Balls and Permissions: Theorising the Link Between Football and Domestic Violence (From Researching Gender Violence: Feminist Methodology in Action, P 190-210, 2005, Tina Skinner, Marianne Hester, et al., eds., -- See NCJ-210311)

• NCJ Number: 210321
• Author(s): Jill Radford; Eve Hudson
• Date Published: 2005
• Length: 21 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter analyzes the ways in which football, supporting football, and football-related violence in public areas is related to violence in private areas, particularly domestic violence.

Abstract

During the late 1990s, both authors worked in combating domestic violence in the Middlesbrough community (United Kingdom) when they noted a marked upswing in demand for domestic violence services first during February through June 1997 and then during February through June 1998. These time periods corresponded to escalating excitement over football in the community. The main goal of the subsequent research was to analyze the gender power dynamics that link football/public violence with private violence in patriarchal societies. The authors extend the notion of “permissions” for violence in analyzing the link between football-related violence in the public sphere and domestic violence; these permissions grant acceptability to the “brutish” culture of masculinity. Discourses on football-related violence are analyzed and the social context of the Middlesborough community is assessed in terms of its contributions to “permissions” for male violence. Finally, the movement to “feminize” football is analyzed in terms of its sexualization of women or its co-opting of women as “mothers of sons.” Policy implications are discussed and include intervention strategies that would increase constraints on sportsmen’s actions. Notes, bibliography