Barbara Musumeci Soares is a sociologist and researcher at the Center for Security and Citizenship Studies (CESeC), at Cândido Mendes University. She approached the topic of gender in the early 90s when she carried out research on the situation of violence against women at the Women's Police Stations. The topic of domestic violence has since surrounded his professional and academic career. She is the author of the book Invisible Women: Marital Violence and New Security Policies.
1) How do you see advances in public policies for women in recent years?
I think there have been great advances: the visibility that the Maria da Penha Law brought to the issue of domestic violence, the recognition that it is a problem that has to be faced seriously. Denaturalization helps reduce violence. The fact that women know that this is not tolerable is extremely important. Some protection measures that are present in the Maria da Penha Law are also important.
I also think, based on my observation trajectory, that there were setbacks, which are due to the fact that the Maria da Penha Law focuses on punishment, criminalization, crime as something absolute. I think this is a problem because in marital violence, although the gender component is extremely important, it is one variable among others. I think the feminist movement considers that any domestic violence involving women expresses a situation of gender domination. There is no research in Brazil that shows that women are the only victims. On the contrary, research that focused on men and women shows that the degree of violence against women is much greater than people want to admit. Ultimately, the problem is to consider that whenever there is a woman involved, we are facing a model of violence resulting from gender domination. Evidently, there is gender violence, violence of domination, silencing, restriction, this classic violence against women, but what is happening is that this is an ideal type, a model. And this model is being confused with reality – which is much more complex.
We left Law 9,099, which treated any type of domestic violence, even if it was brutal, as a mere conflict, capable of being resolved with the payment of a food basket and criminal transactions, and we moved to another extreme in which any situation of violence that has a woman involved is seen as gender-based violence, to be covered by the Maria da Penha Law, which must be criminalized. This transformation of the ideal type of violence into reality leads to simplifications and authoritarian views.
The Law works with the idea that the woman is always the victim and does not take into account the existence of the relationship. As much as gender domination exists, there is also a relationship. By denying the relationship, it denies the possibility of building bridges, of reformulating concepts that favor changes in behavior. When a man hits a woman, in a context of gender domination, he doesn't do it just because he's stronger. He hits because in his opinion that woman is “beatable”. In his imagination it is possible, it makes sense to hit that woman. This means he has a certain image of this woman or women in general. I think that our politics, today hegemonic, prevents people from reconstructing their images, does not allow them to remake their prejudiced, stereotypical ideas. How is a man going to change this image he has of women, if when he hits everything around him he conspires to reaffirm that he is this macho man who hits women? So, he goes to jail, which is a place for macho men who beat women, and there he will become even more “macho”. Politics crystallizes what is at the basis of violence, which is this gap between men and women (in situations of violence), this stereotypical vision. Not to mention that in this process, you place the woman in the place of the universal victim, who cannot formulate a speech about her own story. What bothers me most about this path of punishment and protection at any cost is that women end up being silenced, just as they were in the classic violent relationship. Those who did research on violence against women heard that women did not want their husbands to be arrested, with exceptions when women felt seriously threatened. The speech, at the police station counters, was generally: “Doctor, I want you to scare him”. The women who wanted to be protected were not, in fact, heard, because it was believed that, as victims of violence, they would be cornered and, therefore, unable to express their own demands. Furthermore, we know that our penitentiary system does not help men who are imprisoned, whether for 48, 72 hours, a week, whatever, to rethink their role on the board of family relationships.
2) Recently the Federal Supreme Court decided that not only the victim can report the aggression, ADIn 4424 (Direct Action of Unconstitutionality). Which places the issue of violence within the scope of public interest. How do you see this issue?
The problem I see is that the discourse of women in situations of violence does not exist, it does not appear. She only talks when she's going to file a complaint, then she turns into a number, a statistic. And to be accepted by the system, she ends up having to incorporate a discourse that is not hers. The speech is: “You are a victim of violence, violence is what we, the technicians, understand as violence, what you think about violence, your perceptions, your limits, your tolerance levels are not considered. So let's make a law, let's arrest your husband regardless of her wishes and you will no longer be able to say that you don't want the process”. It seems to me that ADIn brings this. Intentional bodily harm in the context of domestic violence becomes an unconditional public action crime, that is, the woman does not even need to go to the police station, someone just needs to report it. When the woman gets there, she stops being Dolores da Silva, who has a name, a story, a trajectory, who has a vision of what is happening to her and has a perception of that relationship, she stops being that and becomes being the victim of domestic violence. As a result, she loses the possibility of even defining what she considers herself to be living. These are processes that lead to depersonalization which, in the end, is the opposite of empowerment.
