Gender Violence Cycle

Gender Violence Cycle

Cycle of Violence Theory made by anthropologist Leonor Walker in 1979, very useful to understand the behaviors of battered women. Help understand the victim’s return with the abuser. It occurs in almost all cases and includes the following phases:

Phase 1 tension accumulation. Environment warming can be considered. The abuser is hostile and causes destabilization in the victim’s environment who tries to calm the situation and avoid doing what he believes he dislikes his partner, thinking that he can avoid aggression. This phase is variable, it can last hours, days or even years.

Phase 2nd Explosion. It is the most acute manifestation of violence in its broad sense, through verbal, psychological, physical and/or sexual aggressions, includes murder. It is a very brief phase but the most dangerous.

Phase 3 ° Repentance. During this stage tension and violence disappear and man is repentant to what he has done, filling the victim of promises of change. This phase has also come to be called "honeymoon", because man is extraordinarily friendly and affectionate. It is a very dangerous stage because the aggressor retracts his behavior -at least in word -, the victim relaxes and hopes of continuing with the relationship are renewed. This stage of repentance will give way to a new tension phase.

The cycle will be repeated periodically, resulting in an increasingly short phase and the increasingly violent aggressions. After several repetitions the cycle will progressively reduce in the phases of accumulation of voltage and violent aggression.

This theory helps to understand the position of women in situations of aggression with the couple, where in most cases it is analyzed with the help of this theory, why the victim returns with the aggressor regardless of the situation or seriousness of thisSince in its path it is angry in aggressiveness and suffering for the victim.

Within this theory or this cycle there are three phases, where in the first it presents dislikes of man, irritability, where anything seems bad and blames his victim and not only this critics, he mocks and plagues objects or performs some other actionsTo make the victim be afraid.

The victim begins to feel fear, guilt, among other things since he does not know how to react to this situation because he also knows that, if this continuous insults and blows could appear, he acts in such a way in which she thinks she could stop doing actionsthat bother the aggressor so as not to reach major circumstances and avoid events after what happened.

The second phase tells us about a greater gravity since the aggressions in this phase are present where the one who exercises the violence discharges his anger and frustrations about his partner, submits and shames it where he generates a high degree of aggression, he has the ideathat aggression is the only way in which it can be enforced. Not only can it be presented as physical abuse can also be psychological or verbal to the point that it can cause the death of its victim.

This phase can be short or long term.

And finally we have the third phase where the aggressor shows repentance of his acts apologizing, making promises which promises to fulfill, but his main motto is that he will change, he is affectionate and in addition to this you can show manipulator since there are childrenin between the most normal thing is that you use them of excuse.

On the other hand, the woman is fearful since she did not wantcouple, where all these factors create an atmosphere of relaxation for the victim.

Finally, this cycle will be generated a couple more times, but with the disadvantage that this will be shorter, "honeymoon" which will be reduced only to two phases (phase1 and phase 2) and somehow only existing only existingviolence generating a very heavy environment for women