Abstract

If we look at the word identity in regional, national, and EU legislation, we will see it coupled with a range of modifiers: "personal", "digital", "cultural", "gender". Especially prominent among these couplets in the language of the law is the one last alluded to, namely, gender identity, which comes up especially frequently when addressing the issue of male violence against women. That is, the issue this survey turns to, investigating the changes the identity lexicon has undergone with the resurgence of the terms "woman", and "victim", and the newer "weakness" ("frailty"), and "vulnerability". It will be argued that these otherwise neutral terms wind up concealing women's gender identity.