The harm of normalized violence: re-identifying intimate partner violence as torture in acknowledging the stakes of abusive relationships

ABSTRACT

In this article, I draw on the work of radical feminist legal scholars, who have argued for using the terminology of torture in international law as a means to take intimate partner violence (IPV) seriously and to recognize the harm of normalized violence. I explore lived experiences of IPV based on my feminist activist research, which has included co-moderating online support groups and conducting follow-up interviews with women who have been subjected to coercive control. I examine in detail the similarities between torture and IPV in terms of the purposiveness, severity, and effects of violence, and show how these were concretized in the lives of research participants. This research took place in Finland, which has been referred to as the “Nordic paradox,” as IPV is both common and normalized within Finnish culture and society and the harm of private violence is generally dismissed. I conclude that drawing these parallels could serve as a means to raise awareness of the stakes of abusive relationships and validate targets’ experiences of abuse. Moreover, focusing research on experiences of violence in a Nordic country can expand our understanding of gender-based violence in the context of feminist international relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Torture and inhuman treatment
• intimate partner violence
• experiences of violence
• Finland
• Nordic paradox

Introduction

He was pinning me down on the floor and strangling me before I passed out; the last thing I heard him say was “Why are you doing this to me?” (Jenny)

In a statement published in 2019, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment emphasized that domestic violence “is one of the predominant sources of humiliation and death worldwide … and is still considered to be a private matter” (OHCHR 2019, 5). The Special Rapporteur urged states to follow due diligence in preventing human rights violations when they take place in the private sphere. This statement can be seen as reflecting the successes of feminist lobbying for the recognition of the severity of domestic violence at the level of international norms. However, it also compels us to inquire further into the parallels between torture and intimate partner violence (IPV) to contest the normalization of private violence and to develop an understanding of how violence operates in the context of abusive relationships.

In this article, I draw on the work of radical feminist legal scholars (Copelon 1994, 2008; MacKinnon 2006; Meyersfeld 2003; Sheehy 2016) who have argued for the re-identification of IPV by employing the terminology of torture. While this work lobbies for the recognition of IPV as a human rights issue that should be acknowledged within the norm of torture under the UN Convention in international law as well as in national legal systems (Alexander 2000; Runge 2013), I employ these arguments as a means to analyze the practices and processes of abusive relationships. In doing so, I scrutinize the similarities between the position of targets of torture and that of targets of IPV to validate the severity of the violence, challenging hierarchical distinctions between categories of public and private violence. This work is based on my own feminist activist research in Finland, which has included co-moderating online support groups and conducting follow-up interviews with women who have been subjected to coercive control. I contend that the terminology of torture could serve as a means to raise awareness of the stakes of abusive relationships, validate targets’ experiences, and convince authorities and service providers to take private violence seriously.

I move the level of analysis of domestic violence to the complex dynamics of abusive relationships, which have fallen out of view in feminist international relations (IR) approaches. In feminist IR, emphasis has been predominantly placed on comparative analyses of the scale and prevalence of violence against women, including IPV at the global level in the context of human rights (Brysk 2018; Htun and Weldon 2018), in the analysis of how the processes and practices of the global political economy enable and produce violence against women (Elias and Rai 2015; True 2012), through the conceptualization of a continuum of violence (Kostovicova, Bojicic-Dzelilovic, and Henry 2020), and in recognizing how violence in the private sphere increases during and after a conflict or war as soldiers return home (Cockburn 2007; Enloe 1993; True and Tanyag 2019). Violence in the private sphere has been recognized as a strategy during war and conflicts (Baaz and Stern 2013; Skjelsbaek 2001), and the attention paid to the severity of IPV in the context of feminist research and activism has been critically examined as potentially harming racialized men in the process (Zalewski and Runyan 2015).

Following Swati Parashar (2013), I contend that violence is always about real bodies and lives that are transformed by the violence inflicted upon them. Thus, in building an understanding of gendered violence in the private sphere, I believe that analyzing how these abuses concretize in lived experiences and shape targets’ sense of self and perception of the world can deepen our understanding of the severity of domestic violence in the context of feminist IR. Such an approach allows us to assess and take seriously the harm of normalized and mundane everyday violence to targets, which may be neglected as the focus tends to gravitate toward extreme and large-scale physical violence. Moreover, shifting attention to experiences of violence in close relationships and in peacetime Finland aligns with scholarship in feminist peace research and security studies. Such scholarship calls for examining gendered violence and insecurities during peacetime (True 2020; see also Little 2020) and adopting a critical lens toward accounting for violence in the West similar to research conducted in the context of developing countries (Gentry 2015).

