Novos frascos, velhas fragrâncias: a institucionalização da Lei Maria da Penha em uma cidade fluminense

Abstract

This paper is designed to describe and analyze the interpersonal relationships among women, men and professionals in the fields of law, psychology and social service involved in the institutionalization of Law 11.340/06. Also known as the Maria da Penha Law (MPL), it currently governs in Brazil crimes of domestic violence against women. First, the paper presents a concise contextualization of the LMP and the field of debate in which it operates, besides the main changes introduced by the law in relation to the previous policy. The controversies the law has been raising and the modifications it underwent in a short period of existence bring obstacles to establish a consensus among operators and law makers in regards to the perception of domestic and family violence against women as a crime as well as their just punishment. Not only operators, but feminists were also involved in theoretical controversies surrounding the distinction between the definition of "violence against women" and "crime of violence against women." The effort to advance in the analysis of these categories is justified by the difficulties and dilemmas observed in institutional practices during the implementation of MPL. These practices are described and analyzed from the ethnographic incursion into two fields. In the Court of Domestic and Familiar Violence against Women, I attended meetings of a reflection group for men who commit violence, I watched hearings, and I interviewed professionals and eighteen men involved with MPL. This research discusses the senses in dispute that the various social actors construct concerning violent conflicts of the intimacy there judged, and their relations with the exercise of masculinity. Information collected from the other field, a Reference Center for Women, come from observations of everyday institutional scenes, from the follow up with female user of the Reference Center, and from participation in reflection groups for women victims of violence, besides interviews with two professionals and seventeen women. This paper emphasizes the character of pedagogical intervention of the institutions that aim to promote changes in characteristics considered typical of males (aggressiveness) and females (passive) that would be influencing the engendering and maintenance of violence. In the interviews it is emphasized what echoes, corroborates, complements, distunes or even shows new angles of what is comprehended in the groups (confrontation between the senses of violence and its relations with what means to be a man or to be a women) and in the hearings (tendency to victimization and relativization of the roles of the victim and the assaulter). Regardless the conflicts and controversies that are raised, it can be concluded that "violence against women" entered the world of national law with its institutionalization bringing an intense circulation of different meanings, logic and morals that are shaping and reshaping conventions on gender relations and its influence on the above-mentioned violence. Keywords: Maria da Penha Law. Violence against women. Reflection group of men perpetrators of violence. Reflection group of women victims of violence.