Table Of ContentGender and Interpersonal Violence
Also by Karen Throsby
WHEN IVF FAILS
Feminism, Infertility and the Negotiation of Normality
Also by Flora Alexander
CONTEMPORARY WOMEN NOVELISTS
Gender and Interpersonal
Violence
Language, Action and Representation
Edited by
Karen Throsby
University of Warwick, UK
Flora Alexander
Formerly at University ofA berdeen, UK
palgrave
macmillan
* Selection and editorial matter © K. Throsby and F. Alexander 2008
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2008
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2008 978-0-230-57401-4
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First published 2008 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-36507-4 ISBN 978-0-230-22842-9 (eBook)
DOI10.105719780230228429
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British library.
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gender and interpersonal violence: language, action and
representation I [edited by] Karen Throsby.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-36507-4 (alk. paper)
1. Victims of family violence. 2. Victims of violent crimes. 3. Sex role.
4. Violence in mass media. I. Throsby, Karen, 1968-
HV6626.G46 2008
303.6-dc22 2008027563
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Transferred to Digital Printing 2011
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction 1
Karen Throsby and Flora Alexander
Part I Lived Experience
1 'Turning a Pretty Girl into a Killer': Women, Violence and
Clandestine Operations during the Second World War 11
Juliette Pattinson
2 'I Still Sort of Flounder Around in a Sea of Non-Language':
The Constraints of Language and Labels in Women's
Accounts of Woman-to-Woman Partner Abuse 29
Rebecca Barnes
3 Cultural Transformations and Gender Violence:
South Asian Women's Experiences of Sexual Violence
and Familial Dynamics 44
Bipasha Ahmed, Paula Reavey and Anamika Majumdar
4 Sexual Trafficking: A New Sexual Story? 66
Alison Jobe
5 'That's a Bit Drastic': Risk and Blame in Accounts
of Obesity Surgery 83
Karen Throsby
6 The Promise of Understanding: Sex, Violence,
Trauma and the Body 100
Jane Kilby
Part II Representations
7 'It's Wrong for a Boy to Hit a Girl Because the Girl Might
Cry': Investigating Primary School Children's Attitudes
Towards Violence Against Women 121
Nancy Lombard
v
vi Contents
8 Images of Abusers: Stranger-Danger, the Media,
and the Social Currency of Everyday Knowledge 139
Jenny Kitzinger
9 Female-On-Male Violence: Medical Responses
and Popular Imagination 157
Jarmila Mildorf
10 Male-On-Male Violence Against Women: Gender
Representation and Violence in Rebecca
Prichard's Fair Game 171
Richard A. Bryan
11 'He Could See Her No Longer': The Negation of Femininity
Through Violence in Ian McEwan's Fiction 186
Fiona Tolan
12 Thelma and Louise and the Politics of Excess 200
Alex Tate
13 Slap and Tickle: Violence as Fun in the Movies 214
Jenny O'Connor
Conclusion 229
Flora Alexander and Karen Throsby
Index 233
Acknowledgements
Both Karen and Flora would like to thank Jeannette King at the
University of Aberdeen, who organised the Feminist and Women's
Studies Association (FWSA) conference in 200S and who encouraged us
to take this publication forward. Our thanks also go to Joyce Walker, and
the rest of the organising committee, who all worked incredibly hard to
make the conference a success. We are also grateful to the Principal of
the University of Aberdeen who provided a grant to support the event.
We would like to thank all the participants for making the event such a
success and the members and executive committee of the FWSA for their
ongoing commitment to the goals of the organisation.
We would like to thank Jill Lake at Palgrave Macmillan for helping us
to take this project forward in the early stages and Olivia Middleton and
Philippa Grand for their editorial support, and especially their patience.
Thanks also go to the two anonymous reviewers for their supportive and
constructive comments. We are grateful to all the contributors of the
book for their hard work.