Specifically, I focus on experiences of psychological violence in the context of coercive control (Johnson 2006; Stark 2007; Stark and Hester 2019), referring to IPV in which the abuser isolates the target from their family and friends and applies direct and indirect forms of abuse to control the target with the purpose of affecting their self-image and sense of self as “deserving” the violence. Direct forms include a range of physical and sexualized abuses used as punishment for perceived wrongdoings and the threat of violence to control the target’s behavior and all aspects of their life, including sleep, food intake, appearance, social life, the use of their time, and finances. Indirect forms of abuse consist of put-downs, criticism, manipulation, and gaslighting, all of which are intended to make the target question their sense of reality and the reality of the relationship as abusive.

I contend that identifying IPV as “ordinary torture” (Card 2010) or “torture at home” (Wright 2013) could serve as a means to acknowledge the severity of these kinds of repeated and patterned abuses that take place in the privacy of the home and to recognize that IPV is a phenomenon that not only emerges or is enabled and sustained by structures of patriarchal power, but is also systematically operationalized within abusive relationships. In other words, violence in the context of relationships cannot be reduced simply to personal psychopathologies, the inability to control emotions or stress, or outside factors such as poverty or substance abuse. I use the term “target” instead of “victim” to dispel negative connotations of passivity or vulnerability, which imply that there is something about the “victim” that renders them susceptible or prone to being violated (Penttinen 2018). Instead, I emphasize that anyone can become the target of violence, while placing the responsibility for that violence on the abuser in the context of abusive relationships.

This article is organized as follows. I first discuss the context of high tolerance for IPV in Finland and the research methodology. Second, I summarize the main aspects of the critique of the norm of torture as proposed by feminist legal scholars. I then analyze the parallels between the criteria for torture, including purposiveness, severity, and effects, as expressed by the participants in my research. I conclude by addressing how a recognition of these parallels could shift the Finnish attitude toward private violence and validate the experiences of targets of IPV.

Researching intimate partner violence in Finland

My interest in researching experiences of violence in close relationships stems from my position as a feminist IR scholar in Finland, where violence against women in the private sphere remains a significant problem despite the country’s reputation as a social welfare state. Indeed, Finland has been labeled the “Nordic paradox” (Wemrell et al. 2019), given that it has the second-highest prevalence of IPV among European Union (EU) countries (FRA 2014), with especially high rates of IPV leading to death (THL 2021).¹ A recent survey on gender-based violence in Finland revealed that approximately 49 percent of women have experienced physical or sexual violence or the threat of violence, and 50 percent have experienced psychological violence during their lifetime (Attila and Keski-Petäjä 2022). For 54 percent of those who reported experiencing IPV in their relationships during the past five years, the violence was frequent, with 16 percent describing it as a constant feature of their lives. Moreover, for 31 percent of these respondents, the violence was described as severe. These statistics indicate that IPV against male targets is also common; 56 percent of male respondents reported experiencing IPV during the past five years, 4 percent of whom described it as severe. Such figures demonstrate that violence in the private sphere is an acute and widespread problem.

Despite the scale and prevalence of IPV in Finland, it is approached primarily as a problem for families and, indeed, as a private matter for couples or families to deal with rather than as a systematic gendered problem or as a societal issue (Hearn and McKie 2009). Moreover, targets are expected to have strong agency to seek help and support (Qvist 2019; Ronkainen 2008a). The effects or trauma that experiences of IPV may cause are not recognized given the culture of silence, shame, and fear of shame surrounding domestic violence (Laurén and Malinen 2021).

In the Finnish system, policies and projects aimed at preventing violence against women emerged relatively late in the 1990s in comparison to European countries, resulting primarily from feminist lobbying rather than any concern on the part of the Finnish population or policymakers (Ronkainen 2008a). Legislative changes to protect targets of IPV have emerged in response to Finland’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention (Council of Europe 2011) in 2015, when the law providing state-led funding of safehouses was also issued. Previously, the practical provision of services for targets of IPV was largely outsourced to non-profits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (Ronkainen 2008a). However, the capacity of these myriad organizations to respond to the problem of private violence continues to be often unsystematic and inconsistent given the wide regional disparities in terms of the kinds of services and support that are provided to targets of violence.

