Scream quietly or the neighbors will hear

“I just saw a guy hitting his wife.”

We were passing by the JJ flyover, when my friend made this comment after looking outside. Choked as the city is, the flyover lets commuters inadvertently peek into the windows of homes that overlook it. While there was no way of knowing if it was indeed a man hitting his wife, what was clear was that there were a man and woman involved.

This got us talking about domestic violence. I straight away said that I had never once come across it in my family. Till I was about 14, the only thing my parents fought about was chores, and this in a rather non-traditional way. Both would insist on not letting the other do any work, and so I grew up with this as the “normal” (and unconsciously idolising my parents as the perfect couple) – couples were meant to resolve conflicts without ever raising their voices, let alone descend to violence.

Will she just cover it up with makeup?

It was beyond me to imagine my father hitting my mother, I said. “Even if it happened, your mother wouldn’t tell you. It was pretty common in the 90s”, countered my friend. Knowing my parents well, this did not bother me unduly (although I did ask my Mum). But it did get me thinking. Why does a man hit a woman? When I asked this question to friends and acquaintances, there were two answers that popped up. The first was “the man does it in a fit of anger”, i.e. doesn’t intentionally set out to do harm. The second, and this is the answer that invariably came from the female sex, was that it was an assertion of superiority.

A man may hit a woman in a fit of anger, but the act itself is always, I repeat, always an assertion of superiority, and never just an act of expressing anger.

Assume a man hits his wife. Why would a situation of violence arise?

a)    he likes violence, i.e., he is a sadist

b)   he wishes to “punish”, or “chastise” the wife for some perceived wrongs

c)    both are arguing, say heatedly in this case, and he flies off the handle and hits her

In the first two cases, it is established that the superiority element is involved. The third, however, is what is used as justification.

Here’s why. In most relationships, the men are physically stronger than the women. When a man hits a woman, he doesn’t expect the woman to fight back. First let us assume that the woman wishes to fight back. If the woman wishes to fight back, she won’t in all probability do so because of her comparative weakness. If she retaliates, the man may (and in all probability will) hit back harder. So preemptively, the thought of retaliation dies a premature death in the woman’s mind. This is what emboldens the man to hit her in the first place – the awareness that there will be no fighting back. Violence is therefore seen as a way of sealing the argument, in the man’s favor, of course. So even if the woman does not wish to fight back, it is possible that she has denied herself this option subconsciously since she knows it will be futile.

The act may be carried out in anger, but it is always accompanied by an awareness of superiority. Why is this so? If anger arises during an argument, it is reasonable to assume that men might get angry during arguments with, say, their colleagues too. Yet a man will rarely resort to violence at his workplace. Let it be clear that the violent men we are talking about do not come from a poor socio-economic background alone. Middle-class and upper class men who are educated, white-collar workers too are wife-beaters. The wife-beater won’t hit his co-worker, because he is always afraid of ending up in an inferior position. What if the co-worker is stronger? What if he gets fired?

Even assuming that the man has indeed hit his wife on an impulse of anger alone, the inequality in their relative physical strength automatically puts him in a position of superiority. The denial of the option to retaliate is what does this.

What is important in all this is the fact that we must view the act of domestic violence from the victim’s point of view. If a victim sees it as a power equation, it is a power equation. Empathy is perhaps the first step towards empowerment. The life of a subaltern can only be completely understood when it is in his/her own voice. So when women talk about women, and talk to women, is when we will truly understand the evil of domestic violence.