Male Violence Research Articles

Marriage, Gender and Demographic Change: Managing Fertility in State-Socialist Poland

This paper explores fertility management practices in state-socialist Poland and investigates post-war demographic change through the lenses of gender and modernization. Using personal narratives from oral histories and memoirs, we examine reproductive decision-making processes from the 1940s to the 1980s, focusing on motivations, norms, and the means employed to achieve desired family size. Our analysis reveals the ambiguous nature of both modernization and women's emancipation in regard to reproduction. We argue that acceptance of the two-child model and the need to effectively manage fertility increased in Poland through the second half of the twentieth century, but was highly dependent on levels of spousal communication and equality. Personal narratives demonstrate how social pressure shaped women's reproductive choices, and how at times these choices were considerably limited by male violence and domination. As our analysis shows, gender relations in marriage and the modernization of fertility management in state-socialist Poland were deeply interrelated.

Facétieuse Nomerfide

Abstract: This article proposes an in-depth analysis of the character of Nomerfide, one of the devisants in L’Heptaméron , by examining her from the perspective of facetiousness. She is shown at the heart of the narrative device of conversion of tears into laughter, specific to this book, which gives this character a very special place even though she is the youngest and the most playful of the devisants . Nomerfide is analyzed first of all as a storyteller whose stories are distinguished by their brevity and their playful dimension, which must be interpreted in the light of the awareness of the ephemeral character of all things. Endowed with great talents as a storyteller, Nomerfide deploys a vast palette of narrative strategies and comic effects because she wants to fight melancholy and make the good company gathered in Sarrance laugh. On the other hand, Nomerfide does not hesitate to quarrel with the male devisants or to make her voice heard on male violence and on hypocrisy in relationships between men and women. She also openly endorses female desire and pleasure and defends marriages based on love matches. The article shows that Nomerfide, although facetious because she embodies spontaneity, sincerity and naturalness, is also capable of profound words, including religious ones, thus embodying the liberating power of speech.

Ksenija Atanasijević o etičkoj osnovi feminizma

This paper explores Ksenija Atanasijević's understanding of the ethical basis of feminism. It highlights her understanding that feminism as such has an ethical basis. Her criticism of the degrading position of women which, according to her, has its origins in a family based on the male violence against women is also pointed out. The paper also points to Ksenija Atanasijević's understanding of the universal goals of feminism, goals that are not directed only at women. The author points out that despite the explicit distancing of Ksenija Atanasijević in relation to Marxism, especially the Marxist conception of class hatred, some of her positions are similar to the positions which Karl Marx presented criticizing Hegel. The author notes that at the time when she wrote her works, these views of Marx could not have been known to her. In conclusion, the author points out that for Ksenija Atanasijević the freedom of the individual forms the ethical basis of feminism.

Water Disappearing into Water: Healing Male Victims of Sexual Violence

This research paper presents key aspects of the experiences of Chinese male people who identify as sexual assault victims. The paper will also focus on the impacts of their experiences on their livelihoods. Using aspects of law, sex education, and psychological counseling as a lens, the report refers to domestic and foreign sexual assault reports and related policies and documents to explore the potential reasons for an observed lack of support for male victims of sexual assault. It then interprets and synthesizes the results and provides potential solutions. For a period of twenty years, data were collected from multiple sources, including books, journals, and online media. It is worth noting that cases of rape and defilement among men are less likely to be reported than cases involving women. Despite this, male victims of sexual assault are not uncommon, but society, for various reasons, evades the issue. The fact that male sexual violence is not adequately acknowledged and addressed by Chinese society not only affects those who identify as having lived experiences of sexual violence but also leads to larger social problems, such as alienation of oneself from society and dysfunctional social structures. It is, therefore, imperative to find solutions that address the needs of these men. This article proposes action in three areas: to adjust the legal scope of rape and the identification of individuals who need help; to improve the quality of sexual education with regards to its content, deliverance, and accessibility; and to strengthen and regulate professional counseling services, and providing access to competent psychological services through the Chinese health insurance system.

