The Culture of Cool - Getting in Early to Prevent Domestic Violence

Executive Summary

The prevention of men’s domestic violence towards women in New Zealand is a
matter of some urgency given the extent of it and the associated harm.
Men’s domestic violence towards women has the effect on women of limiting their options
for action: their choices in what they can do, who they can contact and their ability to
act with autonomy. A strong association has been found between men’s use of such
violence and their expressions of traditional macho values of dominance and
entitlement. High risk factors for lethal violence are the offender’s excessive control
of his victim and his extreme jealousy.

If violence is understood to occur on a continuum from controlling behaviours
to extreme physical violence then one formulation for prevention is to get in early and
prevent controlling behaviours as young people are starting out in their relationship
careers.

Some research on dating violence has shown an association between
emotional expressions of jealousy or controlling behaviours and violence. However,
little research has been carried out on the social values and beliefs that contribute to
young women’s experiences of control, jealousy or possessiveness in relationships
with a boyfriend.

This study explores young women’s ownership experiences and the social
values, beliefs and attitudes which contribute to these experiences. By identifying
these social factors we open up possibilities for preventative intervention. Young
women who had experienced ownership practices (control, possessiveness or
jealousy) in a relationship with a boyfriend or ex-boyfriend participated in focus
group discussions with a skilled facilitator. Young women aged 18-25 years were
only recruited if they were safe from any domestic violence and were fluent in
English. The young women in this study were predominantly of European New
Zealand ethnicity about a third coming from other ethnicities: only one identifying as
of Pakeha/Maori ethnicity. All names and identifying features of the participants
were changed. Following a brief description of their ownership experiences young
women were asked to describe the social and cultural influences they thought might
have contributed to their boyfriends’ ownership practices. The discussions were
recorded using audio-recordings and the recordings were transcribed. Transcriptions
were then analysed using discourse analysis.

This approach recognises that the social values and beliefs might not be
readily identifiable by those who are situated within the existing context. For this
reason a brief genealogy of violence practices towards women was provided to
highlight the current New Zealand context. Different historical trajectories were
found to have informed ownership practices in New Zealand from a western
perspective and from a Maori perspective. According to western European history
practices of discrimination towards women can be traced to Greek mythology which
attributed evil to womankind and status through sex was conferred to men. In Maori
tradition Maori women were privileged because of their special status as the
beginning and the end of life and status was attributed through the ranking of roles
rather than through sex. These differences are also evident in ownership practices in
marriage: in western European culture the traditional marriage involved the handing
over of the woman by her father to her husband and the woman’s vow was to love
honour and obey her husband. In Maori tradition customary marriages were much
less formal and the woman remained part of her original whanau. Historically
according to British law a husband could beat his wife within limits whereas there are
indications that ill-treatment by a man of his wife, in pre-European Maori tradition,
might result in penalties on the husband and return of his wife and children to her
whanau. These findings suggest that Maori women suffered great disparate changes
through colonisation.

The young women in this study described a number of ownership experiences
from their boyfriends including entitlement practices, surveillance, identity
ownership, physical violence, and sexual identity ownership practices. Entitlement
practices described included assumptions by the boyfriend that the young woman
wanted him to come to activities without consultation with her. Groping her, kissing
her or holding her in public portrayed the message that the young woman belonged to
him. Surveillance practices described included phoning or text messaging the woman
sometimes incessantly in order to monitor what she was doing and who she was with.
Accounts of their boyfriends’ identity ownership practices involved criticising their
dress sense or making comments about things or activities which held pleasure for
them such that their self-esteem and confidence in their identity, beliefs and values
were slowly and increasingly undermined. Some of the young women spoke of their
boyfriend’s physical violence towards them if they did not comply with what he
wanted. Many of the young women described their boyfriend’s sexualising of their
dress sense and the construction of them as seeking the attention of other men: a
position which these young women discounted. These sexualised constructions were
portrayed by some of the young women as a means to prevent their contact with
others.

The social and cultural influences which contributed to ownership practices
were collated into three discourse groupings: the culture of cool, the bitches and hos
culture and the mates’ culture. In the language associated with the culture of cool
some young women described being treated as “a trophy”: the “hot girl in the hot car”
were described as the ideal possessions for men in New Zealand. Being treated as a
possession was described as contributing to young women being dehumanized. For
young women, being a girlfriend provided popularity and status: one teen magazine
for girls is called Girlfriend, capturing this ideal identity. Some young women
described the advertising objectification of young women’s bodies as stripping
women of their identity and creating a normative identity for young women. The
dualities associated with this normative identity – that young women should be thin
but not too thin, sexy but not too sexy - portrayed an image of the ideal
woman/girlfriend which was difficult to achieve: an “unattainable ideal”. These
young women described this objectification of women’s bodies as contributing to a
critical gaze caste on young women by boyfriends and society generally which did not
allow young women to simply be young women. Some young women described this
objectification as contributing to them being treated by some men as disposable
objects: there to be used and discarded.
In the language associated with the bitches and hos culture some young
women portrayed highly sexualised images of young women in advertising and in
music videos as those which stripped women of all identity except their sex. In these
images the man was portrayed as hyper-masculine or endowed with ideal possessions
such as a super car, money and an abundance of women; the women were portrayed
as his sexual possessions which he could manipulate and operate or use for sex as he
wanted. These images were portrayed as blindingly and openly misogynist: through
their explicit sexual denigration leaving young women with nothing.

