Women first-person narrative as a tool for deconstructing stereotyped representations of gender-based violence

Abstract

The social representation of gender-based violence constitutes a subject of increasing interest by researchers in many sub-disciplinary areas of sociology. The growing interest of social scientists in this topic is due to the crucial role of culturally transmitted social mechanisms, that are reflected in the language through which institutions and social actors represent male violence against women, thus reproducing the conditions underlying it. Every social phenomenon lies in its narrative, in the way it is constructed and, in the language chosen to represent it. Therefore, narrative constitutes a fundamental heuristic and hermeneutical instrument through which it is possible to give meaning to a social phenomenon. Nevertheless, it often happens that third people, institutions, or various social actors construct narrative of social phenomena, without involving the people that experienced it. This happens with the narration of gender-based violence that all too often comes from external social actors, while the women who are protagonists – against their will –of the episodes of violence, are excluded from the construction of the social representation of what they suffered. This work, after briefly illustrating the main characteristics of the dominant social representation of male violence against women, proposes a theoretical reflection on the importance of women first-person narrative, as a tool for deconstructing the distorted social representation of gender-based violence that contributes to the perpetuation of its normalization, to the “de-responsibilization” of its perpetrator and of the sexist prejudices against women victims of such violence.