NCJ Number
176616
Date Published
1998
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This chapter presents transcripts of interviews with 18 men who abused their wives, as they talk about how they view their violence.
Abstract
The discussion first considers the study methodology, specifically the relationship between the researcher and the subjects. It then turns to an examination of the patterns and contradictions in the batterers' accounts of their behavior, with attention to the role that their rationalizations play in the progression of the violence and abusiveness. The study next compares the relationship between the batterers' explanations for their violence and those explanations prevalent in the wider society; the batterers' accounts are compared with the analysis offered in the clinical literature on wife beating, and some attention is given to the discourse on battering encountered in the criminal justice system. The author concludes that the excuses and justifications revealed in the study are ideological constructs; at the individual level, they obscure the batterer's self-interest in acting violently; at the societal level, they mask the male domination underlying violence against women; clinical and criminal justice responses to battering are ideological in collusion with batterers' rationalizations. The interrelationship between private rationalizations and public responses recommends using a critical social psychology framework to examine men's violence against women. Such a theoretical framework could place wife beating, rape, incest, and the sexual harassment of women in relation to one another, which offers fertile ground for addressing class-specific forms of male entitlement, male anger, male subjectivity, and misogyny. 37 references