Miesten väkivallan syy

What do you see as the sources of male violence against women?

Men tend to be violent against women when they feel that their power is eroding, when it's slipping. In the patterns of male violence against women that we observe, spouse abuse, for example, rape, battery, things like that. The pattern of these responses tends to occur when men feel that their control over women is breaking down. So men, we see from the outside, we might see men initiating aggression against women, we might see men acting against women, but the men themselves don't experience it that way. They experience is as a revenge or retaliation. Like women have power over me because they're beautiful and sexual and I want them and they elicit that and I feel one down, I feel powerless.

I mean just listen for minute to the way in which we describe women's beauty and women's sexuality. We describe it as a violence against us. She is a knock-out, a bomb-shell, dressed-to-kill, a femme fatale, stunning, ravishing. I mean all of these are words of violence against us. You know, it's like Wow! She knocked me out. So the violence, then, or the aggression or the sexual violence is often a way to retaliate. I'll get even with them. They elicit this, they make me feel like they, I want them, and then they don't come thorugh. I'll get even with them. I'll show them. And so there's a kind of revenge element to it. So from the outside, it looks like the initiation of aggression, but from the inside, it looks like revenge or retaliation.