Сюжет «женщина среди мужчин» у М. Горького и Е. Замятина: «Двадцать шесть и одна» и «Одиннадцать и одна»

The article compares M. Gorky’s short story “Twenty-six and One” (1899) and the screenplay (synopsis) by Ye. Zamyatin “Eleven and One” (c. 1929) in the aspect of plot and system of motifs. The plot “a woman among men” (borrowed by Zamyatin from Gorky), while demonstrating an invariant core, undergoes a number of modifications. The reason lies not so much in the temporal distance between the story and the screenplay as in the genre conventions of cinematic melodrama (idealization of the heroine and her status as an “object,” fatalistic overtones, twist ending, etc.). While Gorky’s female character in a situation of male violence shows agency and defends her rights and dignity against the “twenty-six,” in Zamyatin the outcome for the female character is completely determined by men (despite the fact that she is an educated person and a “comrade” of the “eleven” in all matters, and not a socially deprived maid of dubious behavior, as in Gorky). At the same time, the two works contain a number of similar motifs, primarily a male attitude towards a woman, which, on the one hand, consists in her “deification,” and on the other, in possessiveness, deprivation of subjectivity.

Pontianak Trouble: Gender and Postcolonial Identities in the Malay Vampire Film

Pontianak Trouble:Gender and Postcolonial Identities in the Malay Vampire Film Rosalind Galt (bio) The pontianak is one of the most popular supernatural creatures in Malay cinema: a female vampire who has died as a result of male violence or childbirth and who returns to haunt patriarchy. She first came to cinematic prominence in the late colonial studio cinema of Singapore. This article argues that the pontianak is a complexly expressive figure: a female vampire or ghost who troubles both normativities of gender and presiding narratives of postcolonial and global identity in Malaysia and Singapore. The pontianak is one of the most popular supernatural creatures in Malay cultures and is featured in a number of films, but she does not easily travel the world in the manner of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean ghosts. Instead, there's something stickily local about her, and in getting at the specifics of the pontianak, I want to think about how the popular mediates globality in this particular cultural context. Malaysia and Singapore as nations have been distinctively constituted in relation to the global flows of colonialism and capitalism, with highly racialized social structures, and folkloric horror films stage at once a desire for the local and the transnational circuits of its undoing. In the pontianak film, gender becomes the central term with which to negotiate what kinds of identity and social power are possible, and I argue that the pontianak disrupts both traditional and global forms of being. To begin, then, what is a pontianak? In Malay folklore, she is one of many hantu, or ghosts, and is a childbirth spirit. Walter Skeat, the British colonial civil servant who wrote the first major Anglophone account of Malay folklore, writes of [End Page 40] the spirits which are believed to attack both women and children at childbirth. . . . the Langsuir, which takes the form of an owl with long claws, which sits and hoots upon the roof-tree, the pontianak which is also a night-owl and is supposed to be the child of the langsuir. (325) Colonial anthropologists were not always entirely accurate, and the pontianak is more usually viewed as the spirit of a woman who dies in childbirth, rather than the child. Moreover, in transition from folk mythology to cinema, the pontianak has been revised: although she is sometimes still represented as an owl and can often be found in trees, she is more often represented as a beautiful woman with flowing black hair. Andrew Hock Soon Ng complains that characteristics such as fangs and rising from the grave are drawn from Western vampire stories (2009, 217), and we might equally link her to other international figures of female vampirism and undead vengeance, such as the Thai Mae Nak and the Indian churel. The pathways of these generic influences are complex, but as a distinctly Malay figure, the pontianak has become a mainstay of Malaysian popular cinema. We first see the pontianak in a series of hugely popular films in late colonial Singapore. Cathay Keris studio made five pontianak films: Pontianak (B. N. Rao, 1957), Dendam Pontianak/Pontianak's Revenge (B. N. Rao, 1957), Sumpah Pontianak/Curse of the Pontianak (B. N. Rao, 1958), Pontianak Kembali/Pontianak Returns (Ramon Estella, 1963), and Pontianak Gua Musang (B. N. Rao, 1964). In an effort to copy the success of the series, rival studio Shaw Brothers made their own series, with Anak Pontianak/Son of Pontianak (Ramon A. Estella, 1958), Gergasi (Dhiresh Ghosh, 1958), and Pusaka Pontianak/Pontianak Legacy (1965). After the studio system crashes in the wake of Malaysian and Singaporean independence, there were almost no pontianak films for decades. In 1975, an Australian filmmaker, Roger Sutton, made a low-budget film titled simply Pontianak in Singapore. Twenty-five years later, Djinn's Voodoo Nightmare: Return to Pontianak (2001) attempted a modern revision of the genre, more influenced by The Blair Witch Project (Sánchez and Myrick, 1998) than by Malay hantu films. The pontianak really returns in Malaysia after 2002, when the government relaxed censorship rules that had banned horror films and supernatural themes, and the second horror film to be made was Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam/Fragrant Night Vampire (Shuhaimi Baba, 2004). Since...

Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man Discussing Narratives of Domestic Abuse and Gaslighting through the Cassandra Myth

Renowned for its hard-hitting exploration of gaslighting and domestic abuse, Leigh Whannell’s 2020 film The Invisible Man has inevitably been linked to the #MeToo movement. Despite the film’s contemporary premise, however, its narrative of male violence and female silencing is fundamentally rooted within classical literature and can be seen as an appropriation of the Cassandra myth. This article will be reviewing the continued relevance of the Cassandra myth today and the impact of her appearance within the horror movie genre. It will identify how Cassandra’s narrative as a truth-speaker, who is met with disbelief, has been appropriated for both thematic and critical effect. It will also consider the gendered implication of truth-speakers in horror and the impact of representing a female Cassandra onscreen to critique gendered issues, such as female silencing, domestic abuse, and gaslighting. By applying the classical figure of Cassandra to Whannell’s The Invisible Man, this article will continue by highlighting the patriarchal mechanisms which have historically dictated the reliability of female truth-speaker, thus connecting modern truth-speakers to their ancient counterparts.

‘Troubling men who teach young children’: masculinity and the paedophilic threat

ABSTRACT Gendered norms construct teaching young children in Early Childhood Education (ECE) as a ‘feminine profession’ and as ‘women’s work’. Subsequently, men whoteach young children are often scrutinised. One troubling factor confronting men entering the profession is the construction of men as potential paedophiles. Scholars in the Global North have shown how a conflation of homosexuality with paedophilia positions gay men as actual and potential paedophilic perpetrators. We present a view from the Global South which demonstrates how South African male ECE preservice teachers favour gay men as teachers of young children . Gay men were depicted as feminine and more appropriate for teaching ECE than heterosexual men. Additionally, gay men were constructed as men who did not pose a paedophilic threat in ECE. Conversely, heterosexual male power and violence were used to distance heterosexual men from ECE. These findings demonstrate the fluidity of masculinity and the paedophilic threat in ECE.

“I’m telling you to stop’: Staging the drama of rape, experiment and sexual consent in Ann Quin’s Three and Muriel Spark’s

This article considers experimental literary strategies alongside depictions of male sexual violence in work by two British women writers: The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark (1970) and Three by Ann Quin (1966). It reframes these novels’ particular interest in staging the drama of rape as literary experiment alongside the feminist struggle to articulate and theorise women’s restricted agency in the context of sexuality. I consider how violent avant-garde aesthetic convention is negotiated through emerging feminist anxieties and meditations on sexual violence and gender in these texts. I will suggest that sexual consent emerges as a paradoxically useful site through which women’s contingent and often precarious status as free and equal subjects is revealed. By staging narrative, temporal and affective experiment into the legal and cultural judgments that establish sexual consent, Spark and Quin deploy a modified aesthetics of shock and transgression, which helps to disclose the discursive limitations of both female agency and victimhood.

Sexual Violence Victimization of U.S. Males: Negative Health Conditions Associated with Rape and Being Made to Penetrate.

