JEI/UN Women Colloquium on Gender and the Law
MEN’S PERSPECTIVES ON VIOLENCE
Naming, Blaming and Silencing
Dr Halimah DeShong
Institute for Gender and Development
Studies: Nita Barrow Unit (IGDS: NBU)
University of the West Indies
Cave Hill Campus
Overview

I analyse the accounts of men who perpetrate violence against
women in heterosexual relationships

My work is based on in-depth interviews with Vincentian women
and men, and Barbadian men

Narratives of gender and violence are intertwined in men’s
account. How is gender used in this work?

Research and activism against violence in intimate relationships

Three strategies engaged by men in their talk on violence:
1. Naming: How do men name these acts of violence?
2. Blaming: Claiming and deflecting responsibility for violence
3. Silencing: Strategic silences / conspicuous omissions
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Gender as an Analytical Tool in Feminist Research
 “A fundamental goal of feminist theory is (and ought to
be) to analyze gender relations: how gender relations
are constituted and experienced and how we think or,
equally important, do not think about them . . . Gender
relations enter into and are constituent elements in every
aspect of human experience. In turn, the experience of
gender relations for any person and the structure of
gender as a social category are shaped by the
interactions of gender relations and other social relations
such as class and race. Gender relations thus have
no fixed essence; they vary both within and over
time” (Jane Flax 1990, 40)
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Gender as an Analytical Tool in Feminist Research
 Eudine Barriteau’s (2001) describes gender as a set of
socially constructed, complex personal and social
relations that feature in the process of becoming a
woman or man. She also refers to the institutionalisation
of gender in particular societal practices
 Gendered relations of power are present everywhere –
the social relations of gender
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Gender as an Analytical Tool in Feminist Research
 The fundamental questions to consider when using
gender as an analytical category in feminist research are
as follows:
1. How are gender relations manifested in our specific social
practices and social systems?
2. To what extent do individuals accept, (re)produce, complicate,
or even subvert conventions of gender as they make claims
about selfhood?
3. What kinds of gendered ideas and practices are privileged
within our institutions and what are the effects?
4. How does gender as a social category interact/intersect with
other social relations of power such as race, class and age?
5. What are the nature and effects of the power relations created
as a result of the social configuration of gender?
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Caribbean Research and Activism
 The problem of violence against women has generated
considerable research and policy responses globally
since 1970s
 It is one of the major areas for feminist activism in the
Caribbean
 There is scope for more sociological research on the
general problem of violence against women that can
inform social policy and legislative reform in the
Caribbean
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Caribbean Research and Activism
 However, previous studies include:
 The treatment of domestic violence survivors within the judicial system
and the legal responses (Lazarus-Black, 2001, 2003 and 2007),
(Trinidad and Tobago)
 The distribution and patterns of interpersonal violence (including partner
violence) perpetration (Le Franc et al, 2008), (Barbados, Trinidad and
Tobago, and Jamaica)
 The formal and informal support systems available to women who
survive IPV (Hadeed El-Bassel, 2006), (Trinidad and Tobago)
 Explanations women and men offer about why IPV occurs (Danns and
Parsad, 1989; Gopaul and Cain, 1996; Lazarus-Black, 2007), (Guyana
and Trinidad and Tobago)
 Guyana (Danns and Parsad, 1989; Red Thread, 2000)
 Jamaica (Arscott-Mills, 2000; Gibbison, 2007; Le Franc, et al. 2008)
 Barbados (CADRES, 2010; Le Franc, 2008; Le Franc and Rock, 2001;
Robinson 1999).
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Interpretive Research on IPV
 Intimate partner violence (IPV) against women takes place in the
context of a range of controlling acts (Wolf-Smith and LaRossa
1992) in situations where unequal relations of power are exploited
 Dutton and Goodman (2005) explain that within this framework of
IPV, violence (physical and sexual) is viewed as a tool within
patterns of coercive control with other tools including financial
deprivation, threats, intimidation, abuse of children and other
relatives, and isolation
 Yodanis (2004: 658) proposes that a “culture of fear” of men’s
violence against women secures men’s status in intimate
heterosexual unions
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Interpretive Research on IPV
 The politics of naming and our responsibilities as researchers in representing violence is the subject of work done by Muehlenhard and
Kimes (1999)
 Others have focused on the reasons why violence occurs and the
meanings of violence (Anderson and Umberson 2001; Dobash and
Dobash 1979, 1997, 1998 and 2004; Eisikovits and Buchbinder
1999; Towns and Adams 2000)
 Mullaney (2007) examines the purpose of ‘telling it like a man’
 Men’s use of justifications overwhelm accounts of remorse
 Men engage in morality tales in which women do something that
necessitates violence
 Anderson and Umberson (2001) argue that men invariably perform
masculinity in accounts of IPV
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Inimate Parnter Violence (IPV)
 Unequal relations of gender provides the context in
which intimate partner violence (IPV) against women
occurs
 Dobash and Dobash (1997, 268)
 “men’s possessiveness and jealousy”
 “men’s expectations concerning women’s domestic work”
 “men’s sense of the right to punish ‘their’ women for perceived
wrongdoing”
 “the importance to men of maintaining or exercising their position
of authority”
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Naming and Minimising Violence
