Young Men and Domestic Abuse

David Gadd, Claire L. Fox, Mary-Louise Corr, Steph Alger, Ian Butler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780367598693
• eBook ISBN: 9781317936763
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Surveys reveal that domestic abuse is more commonplace among teenagers and young adults than older populations, yet surprisingly little is written about young men's involvement in it. Reporting on a three-year study based in the UK, this book explores young men's involvement in domestic abuse, whether as victims, perpetrators or witnesses to violent behaviors between adults. Original survey data, focus group material and in-depth biographical interviews are used to make the case for a more thoroughgoing engagement with the meanings young men come to attribute to violent behavior, include the tendency among many to configure violence within families as "fights" that call for acts of male heroism. The book also highlights the dearth of services interventions for young men prone to domestic abuse, and the challenges of developing responsive practice in this area. Each section of the book highlights further online resources that those looking to conduct research in this area or apply its insights in practice can draw upon.

1 Introduction

This book is about young men and domestic abuse. It explores their attitudes towards it, how they define it, and their experiences of it: as victims, witnesses, and perpetrators. The implications of what young men say and feel about domestic abuse for policy and practice are outlined throughout.

Few readers will, initially, require much explanation as to why this matters. Across the world, violence against women is a major social problem. The One Billion Rising campaign was founded around the claim that ‘One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. That is one billion women’ (Ensler, 2012). A study by the World Health Organization suggests that in many parts of the world the risks posed to women by intimate partners are considerably higher, with a clear majority of women in parts of Ethiopia, Samoa, Peru, and Tanzania already having experienced intimate partner violence (Garcia-Moreno et al., 2005). In South Africa, the normality of violence against women was noted by scholars long before the brutal gang rape and murder of Anene Booysen (by a group of young men that included her ex-boyfriend) and the shooting of Reeva Steenkamp (by her partner, Para-Olympian Oscar Pistorius) grabbed the attention of the international media (Boonzaier & De La Ray, 2005; Bollen et al., 1999).

In Europe, the evidence suggests that rates of domestic violence, as measured by national crime surveys, are generally lower than in poorer parts of the world, although the problem remains pervasive. Surveys in Germany, Ireland, Malta, and the UK have all reported that around one in four women have experienced some form of domestic abuse in their own lifetime (Fsadni & Associates, 2011; Federal Ministry, 2004; Smith et al., 2011; Watson & Parsons, 2005). Some comparative analyses suggest that rates of domestic abuse are a little lower in Sweden (Schröttle et al., 2006), but others have suggested they are higher (Lundgren et al., 2001). There are no countries in the world where domestic abuse does not happen.

That said, there remains a reticence, popularly and politically, to identify men’s behaviour as the direct source of the dangers so many women face. As Natalie Gyte (2013), Head of Communications at the Women’s Resource Centre—an umbrella body for UK women’s charities—has commented:

The primary problem with One Billion Rising is its refusal to name the root cause of women’s inequality; its outright refusal to point the finger at a patriarchal system which cultivates masculinity and which uses the control and subjugation of women’s bodies as an outlet for that machoism.

Gyte’s critique could just as easily have been levelled at the UK government’s Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls (Home Office, 2010, 2012), or even the European Parliament’s (2009) Resolution on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, both of which steadfastly avoid any comment on the relationship between the mostly male perpetrators officials repeatedly insist need to be brought to justice and the wider populations from which they hail (Gadd, 2012; Gadd et al., 2014).

Hence, the question remains as to what it is about ‘patriarchal systems’ that we want typically male-dominated government bodies to challenge. What is it about men or masculinities across the world that generates violence against women? Feminism’s most repeated answer is ‘power’ and ‘control’, but is this all there is to men’s use of violence? Can the (clearly not so) ‘playful tiff’ in which Charles Saatchi was photographed throttling Nigella Lawson be explained in the same terms as Raoul Moat’s rampage on finding his ex-partner with her new boyfriend? Were the men who raped and killed Jyoti Singh Pandey in Delhi in 2012 no different than the now infamous group of male celebrities (Stuart Hall, Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris) found guilty of abusing British women in the aftermath of the revelations about Jimmy Saville in Britain? Are all these men motivated in much the same way as the substantial minority of teenage boys who push, threaten, and put down their girlfriends?

In this book, our starting point is that subtle differences between men—including men who are abusive—do matter. Our position is that, unless we can grapple with the meanings men’s violence holds for those who perpetrate it in particular instances, we are ill-positioned to understand why most men are not violent most of the time, why some men are never abusive, and why many of those who have been strive not to be again. Without understanding these markers of difference, it is not possible to know how best to reduce the prevalence of domestic abuse among subsequent generations of young people. In other words, understanding why most men are not violent most of the time is crucial if we are to avoid too pessimistic an account of the possibilities of gender relations. As Raewyn Connell (2000: 215) has elaborated:

Cross-cultural studies of masculinities … reveal a diversity that is impossible to reconcile with a biologically fixed master pattern of masculinity…. When we speak statistically of ‘men’ having higher rates of violence than women, we must not slide to the inference that therefore all men are violent…. Though most killers are men most men never kill or even commit assault. Though an appalling number of men do rape, most men do not. It is a fact of great importance, both theoretically and practically, that there are many non-violent men in the world. This too needs explanation, and must be a strategy for peace.

Of course, not all domestic abuse involves physical violence. We should not overlook the fact that some people who do not assault their partners are sometimes controlling and/or abusive. There is also a distinction to be made between those who continue to incite fear intentionally and with pride and those who have done so unthinkingly or with regret. Such nuances make problematic the criminological project of identifying causes that explain why some men offend and others do not.

International comparative research on this subject is hampered because of wide variations in what is counted, whether in research, government policy, or everyday life. In the US the preferred terms are ‘intimate partner violence’ and ‘dating violence’, although rival advocates of the concepts of ‘family violence’ (a model that emphasises ‘gender symmetry’) and ‘coercive control’ (a model that emphasises a continuum of male power) paradigms have attempted to change the definitional landscape, not only in North America but across the world. In Scotland, ‘domestic abuse’ has long been the preferred shorthand because it captures the wider range of controlling behaviours that co-occur alongside physical and sexual violence, although in government ‘men’s violence towards women’ is the favoured longhand. In France, the term ‘domestic violence’ has been preferred because it conveys the severity of the victimisation many women have to live with. In England and Wales, the terms ‘domestic abuse’ and ‘domestic violence’ are now used interchangeably by government to refer to ‘any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality’,¹ yet much Home Office policy signals a commitment to ending ‘violence against women and girls’ more consistent with the agenda of the European Union. For similar reasons, in Spain ‘gender-based violence’ is the term used by government and educators in order to situate the issue in the wider context of sexual exploitation. By contrast, outside both the European Union and what is a largely Anglophone debate, in Norway the term domestic violence does not translate at all. There, vold i nære relasjoner (violence in close relationships) is the nearest equivalent.

From our perspective, each and all of these terms have value in that they draw attention to the harms that are perpetrated between intimate partners and provide frameworks for beginning to understand why that is. The dangers, however, in framing the issue too quickly include both excluding a broader pattern of behaviour that is relevant to understanding some young men’s abuse of their girlfriends, and presenting the issue in ways that merely generate defensiveness. Violence against women may, for example, best frame the behaviour of a young man who assaults his mother, girlfriend, and female teacher. It may also work for those young men who are violent towards women they do not know. But in the latter case, such violence can happen in the context of gang rivalries between men, and where men are the actual targets. At the same time, much violence between men—including assaults between fathers and sons, young men and their ex-girlfriends’ fathers, or the family members of female partners—also implicates gender, heterosexuality, and power in ways that are rarely conceptualized in academic writing.

For those interested in the aetiology of domestic abuse there is a complex debate to be had between sociological analyses that tend to flag the role of inequalities in class, ethnicity, and power (Messerschmidt, 1993, 2013; Crenshaw, 1994) and psychological research that highlights developmental failings, especially the role of childhood experiences of neglect and abuse. Rates of domestic assault, as measured in national crime surveys, are generally higher among lower income groups, with British women in financially insecure income bands three times more likely to have been assaulted in the last year compared to women in the most secure income bands (Mirrlees-Black, 1998). The men who perpetrate such assaults are more often than not poorer too, but they are also more likely to exhibit greater psychopathology than those men who are generally not violent. As one of the best UK longitudinal studies attested:

At age 21, half of Dunedin Study members involved in partner violence had a psychiatric diagnosis, and one third of those with a psychiatric diagnosis were involved in partner violence.

(Moffitt et al., 2001: 42)

And yet, as the same study shows, many of those men who were violent to partners had pretty much stopped offending by the time they reached their thirties. Cross-sectional survey data makes the same point. In fact, the recurring lesson from virtually every prevalence study of violence against women is that women in their late teens are much more likely than women in their fifties to have suffered a partner assault in the last year (Lundgren et al., 2001; Fsadni & Associates, 2011; Zorilla et al., 2010). In the UK, women below the age of 25 are around about twice as likely to have been victimized in the last year as women in older age groups (Smith et al., 2011). Research in continental Europe puts the disparity closer to four times greater for women in their twenties as opposed to their fifties (Schröttle et al., 2006). This suggests that there are particular social and psychodynamic processes in the life courses of young people that intensify the risks of victimisation and/or becoming a perpetrator. These processes need to be better understood, as we argue throughout this book.

The good news, however, is that in the US, Australia, and the UK, rates of domestic violence as measured by victimisation studies appear to be progressively falling. The 2011/12 Crime Survey of England and Wales, for example, reports that incidents of ‘domestic violence peaked in 1993, decreasing by 74%, from 1.2 million to 308,000 in the 2011/12 survey’ (ONS, 2013: 9). Moreover, in the US and Australia, the greatest declines in rates of intimate partner violence appear to be occurring among the young adult population (Trewin, 2005). As Catalano (2012: 4) reports with regards to the US:

From 2000 to 2005, rates of intimate partner violence continued to decline for females ages 12 to 17 (down 52%), 18 to 24 (down 40%), and 25 to 34 (down 40%), while rates for females ages 35 to 49 and 50 or older remained stable.

This suggests that the behaviour of men, particularly younger men, is changing. It also makes it critical that we develop an understanding of young men’s behaviours that takes account of the potential for change. This is a central aim of this book.

This book draws primarily upon three datasets produced in the From Boys to Men research project, a three year study funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (RES-062-23-2678). The project involved (1) the administration of a survey of attitudes and experiences to 1,203 children within the context of a quasi-experimental evaluation; (2) 13 focus groups with young people, including some who were involved in violence; and (3) in-depth biographical interviews with 30 young men who had perpetrated domestic violence, or experienced it as victims or witnesses. By situating this data within wider debates about the causes of domestic abuse, we hope to spark a more thorough, ongoing discussion about how to respond productively to young men at risk of becoming domestic abuse perpetrators.

Chapter two begins by outlining what is known about the prevalence of domestic abuse among young people. As we explain, much of the literature on this subject is North American and defines the issue in terms of ‘dating violence’. Dating violence and domestic abuse are not entirely synonymous, but the contrast is nevertheless important, for it exposes how what is prioritised definitionally impinges upon what is measured methodologically in research, producing potentially quite variable results. Thereafter, we also report on the findings of our own survey of 13- and 14-year-old teenagers in English schools. This revealed a surface level of gender symmetry in experiences of victimisation and perpetration among younger teenagers, but also provided some clues as to how and when understandings of violence become more overtly gendered as teenagers grow up.

Chapter three continues this theme, exploring the ways in which young men talk about domestic abuse and revealing the contingent and negotiated nature of their opposition to it. Using survey data, we show that while more boys than girls can identify circumstances when hitting a partner is acceptable, the difference is one of degree and not an absolute. Gender comes into play in quite nuanced ways for young men, most notably around the issue of insecurity within relationships and controlling behaviour. While most young people consider domestic violence to be wrong, we show how many young men will make exceptions for others who exhibit controlling behaviour when trust is lacking in a relationship.

Of course, such qualifications are also symptomatic of a degree of malleability in young men’s attitudes to domestic abuse. As we show in chapter four, it is possible to change attitudes through educational interventions in schools. We begin by providing an overview of the quantitative and qualitative literature on this subject, before reporting on the evaluation of a schools-based programme called Relationships without Fear. This, as we show, was able to reduce the social acceptability of hitting a partner among school children in a way that was sustained three months after the intervention. Qualitative analyses of children’s reactions to the programme, however, revealed tensions between inviting open dialogue and prescribing desirable responses, sometimes to protect the feelings of more vulnerable pupils and sometimes because teachers felt a need to assert their own authority. As we also show, boys are much less likely than girls to say they would seek help if they found themselves in an abusive relationship with a partner.

Chapter five also picks up on this theme through a discussion of the ascendency of social marketing campaigns as a means of preventing domestic abuse. Here we explore the reactions of a group of young male domestic abuse perpetrators to the film deployed in the UK’s first This Is Abuse campaign. We show how the film proved unsettling to young men, but also how being unsettled could generate a ricochet of defensive reactions around which a stoically self-sufficient ‘go it alone’, ‘take care of myself’ type masculinity could be formed. When this happens, as we illustrate using a discussion between young male domestic abuse perpetrators, support for challenging violent men as articulated in government policy is easily translated into a mandate for vigilante violence against men perceived to be threatening to women. Such perpetrators are construed as deserving of retributive violence that teaches them a lesson, either because they pick on those weaker than themselves, or because they are so unscrupulous as to seduce naïve women into cheating on their partners. At the same time, constructions of ‘mad’ women in young men’s accounts of arguments are often invoked to justify occasional uses of violence to manage those who behave in ‘crazy’ ways. Paradoxically, when this happens, campaign material designed to show the harm domestic abuse causes can put abusive men on the defensive, leading them to justify controlling behaviour directed at women prone to making ‘malicious’ allegations.

As we show in chapter six, such constructions of ‘mad’ and untrustworthy women also permeate young men’s accounts of victimisation from female partners. In some instances this is because female partners have behaved in ways young men deem ‘crazy’, unthinkable, or intolerable, labelling which is itself highly gendered. Sometimes, however, it is also because female partners have moved to end relationships young men have wanted to hang on to. In this chapter, we look specifically at three young men’s accounts—two collated in the From Boys to Men project and one interviewed in the course of Steph Alger’s doctorate, Inverting Assumptions. In each account we illustrate how ambiguity in terms of who did what to whom is concealed by a discourse of victimisation that allowed feelings of hurt and betrayal to be articulated while feelings of dependency were denied. As we show, young men’s representations of victimisation by partners are not always easy to disentangle from the gendered nature of thwarted expectations of intimacy, or the particular plays of power these men found themselves caught up in, as blame was shifted in relationships that were breaking down. For this reason, accounts of victimhood tended to be packaged also as accounts of heroism in which young men claim to have suffered in order to protect or rescue partners they considered to be harming themselves.

Taking such insights seriously does not mean dismissing young men’s accounts of domestic victimisation as mere fabrication, but it does mean trying to understand why some choose to invest in victim status when others do not. These are, as we show in chapter seven, also acute issues for young men who have grown up in household...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Scale of the Problem
• 3 Young People’s Attitudes Towards Domestic Abuse
• 4 Preventative Education
• 5 Social Marketing as Domestic Abuse Prevention
• 6 Young Men’s Accounts of Victimisation
• 7 Responses to Witnessing Domestic Abuse
• 8 Young Men’s Accounts of Domestic Abuse Perpetration
• 9 Under-responsiveness to Young Men Involved in Domestic Violence
• 10 Conclusion
• References
• Index