“Is This Violence?” Subtlety, Doubt, and the Struggle to Narrate Transgressive Behavior in Denmark

Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Denmark, I explore how Danish women and men negotiate their positions as potential victims of intimate partner violence: in particular, psychological violence. First, focusing on retrospective stories about everyday life, I argue that violence may be experienced as subtle and not necessarily noisy. Second, by turning my attention to public narratives about psychological violence, I demonstrate that they often fail to align with the interlocutors’ stories. This, I suggest, can lead to transgressive behavior being interpreted as nonviolence. This article offers a detailed analysis of the subtle micro-mechanisms that underpin the first manifestations of violence.