The Feminist Textile Glossary
 Maiolence

How would you call the invisible mental distress caused by the pressure of an oppressive social system like patriarchy? If there was no term to define this condition before, you can now find it in The Feminist Textile Glossary and spread it out!  The purpose of this project is to design a product in the form of a physical dictionary that aims to capture the many shades of feelings, facts and conditions which have always exist in our patriarchal reality but that has always been neglected from a social and, consequently,  from a linguistic perspective.

The term maiolence means a behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something and which is perpetuated by male people. The term suggests the importance to include the male gender in the problem of violence, especially violence against women. Men are indeed the major perpetrators of violent crime in our society. In fact, the degree to which women are the victims of male violence is truly staggering. Women worldwide are more likely to be killed or maimed because of male violence than because of war, cancer, malaria, and traffic accidents combined. Under the patriarchal circumstances — that currently prevail worldwide —this abnormality emerges in men to a much greater degree than in women and there is a reason for this. Indeed the parental and societal reinforcement of gender stereotypes has a great influence on this phenomena because of the internalisation of gender roles and expectations on young boys and girls. Nevertheless in our society is still not allowed to couple the word male with the word violence and when we talk about this issue we use the term “violence against women”, forgetting the importance to include the male gender in the problem.