive; and 3) how we might create structural changes that shift power in our society such that violence and victimization are minimized. More than rhetorical questions and naively optimistic strategies, these are real issues that must inform any discussion of the future of justice policy. A model like the violence matrix, modified and improved upon by discussions at convenings like those hosted by the Square One Project, offer some insights into both the what and the how of future justice policy. I hope that this essay is helpful in moving that discussion forward.

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• Published: 20 June 2023

A qualitative quantitative mixed methods study of domestic violence against women

• Mina Shayestefar 1 ,
• Mohadese Saffari 1 ,
• Razieh Gholamhosseinzadeh 2 ,
• Monir Nobahar 3 , 4 ,
• Majid Mirmohammadkhani 4 ,
• Seyed Hossein Shahcheragh 5 &
• Zahra Khosravi 6  

BMC Women's Health volume  23 , Article number:  322 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Violence against women is one of the most widespread, persistent and detrimental violations of human rights in today’s world, which has not been reported in most cases due to impunity, silence, stigma and shame, even in the age of social communication. Domestic violence against women harms individuals, families, and society. The objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence and experiences of domestic violence against women in Semnan.

This study was conducted as mixed research (cross-sectional descriptive and phenomenological qualitative methods) to investigate domestic violence against women, and some related factors (quantitative) and experiences of such violence (qualitative) simultaneously in Semnan. In quantitative study, cluster sampling was conducted based on the areas covered by health centers from married women living in Semnan since March 2021 to March 2022 using Domestic Violence Questionnaire. Then, the obtained data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. In qualitative study by phenomenological approach and purposive sampling until data saturation, 9 women were selected who had referred to the counseling units of Semnan health centers due to domestic violence, since March 2021 to March 2022 and in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted. The conducted interviews were analyzed using Colaizzi’s 7-step method.

In qualitative study, seven themes were found including “Facilitators”, “Role failure”, “Repressors”, “Efforts to preserve the family”, “Inappropriate solving of family conflicts”, “Consequences”, and “Inefficient supportive systems”. In quantitative study, the variables of age, age difference and number of years of marriage had a positive and significant relationship, and the variable of the number of children had a negative and significant relationship with the total score and all fields of the questionnaire (p < 0.05). Also, increasing the level of female education and income both independently showed a significant relationship with increasing the score of violence.

Conclusions

Some of the variables of violence against women are known and the need for prevention and plans to take action before their occurrence is well felt. Also, supportive mechanisms with objective and taboo-breaking results should be implemented to minimize harm to women, and their children and families seriously.

Peer Review reports

Violence against women by husbands (physical, sexual and psychological violence) is one of the basic problems of public health and violation of women’s human rights. It is estimated that 35% of women and almost one out of every three women aged 15–49 experience physical or sexual violence by their spouse or non-spouse sexual violence in their lifetime [ 1 ]. This is a nationwide public health issue, and nearly every healthcare worker will encounter a patient who has suffered from some type of domestic or family violence. Unfortunately, different forms of family violence are often interconnected. The “cycle of abuse” frequently persists from children who witness it to their adult relationships, and ultimately to the care of the elderly [ 2 ]. This violence includes a range of physical, sexual and psychological actions, control, threats, aggression, abuse, and rape [ 3 ].

Violence against women is one of the most widespread, persistent, and detrimental violations of human rights in today’s world, which has not been reported in most cases due to impunity, silence, stigma and shame, even in the age of social communication [ 3 ]. In the United States of America, more than one in three women (35.6%) experience rape, physical violence, and intimate partner violence (IPV) during their lifetime. Compared to men, women are nearly twice as likely (13.8% vs. 24.3%) to experience severe physical violence such as choking, burns, and threats with knives or guns [ 4 ]. The higher prevalence of violence against women can be due to the situational deprivation of women in patriarchal societies [ 5 ]. The prevalence of domestic violence in Iran reported 22.9%. The maximum of prevalence estimated in Tehran and Zahedan, respectively [ 6 ]. Currently, Iran has high levels of violence against women, and the provinces with the highest rates of unemployment and poverty also have the highest levels of violence against women [ 7 ].

Domestic violence against women harms individuals, families, and society [ 8 ]. Violence against women leads to physical, sexual, psychological harm or suffering, including threats, coercion and arbitrary deprivation of their freedom in public and private life. Also, such violence is associated with harmful effects on women’s sexual reproductive health, including sexually transmitted infection such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), abortion, unsafe childbirth, and risky sexual behaviors [ 9 ]. There are high levels of psychological, sexual and physical domestic abuse among pregnant women [ 10 ]. Also, women with postpartum depression are significantly more likely to experience domestic violence during pregnancy [ 11 ].

Prompt attention to women’s health and rights at all levels is necessary, which reduces this problem and its risk factors [ 12 ]. Because women prefer to remain silent about domestic violence and there is a need to introduce immediate prevention programs to end domestic violence [ 13 ]. violence against women, which is an important public health problem, and concerns about human rights require careful study and the application of appropriate policies [ 14 ]. Also, the efforts to change the circumstances in which women face domestic violence remain significantly insufficient [ 15 ]. Given that few clear studies on violence against women and at the same time interviews with these people regarding their life experiences are available, the authors attempted to planning this research aims to investigate the prevalence and experiences of domestic violence against women in Semnan with the research question of “What is the prevalence of domestic violence against women in Semnan, and what are their experiences of such violence?”, so that their results can be used in part of the future planning in the health system of the society.

This study is a combination of cross-sectional and phenomenology studies in order to investigate the amount of domestic violence against women and some related factors (quantitative) and their experience of this violence (qualitative) simultaneously in the Semnan city. This study has been approved by the ethics committee of Semnan University of Medical Sciences with ethic code of IR.SEMUMS.REC.1397.182. The researcher introduced herself to the research participants, explained the purpose of the study, and then obtained informed written consent. It was assured to the research units that the collected information will be anonymous and kept confidential. The participants were informed that participation in the study was entirely voluntary, so they can withdraw from the study at any time with confidence. The participants were notified that more than one interview session may be necessary. To increase the trustworthiness of the study, Guba and Lincoln’s criteria for rigor, including credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability [ 16 ], were applied throughout the research process. The COREQ checklist was used to assess the present study quality. The researchers used observational notes for reflexivity and it preserved in all phases of this qualitative research process.

Qualitative method

Based on the phenomenological approach and with the purposeful sampling method, nine women who had referred to the counseling units of healthcare centers in Semnan city due to domestic violence in February 2021 to March 2022 were participated in the present study. The inclusion criteria for the study included marriage, a history of visiting a health center consultant due to domestic violence, and consent to participate in the study and unwillingness to participate in the study was the exclusion criteria. Each participant invited to the study by a telephone conversation about study aims and researcher information. The interviews place selected through agreement of the participant and the researcher and a place with the least environmental disturbance. Before starting each interview, the informed consent and all of the ethical considerations, including the purpose of the research, voluntary participation, confidentiality of the information were completely explained and they were asked to sign the written consent form. The participants were interviewed by depth, semi-structured and face-to-face interviews based on the main research question. Interviews were conducted by a female health services researcher with a background in nursing (M.Sh.). Data collection was continued until the data saturation and no new data appeared. Only the participants and the researcher were present during the interviews. All interviews were recorded by a MP3 Player by permission of the participants before starting. Interviews were not repeated. No additional field notes were taken during or after the interview.

