Why she continued with him, why she didn’t say ‘no’, why she came back, why she continued talking to him. These are some of the questions that are hovering over the conversations these days as a result of some of the testimonies that point to Íñigo Errejón and that narrate relationships mediated by sexist submission in which women have seen themselves doing things that they did not want to do, but they did not cut it. the link or they did so after a while. The widespread belief that attributes immediate flight as the only possible and logical option when faced with any problematic signal is not exceptional, but this linear story ignores the complexity of a phenomenon with many layers.
It does not mean that these cases constitute facts that fit into the Penal Code; they may not be crimes of sexual assault – as, according to the Police, what actress Elisa Mouliaá reported in her complaint could be – but it does not. For this reason, “they are no longer reprehensible sexist violence” that “generates enormous damage to the victims,” says the psychologist, expert in sexual violence, Alba Alfageme. For Sara, the testimony collected by this medium, the relationship of almost a year and a half that she had with Errejón left very deep consequences to such an extent that it was difficult for her to re-establish “non-toxic” relationships.
However, the identification of abuse is not so simple and in many cases it is only named by the victims some time later. “It is something very difficult and even more so when there is no clear or explicit violence, but rather it is a psychological framework of manipulation in which, if she does not do what he wants, how and when he wants, he will do things to make her feel evil. That looks annoying at first, but not like an attack because it’s subtle. They are much more perverse processes and they penetrate little by little like underground water that ends up leading the victim to a total state of confusion and loss,” says Alfageme.
The experts describe something that could resemble a spider web that is trapping and that, above all, does not present itself as such from the beginning. This is one of the keys: no one stays in a place where everything is always negative. And this is something that contributes to the fact that victims of gender violence take an average of eight years and eight months to verbalize it, according to a study by the Ministry of Equality.
Lawyer Carla Vall, who has been accompanying these women for years, knows this well. “In intimate relationships, the first reaction we usually get is to try to understand why the other person is doing that or if we are also getting confused. Furthermore, most of these behaviors are accompanied by positive reinforcement, they are contradictory.”
To exercise power, aggressors will display a pattern of abusive behavior that will include attacks, no matter how subtle they may be, but not only: positive behaviors as well.
Olga Barroso
— Psychologist specialized in sexist violence
Hence, the intermittency – the ‘now he answers me and then disappears’, the ‘now he gets angry and then he praises me’ – and the reward-punishment dynamic end up hooking the victims. “The goal of the aggressors is to exercise power, to do with them what they want and to feel that their body, their sexuality and their decisions belong to them. To do this, they will display a pattern of abusive behavior that will include attacks, no matter how subtle they may be, but not only: positive behaviors as well. That is what leads the victim to trust him,” explains psychologist expert in sexist violence Olga Barroso.
emotional manipulation
But, in addition, it is important to understand that this image will be built from the beginning: the experts allude to the fact that there is “always” an initial time “no matter how short” in which there is no negative behavior, no contempt or absence of care or recognition. . “It is something very relevant because the woman builds a representation of that person and how they are going to act. When the first aggression occurs, no matter how slight, for example, a belittling, it reaches a brain that has that man represented as respectful. And even more so if it is someone with prestige and social projection, who already has part of the work done and starts from a few boxes later,” believes Barroso.
No one expects someone they trust to attack them. And that stops and makes the process of identifying what is happening difficult, but even more so if there are enormous expectations, as happens with figures with power, who are admired and idealized. Vall recognizes that “a common element is being ideologically close,” at least to the character with feminist discourse that Errejón represented in the public sphere. “That makes one think it is a safer place. How can someone like that do this to you?” Alfageme adds about this: “You don’t identify signs, you give more space to wanting to know him, for him to go well, you justify…”.
This is where a process of a lot of confusion and bewilderment usually begins. “They think, how is he going to treat me badly? No, surely something happened to them today, that they are stressed, that it was a mistake… They don’t feel good, but emotional manipulation leads them to start making them feel that perhaps they are the ones who have done something wrong, They have not been up to par or they have not understood something well. This is credible to them because they trust that this person is not an aggressor, he is not doing this to upset or violate them but rather ‘well, I like him, maybe this or that has bothered him’ and they begin to doubt of their own criteria,” explains Barroso.
You are uncomfortable but you hold on and something inside you breaks, which generates a lot of insecurity and makes you feel smaller and smaller because you are not recognized.
Alba Alfageme
— Psychologist expert in sexual violence
Sara, who spent some time talking on Telegram with Errejón before meeting in person, explained how the dynamic involved her: “We spoke almost every day, he asked me for videos and photos from ten in the morning and at that time they already had to be in sexy clothes… One day he called me at 12 at night, he never did, and I didn’t answer. He sent me a lapidary message: ‘When I call you, you will pick it up. I’m not going to call you again.’ And he never did it again. He stopped talking to me for a week. I felt that I had failed him and I sent him videos and photos to which he did not respond. The silent treatment served to punish me and so that the next thing he asked of me, I would do it without hesitation.”
Rotate control center
In this type of abusive relationships the so-called ‘expectation of reward’ plays a key role, so many victims believe that doing better, they received something better. “The control center has already been turned there. You are no longer you and emotionally you begin to depend on the other to tell you, call you, make decisions… You are uncomfortable but you remain and something inside you breaks, which generates a lot of insecurity and makes you feel more and more small because you are not recognized,” explains Alfageme, who alludes to the fact that as time passes the victims “try to figure out what is happening” because “they are absolutely lost.”
All of this increases if the victim is caught “at a low moment” for a work, personal or any other issue, adds the psychologist. Sara, for example, admitted that she met Errejón after leaving a relationship and had “low self-esteem,” so the connection with the former deputy made her feel “desired.” It was not until some time later that he realized that “it was not me that he desired, but my submission.”
In the end, we have been educated in submission, that you have to work hard so that the beast treats you well and recognizes you.
Carla Vall
— Lawyer
But, along the way, the women themselves also question why they are not able to get out of there. “I thought, why am I doing this?” Sara said she asked herself during one of the meetings with Sumar’s former spokesperson. “I told myself ‘this is wrong, get empowered and leave.’ But I wasn’t capable, I wasn’t capable,” he lamented. It is not an exceptional reaction, Alfageme points out: “They feel guilty, there is shame and also fear of recognizing and telling themselves what they live or have experienced, it is very painful to sustain it and even more so today that women know the theory and have been explained the cycle of violence over and over again. However, the harshest pains of machismo creep into us from many places and many think ‘but if I knew it, how could I have fallen here?'”
Gender mandates
Added to all this, expert voices agree, is “the minimization of violence” of greater or lesser degree with which women live. “There is an enormous naturalization because it seems that it is a toll that must be paid, that they are situations that happen, to which they are accustomed, that they share them with others and that it has also happened to them but that has not been socially recognized for a long time, On the contrary, they have been called exaggerated,” says the psychologist, who also adds gender mandates such as complacency or enduring at all costs as elements that can hinder the ability to identify discomfort and set limits.
And what all the experts agree on is that, in the background, there is a “patriarchal society and culture” that places women in a certain place in relationships. “Well, in the end, we have been educated in submission, that you have to work hard so that the beast treats you well and recognizes you…” Vall exemplifies. For Barroso, there is a factor that especially influences: “We have been taught that our value depends on achieving the appreciation of others, mainly from a man, and from there we build our expectations. It’s about being chosen to be recognized. And if it is by a man considered valuable, the better.”
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