This is the second part of Andrea's story, a series of comics I made as part of an illustrated book commissioned by Paroles de Femmes - Le Relais 77, a women's refuge outside Paris, France. The book is titled "La violence masculine dans le couple: comprendre et en sortir", which means "male partner violence: understanding and exiting". It's available on Amazon Kindle.
This second part addresses gaslighting, psychological abuse and sexual violence in the relationship. It was inspired by the real life experiences of the women who participated in the writing workshops. I then wrote the scripts with Typhaine D, and I did the illustrations. It may be triggering to read, although we took great care to not show any explicit sexual violence to avoid eroticisation, which in my opinion causes dissociation and makes it feel unreal: we are so conditioned to seeing sexual violence against women depicted from the perspective of the male perpetrator in media and porn that our default reaction may be to disconnect from the victim's experience and to feel aroused by disturbing images, which can cause shame and confusion. This would defeat the purpose of the book, which is to enable to reconnect and put words and meaning on difficult and traumatising experiences of abuse that may have been wordless and overwhelming. I hope it works.
I'm actually bilingual but for technical reasons I've kept this blog in English. I'm afraid the cartoons are all in French, I'm sorry they aren't translated yet!