The age range of the participants was from 38 to 55 years and their average age was 40 years. The sociodemographic characteristics of the participants are summarized in table below (Table  1 ).

Five interviews in the courtyards of healthcare centers, 2 interviews in the park, and 2 interviews at the participants’ homes were conducted. The duration of the interviews varied from 45 min to one hour. The main research question was “What is your experience about domestic violence?“. According to the research progress some other questions were asked in line with the main question of the research.

The conducted interviews were analyzed by using the 7 steps Colizzi’s method [ 17 ]. In order to empathize with the participants, each interview was read several times and transcribed. Then two researchers (M.Sh. and M.N.) extracted the phrases that were directly related to the phenomenon of domestic violence against women independently and distinguished from other sentences by underlining them. Then these codes were organized into thematic clusters and the formulated concepts were sorted into specific thematic categories.

In the final stage, in order to make the data reliable, the researcher again referred to 2 participants and checked their agreement with their perceptions of the content. Also, possible important contents were discussed and clarified, and in this way, agreement and approval of the samples was obtained.

Quantitative method

The cross-sectional study was implemented from February 2021 to March 2022 with cluster sampling of married women in areas of 3 healthcare centers in Semnan city. Those participants who were married and agreed with the written and verbal informed consent about the ethical considerations were included to the study. The questionnaire was completed by the participants in paper and online form.

The instrument was the standard questionnaire of domestic violence against women by Mohseni Tabrizi et al. [ 18 ]. In the questionnaire, questions 1–10, 11–36, 37–65 and 66–71 related to sociodemographic information, types of spousal abuse (psychological, economical, physical and sexual violence), patriarchal beliefs and traditions and family upbringing and learning violence, respectively. In total, this questionnaire has 71 items.

The scoring of the questionnaire has two parts and the answers to them are based on the Likert scale. Questions 11–36 and 66–71 are answered with always [ 4 ] to never (0) and questions 37–65 with completely agree [ 4 ] to completely disagree (0). The minimum and maximum score is 0 and 300, respectively. The total score of 0–60, 61–120 and higher than 121 demonstrates low, moderate and severe domestic violence against women, respectively [ 18 ].

In the study by Tabrizi et al., to evaluate the validity and reliability of this questionnaire, researchers tried to measure the face validity of the scale by the previous research. Those items and questions which their accuracies were confirmed by social science professors and experts used in the research, finally. The total Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.183, which confirmed that the reliability of the questions and items of the questionnaire is sufficient [ 18 ].

Descriptive data were reported using mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage. Then, to measure the relationship between the variables, χ2 and Pearson tests also variance and regression analysis were performed. All analysis were performed by using SPSS version 26 and the significance level was considered as p < 0.05.

Qualitative results

According to the third step of Colaizzi’s 7-step method, the researcher attempted to conceptualize and formulate the extracted meanings. In this step, the primary codes were extracted from the important sentences related to the phenomenon of violence against women, which were marked by underlining, which are shown below as examples of this stage and coding.

The primary code of indifference to the father’s role was extracted from the following sentences. This is indifference in the role of the father in front of the children.

“Some time ago, I told him that our daughter is single-sided deaf. She has a doctor’s appointment; I have to take her to the doctor. He said that I don’t have money to give you. He doesn’t force himself to make money anyway” (p 2, 33 yrs).

“He didn’t value his own children. He didn’t think about his older children” (p 4, 54 yrs).

The primary code extracted here included lack of commitment in the role of head of the household. This is irresponsibility towards the family and meeting their needs.

“My husband was fired from work after 10 years due to disorder and laziness. Since then, he has not found a suitable job. Every time he went to work, he was fired after a month because of laziness” (p 7, 55 yrs).

“In the evening, he used to get dressed and go out, and he didn’t come back until late. Some nights, I was so afraid of being alone that I put a knife under my pillow when I slept” (p 2, 33 yrs).

A total of 246 primary codes were extracted from the interviews in the third step. In the fourth step, the researchers put the formulated concepts (primary codes) into 85 specific sub-categories.

Twenty-three categories were extracted from 85 sub-categories. In the sixth step, the concepts of the fifth step were integrated and formed seven themes (Table  2 ).

These themes included “Facilitators”, “Role failure”, “Repressors”, “Efforts to preserve the family”, “Inappropriate solving of family conflicts”, “Consequences”, and “Inefficient supportive systems” (Fig.  1 ).

Themes of domestic violence against women

Some of the statements of the participants on the theme of “ Facilitators” are listed below:

Husband’s criminal record

“He got his death sentence for drugs. But, at last it was ended for 10 years” (p 4, 54 yrs).

Inappropriate age for marriage

“At the age of thirteen, I married a boy who was 25 years old” (p 8, 25 yrs).

“My first husband obeyed her parents. I was 12–13 years old” (p 3, 32 yrs).

“I couldn’t do anything. I was humiliated” (p 1, 38 yrs).

“A bridegroom came. The mother was against. She said, I am young. My older sister is not married yet, but I was eager to get married. I don’t know, maybe my father’s house was boring for me” (p 2, 33 yrs).

“My parents used to argue badly. They blamed each other and I always wanted to run away from these arguments. I didn’t have the patience to talk to mom or dad and calm them down” (p 5, 39 yrs).

Overdependence

“My husband’s parents don’t stop interfering, but my husband doesn’t say anything because he is a student of his father. My husband is self-employed and works with his father on a truck” (p 8, 25 yrs).

“Every time I argue with my husband because of lack of money, my mother-in-law supported her son and brought him up very spoiled and lazy” (p 7, 55 yrs).

Bitter memories

“After three years, my mother married her friend with my uncle’s insistence and went to Shiraz. But, his condition was that she did not have the right to bring his daughter with her. In fact, my mother also got married out of necessity” (p 8, 25 yrs).

Some of their other statements related to “ Role failure” are mentioned below:

Lack of commitment to different roles

“I got angry several times and went to my father’s house because of my husband’s bad financial status and the fact that he doesn’t feel responsible to work and always says that he cannot find a job” (p 6, 48 yrs).

“I saw that he does not want to change in any way” (p 4, 54 yrs).

“No matter how kind I am, it does not work” (p 1, 38 yrs).

Some of their other statements regarding “ Repressors” are listed below:

Fear and silence

“My mother always forced me to continue living with my husband. Finally, my father had been poor. She all said that you didn’t listen to me when you wanted to get married, so you don’t have the right to get angry and come to me, I’m miserable enough” (p 2, 33 yrs).

“Because I suffered a lot in my first marital life. I was very humiliated. I said I would be fine with that. To be kind” (p1, 38 yrs).

“Well, I tell myself that he gets angry sometimes” (p 3, 32 yrs).

Shame from society

“I don’t want my daughter-in-law to know. She is not a relative” (p 4, 54 yrs).

Some of the statements of the participants regarding the theme of “ Efforts to preserve the family” are listed below:

Hope and trust

“I always hope in God and I am patient” (p 2, 33 yrs).

Efforts for children

“My divorce took a month. We got a divorce. I forgave my dowry and took my children instead” (p 2, 33 yrs).

Some of their other statements regarding the “ Inappropriate solving of family conflicts” are listed below:

Child-bearing thoughts

“My husband wanted to take me to a doctor to treat me. But my father-in-law refused and said that instead of doing this and spending money, marry again. Marriage in the clans was much easier than any other work” (p 8, 25 yrs).

