Information for relatives

Yes, honour-based violence and oppression is a form of violence and oppression that is carried out to preserve or restore violated honour. And that requires a brief description of what honour is, and why honour is so important that people are prepared to resort to violence and oppression in order to defend it.

My name is Devin Rexvid, and I’m a researcher who specialises in honour-based oppression and violence. I’ve carried out several studies within this field.

In most societies, honour is seen as something positive. However, the positive aspects differ in different societies, and at different times. In contemporary Sweden, for many people honour means being honest, doing the right thing, not taking advantage of the system, and so on. But that’s not the case in other contexts. There, honour is primarily associated with the ability of brothers, fathers and male relatives to control women’s bodies, behaviours and sexuality. And in that kind of context, honour is the highest value. It’s more important than life, and more important than freedom. It becomes a matter of life and death – or of life or death. The most desirable thing in society.

I may be an honest man, and I may be a successful man, but if I can’t convince the rest of the collective – those who share the same concepts of honour and dishonour, shame and shamelessness – I lose my honour. I don’t benefit much from the other positive values, the qualities such as honesty, trustworthiness, hospitality and success in education or employment, and so on. The most important thing is my ability to control the sexuality of the women around me, in order to be considered an honest, respectable man.

Some scholars describe honour culture as an ideal of violence. That it is legitimate – and socially sanctioned – to resort to violence to maintain one’s honour or to restore violated honour.

It is a form of oppression and violence that is used to preserve or restore honour. This is achieved via various so-called control mechanisms. And to put it very simply, you could say that honour-based oppression and violence has two distinct aspects. On the one hand, there is violence and oppression based on the ideal of innocence, which includes unmarried women of any age. An attempt is made to maintain this ideal by separating the sexes at home, during leisure time, at school, at preschool, at work and in public spaces – in other words, there is gender segregation. The ideal of innocence is also upheld through early marriage, child marriage, forced marriage and cousins intermarrying, mainly in order to keep the property of the family, of the relatives, within the group itself.

Alongside gender segregation and marriage traditions, we also have female genital mutilation, which is done to reduce a girl’s sexual desire. It is done to make her associate her sex with pain, with perceiving it as a source of shame, impurity, dirtiness, and so on.

So all these control mechanisms involve elements of oppression, in the form of limitations, constraints and restrictions that prevent the individual from self-actualising, from developing their physical abilities, their cognitive abilities, and their emotional and social abilities, but also acts of violence, ranging from sexual violence in the context of genital mutilation, virginity checks and forced hymenoplasty, to exposure to sexual abuse in the context of child marriage and forced marriage, and – in the most extreme cases – honour killing if a female relative transgresses the norms of honour and brings dishonour upon the family. So then you are prepared to physically kill her to prevent social death, whereby the men in the family die in the eyes of those around them, and they are seen as worthless, as nobodies.

Honour-based violence can take the form of physical violence, mental violence, sexual violence, symbolic violence and material violence.

Let us take physical violence as an example. This can involve forced virginity checks, kicking and punching, or assaults using objects that are usually associated with uncleanliness and dirt: slippers, a dustpan, a broom or a shoe horn. It can also involve acid attacks to disfigure the face. It can involve the forced shaving of women’s hair, genital mutilation, and in extreme cases honour killing – the physical elimination of an individual who has brought dishonour upon the family.

Mental violence can also take many forms. The victim is made invisible. A daughter who has been seen with a boy, for example, or has had a boyfriend, or had sex before marriage, is made invisible. Nobody talks to her. “We never had a daughter by that name.” She is not allowed to sit at the dinner table, or she is made to sit with her back to the TV. She is not allowed to participate in family activities. She is called abusive names. Unlawful threats of various kinds are made: “We’ll send you away” (to her parents’ former home country), or “We’ll make your life hell”. Punishments are threatened, piling enormous psychological pressure on the victim. There are many more examples of mental violence in this context.

Moving on to sexual violence, I’ve already mentioned forced virginity checks, genital mutilation and forced hymenoplasty. But there’s also incest, rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse that may also be perpetrated by men outside the family who can exploit the victim’s vulnerability to honour-based oppression and violence. It could be a former boyfriend: “If you don’t keep having sex with me, I’ll contact your family, your relatives, and tell them that you had sex with me voluntarily. Or I’ll send these intimate pictures to your family and relatives.” A blackmail situation. And what is specific to honour culture is that when women and girls are sexually abused, whether it be incest or sexual assault, it is usually them who are punished, including by their own families. So in some ways, being a victim of sexual abuse in an honour context is a double-edged sword.

Moving on to economic violence, this involves not being allowed to go out and work, for example, and becoming dependent on male relatives: brothers, fathers or husbands. It can involve not being able to use your own financial assets and resources, even if you go out and work. Women’s bank cards are kept in their father’s or husband’s wallets. But it can also involve destroying objects that are important to the victim.

So that’s the kind of violence that can be perpetrated against the victims. That’s the part of honour-based oppression and violence that we call honour-based violence. Then there’s the oppression aspect, which warrants a chapter in itself.

You could say that it takes the form of everyday limitations that ultimately cause the individual to die mentally. For example, when you are not allowed to dress the way you want, when you are not allowed to spend time with any of your friends, when you have no free time after school, when you are not allowed to use your body to dance, or to play sports, when you are not allowed to have sex, be in love or have relationships, to develop emotionally and so on, you die. You wither away as an individual. That’s what I mean by mental death, as opposed to physical death as the result of honour-based oppression and violence.

If you are a victim of honour-based oppression and violence, you can talk to a teacher at school, a school nurse, a counsellor, a youth clinic or social services. In dangerous situations, where you risk being subjected to criminal acts such as assault or unlawful threats, you can also contact the police.

As well as the authorities and officials, there are also several voluntary organisations that can offer help and support.