Suvi Ronkainen and Sari Näre (2008) label the contemporary Finnish cultural context of IPV a form of “postmodern cruelty,” referring to the lack of empathy for the harm of violence and the emphasis on personal responsibility in preventing and overcoming violence. This contemporary attitude has its roots in attitudes toward domestic violence in post-World War II Finland. Shame and a fear of shame prevented any disclosure of domestic violence, as these experiences did not fit the Finnish national narratives of heroism and perseverance; the disclosure of private violence was considered inappropriate given that soldiers had made even greater sacrifices (Laurén and Malinen 2021). Thus, families were expected to deal with domestic violence privately, placing primary responsibility on women and children to accommodate such situations. Finland’s national narratives emphasized working hard and focusing on the future instead of dwelling on the past. Thus, no space existed for a national discussion of trauma or for acknowledgment of how the war continued in the private sphere. Moreover, the long-term effects of violence have not been sufficiently acknowledged (Ronkainen 2008b). This attitude, according to which suffering from trauma is viewed as a personal weakness rather than a normal reaction to experiences of violence, persists today (Laurén and Malinen 2021). However, it now takes the form of postmodern cruelty, placing the responsibility for abuse on the target of violence and offering no understanding of how violence harms the target.

This postmodern cruelty is evident in professional responses to IPV in Finland, which demand strong agency from targets and deny that violence actually harms them. In therapeutic contexts such as family counseling, women are instructed to take responsibility for the violence and change their own behavior to mediate the aggression and to protect their children – indeed, to “rescue” the family (Keskinen 2005; Virkki and Jäppinen 2017). Upon dissolution of the relationship, women are expected to directly mediate with their abusers to establish shared parenting and custody (Qvist 2019), while evidence of being unable to protect their children from the effects of violence or showing symptoms of trauma may be held against them. Within health care settings, doctors may be more inclined to regard the symptoms of trauma as a medical issue and prescribe antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication instead of addressing the causes of distress while treating physical injuries (Holma 2019; Kivelä 2020). In addition, the police may not report domestic violence during house calls if there is evidence of prior abuse or if they suspect that the violence was mutual (Fagerlund 2016), particularly if it does not meet the criteria for an assault that could result in a prosecution (Mela and Houtsonen 2021). Evidence of prior violence is also used for more lenient sentencing (Fagerlund et al. 2022). Recent statistics show that 80 percent of targets of IPV who died by homicide had reached out to the police for help or filed restraining orders prior to being killed (THL 2021). All of this places targets in a difficult situation in which they know that something unjust has happened to them, but there is no validation of the harm and little outside help.

My own feminist activist research into experiences of IPV has been influenced by the recognition of the lack of empathy toward targets. In the Finnish context, there is precious little space for the sharing of experiences of violence or showing any vulnerability. The NGO sector may be the only source of assistance. Thus, working with Women’s Line, a local NGO that offers a toll-free helpline and a range of support services for women subjected to violence, allowed me not only to research targets’ experiences of violence, but also to participate in supporting them during their process of healing.

My work included co-moderating two online support groups for women, which lasted up to six weeks, between 2015 and 2017, and conducting follow-up interviews advertised in the online groups, as well as training volunteers on psychological violence. The groups included 21 participants between the ages of 21 and 64. Most participants were no longer in abusive relationships, whereas others used the groups as a means to gain the strength that they needed to leave. The group discussions were conducted in Finnish and in written form, thus limiting the diversity of the participants. Among the participants, one was visually impaired and one held migrant status. The online support group site followed the secure shell protocol (SSH) to ensure a secure login, and the participants were given safety instructions as well as the opportunity to use the toll-free helpline. The research followed the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity and the General Data Protection Regulation. Participants were anonymized before taking part in the groups. The direct quotes used in this article are drawn only from the interviews and not from the support group discussions. These are referred to in general terms and also summarized. I use pseudonyms for all of the participants mentioned in the article to ensure their anonymity and safety.

