The Three Main Causes of Violence Against Women

You cannot solve a problem until you understand its causes.

Blindly reacting to a problem without understanding its causes is likely to lead to unintended consequences. Violence against women is a major problem that results in injury and death for millions of women around the world. However, this problem, like any other, will not be solved unless we address its causes.

Blaming the Patriarchy is not helpful

The standard response from feminism to violence against women is to blame the Patriarchy. But is this helpful? What is the Patriarchy?

“Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.” (Wikipedia).

Some argue men attack women to maintain the privileges that they enjoy under the Patriarchy. However, when we examine specific cases of violence against women, it is quite difficult to connect the motivations of the men to the nebulous concept of the Patriarchy.

The Patriarchy doesn’t exist by itself, but as part of a complex network of power structures that takes different forms in different cultures. The Patriarchy is not the same among conservative Christians, Orthodox Jews, Muslims or Hindus. What causes violence against women in these cultures is not the Patriarchy itself, but cultural norms like monogamy and sexual repression. It can be argued that these social norms support the power of men, but this is not exactly true. They exist to empower a certain religion, which in turn supports an unequal distribution of power and wealth that oppresses not just women, but people of a different race, religion, cast, occupation or social class.

Political correctness makes it difficult to attack these cultures, no matter how socially regressive, because this would be condemned as cultural imperialism. So we blame the Patriarchy, which is politically safe but not helpful.

Solving violence against women is a pressing problem that cannot wait until we eradicate the Patriarchy and all the regressive cultures that it supports. Surely, there must be proximal causes that would be easier to address.

Jealousy

When you read stories in the newspapers about a nasty attack on a woman in a developed country, it is likely that the cause of the attack was jealousy. Indeed, several studies have shown that jealousy is one of the most important triggers of domestic violence (Pichon et al., 2020; Puente and Cohen, 2003).

This story goes like this… A man starts suspecting that his wife or girlfriend is cheating on him and confronts her about it. The cheating may be real, but it is often imagined. Regardless, the confrontation escalates and becomes violent. The woman leaves the man. He seethes in loneliness. He is so bitter that no other woman would date him. On her part, she tries to move on and starts dating. He sees this as confirming his suspicions that she was cheating on him all along. At this point, he is so blinded by irrational jealousy that he doesn’t care about his own well-being. He seeks revenge, oblivious to the consequences. That is why many of these attacks on women happen with little effort to conceal them. Some are even murder-suicides.

When jealousy becomes so strong that it leads to insanity (Batinic et al., 2013), legal deterrents are of little help. The man is no longer concerned that he will be punished. His rage has slipped into self-destruction. Restraining orders and jail threats are of no use against a man who sees no future. Giving shelter to threatened women helps, but it also risks turning her into a recluse, unable to move freely for fear that she will be attacked.

Being cheated also brings profound shame, especially on men. It means a failure of masculinity. A man must provide for a woman, keep her happy, satisfy her sexually. If she cheats on him, it means that he has failed at these things. Particularly the last.

In the Latin cultures of Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and all Central and South America, a man who has been cheated on is a “cornudo” — a horned one -, the butt of innumerable jokes and randy stories. The equivalent stereotype in Anglo-Saxon cultures is the cuckold. He is seen as effeminate and emasculated. He is also stupid for not seeing what is evident to anybody else. He is powerless because he lets other men take his most precious possession: his woman.

Men fight against cheating not because it is a betrayal of the promise of sexual exclusivity, but because it is an affront to their masculinity and social status. For them, cheating is an existential thread. The self-esteem of a man who has been cheated collapses. That is what drives him to insanity and murderous violence.

Solutions for jealousy-caused violence

What is, then, the solution? We must look at the causes of jealousy. In two previous articles, I looked at scientific studies on jealousy.

In summary, these articles show that jealousy is not natural but the result of a culture that enforces monogamy. In novels, TV series and movies, the message is loud and clear: cheating is one of the worse things anybody can do. It is an unforgivable act of treason. It not only leads to the end of the relationship, but it justifies violence.

