Equality with a Vengeance: Men's Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash

4. Batterer Narratives

61 4 Batterer Narratives When examined outside their historical and political contexts, competing discourses on violence and abuse might appear to be equally valid. Reasonable people can disagree about how to measure and understand violence and abuse and what terms to use when writing about them. However, the choice to highlight or obscure particular dynamics of violence and the context in which it occurs has implications for knowledge, safety, and social justice. The research on men who abuse women has frequently found that men use violence to produce and defend patriarchal masculinities (Bowker 1998; DeKeseredy and Schwartz 1998; Messerschmidt 1993, 1999, 2000, 2004; Moore and Stuart 2005; Smith 1990, 1991; Totten 2003). Hegemonic masculinity is not only a factor in men’s violence against women; it is also an important feature of men’s violence against other men (Gilligan 1997, 2001; Messerschmidt 1993, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004). The scholarship on masculinities has stressed that the social norms for masculinity include multiple masculinities that are relevant in different social and historical contexts (Connell 2000, 2002; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Because the greatest risk to men of violent victimization, including physical and sexual assault, comes from other men, addressing the links between masculinity and violence is an essential part of decreasing men’s use of and risk from violence across the board.The rich empirical research on men’s accounts of their violence is an underutilized resource for understanding violence as a social problem. While some factors contributing to violence—such as poverty, mental illness, or addiction—may be similar for women and men, these factors cannot explain men’s disproportionate use of violence relative to women. Because research indicates that patriarchal gender norms play a role in the etiology of men’s violence against women and men, gender is an important factor that can 62 | Equality with a Vengeance help explain why men are more likely to use violence than women, and why some groups of men are more likely to use violence than others. Much as Diana Scully and Joseph Marolla (1985) documented the function of rape for convicted rapists, this chapter investigates the function of violence for male batterers. The accounts of men who batter women comprise one of the most salient sources for understanding Booth v. Hvass. Batterer accounts are also relevant to other attacks on genderinclusive responses to violence that seek to eliminate services targeting battered women. The research on factors contributing to men’s violence against women may not be relevant to women’s violence against men due to the significant quantitative and qualitative differences in women’s and men’s use of violence. Research comparing why and how women and men use force in relationships has consistently found sex-disparate patterns and has indicated divergent etiologies for women’s and men’s violence (Anderson and Umberson 2001; Dasgupta 2002; Edleson and Brygger 1986; Hamberger and Guse 2002; Osthoff 2002). Although there are now literally thousands of books and articles on violence against intimates, only a small body of work focuses directly on male batterers’ perspectives on their violence. One reason for the relative dearth of studies on male batterers is the difficulty of gaining access to men who are willing to participate in research. Still, an accessible pool of potential respondents has been identified among incarcerated batterers , batterers participating in programs, and survey participants who report using violence. Though it makes sense to pay attention to what batterers say about why they use violence and what they get out of it in order to understand it better, batterers’ accounts of what happened should not necessarily be taken at face value. What batterers say about violence can help us understand why they use violence as well as how they justify and continue that violence in the face of nominal cultural disapproval.Attention to batterer narratives reveals points of overlap between what is ostensibly deviant behavior and the hegemonic norms sustaining it. James Ptacek observed in his study of batterers that “not only do they present their violence in a light that illuminates its intentionality and cruelty, but their words also reveal the blind spots in the dominant clinical perspectives”(Ptacek 1990, 133). Identifying these points makes it possible to recognize them in other locations and to begin to address their implications. The frames batterers use to talk about violence are remarkably similar to those underlying Booth v. Hvass. The tactics of denial, minimization, [3.145.191.169] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 10...