Interacting with the participants in the online support groups allowed me to gain a unique understanding of the complexity of the violence in their everyday lives and how they framed and made sense of their experiences. In line with feminist activist research, my role was to create a safe and enabling environment (Pihkala and Huuki 2023), which enabled participants to share their accounts of violence as well as their thoughts and emotions in response to the accounts of others in a supportive environment. During the sessions, I also included insights from research on gender-based violence and invited the women to discuss whether the findings were reflective of their own life situations. These discussions were often described as quite helpful, because they allowed participants to gain some perspective on their experiences and to recognize how what had happened to them was part of a larger problem.

Daily online interactions with the participants over the course of several weeks provided a setting in which participants shared their experiences with someone with whom they were familiar. This created a sense of trust (Mauthner et al. 2002) and openness, enabling participants to reflect on their own feelings about their experiences, instead of only on what happened. The result was a rich data set, including online discussions and nine follow-up interviews, which were recorded and transcribed. The interviews followed a semi-structured format and covered the progression of the abuse during the relationships, how the participants made sense of their experiences, their means of coping, and their life after the abuse for cases in which the relationships had ended.

For the purposes of this article, I have used a theoretically driven thematic method of data analysis informed by a feminist phenomenological approach (Crann and Barata 2016). This approach recognizes that experiences of violence are not limited to the actual moment of violence, but continue in targets’ lives, transforming how they see themselves and how they experience their physical environment and relationships (Ronkainen 2008b). In my analysis, I have categorized the participants’ responses according to the purpose, severity, and effects of violence, in line with Elisabeth Sheehy’s (2016) criteria for torture, and used this as a tool for analyzing how these criteria are concretized in the context of private violence.

Intimate partner violence through the lens of torture

The main reason for lobbying for the re-identification of IPV using the terminology of torture has been to maintain that violence against women is a human rights issue (Copelon 1994; Meyersfeld 2003; Runge 2013; Sheehy 2016) and to challenge the attitude that IPV should be regarded as normalized violence within the private sphere (MacKinnon 2006; Qureshi 2013). The key element in the radical feminist critique of the norm of torture has been to critically evaluate the definition of torture and to identify how it discriminates against gendered violence (Alexander 2000; Copelon 1994, 2008; Meyersfeld 2003; Wright 2013; Youngs 2003), drawing attention to similarities in the patterns and purposes of violence in the context of relationships and methods of torture. Indeed, Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald (2019) propose the concept of “non-state torture” as a means to capture the stakes of abusive relationships.

This critique has addressed the criteria for torture as originally identified in the UN Convention against Torture (CAT), whereby it was understood as taking place when physical pain or suffering is inflicted for a specific purpose by an individual acting in an official capacity (Copelon 1994). Thus, for violence to meet the criteria for torture under the CAT, it had to both be carried out by a state official or someone on behalf of the state and serve a specific purpose. Feminist legal scholars took issue with both of these requirements, but most importantly with the involvement of a state official as a determining factor for what counts as torture and what does not. This requirement meant that violence in the private sphere fell outside the definition of torture even if the violence was similarly severe. However, lobbying for the removal of that requirement was successful, given that it led to the recognition of IPV as torture through the 2007 amendments to the definition of torture within the CAT, which claimed that “domestic violence [i]s one of the most crucial issues for the Committee to address” (Copelon 2008, 230).

In addition, feminist legal scholars have emphasized how the norms and representations of torture may operate in ways that prioritize violence that affects men more than women. Sheehy (2016) maintains that targets of official torture are more often male, while Ronli Sifris (2014) argues that masculine bias explains why and how this form of violence is deemed serious and widely prohibited, whereas abuse practices that parallel torture in the private sphere are not regarded as noteworthy. One example of this prioritization is that rape in the context of marriage was not criminalized until 1994 in the United States (Copelon 2008), similar to Finland. Indeed, violence in the private sphere has traditionally been regarded as the right of the father or husband to discipline and exert power within the household (Dobash and Dobash 1998; Lidman 2018), thereby reflecting a hierarchical gender order. In the contemporary context, the right of a man to use violence may not be similarly justified, but the understanding of IPV as belonging to the private sphere still places the responsibility for preventing or ending the violence on the target (McKie 2005). According to Gillian Youngs (2003), the atomistic conceptualization of the individual in liberal legal systems does not allow for the recognition of power relations in abusive relationships, such as those present in the context of coercive control. Thus, partners may be treated as equals, both of whom bear responsibility for the abuse. In the Finnish context, the legal system is similarly more inclined to address isolated acts of violence in the public sphere, which are primarily perpetrated by and affect men, rather than the repeated and patterned form of violence in the private sphere that primarily affects women (Kainulainen and Saarikkomäki 2014).