“Relatively widespread beliefs about jealousy, love, and violence can combine to create a dangerous syllogism in which domestic violence is at least relatively acceptable. […] Jealousy is often construed as arising from love, which can lead to the perception of jealousy-mediated violence as — if not an ‘act of love’ — at least as relatively understandable.” (Puente and Cohen, 2003).

It is not surprising that men react to infidelity as their culture tells them to do: with violence. Culture even tells them that by being violent, they can repair the blemish that the infidelity has put on their honor. Women get the same message and are as prone to feel jealousy and anger over an infidelity as men. However, they are less inclined to express their anger as physical violence (Archer, 2019).

Therefore, the solution to jealousy-caused violence entails deconstructing jealousy and the ideas that monogamous culture attaches to it.

• Stop the positive representation of jealousy in the media, particularly the idea that jealousy is a sign of love.
• Stop shaming cuckolds in the media. A man’s self-esteem should not be attached to the sexual life of his wife.
• Stop defining relationships as possession. People do not belong to anybody.
• Stop giving a sacred meaning to sex. Sex is an act of pleasure and the fulfillment of desire.
• Stop considering sexual infidelity as a betrayal, humanizing it instead as a response to strong sexual desires that cannot be fulfilled in monogamous relationships.
• Stop seeing monogamy and sexual exclusivity as pillars of society.
• Increase the visibility and acceptance of polyamory, open relationships, and other forms of ethical non-monogamy.

Disrespect

Respect, prestige and honor are particularly important for men. You may think that this is a social construct or even a component of toxic masculinity, but it has a biological basis (Archer, 2019). Shame and pride are two powerful human emotions that establish social status, maintain cooperation, and decrease intra-group aggression. Thus, a person who cooperates with others and increases the collective good is rewarded with prestige and respect. Conversely, somebody who is aggressive and uncooperative is shamed, risking to become an outcast. Because men are naturally more aggressive and risk-prone (Archer, 2019), it makes sense that the emotions that restrain these behaviors — pride and shame — evolved to be stronger in men than in women.

From ancestral times, men have been driven by their pride and their shame. And women have been using pride and shame to control men.

I argued above that jealousy is so maddening in men because it undermines their pride. But infidelity is not the only way to shame a man. In some relationships, the abuse may be mutual: the woman may be psychologically abusing the man by constant nagging, berating and shaming. Unable to reciprocate, the man may finally explode in physical violence. Then he gets the blame, because slaps, shoves and kicks leave bruises, but psychological scars are hard to show.

Am I blaming the victim? Well, maybe sometimes there is more than one victim. Humans, after all, are experts in hurting each other in many ways. In another article, I analyzed the subtle ways people in relationships mutually hurt each other.

Of course, violence does not justify violence. And physical violence is just stupid. When a relationship deteriorates to that level, it’s the obligation of each partner to leave. But, as a Paul Simon sang, “the only time that love is an easy game is when two other people are playing it.”

In many cases, the disrespect from the woman is not real but imagined. Men go out into the world and get battered. He is competing, he fails, he is put down by other men. The same can be said for women, of course. But perhaps a man’s ego is more fragile because he is more sensitive to shame. Ultimately, he is driven to that awful hell of low self-esteem in which violence becomes a temptation. And, being a coward, he takes his frustration on the most powerless within his reach.

Solutions for disrespect-caused violence

I am not making excuses for anybody who engages in violence. But if this is a cause of attacks on women, we need to find solutions. Some men attack women, but many just kill themselves.

• Decrease the social stigma when men fail in their careers or lose their jobs.
• Provide a better support system for men so they don’t become victims of their own shame.
• Men need to learn to build their self-esteem on their humanity and not on their success.
• Recognize the enormous destructive power of shame.
• In particular, feminists need to stop shaming men for being men or masculine. We need to recognize and respect the differences between men and women.

