Abusive attitudes: How society normalises men's violence towards women

Fox Smoulder

In Australia domestic violence has been consider a criminal act for close to three decades [1]. However, violence from an intimate partner continues to be a leading cause of preventable health issues for Australian women [2]. Some time ago I did some research trying find out if the reasons for this were those which I had long felt – the pervasiveness is at least in part due to the violence supportive attitudes held by our society as a whole. I looked at it through the frames of subterranean values and techniques of neutralisation [3]. Through exploring the apparent contradictions between criminalisation and widespread prevalence of violence, I find that gendered violence is not a consequence of individual men failing to conform to societal norms, but instead a consequence of underlying support for violence within dominant values of Australian society.

Matza and Sykes define subterranean values as values that “are in conflict or competition with other deeply held views but are recognised and accepted by many” [4]. Sykes and Matza argued that individuals who participated in delinquent behaviour used a range of self rationalisations, which they called techniques of neutralisation, deployed either before (in order to enable action) or after the act[5]. The techniques are:

• Denial of responsibility – the extent to which they could control their behaviour;
• Denial of injury – the extent to which the action causes “real” harm;
• Denial of the victim – arguments that action was right in the circumstances;
• Condemnation of the condemners – attack those who raise concerns over the deviant behaviour to shift focus onto the behaviour and motives of those who disapprove;
• Appeal to higher loyalty – rules of society take a back seat to the demands and loyalty to important others [6].

While there have long been brutal wife beatings in Australia previous to the feminist movements of the 1970's, matrimonial cruelty and wife killings were, to a certain degree, tolerated [7]. The women’s movement responded to domestic violence in assisting women to leave [8], setting up refuges and fighting the view that violence was an indicator of the woman's failure to perform as a wife [9]. The 1975–1977 Royal Commission into Human Relationships found domestic violence was commonplace in Australian homes and that the assaults on women often caused severe damage [10]. During the 1980s, under pressure from feminists, state governments enacted legislation that specifically criminalised domestic violence [11]. In addition, both government and non-government agencies have run a range of campaigns aimed at reducing domestic violence.

While domestic violence is prevalent in Australian society, surveys of the Australian public indicate that the vast majority of people express opposition to violence against women, and that this has increased over time. The 2009 National survey on community attitudes to violence against women (NSCAVAW) found that 98 percent of those surveyed believe that domestic violence is a crime, which had increased from the 93% of respondents who had participated in the 1995 survey [12].

Despite these changes, domestic violence continues to be a serious issue, with 40% of women experiencing violence from an intimate partner across their lifetime, and if anything it is becoming more prevalent in Australia [13]. In New South Wales (NSW) between 1997 and 2004, there was a sharp increase in the number of domestic violence incidents recorded by police: a 39.5% increase the number of reported incidents in Sydney and a 50.7% increase for the rest of NSW. These increases do not appear to be the result of an increased rate of reporting [14]. Summers and the women she interviewed, drew the conclusion that the growth in male violence within Australia is a means to maintain control of women in the context of the growth in economic independence and opportunities that women now have in Australian society [15].

Connell argues that modern societies such as Australia are characterised by a range of masculine gender identities and gender roles [16]. However while there are a variety of forms that masculinity can take, there are dominant forms of masculinity referred to as hegemonic masculinity. Connell’s use of the concept hegemony is drawn from the work of Gramsci, who argued that in class societies, ruling classes maintain their dominance through both coercive force and the “spontaneous” consent given by the mass of society to the direction given to social life by the dominant group [17]. This consent, referred to as hegemony, is given both by the prestige held by the dominant groups, developed as a consequence of being in a leading position, and through the ideas that normalise and legitimise their dominance [18]. Thus when hegemony is challenged, coercive violence will tend to be used on a greater scale until hegemony is re-established [19]. Connell argues that hegemonic masculinity enforces the dominance of a particular vision of masculinity over other existent masculinities within a society, but importantly “embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy which guarantees the dominant position of men and subordination of women” [20]. When this dominance is challenged, then individuals benefiting from it will resort to violence to enforce and maintain their dominance.

This link between male violence towards women and the maintenance of male dominance is reflected in the results on the NSCAVAW which found large numbers of respondents, despite viewing violence against women as criminal, holding beliefs that excuse and or justify violence against women [21]. The main predictors of holding such views were being male and having low levels of support for either gender equity or equality. In addition to this finding, throughout the NSCAVAW there are a number of responses that follow closely the techniques of neutralisation.

Almost a fifth of respondents (18%) agreed that domestic violence can be excused in situations where a “person gets so angry they lose control” (denial of responsibility) as well as men being less likely to see all forms of violence towards women as serious forms (denial of injury) [22]. The survey included a number of questions around victim blaming attitudes (denial of victim). These included 13% of respondents believing that a woman often says ‘no when she means yes’; 5% believed that ‘women who are raped often ask for it’ and 12% of respondents with low support for gender equality, did not believe a woman could be raped by a person they are in a sexual relationship with. The survey demonstrated widespread disbelieving attitudes towards women making allegations, with 49% of respondents agreeing with the statement that “Women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case” (56% of men agreed with this statement). In addition 26% of respondents disagreed with the statement “Women rarely make false claims of being raped” (condemnation of the condemners). There were no survey questions which reflected appeals to higher loyalty, however, there was evidence that participation in highly masculine contexts such as sporting sub-cultures, all-male university accommodation colleges and the military are predictors of violence supporting attitudes [23].