While official torture and torture at home cannot be conflated into one and the same form of abuse for similar purposes, drawing parallels between IPV and torture challenges the approach to private violence that regards it as a series of isolated acts that take place within a relationship. Thus, I move the feminist analysis of IPV further to the level of relationships and recognize how these are connected to a hierarchical gender order and structures of power that enable and sustain abuse.

Drawing parallels: the purposiveness, severity, and effects of private violence

He was never violent toward me; he would sometimes pin me down on the floor to prevent me from leaving and then there was that one time he beat and strangled me. But it was not a physically abusive relationship. (Jenny)

The above quote illustrates the difficulty of identifying relationships as abusive when the abuse is primarily indirect and psychological (Velonis 2016) and the challenge of discerning physical abuse as violence. This quote contrasts with the quote that opened this article, in which Jenny described a life-threatening attack, after which she decided to end the relationship. Prior to this moment, her abuser had used a variety of techniques to control her, first by isolating her from her friends and convincing her that she had a mental illness, requiring him to use force to help her (pinning her down on the floor). As the abuse intensified and escalated over time, she challenged her abuser’s behavior and expressed a desire to leave. His response was to threaten to kill her kitten and to abuse the animal just enough to scare her into staying. Still, she had difficulty labeling the behavior or the relationship as abusive because she had internalized the blame for his actions for so long and he had convinced her that it was she who was mentally unstable and the abuse was necessary for her “recovery.”

In this section, I address the parallels between torture and IPV and show how they were concretized in the research participants’ lives. Highlighting these parallels allows us to see how the relationships themselves must be recognized as abusive, rather than reducing violence to something that takes place within relationships. The purpose that violence serves in the context of official torture is different from that in private relationships; yet, this does not mean that private violence is without purpose. In the context of my research among targets of IPV, the purposiveness of the violence was concretized through the coercive control that a range of techniques of isolation, manipulation, and aggression were meant to establish.

The purpose of private violence becomes intelligible through gender norms and normative notions of gender, which may be used by an abuser as a means to establish and maintain power and control over a target. These include stereotypical or traditional ideas about women’s roles in relationships, as well as cultural values placed on maintaining long-term relationships. The target of abuse may be inclined to work toward maintaining the relationship and accommodate their abuser’s needs by aligning with gendered norms and embodying the role of an understanding partner. Many participants reported that their partners wanted to train them to embody the position of the stereotypical, perfect subordinate wife, someone who attends to her partner’s wishes and is available at all times. However, as the participants did not identify with the stereotypical image of the “battered woman” as a powerless “victim” in difficult life circumstances, they denied that the controlling behaviors were abusive and rationalized such abuse as something that could be worked through. This attitude led the targets to cope with the abuse (Vatnar and Bjørkly 2014), such that they began to change themselves and their behavior to prevent further abuse and maintain their relationships.

Abuse and control in relationships proceeds gradually, typically intensifying once the relationships are settled by moving in together or getting married (Hydén 2005). Common steps involve isolating targets from friends and family, introducing and implementing diverse forms of control, and setting up rules of conduct for targets to follow. These rules change or become impossible to adhere to consistently, thus giving abusers opportunities to punish, issue new rules, and berate targets for their failures. For example, Kathy explained: “He was of the opinion that I had to learn these things, and of course I never learned.” Lisa recounted how the objective of the rules was to ensure that she and her husband appeared in public as the perfect couple, and her role was to be the perfect wife. Her husband’s control extended to policing her facial expressions, who she could look at in public, and all aspects of her existence. He measured her success in complying with his expectations and would punish her if he was not pleased with her performance. For many participants, the rules were justified as a means by which they could “better” themselves, overcoming their “mental health” issues and “personal weaknesses.” The targets were made to believe that they were unlovable and needed the control to prove themselves worthy, severely affecting their sense of self-worth. At this stage, the abuse was harder to deny or rationalize, but as the grip of the abusers tightened, the targets would often become too exhausted to try to retaliate.