Lack of effective communication

“I was nervous about him, but I didn’t say anything” (p 5, 39 yrs).

“Now I am satisfied with my life and thank God it is better to listen to people’s words. Now there is someone above me so that people don’t talk behind me” (p 2, 33 yrs).

Some of their other statements regarding the “ Consequences” are listed below:

Harm to children

“My eldest daughter, who was about 7–8 years old, behaved differently. Oh, I was angry. My children are mentally depressed and argue” (p 5, 39 yrs).

After divorce

“Even though I got a divorce, my mother and I came to a remote area due to the fear of what my family would say” (p 2, 33 yrs).

Social harm

“I work at a retirement center for living expenses” (p 2, 33 yrs).

“I had to go to clean the houses” (p 5, 39 yrs).

Non-acceptance in the family

“The children’s relationship with their father became bad. Because every time they saw their father sitting at home smoking, they got angry” (p 7, 55 yrs).

Emotional harm

“When I look back, I regret why I was not careful in my choice” (p 7, 55 yrs).

“I felt very bad. For being married to a man who is not bound by the family and is capricious” (p 9, 36 yrs).

Some of their other statements regarding “ Inefficient supportive systems” are listed below:

Inappropriate family support

“We didn’t have children. I was at my father’s house for about a month. After a month, when I came home, I saw that my husband had married again. I cried a lot that day. He said, God, I had to. I love you. My heart is broken, I have no one to share my words” (p 8, 25 yrs).

“My brother-in-law was like himself. His parents had also died. His sister did not listen at all” (p 4, 54 yrs).

“I didn’t have anyone and I was alone” (p 1, 38 yrs).

Inefficiency of social systems

“That day he argued with me, picked me up and threw me down some stairs in the middle of the yard. He came closer, sat on my stomach, grabbed my neck with both of his hands and wanted to strangle me. Until a long time later, I had kidney problems and my neck was bruised by her hand. Given that my aunt and her family were with us in a building, but she had no desire to testify and was afraid” (p 3, 32 yrs).

Undesired training and advice

“I told my mother, you just said no, how old I was? You never insisted on me and you didn’t listen to me that this man is not good for you” (p 9, 36 yrs).

Quantitative results

In the present study, 376 married women living in Semnan city participated in this study. The mean age of participants was 38.52 ± 10.38 years. The youngest participant was 18 and the oldest was 73 years old. The maximum age difference was 16 years. The years of marriage varied from one year to 40 years. Also, the number of children varied from no children to 7. The majority of them had 2 children (109, 29%). The sociodemographic characteristics of the participants are summarized in the table below (Table  3 ).

The frequency distribution (number and percentage) of the participants in terms of the level of violence was as follows. 89 participants (23.7%) had experienced low violence, 59 participants (15.7%) had experienced moderate violence, and 228 participants (60.6%) had experienced severe violence.

Cronbach’s alpha for the reliability of the questionnaire was 0.988. The mean and standard deviation of the total score of the questionnaire was 143.60 ± 74.70 with a range of 3-244. The relationship between the total score of the questionnaire and its fields, and some demographic variables is summarized in the table below (Table  4 ).

As shown in the table above, the variables of age, age difference and number of years of marriage have a positive and significant relationship, and the variable of number of children has a negative and significant relationship with the total score and all fields of the questionnaire (p < 0.05). However, the variable of education level difference showed no significant relationship with the total score and any of the fields. Also, the highest average score is related to patriarchal beliefs compared to other fields.

The comparison of the average total scores separately according to each variable showed the significant average difference in the variables of the previous marriage history of the woman, the result of the previous marriage of the woman, the education of the woman, the education of the man, the income of the woman, the income of the man, and the physical disease of the man (p < 0.05).

In the regression model, two variables remained in the final model, indicating the relationship between the variables and violence score and the importance of these two variables. An increase in women’s education and income level both independently show a significant relationship with an increase in violence score (Table  5 ).

The results of analysis of variance to compare the scores of each field of violence in the subgroups of the participants also showed that the experience and result of the woman’s previous marriage has a significant relationship with physical violence and tradition and family upbringing, the experience of the man’s previous marriage has a significant relationship with patriarchal belief, the education level of the woman has a significant relationship with all fields and the level of education of the man has a significant relationship with all fields except tradition and family upbringing (p < 0.05).

According to the results of both quantitative and qualitative studies, variables such as the young age of the woman and a large age difference are very important factors leading to an increase in violence. At a younger age, girls are afraid of the stigma of society and family, and being forced to remain silent can lead to an increase in domestic violence. As Gandhi et al. (2021) stated in their study in the same field, a lower marriage age leads to many vulnerabilities in women. Early marriage is a global problem associated with a wide range of health and social consequences, including violence for adolescent girls and women [ 12 ]. Also, Ahmadi et al. (2017) found similar findings, reporting a significant association among IPV and women age ≤ 40 years [ 19 ].

Two others categories of “Facilitators” in the present study were “Husband’s criminal record” and “Overdependence” which had a sub-category of “Forced cohabitation”. Ahmadi et al. (2017) reported in their population-based study in Iran that husband’s addiction and rented-householders have a significant association with IPV [ 19 ].

The patriarchal beliefs, which are rooted in the tradition and culture of society and family upbringing, scored the highest in relation to domestic violence in this study. On the other hand, in qualitative study, “Normalcy” of men’s anger and harassment of women in society is one of the “Repressors” of women to express violence. In the quantitative study, the increase in the women’s education and income level were predictors of the increase in violence. Although domestic violence is more common in some sections of society, women with a wide range of ages, different levels of education, and at different levels of society face this problem, most of which are not reported. Bukuluki et al. (2021) showed that women who agreed that it is good for a man to control his partner were more likely to experience physical violence [ 20 ].

Domestic violence leads to “Consequences” such as “Harm to children”, “Emotional harm”, “Social harm” to women and even “Non-acceptance in their own family”. Because divorce is a taboo in Iranian culture and the fear of humiliating women forces them to remain silent against domestic violence. Balsarkar (2021) stated that the fear of violence can prevent women from continuing their studies, working or exercising their political rights [ 8 ]. Also, Walker-Descarte et al. (2021) recognized domestic violence as a type of child maltreatment, and these abusive behaviors are associated with mental and physical health consequences [ 21 ].

On the other hand and based on the “Lack of effective communication” category, ignoring the role of the counselor in solving family conflicts and challenges in the life of couples in the present study was expressed by women with reasons such as lack of knowledge and family resistance to counseling. Several pathologies are needed to investigate increased domestic violence in situations such as during women’s pregnancy or infertility. Because the use of counseling for couples as a suitable solution should be considered along with their life challenges. Lin et al. (2022) stated that pregnant women were exposed to domestic violence for low birth weight in full term delivery. Spouse violence screening in the perinatal health care system should be considered important, especially for women who have had full-term low birth weight infants [ 22 ].

