ABAAD: Violent husbands are prompted by a problematic gender identity

In cooperation with the Beirut Bar Association women’s Abaad organization ‎organized yesterday a national meeting with the theme ‘violence against women ‎and girls in Lebanon: between legislation and application’. A study prepared by ‎researcher Azza Charara Beydoun entitled ‘domestic violence: men speaking up’ ‎was presented to participants, which featured a sample of men divided across 2 ‎categories: 9 men convicted with violence and 2 men pleading for psychological ‎treatment to their brutality against their wives. The study has shown that all the ‎respondents were against beating their wives, and approving that the husband has ‎no right to restrain or discipline his spouse! What is more, they denied any act of ‎violence against their wives or said what they did was not worth mentioning, as ‎all husbands batter their wives, stated one of them. Besides, men covered in the ‎survey did not admit the existence of any economic, mental or moral abuse, and ‎justified their cruel act as a mere reaction to the act instigated by the wife. The ‎study has also indicated that in most cases, violence appears to be an instance ‎beyond the control of the perpetrator himself, as if it is coerced from outside, ‎befalling the wife in the same way it befalls the violent husband. Even more, the ‎wife is the one to bring violence upon herself or instigate it, hence rendering the ‎act of violence a compulsive or uncontrollable response, as simple as that. The ‎above study included implications for rehabilitation in line with one main ‎assumption: that “behind a violent husband there lies a serious gender identity ‎crisis”. Hence, some of the causes plaguing these troubled identities are not due to ‎the husband’s inability to understand his wife truly and really, but are related to ‎inherent perceptions and attitudes that are in conflict with the current reality of ‎the woman. These men were in total denial of the change in women’s conditions, ‎who now have their own physical resources, particularly the professional career ‎women, and no more in need of outside emotional or financial support. In ‎conclusion, the study pointed out that while men targeted in the survey were from ‎different ages, regions, religions, age of marriage and levels of education, this ‎confirms that violence is not as commonly understood restricted only to the least ‎educated people, Muslims or to rural disadvantaged areas. (Al Akhbar, September ‎‎30, 2016)‎