Intimate partner violence is probably the most difficult to criminalise set of offences. Behaviourally though, it can leave a person most distraught with agony and even grief.

The challenges to criminalising intimate partner violence revolves around ensuring fairness of evidence and having in place a trusted checks and balances system to filter out false accusations. This is why it becomes crucial to advocate for social sanctions to prevent intimate partner violence, and safeguard the sanctity of intimate relationships. Needless to say, social sanctions ought to reflect principles of equity for all gender groups in order to protect a potential victim from being harmed, and a victim from being revictimized by the community.

There is an enormous list of dos and don’ts in the spectrum of community support for healthy, peaceful intimate relationships. But, let’s just get back to basics first. Criminalising consentual public display of affection and/or stigmatising any form of affectionate behaviour is the starting point of the problem around respectful, consentual relationships. All of this unwanted, violent, abusive behaviour we talk about criminalizing as intimate partner violence of sorts, is fundamentally the lack of healthy relationships.

For any agency or institution to patronize (women’s) bodily autonomy, it is crucial to start with the fact that the institution itself is no gatekeeper or authority over (women’s) body or their sexuality or their choices whatsoever. Let that sink in first. This fundamental mindset sets the stage for every other gender-equal, humane social and legal sanction.

---