Issue 1 2016.Pub

5 Editorial Heather Gridley Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia I want to tell everybody that family cultural facilitators that play out in different violence happens to everybody. No matter ways across the world. how nice your house is, how intelligent So how do community psychologists you are. It happens to anyone and approach issues of violence and gender? How everyone. (Rosie Batty, February 2014). do our theoretical frameworks contribute to understanding gendered patterns of violence? In The first issue of the Australian what ways are these frameworks informed by Community Psychologist for 2016 is a special (or divergent from) feminist understandings of issue devoted to violence and gender. these phenomena? There are many directions Contributions by practitioners and community that this special issue might have taken, in terms activists as well as academics and researchers of the definitions of both gender (binary, non- were invited. The major focus would be on binary or fluid?) and violence (individual, feminist and/or community psychology relational, structural, state-sanctioned...), and in frameworks relating to male violence against terms of the chosen lens (theoretical, cultural, women in intimate relationships; however it was empirical, practice-based, lived experience, made clear that submissions on other aspects of public policy ...). gender and violence would be considered. The eight papers that have been My offer to edit a special issue dedicated recommended by the panel of reviewers for to gender and violence (or should that be inclusion cannot address all possible aspects of violence and gender? – I was never quite sure) gender and violence. But taken together, they had two key motivations. First, there had never draw attention to particularly salient issues for been a gender-focussed issue of ACP or of its men who use violence, children whose mothers parent publication Network, which dates back to have experienced intimate partner violence, and 1984. Second, in 2015 it seemed that all women recovering from such violence. They Australia was talking about Domestic/Family also highlight the responsibility for, collusion Violence, a national conversation that had been in, and sometimes perpetration of, gender-based triggered in part by the heroic work of Rosie violence by nation states and governments, Batty since her son Luke had been killed by his predominantly in Australian and Aotearoa/New father when the boy was supposed to be safe in Zealand contexts, but also in places like a public place at cricket practice. Less than Palestine and Italy. twelve months later, Batty was named The special issue begins with two papers Australian of the Year and the momentum that that examine problematic constructions of had been accelerated, if not created, by her masculinity from the perspectives of three men response to such horror was unstoppable. with histories of violent behaviour. In the first Batty’s words in the immediate aftermath paper (Lorigan, Snell & Robertson, 2016), a of Luke’s murder were gender neutral, but she photo and three autoethnographic narratives are has never left any doubt that family violence is analysed in terms of the first author’s first-time primarily a problem of male violence against experiences with violence, drugs, and sex as their female partners and children. And Batty part of his initiation over several years into a has also been very clear that her voice is being hyper-masculine motorcycle gang culture. In the heard because she’s white, middle class and second paper (Mowat, Coombes & Busch, educated – and still alive. While it is certainly 2016), interviews with two men convicted of the case that “family violence happens to child sexual offences focus on their experiences everybody”, the perpetrator and victim statistics of power and powerlessness, and the discursive locally and globally are so disproportionate that resources available to them that influenced their it must be considered a gendered crime, and one masculine identities, practices, and subsequent that is supported by a range of historical and offending. In interrogating masculinity as a set The Australian Community Psychologist Volume 28 No 1 August 2016 © The Australian Psychological Society Ltd Editorial 6 of socially determined practices, both of these to limit the reproductive autonomy of papers illustrate possibilities for prevention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, future violence in the ways they foreground men women with disabilities, and young women in who have previously used violence reflecting on state care. She presents a powerful argument how their community contexts confirmed and that Australia’s policies of offshore detention constrained their understandings of what it severely constrain the reproductive ‘choices’ of means to ‘be a man’. asylum seeker women detained, and as such, The next three papers turn attention to now represent the next chapter in this shameful women’s experiences of intimate partner history of gender-based violence at a nation violence, and the implications of those state level. experiences