SURESH RAMPHUL
About 66,000 women are killed violently every year globally. The UN Population Fund finds that some 5,000 women are murdered each year in honour killings. In France 149 women were killed in 2019 by their partners or ex-partners. In Switzerland a woman is murdered by her male partner an average of every 15 days.
An expert group meeting on gender-motivated killings of women organized by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, the causes and consequence presented an expert paper on 12 October, 2011. We learn, “Today the notion of feminicide is widely used in Europe, with the meaning introduced by Diana Russell, in sociological and criminological analysis and by the mass media. Feminicide is conventionally defined as the intentional killing of women for being women. The term is also used by an increasing number of sociologists and criminologists to study suicides under gender perspectives. The concept of feminicide is used in political and sociological contexts to conceptualize every form of discrimination or violence affecting a woman for the sole reason that she is a woman.”
A decent break-up
Any form of violence against women is definitely unacceptable. The killing of a woman may be gender-based. But it is worth looking at what psychological elements lead a man to kill a woman. First, let us see what constitutes a decent break-up.
A relationship goes sour. Neither the man nor the woman is happy anymore. Quarrels are becoming more and more regular and both are getting fed up. The tension is having nefarious effects on them and the child or the children. They decide to discuss the issue like adults. They listen to each other, and try to clarify things calmly and in total respect for each other. They hide nothing. They are balanced. There are no insults or offences involved. They are in control of themselves despite a tense situation. He cares for her future. She cares for his.
He judges that since he cannot get along with her, she has the right to live her life with someone else. She too is open-minded. They are not over-possessive. They weigh the pros and cons coolly and take a decision in the best interests of each other. The separation, though painful, is smooth. There is no ill-will. They promise not to create further chaos. They go their own way, shattered, but there is peace of mind for having respected each others’ rights. All throughout, they adopted a responsible and mature attitude, making things for them less stressful.
A tragic break-up
A man is running into trouble with his wife or concubine. She is ending the relationship after several years together. She is clear about it and does not mean to change her mind. She announces it to him out of the blue. He wants explanations. She says she is under no compulsion to explain. He makes out that she may prefer someone else. Or she is cheating him behind his back. The man loves her to madness. He cannot digest the news.
He takes it as an affront to his masculinity. He believes she is betraying him. He recalls she used to say she loved him forever. He cannot let her go. That she will belong to someone else is too much for him. He has always lived with the idea of what is mine is mine. In his mind, the woman is his – completely. She is her possession. He owns her. The fear of losing her is a shock. The abrupt rejection shakes his whole confidence. He cannot imagine himself without her. She means the world to him. He is obsessed. He hates being lonely without her. No other woman can ever replace her in his life.
He is consumed with jealous rage: what does the other man have that he has not? It is his ego that is badly injured. To be dumped by a woman – he cannot accept the idea. Day and night he is haunted by the idea of inferiority. He cannot understand why she is leaving him. Is he worth nothing at all? Is he so easy to forget? Is he such a good-for-nothing? A woman washing her hands of him? His hatred for her is boiling up. He fears he will go crazy. He is confused. How can she treat him, a man, like a piece of dirty rag?
He is burning in the fire of shame. He is not aware of it but his jealousy is getting the better of him. Another man is touching her or will touch her? Someone else coming between him and the woman he is obsessed about? Such ideas go over his mind again and again. He cannot sleep. Hatred fills his mind. He is clear in his mind: if she can’t be his, she can’t be for any other man. He keeps drumming it in his head that the whole world is treating him unfairly. Something snaps within him. He takes hold of a knife with a pointed end. Hatred and resentment have made him blind.
What goes in is what comes out
It’s not the demons inside people that lead them to extreme actions; it’s rather the inability to control them. In a person’s world of self-centeredness, others represent practically nothing. He forgets that real happiness is about improving the quality of life of others around him. Narrow-mindedness causes misery.
Rejection can be painful. Failure to adopt the right strategies to counter the effects of rejection can be disastrous. “The key in learning to handle rejection,” writes Dr Penelope Russianoff in ‘When am I going to be happy?’, “is to recognize this fact: you have the right to reject – and so does the other person. It is important that you can go into any situation involving potential rejection with that understanding clearly in mind. You are not going to like everybody. Everybody is not going to like you. You do not have to accept everybody. Everybody does not have to accept you.” (page 72)
A crime is the result of an angry outburst and deep-rooted frustrations. Caught in a maelstrom of addictive feelings accumulated over time, the person seeks to find an outlet in vengeful satisfaction. The idea of feeling wronged eats his heart out. His mind becomes a stage where he rehearses the worst possible punishment for the person he perceives as having hurt him. Rancour and hate are toxic. Indeed, all negative emotions, if left uncontrolled, are disastrous.
What goes in is what comes out. Put uplifting ideas in the mind and warm feelings in the heart and it will reflect in positive actions. Feed morbid ideas in the mind and destructive feelings in the heart and it will lead to damage. Hell or heaven, it’s all in the mind.