Some contemporary music lyrics were used to illustrate the misogyny in these music videos.
The risk is that the entertaining images and catchy rhythms of these music videos will
allow the open misogyny in the language to become accepted in much the same way
as the objectification of women in advertising has become part of the background
landscape in New Zealand’s busy streets.

The third dominant social and cultural influence towards ownership practices
involved the language associated with the mates’ culture. In these young women’s
accounts some men like to “shoo away the spiders” or be the one who is The Man: the
more dominant one in the relationship, the one who is the protector. In some of these
young women’s accounts being the macho man or the dominant one involved
bringing the woman down through criticising her and limiting her access to pleasure
or pleasurable activities. Some young women described the influence of the man’s
mates on their boyfriends to be the dominant one in the relationship. The language
described by these young women to ensure compliance with the mates’ culture
involved the use of insults such as calling the boyfriend “ pussy whipped”, “a girl” or
“gay”.

These pejorative sexualised and feminized insults were reported to be
employed against men who were not considered to be dominant enough boyfriends
and illustrate the prejudice towards women and homosexual men present in this
culture. Peers alone were not the only influences: such insults were also attributed to
fathers and uncles. The language associated with male dominance and entitlement,
which has been described in previous research on men who use violence towards
women, was also situated here as part of the mates’ culture.

The language and values associated with these three cultural influences was
portrayed as contributing towards men’s ownership practices towards young women.
The young women in this study described the cultural pressures on them to be a
girlfriend/ideal woman but the romantic notions of love, which had been the stuff of
fairy tales, were not played out in their experiences with the boyfriends who engaged
in ownership practices towards them. Such influences towards the ideal created a
stigma for young women, who were experiencing controlling or violent ownership
practices, which silenced them from talking of them. Their accounts also suggest that
there are pressures on men to maintain dominance towards women: to be part of the
mates’ culture in New Zealand which probably emerged historically from the
pioneering crew culture described by Belich (1996).

These young women described campaigns which targeted family violence or
domestic violence as excluding the violence which occurs towards young women in
boyfriend relationships or in childless relationships. Domestic violence or family
violence campaigns were described as targeting older women and couples with
children rather than women of their age or those without children.
Recommendations for prevention are that young people are taught, through
critical cultural studies, to critically appraise contemporary cultural constructions
which dehumanise and objectify women and which limit the options for the identities
of men; that links are made between the objectification and the subjugation of young
women in media representations and the treatment of young women as possessions in
relationships; that education campaigns promote ethical and just relationships; that the
Campaign for Action on Family Violence be opened up to address the violence
experienced by young women from their boyfriends; that early intervention be
directed towards young women through education campaigns available at sites of
their everyday activities; that these early intervention education campaigns describe
the early warning signs of ownership practices which are likely to be precursors to
violence.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the young women who participated in this study and to
acknowledge the courage which they showed in overcoming their fears to talk about
their experiences and to help us with this research. We would also like to extend our
gratitude and thanks to the women who were part of our Maori Advisory Group: Sue
Ngawati Osborne, Vi Wolfe and Tania Cargo; and Jaine Wikitera-Reid (for her earlier
help and assistance). Thank you for providing us with wonderful support and advice
throughout the course of the study. A very special thanks to Sophie Scott-Elvidge who
researched the music and provided us with the bitches and hos music lyrics. Thank
you to the community organisations which provided their support and encouragement
at key times throughout the course of the research process. Thank you to Luana
Crompton for her faithful transcriptions and to Belinda Chase and Debbie Hager for
their editing. Finally we would like to thank the young women whose idea it was to
research ownership practices and Dr Ray Nairn, who reviewed the report, for his
helpful comments.

This study was funded and supported by the Accident Compensation Corporation
(ACC), Wellington, New Zealand. Views and/or conclusions in this article are those
of the authors and may not reflect the position of ACC.

By Alison Towns
Mt Albert Psychological Services Ltd
and Hazel Scott
Inner City Women’s Group
June 2008