for their children. O’Brien (2016) Guidi, Magnatta, Guazzini and Meringolo reports on an in-house evaluation of a (2016) provide an overview of prevalence and community program designed to assist women patterns of intimate partner sexual violence in recovery from domestic violence using (IPSV) in Italy, as compared with findings from volunteer mentoring as a model of support. The other European countries and elsewhere in the program discussed is an innovative and direct world. IPSV appears to ‘fall between two response to largely unmet community need, and stools’, receiving less attention than either the internal evaluation goes beyond what most sexual violence perpetrated by non-partners, or community programs would undertake without intimate partner violence of other kinds, such as an external or funded evaluation. physical and emotional abuse – despite The two papers that focus on the needs evidence that intimate partners are responsible and rights of children impacted by family for a third of sexual assaults, and that sexual violence complement each other in several assault is both physical and emotional violence. ways. The paper by Morgan and Coombes Particular cultural risk factors for IPSV in Italy (2016) draws on findings from a wider research appear to include enduring gender stereotypes project in Aotearoa/New Zealand to highlight that induce women to accept a certain degree of some of the tensions and contradictions that violence and unwanted sex as ‘a wife’s duty’. confront mothers navigating the legal system in Similar cultural constraints in a very their efforts to escape intimate partner violence different context are cited by Sarieddine (2016), and protect their children from its effects. Their who draws on Foucault’s theory of Panopticism focus is on how the women made sense of their as a way of conceptualising the oppression and responsibilities for protecting their children at self-surveillance of Palestinian women through different times during their relationship, and the narratives and oral history that emerged in how the meaning of protecting their children the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba as a form of changed as they engaged with court processes resistance to the dominant narratives of the and advocacy services. Stainton (2016) observes imposed state of Israel. A consequence of this that children have not always been seen as idealisation of pre-Nakba Palestinian society direct victims of violence perpetrated against has been the actual and metaphorical their mothers, nor have they typically been confinement of women to the traditional roles treated as refuge clients in their own right. of peasant women that operated seventy years Stainton draws on this practice-based evidence ago, and the suppression of their voices to such to document the development of a set of Good an extent that external surveillance and active Practice Guidelines aimed at cultural change to regulation on the part of the state are not ensure that children’s needs are met while required. residing in Western Australian refuges. Each of these last three papers bears The last three papers in this special issue witness in its own way to aspects of each take a particular meta perspective on Sarieddine’s (2016) conclusion that: gender and violence. Hayes (2016) positions … violence and discrimination state-sanctioned reproductive coercion as a against women are not always gendered form of violence, and reviews the personal (i.e. inflicted on a single historical role of the Australian state in seeking woman at a point in time), but can The Australian Community Psychologist Volume 28 No 1 August 2016 © The Australian Psychological Society Ltd Editorial 7 be applicable to an entire class or References community of women; that Batty, R. (2014). http:// violence against women is not lukebattyfoundation.org.au/ always physical or psychological, Dobash, R.E. & Dobash, R.P. (1979). but can be subtle and inflicted as a Violence against wives: A case against the lack of right and privilege; and that patriarchy. New York: Free Press. such subtle violence against women Guidi, E., Magnatta, G., Guazzini A., & can be so ingrained in a specific Meringolo, P. (2016). Intimate partner sexual culture that it is hardly recognised violence: an overview of the problem in as such. (p. 124) Italy. Australian Community Psychologist, Violence against women is as 28(1), 101-116. public as the policing of women’s Hayes, P. (2016). Reproductive coercion and swimwear on a French beach and as the Australian state: A new private as the family home. As such it is chapter? Australian Community one of the most pervasive yet least Psychologist, 28(1), 90-100. acknowledged human rights abuses Lorigan, T., Snell, D. & Robertson, N. throughout the world. The aim of this (2016). Sex, drugs and smashing skulls: special issue was to trouble some of the Violence, gender, and hyper-masculinity in a gendered operations of power that lead to gang community of practice. Australian such disproportionate patterns in the use Community Psychologist, 28(1), 9-23.

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