Sexual violence is a significant public health problem with long-term health implications. Previous investigations of male victimization have often relied on nongeneralizable samples to examine the health consequences of rape. Furthermore, made to penetrate (MTP) victimization has received very little attention as a specific form of sexual violence. Using data from the 2010 to 2012 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, we examined negative impacts (e.g., injury) and health conditions associated with experiences of rape and MTP among male victims in the United States. Results indicate that approximately 1 in 4 victims of rape-only and 1 in 12 victims of MTP-only reported physical injuries. An estimated 62.7% of rape-only victims and 59.8% of MTP-only victims reported at least one impact due to the perpetrator's violence. Rape victims were significantly more likely than non-rape victims to report 2 of 11 health conditions measured, while MTP victims had greater odds of reporting 6 of 11 health conditions measured compared to non-MTP victims. This article fills gaps in understanding the impacts of rape and MTP on male victims, and it is the only study to do so using a large, nationally representative sample. Sexual violence is linked to serious health effects but is also preventable. Screening for violence victimization and preventing male sexual violence before it happens are both important to reduce the risk for immediate and chronic health impacts.

Violent Women: Changes in Magisterial Attitudes to Female Acts of Assault in Cheltenham and Exeter (England), 1880-1909

Recent scholarship has indicated that judges and magistrates became increasingly stringent in their treatment of male violence during the Victorian and Edwardian period. Yet it has been argued that female acts of violence were regarded as trivial and thus more readily overlooked. This article presents an alternative perspective on the judicial treatment of violent women by examining female assault prosecutions held at Exeter and Cheltenham magistrates’ courts in the years 1880-1910. By analysing patterns in the verdicts and sentences issued to defendants, it argues that magistrates adopted harsher policies towards violent women as the period progressed. The study further examines a number of circumstantial, demographic and procedural factors which may have impacted shifts in magisterial decision-making processes.

Alexithymia and Insecure Attachment among Male Intimate Partner Violence Aggressors in the Dominican Republic.

The complexity of intimate partner violence and the impossibility of understanding it from single factors have been studied from different biological, psychological, and socio-cultural factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 187 men involved in legal proceedings for problems of violence in their intimate partner relationships in the Dominican Republic in order to explore whether insecure attachment represents a risk factor for alexithymia in men with violent behaviors. The attachment style was determinate by the Casullo and Fernández-Liporace Attachment Styles Scale, and alexithymia was assayed using the Latin American Consensual Toronto Alexithymia Scale (LAC TAS-20), a modification of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Chi-square test and multiple binary logistic regression analysis were performed to explore the phenomena of alexithymia and attachment styles in the context of a confinement center for male intimate partner offenders in the Dominican Republic. The results showed that insecure attachment represents a risk factor for alexithymia, being highest for avoidant attachment in the population studied. The results also highlight the influence of other factors such as education and maternal–familial relationships as a factor risk for alexithymia.

No Man’s Land or Neutral Ground: Perceived Gendered Differences in Ideologies of War

This article approaches gender in the Viking Age as a fluid social category, to be understood through an intersectional lens alongside other cultural variables. Using material from the Vestfold region, the article argues that the perceived genders encountered in mortuary remains from the area display a significant amount of social similarities. It therefore proposes to explore the expression of social roles across, rather than within gendered lines. The approach challenges the traditional tendency of dividing gendered archaeological remains based on a few, select categories singled out from the grave goods. It suggests that a more open approach would avoid overlooking real and tangible levels of shared expressions between graves assigned different gender in many mortuary contexts. The article challenges the idea of a Viking Age instigated by male violence and the interlinked belief that women are naturally less inclined to violence and more disposed to be nurturing and caring. These concepts are examined as modern constructs and as such they are not applicable to the past without scrutiny. I argue that the idea of a Viking Age warriorideology, which leaves no room for women, is culturally ingrained and needs to be questioned in light of both archaeological material and written sources. By critically examining the ideas mentioned above, wider discussions can be created, where gender does not necessarily play a limiting role in the enactment of certain social ideologies. Hence, this article does not seek to detail the specifics of female involvement in war, but rather to explore the cultural contexts that have influenced perceptions of such participation.

