On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, 25 November, reports, analyzes and testimonies. A folder carried out in partnership with Crédit Mutuel.
My conclusion from many years of hysteria research (1) is that there are no hysterics without “suckers.” Instead of being suspicious of “crazy” women, we should be suspicious of men who claim they are that way. If we study the mechanisms of domestic violence, we understand that the attackers always apply a system of “hysterization” towards their victims. In a couple, this man isolates, manipulates, gives conflicting orders, belittles, plays with perceptions. Desired goal: to destroy one’s partner psychologically, making them feel crazy and look that way in the eyes of those around them. The trap then closes them. Because after years of violence, they present real symptoms of psychological suffering. If they condemn this violence, who will believe it?
In the cases – which are rare – where these men are brought before the police or courts, they will also use hysterical arguments, to discredit their partners, but also to justify their violent actions and present them as self-defense. They always use the same words, pretending that they definitely have them “calm” their friends during a “crisis”. We also see expert psychologists mandated to evaluate the psychological profile of victims who follow the strategies and discourses of attackers. However, presenting psychological disorders should strengthen the suspicion that a woman has experienced violence. Unfortunately, society watches them and expects them to be “good” victims. That they manage their anger, are coherent, express their suffering in an “appropriate” way, meaning not too detached or too emotional. One wrong move, and they are discredited.
At the end of this continuum, we find feminized people who justify themselves through hysteria. For example, the case of Bertrand Cantat and Jonathann Daval presents the victim as an angry woman, in crisis, and in the second case, undergoing hormonal treatment – directly referring to the victim’s uterus, which is the root of hysteria (a Greek term hysteria refers to the uterus). However, we collectively tend to subscribe to this fiction. Marie Trintignant’s alleged hysteria would not only be picked up by Cantat’s lawyers, but also by the press, and it would stick with her for years.
We have new tools to identify this violence, such as the “Mémo de vie” platform, created in 2020. This platform allows women to keep disembodied notebooks on the internet. Sometimes these are small details that, taken separately, explain nothing, but when noted together, trace the violence and strategy. This gives credibility to the words of the victims and gives a voice to those who are no longer around to tell their stories, who were killed or committed suicide.
