Contemporary feminism

In this chapter I will explain briefly the theoretical references forming the context of and guiding my work. The principal one is feminism, as it has developed since the 1960s. Without feminism, its analysis of the oppression of women and its determination to put an end to it, and without the concrete practices characterising it, we would not be here discussing male violence.

In this chapter I recall some of these practices, which are particularly relevant for studying violence. Separatism allowed women to have a physical and mental space, in which to interact and concentrate on their priorities without having to adapt to male expectations and priorities. Self-knowledge, practised in small groups, caused many women to discover that the violence they had suffered and each had lived through in secret and shame, convinced they were alone, was instead tragically common. Self-help groups, starting from the need to find answers to the health problems and suffering of many women, were able to develop radical criticism of medicine, psychology and traditional methods of care, producing original knowledge on the subject. It is in this context that the first centres offering support to women in rape cases and refuges for victims of domestic violence sprang up (The Boston Women's Health Book Collective, 1971; Schechter, 1982).

In feminism, theory and practice are intertwined and feed off each other. It is the practices recalled above that provided inspiration for important theoretical developments, such as epistemological breaks with some categories of common sense. One of these breaks has to do with the public/private dichotomy. Situations considered private, even confidential and intimate – such as what happened in the home, kitchen and bed – became subject to analysis, report and political action: this happened for domestic work, sexuality and rape, for example. Feminism also produced radical criticism of theoretical models of the naturalistic and individualistic type, criticism that is particularly relevant to investigating the mechanisms for hiding violence. Theories such as psychobiology and psychoanalysis identify the origin and explanation of social relationships and facts, in this case the subordination of women, in nature (evolution, hormones, genes, brain structure) or individual psychology.