Also, lack of knowledge and low level of education have been found as other factors of violence in this study, which is very prominent in both qualitative and quantitative studies. Because the social systems and information about the existing laws should be followed properly in society to act as a deterrent. Psychological training and especially anger control and resilience skills during education at a younger age for girls and boys should be included in educational materials to determine the positive results in society in the long term. Manouchehri et al. (2022) stated that it seems necessary to train men about the negative impact of domestic violence on the current and future status of the family [ 23 ]. Balsarkar (2021) also stated that men and women who have not had the opportunity to question gender roles, attitudes and beliefs cannot change such things. Women who are unaware of their rights cannot claim. Governments and organizations cannot adequately address these issues without access to standards, guidelines and tools [ 8 ]. Machado et al. (2021) also stated that gender socialization reinforces gender inequalities and affects the behavior of men and women. So, highlighting this problem in different fields, especially in primary health care services, is a way to prevent IPV against women [ 24 ].

There was a sub-category of “Inefficiency of social systems” in the participants experiences. Perhaps the reason for this is due to insufficient education and knowledge, or fear of seeking help. Holmes et al. (2022) suggested the importance of ascertaining strategies to improve victims’ experiences with the court, especially when victims’ requests are not met, to increase future engagement with the system [ 25 ]. Sigurdsson (2019) revealed that despite high prevalence numbers, IPV is still a hidden and underdiagnosed problem and neither general practitioner nor our communities are as well prepared as they should be [ 26 ]. Moreira and Pinto da Costa (2021) found that while victims of domestic violence often agree with mandatory reporting, various concerns are still expressed by both victims and healthcare professionals that require further attention and resolution [ 27 ]. It appears that legal and ethical issues in this regard require comprehensive evaluation from the perspectives of victims, their families, healthcare workers, and legal experts. By doing so, better practical solutions can be found to address domestic violence, leading to a downward trend in its occurrence.

Some of the variables of violence against women have been identified and emphasized in many studies, highlighting the necessity of policymaking and social pathology in society to prevent and use operational plans to take action before their occurrence. Breaking the taboo of domestic violence and promoting divorce as a viable solution after counseling to receive objective results should be implemented seriously to minimize harm to women, children, and their families.

Limitations

Domestic violence against women is an important issue in Iranian society that women resist showing and expressing, making researchers take a long-term process of sampling in both qualitative and quantitative studies. The location of the interview and the women’s fear of their husbands finding out about their participation in this study have been other challenges of the researchers, which, of course, they attempted to minimize by fully respecting ethical considerations. Despite the researchers’ efforts, their personal and professional experiences, as well as the studies reviewed in the literature review section, may have influenced the study results.

Data Availability

Data and materials will be available upon email to the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

Intimate Partner Violence

Human Immunodeficiency Virus

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Acknowledgements

The authors of this study appreciate the Deputy for Research and Technology of Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Social Determinants of Health Research Center of Semnan University of Medical Sciences and all the participants in this study.

Research deputy of Semnan University of Medical Sciences financially supported this project.

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Amir Al Momenin Hospital, Social Security Organization, Ahvaz, Iran

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Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran

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Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran

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M.Sh. contributed to the first conception and design of this research; M.Sh., Z.Kh., M.S., R.Gh. and S.H.Sh. contributed to collect data; M.N. and M.Sh. contributed to the analysis of the qualitative data; M.M. and M.Sh. contributed to the analysis of the quantitative data; M.SH., M.N. and M.M. contributed to the interpretation of the data; M.Sh., M.S. and S.H.Sh. wrote the manuscript. M.Sh. prepared the final version of manuscript for submission. All authors reviewed the manuscript meticulously and approved it. All names of the authors were listed in the title page.

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Correspondence to Mina Shayestefar .

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This article is resulted from a research approved by the Vice Chancellor for Research of Semnan University of Medical Sciences with ethics code of IR.SEMUMS.REC.1397.182 in the Social Determinants of Health Research Center. The authors confirmed that all methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations. All participants accepted the participation in the present study. The researchers introduced themselves to the research units, explained the purpose of the research to them and then all participants signed the written informed consent. The research units were assured that the collected information was anonymous. The participant was informed that participating in the study was completely voluntary so that they can safely withdraw from the study at any time and also the availability of results upon their request.

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Shayestefar, M., Saffari, M., Gholamhosseinzadeh, R. et al. A qualitative quantitative mixed methods study of domestic violence against women. BMC Women's Health 23 , 322 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-023-02483-0

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Dissertation on Violence & Women

2011, Dissertation for Master of Arts in Contemporary Literature & Culture/ Department of English/ School of Arts\ Brunel University/ West London\ UK

Violence & Women discusses the different kinds of violence towards women and their ways to respond to such violence through Carter's & Atwood's fiction. It highlights issues of how such violence effects women's role in literature & society.

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SMART M O V E S J O U R N A L IJELLH

“Violence against Women and Girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. It takes a devastating toll on women’s lives, on their families, and on society as a whole. Most societies prohibit such violence—yet the reality is that too often, it is covered up or tacitly condoned”-Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General (8 March 2007). Gender-based Violence occurs as a cause and consequence of gender inequalities. It is prevalent in all countries across the globe and our country is no exception. Gender-based violence is recognized today as a major issue on the International Human Rights agenda. This violence includes a wide range of violations of women’s human rights, including trafficking of women and girls, rape, sexual abuse of children, and harmful cultural practices and traditions which sometimes affects the mental balance of women. The Patriarchal society like ours resists any kind of rebellious attitude shown towards such issues which is plaguing our very existence in the society

University of Missouri--Columbia

Kate Busselle

Raj Gaurav Verma

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences

ALI MIRENAYAT

Canadian novels have witnessed a movement from description to more different analytical and interpretative directions. Margaret Atwood&#39;s oeuvres are belonged to the postmodern literary field of feminist writing. Her fictions show a severe alertness of the relationship between chains and slavery, i.e. between women&#39;s requirement for relationships with others and her requirements for freedom and autonomy. In this paper, The Handmaid&#39;s Tale, Bodily Harm, Surfacing, and The Edible Woman will be surveyed in a direct relationship between politics, violence and victimization of female protagonists. An examination on Margaret Atwood&#39;s novels demonstrates that she is pioneer in the dimension of time by being a revolter against the patriarchal society.

Journal of the College of languages

Dhafar Jamal Fadhil

The present study is concerned with the writer&#39;s ideologies towards violence against women. The study focuses on analyzing violence against women in English novel to see the extent the writers are being affected and influenced by their genders. It also focuses on showing to what extent the writer&#39;s ideologies are reflected in their works. Gender influences social groups ideologies; therefore, when a writer discusses an issue that concerns the other gender, they will be either subjective or objective depending on the degree of influence, i.e., gender has influenced their thoughts as well as behaviors. A single fact may be presented differently by different writers depending on the range of affectedness by ideologies. The study aims to uncover the hidden gender-based ideologies by analyzing the discursive structure of a novel based on Van Dijk&#39;s model (2000) of ideology and racism. The selected novel is based on discussing violence against women. The study will later on re...

Violence against women

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Cary Carr awarded Lockhart Dissertation Award

By Katarina Fiorentino Klatzkow

Cary Carr, M.P.H., a public health Ph.D. student with a concentration in social and behavioral sciences, was selected for this year’s Madelyn Lockhart Dissertation Fellowship. Awarded by the Association for Academic Women at the University of Florida, one Ph.D. student from any UF Ph.D. program is chosen each year. This prestigious recognition celebrates an outstanding researcher who has overcome challenges, positively contributing to their campus and local community.

The award honors and celebrates the life of Dr. Madelyn Lockhart, former dean of the Graduate School and dean of International Studies and Programs. Passionate about helping students achieve their dreams, Lockhart established this fellowship program to support the work of Ph.D. students defending their dissertations.

