Essay: Home is Where the Hurt is

Dylan Martinez | Credit: REUTERS

CW: femicide, rape

Home is where the hurt is. 

Private, hidden, that space cleaned and cared for by women, that space headed and ruled by men, that space where women are most endangered. And it is men they know, love or once loved, men they are related to, who most endanger women–not stranger danger but men they know.

Home is where Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei was set on fire by her partner (some news reports describe him as an ex-partner) Dickson Ndiema, during a disagreement on Sunday. He bought a can of gasoline, poured it all over her and set her ablaze. She was taken to hospital with 80 percent burns. She died there on Thursday. Her murder began at home on Sunday—three weeks to the day after she finished 44th at the Paris Summer Olympics.

Some call it “domestic violence.” But “domestic” is important only when it hurts men and the State--as in Domestic Terrorism.

Otherwise “domestic”--as in domestic violence--is not taken seriously. It is private, it is hidden, it happens in the realm of the home, that space cleaned and cared for by women, that space headed and ruled by men, that space where women are most endangered. Home is where the hurt is. 

So we call it Intimate Partner Violence instead to shake off the air of privacy and denial, but even that is not enough to convey the horror. 

So let’s call it what it is: terrorism. It is femicide: the killing of a woman or a girl by a man because of her gender, a killing which would not happen, but for her gender

If terrorism means politically-motivated violence intended to scare us into changing the way we behave, then surely femicide is terrorism. Patriarchy is the ideology; cis men are the terrorists.

Home is where the hurt is because home is where patriarchy has made cis gender men safe from scrutiny and secure that “domestic violence” remain private, hidden, in that space cleaned and cared for by women, that space headed and ruled by men, that space where women are most endangered.

Home is the most dangerous place for a woman. Not the bush with a stranger waiting to pounce or a dark alley or whatever menacing place (Menacing for who? Menacing because of whom?) patriarchy threatens us with so that we can be good girls who stay home and safe. (Safe for who? Safe from whom?) 

Home is where the hurt is because home is where patriarchy has made cis gender men safe from scrutiny and secure that “domestic violence” remain private, hidden, in that space cleaned and cared for by women, that space headed and ruled by men, that space where women are most endangered. Home is where the hurt is because home is where patriarchy has given cis gender men freedom to mete out whatever violence they wish on their possessions: furniture, women, or children.

Home is where Dominique Pélicot drugged his wife Gisèle, “almost to a state of coma,” and invited men to rape her. So comfortable was Pélicot in exercising his power over his wife of 50 years, his possession, that he filmed it - the 100 times that those other men raped her over a period of 10 years. So secure in Pélicot’s ownership of the body being offered to them, some of the rapists have denied the rape charges, arguing that they had the husband’s permission and thought that was sufficient.

Pélicot and 50 of those rapists are now on trial in France. 

We only know about the rapes because Pélicot was arrested after a security guard caught him filming up the skirts of women in the local supermarket. Police found a file labelled “abuses” on a USB drive connected to his computer that contained 20,000 images and films of his wife being raped almost 100 times.

If terrorism means politically-motivated violence intended to scare us into changing the way we behave, then surely femicide is terrorism. Patriarchy is the ideology; cis men are the terrorists.

Gisèle, who divorced Pélicot after he was arrested, wanted us to know all of this horror because she knows the ways that keeping the hurt that happens at home private and hidden only maintains patriarchy’s lie that home is where we are safe and sound.

The public prosecutor and the defendants' lawyers  had asked for the trial to take place behind closed doors for reasons of “decency” and to protect all parties. Decency! Imagine! Protect? Who? 

“She wants people to know what happened to her and believes that she has no reason to hide. No one can imagine that my client will find any satisfaction in exposing what she has suffered. She wants this hearing to be open so that justice can be done in public,” Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer Stéphane Babonneau said. “Whether one likes it or not, this trial goes beyond the limits of this courtroom. And going behind closed doors also means asking my client to be locked in a place with those who attacked her.”

If terrorism means politically-motivated violence intended to scare us into changing the way we behave, then surely femicide is terrorism. Patriarchy is the ideology; cis men are the terrorists.

Every 11 minutes on average, during the time that it will take you to read this essay, a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or family member somewhere in the world, according to figures from UN Women, the agency promoting gender equality, and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Clearly, the daily terrorism of girls and women is akin to the air we breathe – we take it as granted and we rarely think about it.

If every act of violence against women were reported on the news, it would be recognized for the epidemic -- the war -- that it is. Instead, only “especially” violent attacks are reported and not even all of those, which tells you that society does not care, or is immune and innured to them. A daily war is carried out against women, and yet it is not called “barbaric” or  “savage.” We are supposed to learn to live with it, accommodate it, never fight it.

All men benefit from some men’s violence against women. They are beneficiaries of that violence because that violence upholds patriarchy. It is foundational to patriarchy. 

Unless we impose on societal consciousness just how quotidian violence against women is and how it is ordinary men who commit it – and not some rare Minotaurian beast or a “psychopath” i.e. any other man but me– it will continue to benefit ordinary men. It does. 

Dominique Pélicot “seemed like a classic man next door. He was a trained electrician, an entrepreneur and an avid cyclist.” The 50 men on trial with him include a local councillor, nurses, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, soldier, firefighter and civil servant, aged between 26 and 73 at the time of their arrests.

Say it.  Violence against women is everyday; ordinary men commit it.

Denial of that, enables men to distance themselves from the violence. Whether any individual man has ever beaten up or raped a woman is besides the point at this stage because such violence--enabled and protected by patriarchy--helps maintain a social construct (women’s fear of men, and subservience to them) that privileges all men. 

All men benefit from some men’s violence against women.

They are beneficiaries of that violence because that violence upholds patriarchy. It is foundational to patriarchy. 

Women’s fear of that violence demands her constant deference, to all men. Not all men might be rapists or abusers, but enough are to fuel women’s constant deference and fear.

I do not want to be protected from the violence of cis men. Keep your protection. Answer me this instead: How long must we wait for men and boys to stop murdering us, to stop beating us and to stop raping us? How many rapists must we kill?

If we stand a chance of ending femicide the very destruction of that patriarchy must be acknowledged as the way to end the terrorism of cis men against women. 

The ways patriarchy enables and protects cis men’s violence against women must be recognized for the ways it undergirds their violence. 

Again, I do not want to be protected from the violence of cis men. Keep your protection. Answer me this instead: How long must we wait for men and boys to stop murdering us, to stop beating us and to stop raping us? How many rapists must we kill?

I want patriarchy to stop protecting violent cis men. I want an end to patriarchy.

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.  

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