The editors and publishers wish to thank the following for permission
to reproduce copyright material:
Pluto Press, for Chapter 7 from Jenny Kitzinger, Framing Abuse: Media
Influence and Public Understanding of Sexual Violence Against Children
(2004).
Imperial War Museum, for photograph (MH24434) of Jacqueline
Nearne in the 1944 documentary School for Danger.
vii
Notes on Contributors
Bipasha Ahmed is a senior lecturer in social psychology and qualitative
methodologies in the School of Psychology, University of East London.
Her research interests are in critical approaches to psychology, particularly
relating to 'race', gender and class. She has published and presented
research on the social construction of racism, feminist psychology
and issues relating to the research process. She is currently involved in
researching South Asian women's experiences of sexual violence.
Flora Alexander is the author of Contemporary Women Novelists (Edward
Arnold, 1989) and articles on fiction by English, Scottish and Canadian
women. Until 2001 she was a senior lecturer at the University of Aberdeen,
where she co-founded an undergraduate programme in Women's Studies
and taught on several Women's Studies courses, including a module on
Gender and Violence.
Rebecca Barnes is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Derby. She
recently completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham, where
she researched violence and abuse in women's same-sex relationships.
She has wider research interests in gendered conceptualisations of
domestic and sexual violence, and the long-term impacts of domestic
violence upon the self.
RichardA. Bryan has, since the start of this project, advanced from doctoral
candidate to lecturer at the University of Tennessee. Now, although he
has enjoyed and been greatly rewarded for his time in Knoxville, he looks
forward to the fall and to serving as an assistant professor of dramatic
literature in the Department of Language, Literature and Philosophy at
Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia.
Alison Jobe recently completed a PhD on trafficked women's access to
asylum in the United Kingdom, at Newcastle University. Her research
interests include sexual trafficking, the prevention of violence against
women, female asylum seekers and the UK asylum system.
Jane Kilby is a lecturer in the School of English, Sociology, Politics and
Contemporary History at the University of Salford. Her research focuses
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
on sexual violence and victim testimony. She is the author of Violence
and the Cultural Politics of Trauma (EUP, 2007) and is currently writing a
book on the ordinary nature of incest.
Jenny Kitzinger is a professor of Media and Communications Research
at the University of Cardiff. Her work examines power struggles in media
production processes and is particularly concerned with questions of
media influence and audience reception. She is the co-author of Human
Cloning in the Media: From Science Fiction to Science Practice (Routledge,
2007) and the author of Framing Abuse: Media Influence and Public
Understandings of Violence Against Children (Pluto, 2004).
Nancy Lombard is in her final year of her Ph.D looking at how 10-and
II-years old understand male violence against women and locating this
within their everyday constructions of gender. She has both practical
and theoretical experience in this field having been both a volunteer
and caseworker at Women's Aid refuges in the North of England and
London. She was also part of the research team commissioned by the
Scottish Executive to investigate male domestic abuse in Scotland.
Her research interests include male violence against women, feminist
methodology, childhood and gender.
Anamika Majumdar is currently a PhD student at London South Bank
University. She researches South Asian married experiences of intimacy
in the United Kingdom. She is supervised by Professor Jeffrey Weeks,
Dr. Paula Reavey and Dr. Shaminder Takhar. Her research interests lie
in sexuality, relationships and culture. She has previously worked on
research projects focussed on understandings of sexual health and
service provision with the Bangladeshi community of Tower Hamlets
and South Asian women's experiences of sexual violence.
Jarmila Mildorf is a lecturer in the Department of English and American
Studies at the University of Paderborn and is the author of Storying
Domestic Violence: Constructions and Stereotypes ofA buse in the Discourse of
General Practitioners (University of Nebraska, 2007).
Jenny O'Connor is a PhD student at University College Dublin in
Ireland and a lecturer in Communications at Waterford Institute of
Technology. Her research examines Deleuzian approaches to modern
film as well as feminist reworkings of Deleuze's philosophies. The three