Sustaining moral order

Another reason women are attacked by men is because they infringe on some cultural prohibition. For example:

• Women in Muslim countries not wearing the niqab or the burka.
• Girls attacked in these countries for going to school.
• Women in Hindu cultures refusing an arranged marriage or eloping outside their cast.
• Women having abortions in Christian conservative countries.
• Women wearing a miniskirt or dancing in many conservative cultures.

In many cases, these rules are enforced by the state, but when they are not, men do it by injuring, raping, kidnaping and murdering women.

The article The Great Indian Toxic Masculinity Crisis, by Devam Doshi, includes this quote:

“Another key feature exhibited through images of social violence, and integral to a culture of masculinity, is the belief that ‘real men’ are directly responsible for sustaining a moral order. Its guardians, they must restore that order when it is disturbed.” Rajeev Bhargava

This reminded me of scientific research on altruistic punishment.

“Altruistic punishment is punishment of a transgressor (first party) which is administered, not by a victim of the transgression (second party), but rather by a third party not directly affected by the transgression. It has been argued that third-party punishments are the essence of social norms, as they are an evolutionarily stable strategy, unlike second-party punishments.” (Wikipedia).

The ultimatum game has been used by economists and psychologists to measure altruistic punishment. In it, one player is given a sum of money that he has to divide between himself and the other player. The catch is that the second player can either accept the offer — in which case they both get to keep the money — or refuse it — in which case they both lose the money. If the first player is too greedy in his offer, the second player engages in altruistic punishment by refusing it. It is called altruistic because to punish the first player, the second player must forfeit his reward. The amount of money offered that triggers altruistic punishment is a measure of the indignation of the second player. Indignation is a social emotion that makes people want to punish unfair behavior. It is crucial for cooperation because it eliminates free-riders.

Some intriguing biological properties were found when studying indignation with the ultimatum game. Men are more prone to feel indignation than women, and this depends on their testosterone levels. Men with high testosterone punished low offers more, but also rewarded generous offers more (Burnham, 2007; Dreher et al., 2016; Zak et al., 2009). Conversely, women made higher money offers than men and this was mediated by oxytocin, a neuropeptide that increases empathy (Barraza and Zak, 2009).

This propensity of men to indignation is what makes them the guardians of moral order. In many religious cultures, moral order is based on great part in repressing the sexuality and the freedom of women. But men are not defending their privilege by doing this — unless they do it in a very roundabout way. They are moved by moral indignation and altruistic punishment. A father who kills his daughter because he found her having sex is not only committing an odious crime, he is inflicting a terrible emotional wound on himself. This type of behavior is just culturally driven insanity.

Women also enforce cultural norms but usually by non-violent means. They use the force of the law or encourage men to perform the attacks. For example, the ongoing repression of sex workers is driven primarily by radical feminists in position of authority. When sex workers in Spain tried to organize by forming the union OTRAS (Wikipedia), they were rebuffed by women in the government of the socialist party PSOE: the Minister of Work, Magdalena Valerio, and the President of Andalusia, Susana Díaz. Finally, the rights of sex workers to unionize were recognized by the Supreme Court of Spain.

It is also important to recognize the enormous violence against women that takes place in modern warfare — often involving mass rape — and following coups. This goes beyond enforcing cultural norms. It is just part of an inhuman strategy to terrorize and submit an entire population.

Solutions for moral order-related violence

• Recognize the dangerous, irrational behavior unleashed by moral indignation.
• Stop giving a free pass to openly misogynistic cultures, like the conservative branches of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. We need to confront the repressive and inhuman aspects of all religions and ideologies.
• Condemn punishments metered outside the law by vigilantes, on the Right but also on the Left. Persecution of sex workers, canceling and trial-by-the-media deserve the same condemnation as attacking women because of their dress or stalking abortion clinics.

Conclusions

These three causes of violence against women are often interlinked. For example, jealousy is attached to a man’s sense of self-respect and it’s driven by a moral order that enforces monogamy. Eliminating violence against women requires a profound cultural transformation that goes beyond blaming men. Violence against women results from cultural factors — like monogamy — that have widespread social support.