Aggression and victimization in violence against women

Abstract

The enormous structural problem of violence against women is addressed in this work only in one of its lines (defense of the victim), for which it seems appropriate to begin by recognizing women as a peculiar victim when we refer to sexist violence, necessarily resorting, as a starting point, to the memory of the so-called cycle of violence that, in a study on battered women, the American psychologist Lenore Walker originally carried out and to which she devoted valuable subsequent works. It is a theory according to which the continued conjugal abuse would generate in the woman a pathological adaptation disorder called "battered woman syndrome“ (battered woman syndrome) and in which ”battered" would correspond to a woman who has been a victim of physical, sexual and psychological (or even social) violence on several occasions. This is a model made on the basis of the experiences of those women who have been subjected to repetitive violence at the hands of their male partners and that can be concretized in a set of effects that make the woman unable to respond in an immune way to episodes of violence, feeling prey to the situation to the point of even hiding such situations for fear of a more intense direct aggression towards her or indirect towards her closest ones. Only from this knowledge of female victimization, we will be able to ask ourselves if there is a hypothetical criminal responsibility of women who react to violence by committing crimes, and what would be the arguments to defend such responsibility or deny it based on the application of the legitimate defense exemption. This may lead to debate the traditional interpretation of the requirements of the cause of justification that may not be in line with the reality of gender-based violence, and perhaps respond to a sexist application of the law, ignoring the true position of women in such situations and allowing occasional recourse, as an alternative, to the application of “insurmountable fear” that allows recognizing an absence of responsibility or, at least, a partial responsibility of these women, albeit in a less significant way. This possibility will not dissociate the victim from such a poisoned relationship and from the mechanism of physical and sociological violence, nor will it recognize the realization of repeated violence or the “legitimate” character of the defense of women, but will only allow to assess the situation as an uncontrolled reaction to an isolated and singular fear.