“The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in addiction, and, making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of substance use. Now the law commands us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’” (John 8: 2-5, redacted)
The public debate in the United States on addiction revolves around two basic hermeneutical perspectives: addiction as moral choice (maximizing emphasis on individual freedom and responsibility) and addiction as “chronic relapsing brain disease” (minimizing such emphasis). Neither approach takes into adequate account the social context of addiction. This paper takes a social approach by examining the impact of gender violence on the onset of addiction and the possibilities of recovery for women.
I been an addiction recovery coach since 2017, with a specific focus on women in addiction and recovery since 2022. As such, I have facilitated four different recovery support groups for women, and have conducted over 100 60-90 minute interviews with over 60 women. This work/research provides the material for the present paper.
Of the 63 women thus far interviewed, 61 have experienced significant physical or sexual abuse (most often both) antecedent to the onset of severe active addiction. In most cases, the experience of abuse has occurred over an extended period of time, with, for instance, criminal confinement and strangulation being common. These facts have direct implications for assessing freedom and responsibility in women’s addiction and recovery.
This paper argues that such patterns of violence constitute a “regime of gendered torture,” with a particular set of ideologies underpinning it. It then shows how Catholic teaching on gender reinforces these ideologies.
Most major media underreport violence against women. The assumption is that incidents of violence against women constitute one-off events that do not merit national attention or scrutiny for patterns. When particular cases do receive attention, they are typically sensationalized, and thus individualized again, by focusing on the perpetrator as an anomalous “monster.”
The present paper makes the case that there are in fact patterns, ones which are shaped by longstanding ideological forces that, combined, have created a regime of gendered torture. (Here, the author follows Weber, as seen especially in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in affirming that broad ideas do shape particular practices.) In brief, the tradition of republicanism, with its emphasis on the active male (vir) and the passive female, combines with the tradition of the public/private split in liberalism to create a regime where men abuse women out of public sight and concern. Though the regime is less formalized than in earlier centuries – for instance, women are no longer juridically men’s property – the pattern of abuse suggests that the regime is very much alive and functioning.
Political scientist Carole Sheffield’s interpretation of gender violence as “sexual terrorism” perhaps comes closest to the concept of a regime of gendered torture, but there are important differences (Sheffield, “Sexual Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century,” 2020). Sheffield does emphasize the structural, ideological nature of gender violence but, because of the way it is popularly conceived, the term “terrorism” can lead to a projected “othering” onto assailants, allowing men to swiftly exonerate themselves of any complicity. When the Pelicot case became news in France – Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife and, over a period of nine years, had her raped by fifty men -- the debate shaped around the question of whether the rapists represented “all men” or were “monsters,” that is, not men at all. This bifurcation sets up the possible reasoning that because not all men actively rape or physically abuse, then no men other than the rapists have any complicity. The term “regime” focuses on the way that men in general are complicit, even by simply benefiting from the regime’s assumptions, and the term “torture” makes clear that not all men need to be directly participating at all times in order for the practice to be effective in subjugating women.
Catholic teaching on gender reinforces the republican pattern. The classical republican view is that women are socially subordinate because they are inherently inferior. Aristotle argues that the deliberative faculty necessary for rulership is ineffective in women in directing the emotional part of the soul, and thus is akuron or "lacking in authority” (Aristotle, Politics, 1259b2-17). Beginning in the 18th century, republicanism shifts to morally elevate women, making them responsible for the behavior of men. One 1795 advice pamphlet, for instance, urges women to "change [men’s] tempers and dispositions, and superinduce habits entirely new." However, because men remain the “head” of the household, women have the responsibility to change men, but not the authority to do so. They are still, as in Aristotle, “lacking in authority.” Aquinas repeats Aristotle on women, and Pius XI, in Casti connubii (1930), follows modern republicanism in telling women that although they are the moral “heart” of the family, they still must exhibit the “ready subjection of the wife and her willing obedience” to the husband. Official Catholic teaching therefore recapitulates the tradition of republicanism. In the process, it theologically underscores the republican ideology through the theo-moral elevation of Mary: Pius IX makes official her Immaculate Conception in 1854, and Pius XII announces her Assumption into heaven as dogma in 1950. John Paul II then makes Mary’s fiat – “Let it be done unto me” the “archetype” for women. “Self-giving,” he claims later, is the “feminine genius.” Given the reality of a regime of gendered torture, to make “Let it be done unto me” the definitive script for women is to reinforce that regime.
Despite growth in mental health options, U.S. response to severe active addiction remains primarily one where law enforcement coercion is paramount, as is evident in drug court (virtually all of the women in my research have been incarcerated for drug possession). A social approach complicates and even shifts the question of responsibility for addiction: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
I been an addiction recovery coach since 2017, with a specific focus on women in addiction and recovery since 2022. As such, I have facilitated four different recovery support groups for women, and have conducted over 100 interviews with over 60 women. This work/research provides the material for the present paper.
Of the 63 women thus far interviewed, 61 have experienced significant physical or sexual abuse (most often both) antecedent to the onset of severe active addiction. In most cases, the experience of abuse has occurred over an extended period of time, with, for instance, criminal confinement and strangulation being common. These facts have direct implications for assessing freedom and responsibility in women’s addiction and recovery.
This paper argues that such patterns of violence constitute a “regime of gendered torture,” with a particular set of ideologies underpinning it. It then shows how Catholic teaching on gender reinforces these ideologies.