Carr has dedicated her academic and professional career to working with non-profit groups, and advocating for survivors of violence and abuse. Her primary research interests include sex worker’s rights, violence prevention, sexual wellbeing, body image and feminist methodologies.

“I was incredibly honored to receive this award. During my Ph.D., I have faced many personal challenges, and there were times I seriously doubted if I would be able to graduate,” Carr said. “Some of the challenges I faced stemmed from the same structures I fight against within my work and research and created significant financial issues that I did not anticipate navigating, especially as a single mother during the start of my program.”

The fellowship awarded $2,000 to assist in the dissertation phase of Carr’s doctoral studies.

Carr’s dissertation examines the current landscape of violence prevention for sex workers in the United States, as well as the urgent need for evidence-based interventions that take a comprehensive approach to improving sex workers’ health and overall well-being. Additionally, her research explores care barriers facing sexual violence service providers, with aims of developing comprehensive recommendations for improved violence prevention and response for sex workers.

“In my work in violence prevention with nonprofits, I recognized that there was very little funding allocated toward prevention and I decided I wanted to understand more about how to address the root causes of violence. My goal is to pursue a career as a researcher and instructor in which I can work with students on community-driven research,” she said.

The fellowship selection committee was highly impressed with her ability to articulate the importance and transformative potential of her dissertation work and felt that her publications, presentations and outreach activities, which extended over and above the call of duty required during her research, elevated the transformative potential of her work.

Additionally, they commended her on her academic achievement, compassion for helping communities and individuals within those communities, and dedication to helping others overcome challenges.

“Until all of us are free from sexual violence, none of us are free. That means that our response services, prevention interventions and policies must be developed through an intersectional lens,” she said. “I believe that sex workers were some of the original feminists, and that their voices and perspectives are critical to future violence prevention efforts, including the prevention of sex trafficking.”

Ultimately, this fellowship supports Carr’s mission of incorporating a public health lens to prevent violence.

“Receiving this award has inspired me to continue my work and hopefully foster safe spaces for all survivors of violence,” she said.

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• Thème de l'année : La Violence

1 - La violence/Méthodologie : La violence conquérante

De nombreux conseils de méthodologie, des références, ou encore 25 dissertations rédigées sont au coeur de l’ouvrage La violence en 25 dissertations , écrit par Véronique Bonnet et publié par Studyrama. Il vous aidera à préparer au mieux votre épreuve de culture générale sur le thème de la violence. 

Sujet : La violence conquérante

La violence conquérante serait une propriété du vivant. Mais l’invocation, dans certains totalitarismes, d’un droit à l’espace, à l’espace vital, au nom de la survie, est-il recevable ? La violence conquérante du vivant peut-elle être revendiquée par les individus humains et alimenter par exemple les problématiques du droit du plus fort ? Dire de la violence conquérante qu’elle est vitale ne serait qu’un alibi irrecevable.

Découvrez ci-dessous, l'analyse de  Véronique Bonnet. 

Si vous souhaitez télécharger l'ouvrage gratuitement, c'est juste ici !

Tous les dossiers des professeurs

Autres cursus et formations

Programmer l'humain contre la violence

"Penser la violence dans l'art occidental" - Eric Cobast et Elinor Myara-Kelif

La violence en 25 dissertations : un ouvrage indispensable

Recevez régulièrement des contenus sur le thème de la violence

24 – La violence/Méthodologie : La violence peut-elle être sublime ?

Textes du sujet : offensive de la violence, des semences de l'incandescence

Culture générale : "La société romaine est violente"

Lettres et philosophie : (7/11) Exemple de sujet de dissertation

Offensives de la violence

90 textes sélectionnés par vos professeurs réunis dans l'édition 2024 des TDS. 

Deborah Cotton Made Us Face the Truth About America’s Past

D eborah “Big Red” Cotton and I met by getting shot together. It was a Mother’s Day afternoon during Barack Obama’s second term as America’s first Black president. We were two of 19 people gunned down in the biggest mass shooting in the modern history of New Orleans, a city stained by racism and violence since its time as the biggest slave market in North America. The shooting targeted a second line parade, an iconic local ritual that evolved from the burial rites enslaved Africans brought with them to Louisiana starting in 1722 and that later helped give birth to jazz. To desecrate such a sacred gathering, New Orleans singer John Boutte said, was “ like bringing a gun to church and starting to shoot people. It’s just hateful.”

Gravely wounded, Cotton was not expected to live through the night. But she held on long enough to dictate a statement that a close friend delivered to a hastily called City Council meeting. A day after the shooting, a surveillance video had surfaced that showed a Black man watching as the parade passed left to right. Suddenly, the man plunged into the crowd—which consisted almost entirely of Black men, women, and children—and began firing a handgun at point blank range. As people ran and threw themselves to the ground in terror, the gunman kept firing until he emptied his weapon, then ran away.

Cotton’s City Council statement implored the people of New Orleans to stop and think before passing judgment. “Do you know what it takes to be so disconnected in your heart that you walk out into a gathering of hundreds of people who look just like you and begin firing?” she asked.  Alluding to the bleak circumstances facing many young Black men in New Orleans—parents absent or impoverished, abysmal schools, rampant gang and police violence, few job options beyond menial labor or drug dealing—she added, “These young men have been separated from us by so much trauma.”

Thanks to what Cotton and the police officers investigating the shooting both labeled “a miracle,” she did live through the night. In fact, I connected with her in New Orleans a few months later. She’d been discharged from the hospital by then, though her return to normal life was uncertain at best. Some vital organs had been severely compromised or outright removed. The doctors said she had many more surgeries ahead.

When we spoke, after telling me to call her "Deb," she shared that she often felt nauseous, anxious, and sometimes depressed these days. Yet she evinced not the slightest anger toward the two gunmen who had shot us and seventeen other people at a ritual that, as she well knew, was sacred to Black identity in New Orleans. Instead, she reiterated her initial response.

“I try to put myself in other people’s shoes in life,” Cotton told me. “I asked myself, ‘What has happened to put those young men in such a dead-hearted place that they would shoot into a crowd of people who looked just like them?’  That’s what’s so striking to me. They weren’t shooting at white men; they weren’t shooting at Black women. They were shooting at other Black men. There’s a level of self-hatred there that is so profound. It’s like they’re trying to wipe themselves out.”

Today, Cotton’s message of mercy and understanding toward people who have done us harm, or who we fear will do us harm, is much-needed balm for a nation that has been polarized by figures and forces spreading division and hatred.  When I first got to know her, Cotton’s ability to forgive made me think of her as a saint.  As I went on to write a book about the Mother’s Day shooting, I also came to see her as a prophet.  

Cotton’s belief in forgiveness, I learned, was no straightforward act of Christian charity; it was accompanied by her clear-eyed, historically grounded warning that horrors like the Mother’s Day shooting—and, for that matter, the election of an unabashed racist to succeed the nation’s first Black president—would continue to happen in the United States until the circumstances underlying those horrors were honestly named and confronted. Elaborating on her reasons for forgiving the Mother’s Day gunmen, she later explained to me that, “Racism can kill Black people even when a Black finger pulls the trigger.”

