Youngsters, graphic novels and (the limits of) empathy in gender-based violence awareness

Background The article presents findings from the GENTEEL Project – Graphic Novels Against Gender Violence, which investigates graphic novels as pedagogical tools for raising students’ awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) in Portugal. It draws on comics studies and critical pedagogy, and explores how a sample of 16- and 17-year-old students from two schools in Northern Portugal engaged with five Lusophone graphic novels addressing diverse manifestations of GBV, selected to represent a more inclusive, intersectional, and systemic understanding of GBV than is often portrayed in mainstream media, not framing it as isolated deviance. Methods Following a preliminary survey establishing participants’ baseline knowledge and attitudes, students read the graphic novels individually, recording their reactions before taking part in semi-structured interviews. Interviews were coded and analysed using content and framework analysis, structured around three research questions: perceived learning, learning processes, and the ability to apply acquired knowledge to definitions and vocabulary of GBV. Results Most participants reported learning about forms of violence, victims’ experiences, and perpetrators’ behaviours they had not previously recognized as GBV-related. Gendered patterns emerged in our sample: girls tended to identify normalized forms of violence affecting women, while boys focused more on understanding the victims’ experiences and, in some rare cases, on revising their own behaviour. Three learning modes were identified inductively: “affective resonant alignment” (learning by feeling), “rational cognitive discovery” (learning by thinking), and “learning by sharing,” the first two grounded in narrative empathy and reader-response scholarship. The analysis also revealed notable blind spots, including the discursive erasure of institutional violence and of women’s perpetration. Conclusions This arts-based form of critical pedagogy demonstrates some of the affordances and limitations of empathy as a pedagogical and political tool, arguing for a shift from experiencing GBV vicariously toward understanding the underlying logics through which it operates and being able to name/define it.