Female violence in Italy. An emerging discourse of heterosexual intimate partner violence

The phenomenon of female violence perpetrated by women (henceforth 'female violence') is acknowledged in criminology and family studies and it is also discussed in cultural studies as a stereotypical monstrous and erotic representation of deviant women. However, it remains a neglected topic in any public discourse of ordinary domestic and partner violence. In Italy, a new discourse on female ordinary violence in heterosexual context is emerging from a heterogeneous social movement. Through interviews with men's rights, shared parenting and divorced father activists, family violence professionals, and opinion makers, main features of this emerging discourse are revealed. Central is the urgency to challenge the normalized dichotomy of male aggressor and female victim by rendering visible specific modalities of female violence, which typically are less visible than male modalities: not only psychological abuse to control partners through blackmail and limitation of father-children relations, insults and manipulations, but also physical abuse and aggression through a third male party. Stereotyped perception of dominant masculinity as inviolable and violent, and gender differences in socialization of violence, are core barriers hindering public acknowledgment of this emerging discourse on female ordinary violence in context of heterosexuality. This discourse can be politically subversive in that it requires overcoming fixed gender stereotypes with a redefinition of ordinary masculinity as emotive and potentially vulnerable and a redefinition of ordinary femininity as aggressive and potentially harmful.