The sexual politics of citizenship and violence

Abstract

a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Available online xxxxViolence against women appears to be endemic even in those societies where women have formal and equal citizenship. The influential theorist of citizenship, T.H. Marshall, found the status of women, or at least married women to be 'in some important respects peculiar'. Women in social democratic societies seem to have overcome those peculiarities and achieved full citizenship. And yet women's rights as citizens continue to be undermined by violence, specifically gender-based violence. In order to address the question about the apparent failure of citizenship rights to protect women from persistent violence this paper will suggest that the state is integral to our understandings as well as to any useful strategies for change. Based on the argument that citizenship is defined and practiced in terms of the sexual politics of contested gender relations, the paper argues that the state connects citizenship and violence. The persistence of violence against women is implicated in the sexual politics of citizenship. Hence, the challenge of violence against women is recognised as an issue for the state, citizenship and the whole community. Campaigns to recognise this challenge are becoming valuable sources of agency and activism as can be seen in recent campaigns and heightened media attention.

Rethinking Women’s Mental Health After Intimate Partner Violence

“…Within sexual politics, the sexes are understood as coherent groups that are subject to politics, just as are races and classes (Millett, 1969). Sexual politics understands structures of power as shaped and reproduced by the gender inequalities of the public–private divide and the patriarchal state, but gender relations are also seen as continually contested, dynamic, and open to change (Franzway, 2016). Our analysis specifically illustrates how sexual politics plays out in IPV and coercive control.…”

“Becoming a Better Man”

“…The discourse identified in the analysis about becoming a better man and prevailing over abusers has not been previously identified in the literature on masculinities, and it adds further insight into how men can mobilize hegemonic masculine identities to manage the impact of abuse in ways that women cannot. This consistent valuing of emotional control, rationality, emotional detachment, and competitiveness across the narratives in part reflects the fact that, in spite of shifting sexual politics in western societies over the past five decades (Franzway, 2016), there continues to be fewer questions about what is valued in a man than there are for women. However, it is also important to consider that in the act of narrating the experience of CEA to a female interviewer, the men may have (unconsciously) emphasized hegemonic forms of masculinity to safeguard and preserve their performed identities as men (Schwalbe & Wolkomir, 2001).…”

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

“…Hence, some of the narratives captured shifts in gender power relations over the last part of the 20th century in Western societies, with women’s experiences of CEA coming to reflect growing contradictions between traditional discourses about women and more contemporary ones. Related to this, the analysis showed how many women actively resisted pressures to do femininity in ways they saw as oppressive and self-denying, laying bare the everyday nature of sexual politics and the ways that “gender relations are continually being contested” (Franzway, 2016, p. 19), including at microlevels of interaction within families. Stark (2007) theorizes that some men’s efforts to enforce a servile, submissive femininity on female partners through coercive control in domestic violence represent a reaction to shifts in contemporary gender power relations and the position of women in heterosexual relationships.…”