 Men minimised the frequency and severity their violence
 “I didn’t really like abuse her that much” (Scott)
 “It was just that one time. We never fight before, that time when she get
hurt” (Lance)
 Men attempted to present non-violent selves in interviews
 “It’s not that I’m not a violent person . . . Most of the times when she
gets hurt it’s because she is running from me ends up damaging
herself” (Randy)
 Men distanced themselves from the violence they perpetrated
 They avoided the use of the first person when referring directly to their
use of violence: “I just lost control and she got a hard pound [lash]”
(Lenny)
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Naming : Gendered Depictions of Violence
 In describing the violence they perpetrate men engage in what
Wetherell and Edley (1999) refers to as hegemonic sense-making of
masculine identity
 Anderson and Umberson (2001, 363) in their analysis of men’s
accounts of IPV observed that “men depicted their violence as
rational, effective, and explosive, whereas women’s violence was
represented as hysterical, trivial, and ineffectual.”
 Men in the current study suggested that violence enacted in
relationships had differential effects depending on whether the actor
was a man or woman.
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Naming : Gendered Depictions of Violence
 Well it’s obvious the man would get the upper hand right, women could
get the upper hand too right, but all of the time I would get the upper
hand. When me and her argue it would lead to a fight. In order for me
to get her to humble [calm] herself I have to get the upper hand. Let me
tell you, she’s bigger than me, you know. She’s bigger than me, but her
bigness don’t fool me. I would make sure she get on the ground, not
box her down or anything of that sort, you know. I would squeeze her;
fight with her like a man, right. I would squeeze her off; choke her off.
When I say choke her off, not in a way to like kill her, but just so she
could humble herself, you know, because the way she behaves; she
behaves as if she could beat me. She can’t beat me, regardless of
what. I would hold her around her neck [He performs the action as he
explains] like I would hold her like so and if I really put pressure on her
that would fuck her up. No but I wouldn’t do that. I would do that just
so she could humble herself. But she would want to box me, pull a
knife at me and I would be like ‘humble yourself, you can’t beat me, you
can’t this, you can’t that’, but she insists. (Roger)
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Blaming
 Men often constructed their violence as a consequences of women’s
provocation
 Suspicions of women’s infidelity was the most common explanation
cited for men’s use of violence by women and men in the study
 Often implied in these accounts is the associated threat of emasculation
 By shifting the burden of the violence on to women, men position
themselves as victims: “The things she would do gets me in a rage . . . I
would a crazy man to just go and start beating her like that” (Randy)
 Other reasons cited by men for their use of violence included:
women’s disobedience by women, women’s inability to complete
household chores and gossip
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Blaming & Provocation
 I tell you I mek some mistakes because, like, at times when that stuff
was happening I lose my temper a couple of occasions, you know
because I couldn’t believe what she was telling me. And with
attitude too. You know, that help me to succumb to the, ahm,
stupidness. (Earl) Blame
 I was home breezing, right, and I get a phone call. A man tell me he
now burst the bathroom in school and butt up my girl bouncing on a
fella and sucking a next one cock. I say “shhh.” That one hurt my
feelings boy. When she get home I beat she so bad and she keep
denying it, denying it, denying it. Until I tek up piece ah log to slap
she in she face until she tell it. I tell she, “man don’t worry man, but
you know you have to keep from round me and ting. I don’t really
keep those sort a things man.” (Henry) Provocation & Justification
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Silencing Violence
 Men’s silence on sexual violence
 Well she always remember a certain thing that happened, you
know, because it have a certain time like when we used to thing
[argue] before and you come home and you want little sex and
she ain’t give me and she start to thing and a time when she go
through the back door. She say how me fight she for sex
through the back door, and all thing, ahhhh, ok. She go [would]
more remember that. (Brent)
 Constructing stories on violence: we learn of men’s
motivations, feelings of remorse, where responsibility
should be place, but men are often silent on the acts of
violence they perpetrate
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Conclusion
 Men often portray their violence as decisive and
effective, and that of their partners as ineffective
 Men’s tendency to minimise and to silence their violence,
I would argue, may be a result of:
 Their awareness that violence is loathed in public discourses
 Their awareness of state sanctions associated with against
violence against women
 The shame associated with using violence against women
 Protecting their public masculine image
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Conclusion
 Men tended to engage in discourses of provocation in order to shift
blame for violence on to their partners, and to distance themselves
from the practice of violence. It functions as a means through which
men rationalise, justify and excuse their violence
 Suspected infidelity is the
 most common justification given for men’s violence
 The source of violence is often presented as something external to
the individual; something outside of his control
 It is imperative to recognise the nexus between ideologies of gender
and the discourses of violence produced as often explanations of
violence draw on dominant narratives of gender
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THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
QUESTIONS????
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