Read More: James Baldwin Insisted We Tell the Truth About This Country. The Truth Is, We’ve Been Here Before

To remedy the legacies of slavery that fueled such horrors, she advocated a strategy of truth and reconciliation, a version of which had helped South Africa to navigate the transition from apartheid to democracy in the 1990s. (As Cotton and I got to know one another, we were happy to discover that the anti-apartheid struggle had loomed large in both of our political comings of age. She even confessed to feeling a tiny bit jealous that I had been arrested with Archbishop Desmond Tutu protesting apartheid at South Africa’s embassy in Washington, D.C.)

When Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison to lead a new South Africa, the country had just fought a bloody civil war after nearly 100 years of repression of the Black and mixed-race majority by the white minority.  It was far from clear that South Africa would not descend back into violence, much less that it could evolve into a unified country with freedom and equality for all.

South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was designed to enable South Africans to move forward “on the basis that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu [an African word connoting communal solidarity] but not for victimization.”  The Commission conducted a nationwide conversation about what happened during apartheid. Victims were invited to testify about injustices. Security officials could apply for amnesty from prosecution, provided they told the whole truth about their wrongdoings. The Commission aimed to establish a truthful record of what apartheid had done, present this truth to the South African people, and thereby lay the groundwork for a reconciliation among contending segments of the population so the country could heal.

Tutu, who chaired the Commission, later ventured that the U.S. might also benefit from a truth and reconciliation process. In words that mirror Cotton’s perception of the Mother’s Day gunmen, he wrote that victims of apartheid “often ended up internalizing the definition the top dogs had of them. . . . And then the awful demons of self-hate and self-contempt, a hugely negative self-image, took its place in the center of the victim’s being. . . . Society has conspired to fill you with self-hate, which you then project outward.”

How a racial truth and reconciliation process would operate in the U.S. is a complex question. But the necessary first step is to tell the truth. After the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in the opening months of the Trump presidency, civil rights leader Bryan Stevenson said that only after Americans acknowledged the truth about their past could they hope to consign such outbursts of racist hatred to history. “You have to tell the truth before you can get to reconciliation,” he said in an interview with The Guardian , “and culturally we have done a terrible job of truth telling in this country about our history of racial inequality.”

Facing unpleasant truths about America’s past is not easy, but no one should blame themselves for being unaware of those truths in the first place. America’s schools, churches, legal and political systems, and news media have obscured the truth about race and slavery since before the nation’s birth. Teachers, parents, clergy, coaches, neighbors, and employers have passed down harmful habits of word and deed to younger generations. Those inherited patterns are part of what makes racism a systemic condition rather than an individual shortcoming.

After a White supremacist massacred nine Black people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 hoping to trigger a race war, a white man named Garry Civitello called in to a national TV show and asked, “How can I be less racist?” Heather McGhee, a Black scholar on the show, praised Civitello for his desire to change. She suggested that he get to know some Black people and read some Black history. Civitello ended up not voting for Trump in 2016, even though nearly all the white people around him in rural North Carolina did. In a comment countless Americans might echo if they read the history books McGhee had recommended to him, Civitello marveled that, “There are so many things I did not know that I thought I knew.”

Deborah Cotton eventually succumbed to her wounds—she died four years after the shooting—but she lost her faith in truth and reconciliation.  After recovering her health sufficiently to work part-time, she took a job with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that worked to reform the criminal justice system, including the mass incarceration of people of color. Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016, Cotton was invited to address a conference of government officials and legal experts in Louisiana’s state capital. The first speaker was an older white woman who had lost her son to gun violence. The woman argued forcefully against reforming current practices, insisting that her son’s killers never be allowed back on the streets.

“Then I got up,” Cotton later told me, “and I said that the young men who shot me and the other people on Mother’s Day should be punished, but I didn’t think they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. I said I thought those young men could redeem themselves and make a positive contribution to society if we would consider alternatives to life in prison. After the panel was over, a long line of people came up and wanted to talk with me, take my card, have me come speak to their organization, and whatnot. That felt so good. My statement and presence sent a very different message than people usually hear from victims of crime.”

Driving home afterwards, Cotton found herself actually feeling grateful that she’d been shot. “During the first year after the shooting,” she told me, “I often felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. I wasn’t going to take action myself, but many days I thought, ‘Just let me go.’ Now, I feel like if getting shot was what put me in the position to do this work, then I’m glad I was shot.”

“Wait—are you serious?” I asked. “Glad you got shot? I’m glad you survived, but I’m sure as hell not glad you were shot.”

“Yeah, I’m serious,” Cotton replied. “That’s just how I feel.”

Excerpted from Big Red's Mercy: The Shooting of Deborah Cotton and a Story of Race in America by Mark Hertsgaard. Published by Pegasus Books, May 7 th 2024

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Violence is traumatizing Haitian kids. Now the country's breaking a taboo on mental health services

Violence is traumatizing Haitian children

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Students often throw up or wet themselves when gunfire erupts outside their school in northern Port-au-Prince.

When they do, school director Roseline Ceragui Louis finds there's only one way to try to calm the children and keep them safe: getting them to lie on the classroom floor while she sings softly.

“You can’t work in that environment," she said. "It’s catastrophic. They’re traumatized.”

Haiti's capital is under the onslaught of powerful gangs that control 80% of of the city.

On Feb. 29, gangs launched coordinated attacks targeting key infrastructure. The attacks have left more than 2,500 people dead or wounded in the first three months of the year. Now, in a bid to help save Haiti ’s youngest generation, the country is undergoing a wider push to dispel a long-standing taboo on seeking therapy and talking about mental health.

At a recent training session in a relatively safe section of Port-au-Prince, parents learned games to put a smile on their children’s faces. The parents are often so distraught and discouraged they don’t have energy to care for the kids, said Yasmine Déroche, who trains adults to help children overcome trauma inflicted by persistent gang violence.

Gunmen have burned police stations, stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons to release more than 4,000 inmates and fired on the country’s main international airport, which closed March 4 and hasn’t reopened. The violence has also paralyzed Haiti’s largest seaport.

Meanwhile, some 900 schools have closed, affecting some 200,000 children.

“We must fight against this social inequality so that all children, all young people, can have the same opportunities to go to school, to work, to earn a living,” said Chrislie Luca, president of the nonprofit Hearts for Change Organization for Deprived Children of Haiti. “All of these are problems that have led us where we are today, with the country on the edge of the abyss.”

UNICEF's Haiti representative said the violence has displaced more than 360,000 people, the majority women and children. In addition, at least one-third of the 10,000 victims of sexual violence last year were children, Bruno Maes said.

“Children are left to fend for themselves, without assistance, without enough protection," he said.

More than 80 children were killed or wounded from January to March, a 55% increase over the last quarter of 2023 and "the most violent period for children in the country on record,” said Save the Children, a U.S. nonprofit.

Luca said among those hurt were two boys struck in the head while walking to school and an 8-year-old girl playing inside her home when she was hit by a bullet that tore through her intestines, requiring emergency surgery.

“We are witnessing a lot of mental health issues,” Maes said. “This violence is traumatizing."

Louis said her 10-year-old son would daily cry “You’re going to die!” as she headed to school, and the violence did not allow the boy to eat, sleep or play.

Louis remained resolute, knowing she had to be strong for him and her students.

“My heart is destroyed, but my students see my smile every day," she said.

Still, many would fall asleep in class, unable to focus after sleepless nights punctuated by gunfire.

Others had more important things on their mind.

“It’s hard to focus at school or focus on playing a game when the rest of your body is worried about whether your mom and dad are going to be alive when you get home from school,” said Steve Gross, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Life is Good Playmaker Project.

