Accounting for Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious social issue which affects the medium- and long-term health outcomes of many individuals worldwide. The cost of IPV on the physical and psychological well-being of individuals, in addition to its wider economic costs in responding to abused persons, is significant. Presently, there is a lack of understanding about the nature of female-initiated IPV and how men account for their experiences of it. This study examined male victims' life stories of their IPV experiences from their intimate partners. Using the biographical narrative interpretive method, three cases were analyzed from a social constructionist perspective to examine what narrative strategies men used to account for their experiences of being abused by their female partners. Three dominant narrative strategies were used by respondents: the fatherhood narrative, the good husband narrative, and the abuse narrative. The abuse narrative had a unique narrative form, which reflected respondents' disassociation between their identities as men and also as abused persons. Dominant conflicting discourses of masculinity and intimate partner abuse disadvantaged men in identifying IPV and secondly in responding appropriately. This study found that men prefer to use dominant discursive identities as legitimate means from which to disclose IPV experiences. The findings from this study illustrate that broad questioning by professionals regarding fatherhood may be most helpful in promoting disclosures of IPV if this is suspected.

Intimate Partner Violence and Gender A/Symmetry: An Integrative Literature Review

“…An analysis revealed six distinct categories of results, as shown in Table 2. 1) Studies show that both men and women can be perpetrators in situations of violence, however levels differ depending on the subtypes of violence (Bates et al, 2014;Chan, 2012;Corbally, 2015;Hamby & Turner, 2013;Johnson et al, 2014;Lövestad & Krantz, 2012;Melander, Noel, & Tyler, 2010;Myhill, 2015;Post, Mezey, Maxwell, & Rhodes, 2011;Tanha et al, 2010), which needs to be taken into account planning interventions (Allen, 2011;Brown, 2012;LanghinrichsenRohling, 2010;Stark, 2010). Also, violence tends to start asymmetrically and becomes symmetrical with time (Leonard et al, 2014).…”

Life Stories of the Economic Recession: Biographical Narrative Interpretative Method (BNIM) and the Lived Experience of Disability in Times of Austerity

“…As a starting point, the application of BNIM in the study should be further clarified before proceeding to a presentation of BNIM findings. BNIM might be described as both a method and an interpretivist methodology (Corbally 2015). As a psycho-societal method, BNIM takes a phenomenologically orientated qualitative narrative approach that assumes that individuals construct meaning in their lives through narrative (Wengraf 2001(Wengraf , 2010.…”

“…To account for such complexity, BNIM follows an intensive data analysis process, with psychoanalytic leanings and a phenomenological emphasis and social constructivist perspective (Corbally 2015;Wengraf 2001Wengraf , 2015. In the context of austerity as a social justice matter, BNIM may also usefully uncover hegemonic ideas present within individual consciousness (Ross & Moore 2016).…”

“…These present the researcher's narrative reconstruction of what the participant's present perspective was on their past lived experience (Wengraf 2001(Wengraf , 2015. As is often customary with presentation of BNIM life stories, the researchers voice is dominant within the following stories (see Corbally 2015;Wengraf 2001). The empirical material presented is necessarily limited by the confines of the article; nonetheless, cases reflect the conscientiously balanced product of in-depth systematic and intense analysis processes that dictate their final form as analytical narrative, including multi-part methodological refinement of a much larger quantity of original data.…”

Promoting Inclusivity in Intimate Partner Abuse Research: Exploring Gender and Age

“…For men, societal ideals usually reside around expectations of masculinity and public perceptions of what it means to be a man. In a narrative review of men's life-stories, Corbally (2014) identified three core narrative themes. The first two themes centre on the fatherhood, and the good husband narrative; both describe public identity narrativesthose that are publicly acceptable.…”