Embodying gender violence. Autoethnographic accounts of intimate partner violence

Abstract

The possibility of understanding what happens in a sociocultural context, from the study of a particular event in a person's life, becomes a beta of opportunity for those who want to delve into a certain social phenomenon. This experience becomes especially interesting when it has been embodied in the body of the person giving the voice, that is, the researcher, thus having at his disposal the tools to shed light on testimonies not previously revealed by other research methodologies.

In this work I present my autoethnography, that comes from my doctoral thesis The sociocultural dynamics of love in couples. An autoethnographic approach¹, where I try to show how are the heterosexual relationships in Aguascalientes, Mexico, which occurred at the beginning of the 21st century. It was in the self-reflective process of this thesis when I found out that I had experienced violence with my ex-partners, but that, like me, there are many women who have experienced gender violence in their relationships, but have not brought it to light or worse still, as was my case, which at the time they did not recognize it as violence.

It was until the writing of my autoethnography that I was able to recognize that I was a woman who experienced violence from my ex-partners. With this objective, I was interested in showing through this article, to contribute to understanding. of the social conditionings and cultural relationships that frame relationships, which are governed by the banner of romantic love, which serves as a fertile field for the reproduction of various practices, including those that generate intimate partner violence, particularly those perpetrated by men towards women as a form of domination and power.

1 Article derived from my PhD thesis “The sociocultural dynamics of love as a couple. An autoethnographic approach ”of the doctorate in Sociocultural Studies of the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes.