The Violences of Men

How Men Talk About and How Agencies Respond to Men′s Violence to Women

Jeff Hearn

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780803979406, 9780803979390
• eBook ISBN: 9781446238950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Addressing the problem of men?s violence to known women, this book considers the scale of, and critically reviews the theoretical frameworks used to explain this violence.

From the perspective of `critical studies on men?, Jeff Hearn discusses issues, challenges and possible research methods for those researching violence. He draws on extensive research to analyze the various ways in which men describe, deny, justify and excuse their violence, and considers the complex interaction between doing violence and talking about violence. The book concludes with a summary of the key issues for theory, politics, policy and practice.

Part I

SETTING THE SCENE

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1

Introduction

The Problem of ‘Men’

Men, or ‘men’, are now on the political agenda – and about time too! In one sense men have, of course, always been there. Many, most, public political agendas have been men’s, just as many, most, organizations have been full of men’s groups for centuries. On the other hand, the way men are has been questioned before.¹ What is relatively new, however, is the extent to which ‘men’ have become problematic, contested, up for discussion, debate and dispute. In fact it is only with ‘men’ becoming problematic that ‘men’ are explicitly placed on agendas at all.

Thus, what we have here is the common paradox that something becomes a topic for study and critique when that topic is no longer coherent, certain, known, in fact is no longer a topic in itself. And that something in this case is ‘men’. The placing of the topic ‘men’ on political agendas simultaneously solidifies it and contributes to its withering, its falling away. These agendas are not only political but also personal, popular, theoretical and professional.

This focus on ‘men’, this solidifying and falling away of ‘men’, is necessarily different for those who are or who are not part of the topic ‘men’. Thus, for men to focus on ‘men’ is different for women or others to focus on ‘men’. The solidifying and falling away of ‘men’ may be, for women, a useful naming of those in power and a useful contribution to the destruction of their power. For men, the solidifying may be all too appealing as a means to further power. This is illustrated profusely in the theories and practices of male liberationists, members of the male backlash against feminism, as well as those who naively repudiate or reinforce men’s power. The falling away is for men more difficult.

Undermining what men are may be personally disconcerting, confusing, even frightening. It may also be unclear what political implications follow from this: in this scheme there are few certainties on what is the appropriate thing for men to do. It is also likely that the subversion of men may show up further and further cracks in the power of men, may contribute to the destabilizing of men’s structural power. Similarly, this book is uncertain, theoretically. It questions the very ideas of ‘knowledge’ and ‘theory’; in particular, it undermines the dominant connection between men’s knowledge and men’s theory, on the one hand, and ‘knowledge’ and ‘theory’, on the other.

Pro-Feminism

My own perspective on these questions is unreservedly, unapologetically, pro-feminist. This may be an obvious and very familiar position, or it may be new and strange to you. Pro-feminism has developed as an explicit perspective over many years, even many centuries, on the basis that men cannot be feminist(s), if feminism is understood as theory and practice by women for women. On the other hand, it is quite possible for men to relate positively to, to welcome, to learn from, to support and be supportive of feminism. This does not mean that men can just sit back and depend on feminists, nor does it mean that men can become quasi-feminists. It does, however, strongly suggest that if men are to take feminism seriously, as within a pro-feminist perspective, then one of the most urgent tasks, perhaps the most urgent one, is for men to change men, ourselves and other men. It is not our (men’s) task to try to change women; they can do that themselves if they wish.

While pro-feminist work necessarily develops in close association with feminist work, the focus on men and changing men is a task that clearly is, and has to be, open to both women and men. This applies in personal, professional, political and academic forums. Thus, what has come to be called Critical Studies on Men, while informed by pro-feminism, is necessarily open to both women and men.

Critical Studies on Men

The idea of Critical Studies on Men has developed as a more appropriate framework for the recent growth of studies on men than what has been labelled ‘men’s studies’. Men’s studies is a confusing and potentially dangerous way of conceptualizing studies on men. Not only are ‘men’s studies’ ambiguous (studies on men or studies by men?), they are also far from new. Libraries are stacked full of men’s studies – the academic disciplines themselves. Moreover, men’s studies can be a way of excluding women, of creating (more) spaces for men (without women). Men’s studies also carry no clear political perspective; they may be well intentioned, even pro-feminist, but they then can become places for the development of institutionalized relations to feminism or may even be anti-feminist, in design or outcome (see Hearn, 1989).

Within Critical Studies on Men (see Hearn and Morgan, 1990), the emphasis is on the critique of men and men’s power and domination, not just the study of men. Accordingly, issues of sexuality, sexual violence and violence are central within this framework, not just another ‘topic’ within studies of men (see Hanmer, 1990). There are diverse strands within these developments. They include feminist studies that are looking in some detail at particular men, or men in particular situations (for example, Friedman and Sarah, 1982; Cockburn, 1983); gay studies, most obviously, though not exclusively, on gay men (for example, Weeks, 1977; Plummer, 1992); and pro-feminist responses by men to feminism.

Explanations of ‘Men’

One aspect of theorizing on men, whether by women or by men, that is particularly important is the production of explanations of men. Men are an object to be explained, just like any other social phenomenon. There are a number of ways of approaching the task of explanation. First, all the various methodological and theoretical approaches in social science can be applied to the explanation of men, for example, symbolic interactionism, conflict theory. Second, and similarly, all the different approaches and perspectives in feminism(s) implicitly or explicitly suggest different accounts of men. Third, some broad distinctions can be made between psychological and psychoanalytic accounts that focus on the individual man; social psychological accounts which focus on interpersonal relations; cultural, sub-cultural and other socially specific accounts which draw on the specificities of particular kinds of men; structural accounts of the general social category of men; and accounts that are structurally defined in some other way, for example, in structured discourses. Although I realize that discourses about men, as about anything else, can be, indeed perhaps by their very nature are, specific, they are also structured in ways that transcend interpersonal, group or even cultural processes and dynamics.

For much too long men have been considered the taken-for-granted norm against which women have been judged to be different. Yet despite, indeed because of, this dominance, the social construction of men has often not been addressed. Men have been all too visible yet invisible to critical analysis and change. Like other superordinate categories and groups (the rich, white people, physically able, and so on), men have been strangely absent from explicit inquiry – and deconstruction. To put this bluntly, men need to be named as men (Hanmer, 1990; Collinson and Hearn, 1994).

Making sense of men necessitates placing men in a social context. This entails considering men’s power relations to women in that general context. Men’s identity usually includes an acceptance of that basic power relation. To do so is a relatively simple way of affirming a sense of, first, being a boy and then being a man. Thus a common aspect of men’s identity is a taken-for-granted acceptance of that power, just as it is also likely to involve an acceptance of being a boy, then a man. The psychological and social identity called ‘man’ says and shows power relations. It is identical. An important aspect of men’s power and sense of power is the use, potential use or threat of violence. And men’s violence remains a major and pressing problem.

Furthermore, men have unities with each other and differences between each other (Hearn and Collinson, 1993). Unities and diffferences exist both collectively, for groups of men, and individually, for individual men. It is very important to acknowledge the interplay of these unities and differences between men; the paradox of the recognition of men as a gender class and the deconstruction of the monolith of men; and, more generally, the usefulness of developing explanatory accounts that are simultaneously psychological and social, agentic and structural, material and discursive.

The Focus on Men’s Violences

Men’s violences may be to women, girls, boys, children, young people, each other, animals, life, ourselves. The term ‘men’s violences’ is preferred to ‘male violence’ for several reasons. First, it is more precise: it attributes the violence to men. Second, it makes it clear that there is not any assumption of biological inevitability to the violence or a biological cause of the violence. Third, it removes the ambiguity that there might be a special form of violence that is ‘male’ that is only one part of the totality of violence of men. Fourth, it acknowledges the plurality of men’s violences.

In this book, my primary focus is on men’s violence to women, in particular, men’s violence to known women, as wives, girlfriends, partners, ex-partners, mothers, other relatives, friends and neighbours. The extent of men’s violence to women and known women is immense. This is not to say that all men are violent towards women all the time, in all societies, in all contexts or cases. It is, however, to recognize the pervasive presence of those violences by men to women. Indeed it is apparent that: ‘The safest place for men is the home, the home is, by contrast, the least safe place for women’ (Edwards, 1989: 214). Similarly, Dobash and Dobash (1992: 2) comment:

It is now well known that violence in the home is commonplace, that women are its usual victims and men its usual perpetrators. It is also known that the family is filled with many different forms of violence and aggression, including physical, sexual and emotional, and that violence is perpetrated by young and old alike.

In considering men’s violence to known women, I am particularly concerned with violence in ‘intimate’, usually sexual, that is, heterosexual relationships. A recent review suggested that: ‘Estimates based on national and regional surveys . . . show that ten to twenty-five percent of British women have, at some time, during their life, been the victim of violence from a male partner’ (Dobash et al., 1996a: 2).² However, even such figures needed to be treated with caution as they may under-report verbal, psychological and emotional violence and abuse, and rape, coercive sex and pressurized sex. When women point out that women are in most danger from the man they are in the closest relationship with, this means that we can see why it is that men are most dangerous to the women with whom they have the closest relationship. This effectively raises the question of the relationship of men’s violence to women and men’s heterosexuality and heterosexual relations.

Men’s violences are being increasingly recognized for what they are – a severe social problem. Yet the recognition appears to do little to reduce men’s violence to women, or, indeed, other kinds of men’s violence. The problem of men’s violence to known women has now been named, and men have been named as the problem. Men’s violence to known women and the pain, both physical and emotional, of that violence have been made public. The focus upon men’s violence to known women has become more conscious – in personal and political responses, in clarification of the law, in particular the making of such violence illegal, and in the changing of criminal justice and other policies.

Similarly, there is increasing concern with the way in which different forms of men’s violence may be interconnected with each other, yet it is still far from clear to what extent it is analytically and politically useful to consider men’s violences as a unified set of activities, as against a series of relatively discrete activities, with different characteristics, and thus demanding different intervention, policies and actions.

Kaufman (1987) has written of the triad of men’s violence, between men’s violence to women, to each other and to ourselves. This provides a simple but effective framework of thinking about the connections between these forms of violence. This can be done theoretically, politically and, indeed, personally. I have previously attempted to extend this relationship to include a fourth form of violence – men’s violence to young people, including child abuse (Hearn, 1990). This clearly increases the combination and permutation of connections, and thus is difficult to conceptualize. However, it does have the advantage of including the specific dimension of men’s violence and power in relation to age. The connections between men’s violence to women and men’s violence to young people are many, not least because the latter is always also the former, and the former is often the latter. This is especially so in the case of men’s violence to mothers, whether or not in the presence of young people. An important task in studying, changing and abolishing men’s violence is to make connections between different kinds of men’s violences, whilst simultaneously recognizing their specific and special form in different situations.

To adopt this focus is not to play down women’s experience but rather it is to name and focus on the problem – the problem of men as the major doers of violence to women, children, each other, and indeed to ourselves, whether in specific self-destruction and suicide or more generally men’s self-reduction to ‘not fully human’, indeed to violence itself.

This necessitates for men a critical relation to men. For men to do this involves a challenge to the way we are; it involves a critique of ourselves, that is, first, personally; second, in terms of other men we are in contact with in our personal or public lives; and also, third, more generally and socially, towards men as a powerful social category, a powerful social grouping. So to focus on men, the problem of men, in doing this kind of work, whether it is research work or otherwise, is likely to have different implications for women and for men. It raises a variety of problems of how men are, how men behave, how men should behave, why men have power in society, whether that power is structured, personal or both, what different kinds of men are there, and how these current arrangements can be changed.

To put this rather bluntly, to focus on men and men’s violence to women unsettles, makes problematic, the way men are, not just in the doing of particular actions of violence but also more generally. It raises question marks against men’s behaviour in general. For example, how is it possible that men can be violent to women, perhaps over many years, and this can be part of a socially accepted way of being a man? How does violence relate to the social construction of different forms of masculinity in school, in sport, in work, in the media? What is the link between violence and dominant forms of masculinities? What is the connection between men and violence? What has violence got to do with men? How do we understand men and violence, men’s violence? In raising these kinds of questions, two major themes need to be stressed: power and control; and the taking apart of what is usually taken-for-granted.

My Relation to Men’s Violence

Like most issues in sexual politics and gender politics, ‘the personal is political’. What I mean by this is several things: men’s violence to women is certainly both a personal and a political problem; doing work on this problem may raise personal issues about one’s own behaviour as a man both in private and in public; and in changing the situation, it is not just enough to rely on ‘governed’ policies. The actual occurrence of violence occurs personally and interpersonally. To stop violence necessitates both general policy change and changing individual men.

Violence is for me, thus, necessarily a personal and political issue. This is also so for most men, even when it is not recognized as such. My personal relation to violence is not a matter of direct physical violence, for that is not how I live. It is because of the physical intimidation of my presence as a man, my ability to be emotionally and verbally violent, as well as my potential physical violence. Furthermore, I, like other men, am defined at least partly in relation to violence. In other words, violence is a reference point for the production of boys and men. For these reasons, opposing violence is a key political priority for...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I SETTING THE SCENE
• PART II TALKING VIOLENCE
• PART III RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE?
• PART IV REVIEWING THE PROBLEM
• Appendix: Summary of Men in Interview Sample
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index