10 years ago, Perseu Abramo carried out a survey only with women and when you carry out a survey only with women you have a certain vision. Now she did it with men too. What was revealed was a very significant frequency of violence committed by women. There is a Manichaeism, a dualism that fixes people in a role, preventing them from changing. This is my disagreement with the total ideologization of this problem. What do we want? End violence or prove that men are violent and should be put in jail? The impression I have is that when we enter a process of polarization, we want to reduce violence to a certain point, which is what allows us to reiterate our identity. One of the reasons given for the Maria da Penha Law to protect only women is the fact that women have been harmed for many years by the justice system. I find this argument a bit fallacious. I believe the idea of affirmative action is to treat unequals unequally to restore equality. I think that the Maria da Penha Law introduces an inequality to generate another inequality. The same person committing the same crime, depending on the victim, will face different justice systems. What is the problem with a law to protect and punish when necessary – because it is necessary, sometimes, to take a person out of circulation – that benefits men too? If the thesis that men don't spank, they only hit, is true, no man will benefit and there will be no problem. If it's not true, you include it. Why exclude? It's not zero sum!
3) The Maria da Penha Law has an important characteristic, which is the visibility you mentioned. Today, everyone knows and knows that violence against women has consequences, which can be a factor that inhibits violence. What measures need to be implemented so that the Law does not just have this punitive characteristic that you refer to?
There are protective measures that are very good legal instruments to remove the man who commits violence. But I see Reflection Groups as one of the promising measures that can contribute because they are spaces that allow us to think in a different way. How can someone stop being “the aggressor” if everything around them says they are an aggressor, everyone sees them as an aggressor, treats them as an aggressor? Under these conditions, how is it possible for a person to move to leave this place? The Reflection Group has this potential, in addition to allowing people to rethink their conceptions, by seeing themselves mirrored in other men who commit violence, and even by providing a space for men to say things they never say. It's very rich as a possibility, but it hasn't been tested at scale yet. It entered the Law as a form of authorization, that is, the judge may or may not forward it to the Reflection Group. It is an advance, it has to be in the Law even if it is not mandatory, but there still needs to be standardization, that is, minimum operating rules. Today, there are several of these groups operating in domestic violence courts, but there is still no control over the quality and consistency of this work.
Before ADIn, the case went to the Domestic Violence Court, in many cases, the judge suspended the case and sent the perpetrator of violence to the group. He followed the program and, when he didn't, the technicians reported the fact to the judge. If it was met, the technicians would make a report and the judge, based on this assessment, would apply one sentence or another, or even close the case. Now, theoretically, it is prohibited to suspend the process, it can only be sent to the groups as a penalty. This punitive movement has been reinforced and now there appears to be a linear movement of denunciation – prosecution – accusation – sentence – serving the sentence.
With this, the approach to something that is of the nature of a human relationship, of the bond between two people, suppresses all space for either of them (man and woman) to express their desires, demands, desires, perceptions, etc. How do you eliminate the essential part of the problem, which is the relationship? The fact of recognizing that it is a relationship does not mean that the two are guilty or accomplices and that it is a problem between husband and wife and that one should not interfere. It's not that. I think we have already overcome this stage and can now face domestic violence without needing to deny one of its central dimensions – which is the relationship.
Furthermore, we know that the most refined definitions of violence, which take into account the interaction of multiple causalities (from the World Health Organization, for example) postulate, to define violence, a dynamic relationship between personal, relational, community and social. The idea of violence as a mere update of the model of man's domination against women even assumes that society does not change. Even if, when we leave this model, we can think that if men used to hit to dominate women, they often hit today because they no longer dominate. Society also changes along this axis of domination relations. Thinking only about the aggressor on one side and the victim on the other, the man who hits and the woman who is beaten, results in a very simplistic view. It is a dualistic and fixed perspective, which ties the characters into rigid roles, preventing there from being a bridge to reconstruct the conceptions, the possibilities of dialogue. When I talk about dialogue, I'm referring to dialogue on a social level, because these characters move through situations, they're not tied down. Of course, people have to take responsibility for their actions, but the problem is that our way of holding them responsible is to stick to stereotypes and say: “You are and will always be what I am saying you are”. When I say dialogue I mean the possibility of listening. Listen to women, listen to their demands, listen to men and produce situations in which they listen to other victims. In short, that everyone finds a place to listen that, instead of freezing characters and positions, inspires changes, revisions and transformations.
I have been thinking about creating Reflection Groups with men and women. Never bring together the man who hit and his wife, but groups of men who hit and women who were beaten. This would be an example of listening processes. Violence is non-dialogue. When a violent man looks at his own woman, he produces that look full of assumptions that he created about that woman. I imagine that meetings like these could provide these small shifts in looking and listening, which would gradually change the view that each person has of the other. But it's difficult work, each group only has 15, 20 people, it takes six months, keeping the group running is hard work. I followed a group of both women and men and it mobilized me a lot, I think it is very promising as a possibility. I think we need to invent many more. Roll up your sleeves and think about non-violent processes to combat domestic violence.
4) According to recent data from the Women's Service Center – Call 180, almost 60% of women who reported violence are not financially dependent on the aggressor man, their dependence is emotional. How do you see this issue?
It's a relationship. In this whole process, we demand that women treat their husbands as if they were anonymous thieves. It is a relationship, there is a common history, projects, love, contradictory feelings, bonds, commitments, a social image. A relationship is a construction, mainly affective and emotional. And domestic violence is not like assault. One day someone speaks louder, the next day they say something rude, the next day they give a push. When does it start? When is the time to go to the police station and say: “My husband is a criminal”? When violence takes hold, the process is so deep that it is very difficult to undo.
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