Seven out of ten sexual abuses take place in the family. This is a known statistic but one of which we have little damage dimension. The writer’s uncle Belen Lopez Peiro He abused her from 13 to 17 and this week he received his ten-year sentence.
Peiró wrote two books: “Why did you come back every summer” Y “Where I can’t stand”. The first recounts with third-party voices everything that was told to him when he decided to denounce his uncle and the second, among many other questions, the role of victim and the role of reporting these crimes are questioned.
And that is what I am going to try to disarm in this note, the concept of victim. Because many people think they know what that word means, but upon investigation, the scenario is much more complex than it seems.
To talk about it, I interviewed lara fuchsa psychologist specializing in gender and queer studies, and also Maria Lina Carreralawyer, teacher and co-author of “They say I had a baby”.
TELL ME HOW YOU FEEL AND I WILL TELL YOU WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU
The message is what we say but also how we say it and when talking about gender violence, for example, “victim” is a leading word. We are going to divide the issue into two large fields where this word plays a key role: the judicial and the psychoanalytic.
Within Justice, the concept is empirically linked to paternalistic and macho interpretations. Not surprising. The book “They say I had a baby” which deals with the cases of seven girls imprisoned due to obstetric complications, It clearly disarms these preconceptions that the judicial question has when reading an investigation where the person involved is a woman and in most cases, poor.
“Addressing cases with a gender perspective requires us to remove from focus all those issues on which some years ago attempts were made to attribute the blame for the act suffered to the victim, especially in crimes against their sexual integrity. They have fought and continue to fight so that questions that have nothing to do with the incident are not investigated: the victim’s past, her previous affective sexual relationships, her clothing, the places she frequented, her circle of friends, etc. This was completely normalized before, in justice and in the media”, explains the lawyer.
It is not the same to say a victim as a person who is going through a situation of violence. Within the legal margins it continues to be a subtle difference, although it is becoming more and more formed. “In her latest book ‘Donde no hago pied’, Belén works on all the burden and how significant it is to recognize herself as a victim of a process. Some people prefer to call themselves survivors, for example. The subjectivity under which each person lived the events suffered is very variable, because of course it also depends on the events and the consequences that they have generated throughout their lives”, adds the specialist.
INSIDE OUT
It’s not easy. The individual question of the process is part but in general it is not addressed correctly. “You have to listen to the person and ask them what their intention is with the process, what they would like to see happen. This, which seems very obvious, is rarely consulted with the victims. Law 27372 that was sanctioned in 2017 brings this as one of his strongest ideas, and it is important to keep it in mind ”, indicates Carrera.
But what happens in the therapeutic process of a person who is going through a situation of violence? More specific, what if it’s a woman? Is she the same? Is it necessary to apply a gender perspective when we talk about individuals who sit in therapy to be analyzed? For Lara it is a complex issue but one that has some apparent solutions. “Victim is not a concept of psychoanalysis. For psychoanalysis there is no situation that necessarily transforms anyone who has been through it into a victim. But it is always a subjective experience. Unlike the discourse of the law, which is for everyone, psychoanalysis works from a case-by-case ethic, where the analyst works on his own analysis to be unprejudiced, to set aside any type of perspective or belief of what is right or wrong, and there is room for a single subject who is the one who consults. Giving them the chance to speak up and take a stand against the experience has a dignifying effect, ”she says.
There is a collective belief that places people who have been victims of abuse in an uncomfortable and passive place. The abuse becomes a fissure and the life of the person who suffered it enters an apparent insurmountable darkness.. Both the writer Peiró and many others bring this interesting debate, Why does rape define me? Why should my life stop for something that has nothing to do with me?
“The thrust to the place of victim that the patriarchal system especially proposes to women and dissidents is not naive. It is necessary to carry out an analysis in terms of the positions of power that are put into play. This puts it very well virgin despentes in a chapter of his book king kong theory where he describes the rape he suffered hitchhiking at the age of 17, and which he called “Impossible to rape such a vicious woman.” Despentes proposes to question the idea that a woman after suffering sexual violence should be traumatized, ashamed. Because this leaves two possible positions: silence or being an eternal victim, a ‘broken woman’”, says Fuchs.
Following that same line, wake up He wonders why abuses do not have violence as a response but defenselessness. Beyond the force of the person who performs the violent act and beyond the act itself, What about the possibility of being active subjects in the process? “We always say that the place of victims can be an important place to go through and recognize oneself at some point, but also to leave because it is very objectifying. To think that someone is a victim is to grant them a certain permanent identity related to a place of passivity or object in front of the other that violates or must save them.. That is why it is very important to talk about people in a situation of violence, this restores a place of agency, of subjects in full rights, desiring and responsible for their acts. It is not empowering, since empowering is sometimes a trap, it is more about to be able to do with the limitations, the vulnerability and the points of impossibility and contradiction of each case. Open questions where there is naturalized violence that invites a change of subjective position, which opens the possibility of doing something else with it. Following the famous Sartrean phrase ‘we are what we do with what they made of us’, there are conditionings, but on the other hand, we do with what they made of us, that is, at that point there is freedom and the possibility of decision, and no matter how limited and forced it is, it is the most emancipatory and revolutionary thing we have”, explains Fuchs.
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE WORST OF ALL
When we talk about gender violence, where the focus is placed is important. The questioning of the sexual life of women is constant and is measured with different standards.
We know the categories of good and bad victim well. There are hundreds of example holders and society is very unfair with its immovable standards regarding how a person who has gone through or is going through abuse, a situation of violence and even a duel should be, act and behave.
“From the moment a victim is assumed – as if it were an immovable attribute of the person, to which he remains identified – an ideal is built. This not only infantilizes the subject and gives consistency to paternalistic positions about what and how they should act or feel; Rather, it states that there is an ideal of being a victim and in the face of any hesitation in any discourse there are victims who are not up to the task and become bad victims.. Talking about being in a situation of violence is different and brings a new vision of this complex issue,” says the psychologist.
It is clear that there are some categories that we must leave behind and that the word victim at this very moment is being rewritten in all areas where gender violence prevails. Recognizing yourself as such can wake you up but understand that the only way out depends on you, saving your life.
“Law 27372 gives the possibility to those who go through a situation of violence to participate and be part of the process through different ways. You have the right to be informed of the process and to be heard before each decision of the courts that can, for example, file the case or order a measure of coercion (release, preventive detention, etc). The law offers a very broad spectrum of possibilities according to the will and circumstances of each person and is governed by the principle of non-revictimization. and of course For those who wish to participate with a more active role, the possibility of being a complainant is also provided.”, concludes the lawyer.
