Violence as understandable, deserved or unacceptable? Listening for gender in teenagers' talk about violence

Abstract

Youth violence is a topic of increasing global concern. Research has primarily focused on young people's responses to existing definitions of violence in seeking to understand how best to develop violence prevention. Little work has explored how young people themselves define violence and the factors which influence their acceptance, and use, of violent behaviour. The present study investigated young people's understandings of what constitutes violence, their acceptance of violence and justifications made for doing so. The study was distinct in its focus on young people's characterisations of violence. The findings revealed that gender norms mediate understandings of what constitutes violence and discourses around the perceived acceptability of violence. Particular forms of violence were clearly identified as being more acceptable and ‘deserved’ than others and young people's perceptions were shaped by their understandings of appropriate and normative gender behaviour.

Keywords:

• sociology
• masculinities
• femininities
• domestic violence
• violence
• focus groups
• phenomenology
• secondary education

Notes

1. http://thisisabuse.direct.gov.uk/Debate.aspx?id=1.

2. The majority of violence prevention campaigns aimed at young people have focused on interpersonal violence (physical, emotional, verbal and sexual) rather than structural, symbolic and financial (and so on) forms of violence. The focus of the present study is therefore on young people's understandings of interpersonal violence, as enacted between individuals or groups of individuals.

3. By contrast, in the very few instances of school violence perpetrated by young women (an extensive Internet search revealed only two cases occurring in the USA in 1979 and 2008, respectively), not only is the gender of the perpetrator highlighted, but also the perpetrator is treated problematically on the basis of their gender alone (Katz and Jhally 1999).

4. The photographs depicted male violence towards a woman or towards another male (physical violence only). The original research design strove to include photographs of female perpetrators of violence as well as male perpetrators of violence. However, an extensive online image search revealed that very few photographs of women perpetrating violence towards men exist and those that did were presented for comedy effect. The decision was therefore made to include only photographs of violence being perpetrated by males.