This control and manipulation often broke the will of the targets so that they relented to the will of the abusers. This was accomplished by instilling a sense of powerlessness in the targets and by alternating moments of violence and relief (Pain and Scottish Women’s Aid 2012; Sheehy 2016). Prior research suggests that the cyclical pattern includes periods of calm escalating to violence, which vary from indirect and non-physical abuse to direct physical aggression. Sheehy (2016) emphasizes that the cyclical pattern itself is what makes violence effective in terms of subjugating targets to the control of abusers and establishing relationships of dependence. This process renders targets hypervigilant and emotionally numb, which allows them to bear the abuse. For example, Lisa explained that she was unable to feel anything after a while, that she was simply existing in a fog. Jessica recounted her experience as follows:

I felt that I was bad and that I did not know what was right and why I did everything wrong. I worked really hard to keep my head together. In the end, I crashed; I walked like a zombie and I was unable to do anything.

In addition to the purposiveness of violence, similarities between torture and IPV include the severity of specific techniques and the practices of violence. Amnesty International (n.d.) recognizes that the techniques of torture involve forms of physical violence that are both direct (including the use of electric shocks, beating, and sexualized violence such as rape) and indirect (including solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and threats of violence made to targets and their family members). Moreover, alternating moments of relief and abuse is recognized as a means to establish control in the context of torture.

In my own research, participants disclosed similar techniques of violence, such as threats to the lives of their children and pets if they did not relent to the will of the abusers. Sleep deprivation served as a technique of interrogation, enhanced at times through physical and/or sexual assault if the targets appeared to be falling asleep regardless of the intensity of the interrogation. Physical and sexualized violence were used as forms of punishment for being late after running errands, which gave way to suspicions that the targets were “seeing other men.” Lisa, for example, was made to stay in the shower for extended periods of time to rid her of any uncleanliness if her abuser suspected that she had, for example, laid eyes on another man. Jessica recounted being raped after she came home a few minutes later than the time granted to her for grocery shopping. Hannah’s partner threatened to kill their infant child by leaving the baby on the train tracks if she left to see her relatives, while Linda’s partner threatened to kill her dogs and lay the corpses at her feet if she went out with her friends. Other techniques that participants reported included controlling access to food and food intake, refusing use of the bathroom, denying children their medication as a form of punishment and control over targets, and monitoring access to and use of digital devices through spyware, thereby severely impacting all aspects of targets’ lives.

Through these diverse tactics, abusive relationships exerted totalizing systems of physical and psychological control over the targets (Copelon 2008; Johnson 2006, 2008), similar to being held in captivity (Sheehy 2016). Sarson and MacDonald (2014) point out that some of the targets whom they helped in their clinical work were kept in physical captivity, similar to targets of official torture. This was also the case for several participants in my research.

However, it is important to carefully consider how the parallels between torture and IPV are drawn. If only the most extreme physical and sexualized abuses and deprivations of liberty qualify as torture, as implied by Sheehy (2016) and Bonita Meyersfeld (2003), this prevents recognition of the severity of indirect and psychological abuse. In the context of critical discussions on torture, Hernán Reyes (2007) argues that the severity of torture must be evaluated in the context within which it takes place, instead of concentrating simply on identifying the severity of specific acts or techniques. According to Reyes (2007, 591), it is precisely those non-physical and subtle forms of torture that are the most devastating and cause complex trauma; these techniques are also deemed more effective than “crude physical methods” of physical violence. These methods can be insignificant in and of themselves, including taunting, verbal abuse, sexual innuendo, and practices of humiliation. However, when they are applied over a long period of time and unpredictably, targets are placed under duress, causing them to remain in a constant state of stress and hypervigilance, altering their personality and sense of self. Indeed, it is the context of the abuse that acts on the mind of the target of violence, resulting in the primary objective: destroying the personality of the target. This is also what happens in the context of coercive control.

