Sexual Ethics, Masculinity and Mutual Vulnerability

Abstract

Over the past two decades, significant work has been undertaken in masculinities scholarship to aid the development of efforts to prevent incidences of sexual violence against women. This has included Carmody's powerful contribution of grounding primary prevention strategies in Foucault's ethics of the care of the self and others. This paper expands on this approach by theorising how Judith Butler's ethics of non-violence built on the recognition of vulnerability can provide a conceptual mechanism or justification by which men will embrace sexual ethics of care. Using the contextual example of group sexual assault by team sportsplayers as well as recent efforts to address masculine violence in Australia, the paper argues that Butler's recent work contributes to ways in which that ethics can be better embraced by men as part of a broader project of cultural transformation of (hyper-)masculinity into a less-harmful event. The paper addresses ways in which to understand the failure of team sportsplayers capacity to recognise the vulnerability of women in group sexual assault cases by showing how the operation of normative frames prevent conceiving the hypermasculine self as anything but inviolable. In that context, some recent debates in Australian masculinities and anti-violence scholarship on whether or not changes to gender relations are best communicated as a benefit or loss of power to men are addressed. The aim of this paper is to make a small contribution to advancing theories and concepts of sexual ethics in the context of masculine sexual violence by investigating ways in which Butler's approach can operate as both a mechanism for inducing care of selves and others and an outcome of the cultural transformation of gender relations.Over the past two decades, significant theoretical, conceptual, strategic and pragmatic work has been undertaken to aid the development of efforts to prevent incidences of sexual violence against women. In many cases, these have included efforts to intervene in homosocial masculine institutions in which group-based sexual assault and violence occurs, including sites that are often the subject of public scandal such as elite and high-profile sporting teams and military organisations (Toffoletti 2007;Flood 2007). Recent preventative measures have been built on the need to engage men and boys in understanding the unethical nature of gender-based violence and sexual assault; a task which has been noted as considerably difficult to achieve (Flood 2011, 262), including through compulsory programmes and intervention schemes in masculine-based highprofile institutions. Such schemes respond to the need for a shift in focus beyond the Australian Feminist Studies, 2014 Vol. 29, No. 82,[435][436][437][438][439][440][441][442][443][444][445][446][447][448][449][450][451] http://dx.

One for the Team

“…Don’t tolerate anything you would be embarrassed to tell your mum about (2013, p. 79).Kent’s representation of players as responsible for preventing violence echoes aspects of ethical bystander discourse’s interventions (Corboz, Flood, & Dyson, 2016; Cover, 2013). Teammates are represented as being able to shape club culture, something that bystander education is touted as being able to facilitate (Cover, 2014). Discussing bystander intervention education in the Australian Football League (AFL), Corboz, Flood, and Dyson (2016, p. 339) note that the cultures and relations of professional sport have a “significant influence” on players’ perception of violence and the actions they take in response; some of the texts in which teammates are afforded discursive responsibility aim to shape these cultures via the ethical bystander players.…”

Gender on the ropes: An autoethnographic account of boxing in Tasmania, Australia

“…As I reflect on this, the situation presents itself as much more complex. If men are to distance themselves from a masculinity that is constructed in relation to cultural notions of feminine weakness/vulnerability, they must do so at a significant cost to themselves in terms of renouncing gender privilege (Cover, 2015). Men must be willing to be vulnerable in a spar.…”

“…The other men in the club, to a certain extent, recognised this and comforted me as I sat on the bench in a performance of moderated masculinity and femininity. However, this is not to say that the men in the room were not complicit in what had occurred given that the dominant boxing masculinities are built on unequal relations with women (Cover, 2015). Thus comforting me was perhaps an opportunity for my friends to reaffirm their own masculinity by demonstrating care for a heterosexual woman.…”

“…Yet while hypermasculinity is often associated with hegemonic masculinity, hypermasculinity is not necessarily hegemonic in contemporary boxing culture nor is it a coherent source of identity for boxers even though men are often complicit in the social formations that privilege hypermasculine behaviour (Cover, 2015). In this paper, I use hypermasculinity to signal ‘an idealised image of an extreme form of masculinity that few, if any, actually embody’ (Pringle and Hickey, 2010: 119).…”

“…This is a significant barrier for most men given the social environment through which masculinity is being performed (i.e. where certain hypermasculine behaviours are framed as an advantage) (Cover, 2015). Thus a man pulling his punches is demonstrative of his need to re-secure an unstable masculine identity by foreclosing on other possibilities of gender relationality (e.g.…”