(Mis)Understanding Same-Sex Sexual Violence Amongst Boys: A Perspective on Recent Rape Incidents in South Africa

Incidents of male–male sexual violence amongst young boys in South Africa have been brought into sharp focus by the media and, to a lesser extent, research, yet there continues to be very little research into this phenomenon in South Africa. In this perspective, evidence is presented of how the dearth of research has led to a limited appreciation of the associated risk factors and the socioeconomic circumstances under which male–male sexual violence amongst young boys occurs. It is possible to theorise that this neglect results from a gendered discourse which frames males and females as perpetrators and victims respectively, and disregards males as victims. Moreover, drawing on critical men and masculinities scholarship, the contention is made that this neglect also results from limited recognition that boys are gendered, that there are a multiplicity and hierarchy of masculinities amongst boys, with dominant masculinities sometimes employing physical and sexual violence to suppress and control subordinate and alternative masculinities. More research is urgently needed on boy–boy sexual violence in resource-poor communities in South Africa. Such work should be grounded in the critical men and masculinities framework. The findings from such research could inform the development of context-specific gender-transformative interventions for young adolescent boys, to prevent their construction of violent masculinities and the use of violence.

‘All across Europe it had come’: The Black Death and Fascism in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s wartime novel The Corner that Held Them (1948), about a nunnery during the Black Death, reflects on female community and bonding in a period of male fascist violence. The novel explores the shift from pacifism to acceptance of the need for anti-fascist war which characterised Warner’s intellectual beliefs from the 1930s into wartime, probing the arts of peace in compositional practice. Such a dialectic of war and peace is considered in relation to what Maud Ellmann has described as the outward turn to collective choral consciousness in mid-century modernism. This article explores both the staging of fascism as plague and the feminist daring and limits that Warner saw as operative in female witnessing and withstanding of Nazi ideology and menace. It closely reads key scenes from the panorama of a novel (notably Alianor’s stillness as her husband is killed, Alicia’s plans to withstand the economic impact of the Black Death and the cure of Ralph’s plague symptoms) to register the satirical and allegorical substance of Warner’s rescripting of Woolfian notions of resistance to warmongering misogyny by a society of outsiders. The readings seek to consolidate a varied and multiple sense of the book as a Marxist historical novel that gives voice to the ruled. In doing so Warner analyses the Black Death as a moment in history that saw the emergence of early modern capitalism and labour relations out of the feudal system, even as the religious framework that had structured medieval Europe gave way to more secular beliefs in autonomy, self-determination, citizen and collective dreams, projects and affects. At the same time the plague as a political trope, rooted in anti-fascist rhetoric that turns Nazi anti-Semitic uses of the Black Death motif on their head, triggers readings that bring those historical scenes into allegorical relation with the ways in which the Second World War was experienced by marginalised female communities.

AN EXAMINATION OF MEN'S IMPLICIT ASSOCIATIONS TOWARDS GENDER AND VIOLENCE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS AND BELIEF IN A JUST WORLD

Violence is being researched increasingly. However, these studies mostly focus on explicit attitudes. Studies focusing on the implicit cognitive structure point to three implicit attitudes: Implicit attitudes towards gender, implicit attitudes towards violence, and implicit associations between gender and violence. In the present study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between these implicit attitudes of men and their demographic characteristics including age, education, employment status, income and socio-economic status, and Belief in a Just World (BJW). To measure implicit attitudes, three Implicit Association Tests (IATs) were translated into Turkish. Two hundred two men, aged between 18 and 55 years (M. = 27.96, SD = 9.68), participated in the study. The findings revealed that implicit attitudes towards gender and violence were associated with age, but not with other demographics. While implicit associations between gender and violence did not differ in terms of demographics, they were found to be related to implicit attitudes towards gender and General BJW. The results were evaluated in the context of normalizing violence against women in society. It is thought that the IATs used can contribute to the intervention programs in Turkey, and the findings obtained with this demographically diverse sample can contribute to the relevant literature. Keywords Belief in a just world, male violence, Implicit Association Test, implicit attitudes

The gendered character of welfare: reconsidering vulnerability and violence in South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper considers the ANC government’s approach to welfare and, in particular, its de factorejection of a Universal Basic Income Grant. In the first part of this essay weargue that the current welfare model in SA is underpinned by a naive conceptionof the South African economy as potentially fast-growing and labour absorbingacross all skills types. In the second part of this essay, we consider thegendered character of welfare and of unemployment arguing that under currentconditions young men are effectively excluded from social protection. Wepropose that this situation interrupts the transition to male adulthood andfuels violence against women and children. We conclude by proposing that aUniversal Basic Income Grant is necessary under conditions of mass, structuralunemployment and widespread 'waithood'.