It is clear that there are a range of attitudes that are widespread within Australia that help to maintain the pervasiveness of violence against women [24]. At the same time these attitudes coexist with norms opposing violence in general and towards women specifically. Frames of neutralisation and subterranean values allow an understanding of how individuals are able to simultaneously hold attitudes that both oppose violence and justify and normalise that violence. This is because the violence-supporting attitudes emerge out of other, deeply held, socially acceptable norms. This would suggest that efforts to further to reduce both the support for and prevalence of violence supporting attitudes need to challenge not just these attitudes, but the norms from which violence emerges from, in this case the idea that men should be dominant over and have access to women [25].

Endnotes

1.   Ludo McFerran, Taking Back the Castle: How Australia is Making the
      Home Safer for Women and Children. (Kensington, NSW: Australian
      Domestic Violence Clearing House, 2007).
2.   Bob Pease and Susan Rees, ‘Theorising men’s violence towards
      women in refugee families: towards an intersectional feminist
      framework’, Just Policy, 47 (2008), 39.
3.   Jayne Mooney, ‘Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence’,
      Critical Criminology, 15 (2007).
      David Matza and Gresham M. Sykes, ‘Juvenile delinquency and
      subterranean values’, American Sociological Review, 26 (1961).
      Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza, ‘Techniques of neutralization: a
      theory of delinquency’, American Sociological Review, 22 (1957).
4.   Pauline Savy, ‘Culture’ in Brian Furze et al (eds.), Sociology in
      Today’s World, (2nd edn., South Melbourne: Cengage Learning
      Australia), 53.
5.   Matza and Sykes, ‘Juvenile delinquency and subterranean values’,
      716.
6.   Sykes and Matza, ‘Techniques of neutralization: a theory of
      delinquency’, 667-669.
7.   Colin James, ‘Media, men and violence in Australian divorce’,
     Newcastle Law Review, 10 (2008), 56.
      Christine Coumarelos and Jacqui Allen, ‘Predicting violence against
     women: the 1996 women’s safety survey’, Crime and Justice Bulletin,
      42 (1998), 1.
8.   Suellen Murray, ‘‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’: belonging, disruption
      and domestic violence’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 31
      (2008), 65.
9.   Murray, 67.
10. James, ‘Media, men and violence in Australian divorce’, 59.
11. McFerran, Taking Back the Castle: How Australia is Making the Home 
      Safer for Women and Children, 2.
12. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence 
      Against Women: Changing Cultures, ChangingAttitudes – Preventing
      Violence Against Women, (Melbourne: Victorian Health Promotion
      Foundation (VicHealth), 2010), 7.
13. Kylie Weston-Schueber, ‘Looking out for ‘our women’: cultural
      background and gendered violence in Australia’, James Cook
      University Law Review, 14 (2007), 139.
      Anne Summers, The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s 
      Choices in 21st Century Australia, (Milson Point, NSW: Random
      House, 2003), 78.
14. Julie People, 2005, ‘Trends and patterns in domestic violence
      assaults’, Crime and Justice Bulletin, 89 (2005), 3.
15. Summers, The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s Choices
      in 21st Century Australia, 78-79.
16. R.W. Connell, Masculinities, (2nd edn., Crows Nest, NSW, Allen &
      Unwin, 2005), 77.
17. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, tr. Quentin
      Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971),
      12.
18. Gramsci, 12-13.
19. Gramsci, 210-211.
20. Connell, Masculinities, 77.
21. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence
      Against Women: Changing Cultures, Changing Attitudes – Preventing
      Violence Against Women, 8-9.
22. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, 8.
23. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth, 17.
24. Australian Institute of Criminology, The Social Research Centre, and
      VicHealth,
25. Connell, Masculinities.
      Mooney, ‘Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence’.


Bibliography
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     VicHealth, National Survey on Community Attitudes to Violence
      Against Women: Changing Cultures, Changing Attitudes Preventing
      Violence Against Women, (Melbourne: Victorian Health Promotion
      Foundation (VicHealth), 2010).
Coumarelos, Christine and Allen, Jacqui, ‘Predicting violence against
     women: the 1996 women’s safety survey’, Crime and Justice Bulletin,
     42 (1998), 1-23.
Connell, R.W., Masculinities, (2nd edn., Crows Nest, NSW, Allen &
     Unwin, 2005).
Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, tr. Quentin
      Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971).
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     Law Review, 10 (2008), 49-68.
McFerran, Ludo, Taking Back the Castle: How Australia is Making the 
     Home Safer for Women and Children. (Kensington, NSW: Australian
     Domestic Violence Clearing House, 2007).
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Mooney, Jayne, ‘Shadow values, shadow figures: real violence’, Critical 
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Murray, Suellen, ‘‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’: belonging, disruption and
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     Crime and Justice Bulletin, 89 (2005), 1-16.
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      Random House, 2003).
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