Some students are increasingly drawn into gangs, toting heavy weapons as they charge drivers for safe passage through gang territory.

“The young children are traumatized and agitated,” said Nixon Elmeus, a teacher whose school closed in January. He recalled how his best student stopped talking after an encounter with gangs. Other students become violent: ”Ever since the war started, the children themselves have acted like they’re part of a gang.”

Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, a Haitian partner nonprofit aimed at helping children, held a training session for teachers that Louis attended after gang violence forced her school to close in March. She learned which games were best to distract students from the violence outside school gates.

“How can I recapture these children?” she asked.

With hundreds of schools closed, online courses are for those who can afford Wi-Fi and a generator. Most Haitians live often in the dark due to chronic power outages.

With no school, high poverty and trauma such as having to sidestep mangled bodies on streets, kids have become easy prey. Between 30% to 50% of members of armed groups are now children, Maes noted.

“That’s a very sad reality,” he said.

A 24-year-old man who offered only his last name, Nornile, for safety reasons, said he was in a gang for five years.

He said he joined because the gang gave him money he needed and provided more food than his mother, a vendor, and his father, a mason, could offer him and his seven siblings.

At night, he would work as a security guard for the gang leader. During the day, he would run errands and buy him food, clothes, sandals and other goods. Nornile said felt proud the gang trusted him but thought about quitting when one of his three brothers was killed by gangs on June 16, 2022.

“Ghetto men don’t fight for education or a hospital. They fight for territory,” he said. “They only care about themselves.”

Nornile left the gang two years after his brother died and began working for Luca’s nonprofit.

“The reality of the gang is that the person can carry a weapon, but in his mind, that’s not what he really wants," Nornile said.

Jean Guerson Sanon, co-founder and executive director of Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, stressed the importance of parents interacting daily with children to boost their mental health.

“Sometimes, that’s all we have,” he said, noting that conversations about mental health remain largely taboo.

“If you go see a psychologist, it’s because you’re ‘crazy,’ and ‘crazy’ people are really discriminated against in Haiti,” he said.

At the training on a recent Sunday, parents learned games for their children. One was mirroring the other person; another was pretending an inflatable ball was a piece of cheese that the child, pretending to be a mouse, had to steal.

By the end of the training, parents were giggling as they invented different dance moves in a large circle in yet another way to play with their kids.

When asked to draw what a safe space meant to them, several of them drew homes; some drew flowers; and one, Guirlaine Reveil, drew a man with a gun as she approached a police station — a real-life scenario that occurred a couple years ago.

One parent, Celestin Roosvelt, said he tells his children, 2 and 3, that gunfire is not a bad thing, a lie he called necessary.

“You have to find a way to live in your own country,” he said with an apologetic shrug.

At the end of the training, parents were given a copy of the presentation, crayons and an inflatable ball.

Déroche, who runs the program, noted how parents feel so overwhelmed that they are disconnected from their children's needs.

“I know that the crisis we’re living through right now will have consequences that will take I don’t know how many years to sort out,” she said.

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African Diaspora

Violence is traumatizing Haitian kids. Now the country’s breaking a taboo on mental health services

In a bid to help save Haiti’s youngest generation, the country is undergoing a wider push to dispel a long-standing taboo on seeking therapy and talking about mental health.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Students often throw up or wet themselves when gunfire erupts outside their school in northern Port-au-Prince .

When they do, school director Roseline Ceragui Louis finds there’s only one way to try to calm the children and keep them safe: getting them to lie on the classroom floor while she sings softly.

“You can’t work in that environment,” she said. “It’s catastrophic. They’re traumatized.”

Haiti’s capital is under the onslaught of powerful gangs that control 80% of of the city.

On Feb. 29, gangs launched coordinated attacks targeting key infrastructure. The attacks have left more than 2,500 people dead or wounded in the first three months of the year. Now, in a bid to help save Haiti’s youngest generation, the country is undergoing a wider push to dispel a long-standing taboo on seeking therapy and talking about mental health.

Getting help

At a recent training session in a relatively safe section of Port-au-Prince, parents learned games to put a smile on their children’s faces. The parents are often so distraught and discouraged they don’t have energy to care for the kids, said Yasmine Déroche, who trains adults to help children overcome trauma inflicted by persistent gang violence.

Gunmen have burned police stations, stormed Haiti’s two biggest prisons to release more than 4,000 inmates and fired on the country’s main international airport, which closed March 4 and hasn’t reopened. The violence has also paralyzed Haiti’s largest seaport.

Meanwhile, some 900 schools have closed, affecting some 200,000 children.

“We must fight against this social inequality so that all children, all young people, can have the same opportunities to go to school, to work, to earn a living,” said Chrislie Luca, president of the nonprofit Hearts for Change Organization for Deprived Children of Haiti . “All of these are problems that have led us where we are today, with the country on the edge of the abyss.”

Edge of the abyss

UNICEF’s Haiti representative said the violence has displaced more than 360,000 people, the majority women and children . In addition, at least one-third of the 10,000 victims of sexual violence last year were children, Bruno Maes said.

“Children are left to fend for themselves, without assistance, without enough protection,” he said.

More than 80 children were killed or wounded from January to March, a 55% increase over the last quarter of 2023 and “the most violent period for children in the country on record,” said Save the Children, a U.S. nonprofit.

Luca said among those hurt were two boys struck in the head while walking to school and an 8-year-old girl playing inside her home when she was hit by a bullet that tore through her intestines, requiring emergency surgery.

“We are witnessing a lot of mental health issues,” Maes said. “This violence is traumatizing.”

Louis said her 10-year-old son would daily cry “You’re going to die!” as she headed to school, and the violence did not allow the boy to eat, sleep or play.

Louis remained resolute, knowing she had to be strong for him and her students.

“My heart is destroyed, but my students see my smile every day,” she said.

Still, many would fall asleep in class, unable to focus after sleepless nights punctuated by gunfire.

Others had more important things on their mind.

“It’s hard to focus at school or focus on playing a game when the rest of your body is worried about whether your mom and dad are going to be alive when you get home from school,” said Steve Gross, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Life is Good Playmaker Project.

Some students are increasingly drawn into gangs, toting heavy weapons as they charge drivers for safe passage through gang territory.

“The young children are traumatized and agitated,” said Nixon Elmeus, a teacher whose school closed in January. He recalled how his best student stopped talking after an encounter with gangs. Other students become violent: ”Ever since the war started, the children themselves have acted like they’re part of a gang.”

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Learning to cope

Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, a Haitian partner nonprofit aimed at helping children, held a training session for teachers that Louis attended after gang violence forced her school to close in March. She learned which games were best to distract students from the violence outside school gates.

“How can I recapture these children?” she asked.

With hundreds of schools closed, online courses are for those who can afford Wi-Fi and a generator. Most Haitians live often in the dark due to chronic power outages.

With no school, high poverty and trauma such as having to sidestep mangled bodies on streets, kids have become easy prey. Between 30% to 50% of members of armed groups are now children, Maes noted.

“That’s a very sad reality,” he said.

A 24-year-old man who offered only his last name, Nornile, for safety reasons, said he was in a gang for five years.

He said he joined because the gang gave him money he needed and provided more food than his mother, a vendor, and his father, a mason, could offer him and his seven siblings.