This brings us to the third parallel, which focuses on the effects of torture and IPV on targets, another central component of feminist advocacy toward recognizing IPV as torture. Sarson and MacDonald (2014) found in their clinical treatment of survivors of torture and IPV that the symptoms and effects of violence were similar in the two groups. A similar finding is also supported by trauma theory (Levine 1997; Rothschild 2000; Van der Kolk, McFarlane, and Weisaeth 1996), which recognizes the development of complex trauma as a normal reaction to prolonged stress rather than to specific forms of violence or conditions. What matters is the perpetual psychological strain, the powerlessness of the target, and the internalization of blame for the violence (Şalcıoğlu and Başoğlu 2017). Reyes (2007) lists the reported long-term psychological and psychosomatic effects experienced by those who have endured subtle and psychological torture, including paranoia, insomnia, an inability to trust others, and an intense sense of shame. In the context of IPV, Heli Siltala, Juha Holma, and Maria Hallman-Keiskoski (2014) found that the effects of psychological violence are more severe and last longer than the effects of physical violence. These effects include similarly complex trauma, stress-related illnesses, depression, and anxiety and panic disorders, in addition to a broken sense of self or a self-image of somehow “deserving” the abuse (see also Yoshihama, Horrocks, and Kamano 2009). Both targets of IPV and targets of torture may experience cognitive impairment resulting from trauma, such as difficulty remembering or accounting for what happened to them or even what kinds of abuse they were subjected to and when (Scaer 2001). For example, Linda explained:

It is as if I am trying to escape from the whole thing, or I cannot really remember or organize it in my mind. It comes in flashes [of memory], or a feeling in the body. I can remember where we ended [after an abusive incident], but not how it started or what happened during [the abuse].

Similarly, participants reported symptoms of hypervigilance, such as living in a constant state of fear and physical and emotional numbness, experiencing “my brain not functioning” in reference to cognitive impairment (Bremner 2005), anxiety, and panic, as well as physical symptoms, such as rapid weight loss, heart palpitations, and insomnia. These effects started during the abusive relationships and impaired the targets’ capacity to study or do knowledge-based work, resulting in prolonged periods of sick leave. Participants also reported that their children had similar difficulties, including trouble concentrating on schoolwork due to the stressful situation. Some participants reported that when they were at home alone, they experienced intense vomiting as their bodies reacted to the abusive environment. The effects on their self-esteem and personal integrity were profound, leading to a sense of failing as a human or being inherently flawed, both in terms of “deserving” the violence and being destroyed by it. Thus, many participants also felt guilt and shame for the symptoms of trauma that they were experiencing, because in a way those effects substantiated their abusers’ view of them as weak and inadequate.

For many participants, the effects of traumatic stress continued even after their relationships ended and they were physically safe. Long-term symptoms included insomnia, panic attacks, stress-related illnesses, anxiety, and depression. Flashbacks and nightmares were common, in one case continuing for 20 years after the abuse ended. Many women continued living in a perpetual state of fear and adopted behaviors and practices to protect themselves from further abuse. For example, some women reported never wanting to live on the ground floor of an apartment building or always installing extra locks when moving into a new place, and keeping their phone number and address secret. Many participants admitted to ending friendships and potential romantic relationships and even changing jobs at the slightest transgression, thus fiercely protecting their own boundaries. These precautions were taken even when their abusers had severed all contact and remained absent from their lives for years. It was also difficult for many participants to accept that they had been abused and that their lives had fundamentally changed as a result. Thus, there was a sense of sadness and loss, because their former relationships had not turned out how they had hoped. Instead, participants were left picking up the pieces and working toward restoring their lives. As Paula reflected,

I can’t think about this as something that makes me stronger, or [think that] because I have experienced this, I am so much stronger now. Thinking about this in hindsight, I wish I would have never had to live through it at all.

In this section, I have outlined the parallels between torture and IPV. However, one crucial difference exists. Many participants in my research continued to experience constant stress through direct and indirect forms of post-separation violence, including stalking, harassment, and digital surveillance. Participants reported that their children were also used as proxies to harm, control, and manipulate them. Their abusers now used children as targets of violence during parental visits and blamed the abuse on their ex-partners. In this way, IPV differs from official torture because it does not necessarily stop with the severing of the relationship or the end of the period of captivity.

