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Abused Women's Understandings of Intimate Partner Violence and the Link to Intimate Femicide

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In this article, we explore how women survivors of intimate partner violence understand
the abuse they endured and the possible link to intimate femicide. This is a qualitative study based
on a feminist poststructuralist perspective. Seven South African women, aged 23 to 50 years, with a
history of different manifestations of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) participated in open-ended
interviews. The data was analyzed by means of discourse analysis. In their explanations, the
women constructed gendered identities, which reflected contradictory and ambiguous subjective
experiences. The women's understandings were filtered through the particular social context in
which their abusive experiences occurred. The findings highlighted that contemplating femicide was
too threatening, and consequently participants drew on discourses of femininity, romantic love, and
others to justify their remaining in their violence-ridden relationships. It emphasizes the need for
additional engagement in women's understandings of intimate femicide, as women who live in
abusive relationships have largely been consigned to the periphery.

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: FQS.,
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Language
English
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Subject(s)
abuse; domestic; South Africa; interviews; discour
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Article
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