At night, he would work as a security guard for the gang leader. During the day, he would run errands and buy him food, clothes, sandals and other goods. Nornile said felt proud the gang trusted him but thought about quitting when one of his three brothers was killed by gangs on June 16, 2022.

“Ghetto men don’t fight for education or a hospital. They fight for territory,” he said. “They only care about themselves.”

Nornile left the gang two years after his brother died and began working for Luca’s nonprofit.

“The reality of the gang is that the person can carry a weapon, but in his mind, that’s not what he really wants,” Nornile said.

Playing again

Jean Guerson Sanon, co-founder and executive director of Gèrye Jwa Playmakers, stressed the importance of parents interacting daily with children to boost their mental health.

“Sometimes, that’s all we have,” he said, noting that conversations about mental health remain largely taboo.

“If you go see a psychologist, it’s because you’re ‘crazy,’ and ‘crazy’ people are really discriminated against in Haiti,” he said.

At the training on a recent Sunday, parents learned games for their children. One was mirroring the other person; another was pretending an inflatable ball was a piece of cheese that the child, pretending to be a mouse, had to steal.

By the end of the training, parents were giggling as they invented different dance moves in a large circle in yet another way to play with their kids.

When asked to draw what a safe space meant to them, several of them drew homes; some drew flowers; and one, Guirlaine Reveil, drew a man with a gun as she approached a police station — a real-life scenario that occurred a couple years ago.

One parent, Celestin Roosvelt, said he tells his children, 2 and 3, that gunfire is not a bad thing, a lie he called necessary.

“You have to find a way to live in your own country,” he said with an apologetic shrug.

At the end of the training, parents were given a copy of the presentation, crayons and an inflatable ball.

Déroche, who runs the program, noted how parents feel so overwhelmed that they are disconnected from their children’s needs.

“I know that the crisis we’re living through right now will have consequences that will take I don’t know how many years to sort out,” she said.

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'This World Doesn't Exist. We Don't Live There.' New Book Imagines a World Without Male Violence (Exclusive)

In Tessa Fontaine's debut novel, 'The Red Grove,' a group of women are immune to violence. Here, she examines what that safety might feel like

Max Cooper, MacMillan

I’m a freshman at UC Santa Barbara, and like most days, I’m on a run. I’ve already determined my favorite trail, a dirt path that winds along a giant scrubby bluff, wild-feeling while still close to my dorm, pelicans swooping nearby and dolphins sometimes playing in the ocean below. It’s technically on campus, but I don’t usually see many people.

Per usual, I’m wearing running shorts and a T-shirt. I have never been the kind of person who ran in spandex or a sports bra, too risky, too showy. I never wear headphones. In part, I like for my mind to wander when I run, but more than that, it isn’t safe. I know this; I have always known this. You’ve got to be able to hear someone coming up behind you.

The early evening sun is warm on my skin as I round a corner and there, beside a tree, is a man with his pants around his knees. He is masturbating, looking me dead in the eye. I startle a little, let out an oh , and then turn around and run quickly back the other way. I listen, but he isn’t coming after me. 

Maybe I tell a few friends about it, maybe I don’t; I can’t remember. He wasn’t the first public masturbator I’d seen, and he won’t be the last. What’s remarkable about this experience is only how unremarkable it is. Nothing bad had happened, really, but it was my imagining how much worse it could have been, what someone like that would have wanted had he chased me, that seeped in. 

UCSB Library/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0

I started to change. Not all at once, and not just from that one incident, but the accumulation of all these moments and stories from friends and news reports and movies and statistics. The woman raped and murdered on her run. The woman beaten by a boyfriend with no history of violence. The woman stalked, kidnapped, killed while walking home alone. It’s not what has happened to me; it’s what I can always imagine might.

I’m fiercely independent, the first to say yes to an adventure or challenge, and so it kills me to admit all this. And yet, when I’m alone on a trail or even in a city, I make casual plans in the back of my mind for what I might grab nearby to use as a weapon. I avoid twilight and make the right amount of eye contact with men I pass — too much and you’re inviting, too little and you’re a snob — and obviously never run in the dark, every girl grows up learning that.

The man on the bluff does not register in my catalog of important life events, falling instead into a category of experience that will happen again and again, and in that way, I am extremely lucky. Unlike so many friends of mine, I do not carry major sexual trauma. The luck of this feels like a ticking clock, which might, at any time, go off. 

Years later, I am writing my debut novel The Red Grove , which centers on a community of women who believe themselves immune to violence. In their valley, a special protection prevents any violence from befalling them. The deeper into this world I went, the more I realized how absolutely foreign this experience would feel. Because what might change if I were never worried about violence? If I never spent time imagining someone around a corner with his pants down, who might chase me down? If that girl weren’t ever afraid, where might she run, and when? What else would be different that I couldn’t even conceive of?

I began formulating my own answers, and to a wide swath of women in my life, I sent this question: “What would you do differently, now or in the past, if you didn’t have to worry about male violence?”

The recipients spanned ages, locations, sexual identities, races and cultures. And I got a lot of answers — amazingly thoughtful, insightful, devastating answers. 

“I would have driven alone across the country,” a friend wrote back right away. “And gone camping alone and into bars and on motorcycle through the countryside of Europe by myself.” 

Another friend said she “might have had success in some areas because I wouldn’t have had to always worry about the things that women worry about: being attractive, being nice, being available and attentive to others in my life, being a good wife, being a good mother, being a good daughter, being responsible for making sure others are happy and fed, making sure I fit in, etc.”

And another: “The immense drop in my constant, general sense of vigilance would leave room for... what? I would be so different it's hard to imagine how.”

Cavan Images/Getty Images

“I wonder what kind of fairy tales we would have (less damsel, for sure), what kind of stories we would tell, and how identity would be shaped if we didn't have to spend so much energy on being so careful all of the time,” another person said.

I was floored by how profoundly people I loved and respected thought their lives might be different — better — without this lifelong vigilance. How different their imagined versions of their truest selves were.

So many people said they’d do more things alone. That they’d explore their sexuality more, and push the boundaries of gender expression, friendships with men, kindness toward strangers, more dancing, fewer bras, more traveling, less smiling unless they actually wanted to smile, more nighttime exploration, more nudity, more outward expression of who they are that they are afraid to claim. They — we — would be more confident in who we are. 

The world I invented in The Red Grove is fiction; we don’t live there. I don’t know if we ever will. But I have liked imagining it for the younger me, running along that bluff in twilight. I like vanishing from her brain the shadows of things she knows happen in the world: poof , no need to imagine a dangerous man up ahead. Poof , no image of your perfectly gentle boyfriend strangling you, as a friend’s boyfriend did not long before. Without all that imagined violence, what else might take up space? 

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

The Red Grove is out May 14, and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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Instruction: According to the article from the above link, men are said to be perpetrators of gender-based violence. Informed by the views from the above article and the three that are provided below, write a research-based essay in which you either agree or disagree with the assertion that men are the perpetrators of gender- based violence (GBV). Your argument should include 3 reasons in support of your chosen position. In addition, suggest 3 examples from your personal experience that can justify the correctness of your argument.

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Payments processors

We provide paid products and/or services on our Website. In that case, we use third-party services for payment processing (e.g. payment processors).

We will not store or collect your payment card details. That information is provided directly to our third-party payment processors whose use of your personal information is governed by their Privacy Policy. These payment processors adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council.

Contacting Us

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us.