As mentioned earlier, in the Finnish context, targets of IPV are expected to have strong agency and be capable of entering into mediation with their abusers and negotiate custody arrangements. In this way, private violence is acknowledged as having taken place, but the extent to which violence affects and transforms targets remains unrecognized. The participants in this research struggled with these issues as well, given that their abusers were able to convince child protection services that the targets were mentally unstable, and thus not fit to have custody. This placed the targets in an impossible situation in which they had to hide any effects of trauma and fight for their parental rights with their abusers, who were the cause of their suffering. The inability of social services to recognize the effects of violence was also re-traumatizing for many participants given that they struggled to ensure the safety of their children.

Conclusion

The argument that IPV parallels torture in terms of its purposiveness severity, and effects is both a feminist strategy and a political statement. Through the examples provided from my research, I have demonstrated how the diverse techniques of control were systematically used to break down targets, how these techniques impacted all aspects of the targets’ everyday lives, and how blame for the use of abusive practices was placed on the targets. I have shown how living under such intense and prolonged duress seriously affected the mental and physical health of research participants and hindered their capacity to trust others or feel safe in certain physical spaces that reminded them of the abuse or where they might run into their abusers, such as shopping malls or particular neighborhoods. Moreover, participants reported that their children often experienced similar symptoms and became targets of coercive control after separation.

Drawing parallels with IPV and torture allows us to recognize that this form of violence cannot be simply managed by targets, just as targets of torture cannot be held responsible for their abuse. Moreover, the fact that professionals such as family counselors often harbor gendered expectations of women as capable of managing violence and maintaining peace in the household can lead women to try to make a relationship work and remain in it beyond when it is safe or healthy for them to do so. Similarly, it may lead to experiencing and internalizing personal failure when targets are unable to manage the impossible task of controlling their abusers’ tactics.

The scale and prevalence of violence against women in Finland shows that a social welfare state with a high level of gender equality does not guarantee safety for women or provide reasonable care within the health or justice systems. Further research in the context of feminist IR is needed – specifically, research that focuses on the configuration of gendered violence in the context of Nordic and Western societies to provide a comprehensive understanding of the workings of gender-based violence globally and its effects on targets’ lives locally. Furthermore, research on gendered violence in peacetime, particularly in the Finnish case, compels us to re-think how the effects of post-war societal responses to private violence may continue in unexpected ways even decades later and across generations.

As recently as January 2022, the National Ombudsman for Non-Discrimination in Finland was appointed to the role of National Rapporteur on Violence against Women, in line with the obligations of the Istanbul Convention.² This new appointment represents a change to the Finnish approach to domestic violence. For the first time, this approach acknowledges domestic violence as a problem requiring attention and action from public authorities. However, much work remains to be done to open up discussions on the harm of normalized violence within Finnish society, which might also convince service providers to recognize how they could adjust their own approaches to working with targets of violence to actually promote recovery and healing.

Thus, I conclude that re-identifying IPV as torture could serve as a means to raise awareness and educate professionals, including the police, child protection services, and family counselors, to recognize the stakes of abusive relationships and acknowledge the harm of normalized violence. This could also motivate the development of trauma-informed responses and remove the unrealistic expectations that are still harbored. Most importantly, it could help targets to understand that they are not responsible for the violence that they experience.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their thorough and constructive comments, which greatly helped in the revision of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Helsingin Yliopiston Tiedesäätiö: University of Helsinki three-year grant 2016–2019.

Notes on contributors

Elina Penttinen

Elina Penttinen is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has published widely on gender and violence in the contexts of global political economy, crisis management, global mobility, close relationships, and the workplace. She is the author of Joy and International Relations: A New Methodology (2013) and Globalization, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking: Corporeal Politics (2008) and the co-author of Emotional Workplace Abuse: A New Research Approach (2019) and Gender and Mobility: A Critical Introduction (2017). Her areas of expertise in research and teaching are feminist methodology, gendered violence, creative analytic writing, and contemplative pedagogies.

Notes

1 Country-specific details on the scale and prevalence of violence against women in EU countries can be found in the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights survey (FRA 2014). While the survey does not offer explanations for the differences between countries, it identifies the cultural context, in which IPV is viewed as a private issue, as well as the higher scale of substance abuse as contributing factors.

2 For more information on the role of the ombudsman, see Non-Discrimination Ombudsman (n.d.).