Intersectionality in Young Men's Accounts of Domestic Violence

• In Event: Theoretical Criminology Panel: Psychosocial and Cultural Criminology

Abstract

This paper argues for approaches to explaining domestic violence that are sufficiently nuanced enough for most men to be able to see both similarities and differences between themselves and other men who have described perpetrating assaults on women. It begins by outlining the instrumentalist assumptions that continue to inform key feminist approaches to explaining perpetrator behaviour. It then elaborates on how conceptual developments in the study of masculinities have challenged instrumentalist explanations without fully transcending the social determinism implicit in them. Using three young men's narrative accounts the paper shows how domestic violence can be both instrumental and expressive at the same time - controlling and defensive - and that the meaning of such behaviours can often only be grasped by being alive to the gendered nature of social discourses, many of which are easily infused with racialized, disablist and class-based assumptions.

Author

• David Roy Gadd, Manchester University