Increasing the punishment, addressing the shame to the abuser and informing will not necessarily prevent the next woman from joining the 19 victims • Opinion
The late Najah Mansour
In the week in which two women were murdered by their spouses and joined by 17 other women who thus found their deaths this year, it can be said that this common story is still considered by many to be a matter "between them".
Despite the shock and growing voices of protest in the matter, it can be said that as a society, we tend to deal with situations of violence against women in the range between road accidents and assassinations in the underworld.
The events are experienced as a fate similar to a carnage on the roads or as a matter of "family interior", and therefore one that is sometimes perceived as closing private accounts.
When examining the voices that suggest eradicating the phenomenon, one can hear, among others, those calling for increased punishment, for turning the spotlight on shame to the abuser, and for advocacy calling for women not to remain silent and resort to outside factors to get out of a violent relationship.
All of these are important and necessary operative, legal and cultural measures, but one has to wonder whether we do not sometimes send women to their deaths in a message that we pass on from generation to generation for years?
Long before punishment, advocacy and budgets for battered women dormitories, the solution lies in our gender perceptions, those that are passed on to us from an early age.
Women from all walks of life too often choose partners who show signs of control or violence.
These are not ancillary and negligible qualities for a man that is all giving and tenderness, they are not suddenly revealed and are not expressed only the moment the hand is first sent to strike, sometimes it is not actually sent at all.
These choices are usually not "despite" the man's aggressiveness, but also "because of her" or "because of her."
A man's power, control or jealousy still translates in some women into love.
Not just love - love full of passion, and not just a man - a strong and dominant man.
Many of us, even women who in many ways are independent and powerful, have sinned in this.
Our confusion is created from the messages and education we receive and adopt from our culture, society, mothers and fathers.
Messages that follow are much harder to break free from, even when experienced as less romantic.
Culturally this can be seen for example in the character of the "bad boy" and the inconceivable who is considered attractive and exciting, or in the rough and tough man who "keeps us short" and "saves us from ourselves".
Even if the roots of attraction are genetic and stem from the primordial need for a warrior and defender man to pass these genes on to his offspring, we no longer need to hunt when the poison arrows are pointed at us.
As long as we do not dedicate other women, as well as ourselves, to emotional independence, and as long as we do not change our perspective on what is considered masculine, women will continue to be attracted to these partners.
Sometimes it will end "only" in an unsuccessful relationship, sometimes it will end in death.