Correlates of transitions from alcohol use to disorder diagnosed by DSM-5 in China

BackgroundThis study aimed to describe the prevalence and lifetime criteria profiles of DSM-5 alcohol use disorder (AUD) and the transitions from alcohol use to disorder in Chifeng, China.MethodsFace-to-face interviews were conducted using Composite International Diagnostic Interview-3.0 (CIDI-3.0) among 4528 respondents in Chifeng.ResultsThe weighted lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-5 AUD were 3.03 and 1.05%, respectively. Mild lifetime AUD was the most prevalent severity level (69.53%). The two most common criteria were “failure to quit/cutdown” and “drinking more or for longer than intended.” Lifetime prevalence was 65.59% for alcohol use, and 22.97% for regular drinking. Male and domestic violence were risk factors for the transition from alcohol use to regular drinking or AUD and from regular drinking to AUD. Younger age was risk factor for the transition to AUD from alcohol use or regular drinking. Poverty (OR = 2.49) was risk factor for the transition from alcohol use to regular drinking. The earlier drinkers were more likely to develop to regular drinking (OR = 2.11).ConclusionAUD prevalence in Chifeng was not as high as that in Western countries. The study revealed that multiple risk factors might contribute to the transition across different stages of alcohol use. Further research should explore the underlying mechanisms.

Social stressors, personality and coping behaviors associated with male inmate violence

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to expand available knowledge on predictors of male inmate violence by examining a large set of variables offered by the importation, deprivation and threat appraisal and coping theories.Design/methodology/approachA total of 465 male inmates from five medium-security prisons in Wisconsin completed surveys to report demographics, violence, personality, social stressors and healthy coping behaviors to help manage risk by identifying key factors.FindingsInmates reported more violence with the “imported” characteristics of younger age, less incarceration, no college experience and personality patterns of impulsiveness, hostility and internal locus of control. More violence was reported by inmates with social stressors experienced from family and correctional staff. Additionally, less violence was reported by inmates with more healthy coping behaviors of exercise and social support, especially from family and other inmates.Research limitations/implicationsOne must remain uncertain about whether similar patterns of demographics, personality, social stressors and coping behaviors associated with inmate violence would be found in other US prisons. Future research can determine whether similar predictors of violence are found for women inmates and the consideration of ethnicity should be warranted when examining predictors of inmate violence.Practical implicationsPrison administrators can develop new programs to reduce social stressors and increase healthy coping behaviors found by this study to be significantly associated with reduced violence, exercise and social support from other inmates and family.Social implicationsThis research recommends that educating and training correctional staff for a trauma-informed care approach is an integral part of lessening the effects of “pains of imprisonment” on inmate violence and healing the effects of trauma.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first direct comparison of social stressors from other inmates, correctional staff or family members outside the prison as possible predictors of male inmate violence.

Impacts of Male Intimate Partner Violence on Women: A Life Course Perspective.

The nature and extent of the impacts of intimate partner violence (IPV) on victims are well documented, particularly male partner violence against women. However, less is known about how these impacts might change over time, including their legacy after women leave an abusive relationship and the lasting effects in their later lives. The purpose of this study was to examine women’s experiences of IPV at different stages over their life courses. Interviews with a cohort of 18 older women who had left an abusive relationship were analysed using thematic narrative analysis and the findings were presented according to trajectories, transitions, and turning points over their life courses. When in the relationship, the women experienced direct impacts on their physical, mental, social, and financial wellbeing. During separation, many experienced continued abuse and housing, legal, and financial stress. Life after separation was marked by loneliness, trauma, financial insecurity, and damaged relationships. Some women reached a turning point in their recovery through helping others. Understanding these impacts can inform interventions during each stage. Crisis support is critical when women are in an abusive relationship and during the dangerous phase of separation. Interventions can also assist women’s longer-term wellbeing and help them recover through post-traumatic growth.