Blackwell Reference Online

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When men's violence against women and children is made an object of analysis – say, the focus of scholarly attention or the focus of an undergraduate criminology module – all hell breaks loose. Even calling men's violence “men's violence,” thereby pushing home responsibility for that violence to men, can provoke uproar. It has even led to some sections of the academy in the United States, and now in the United Kingdom, to argue that, contrary to feminist claims, women are equally if not more violent than men and that there is a “sexual symmetry in marital violence” (Dobash et al. 1992). One thing's for sure – naming men as the main perpetrators of most forms of violence, especially violence against women and children, is still not culturally permitted in non-feminist forums. Saying, without qualification, that men have responsibility for most forms of serious violence in Western jurisdictions is tantamount to declaring war on the civilized discourses of erasure and denial in which criminology and related disciplines couch the question of men's pervasive violence against women and children. At least, that's my experience, but where I come from, the declaration of an experiential basis for an assertion is the beginning, not the end, of a conversation about men's violence.For over ten years – now there's a bid for experientially based credibility – I have taught in the field of sexed ... log in or subscribe to read full text