Domestic abuse and the public/private divide in the British military

Abstract

Domestic abuse and the public/private divide in the British militaryDivisions between the social spheres of public and private are always fluid, mutually constitutive, and politically and socially formulated. Within the British military, such divisions are further framed through the needs of operational effectiveness. In the pursuit of operational effectiveness the public/private divide functions at times as porous, in large part through the military's provision of services such as housing, welfare and policing to personnel and their families and through the notion of a closeknit military community, and at others as firm, bolstering operational effectiveness through recourse to militarised ideas of the private sphere as the fixed space of hearth, home and femininity which is to be protected by military force. This article employs narratives of domestic abuse as a window through which to analyse enactments of the public/private divide in the British military. The analysis draws upon interview participants' experiences of abuse and of help-seeking to illustrate the complex and 2 fluid ways in which the prioritisation of operational effectiveness frames and delimits the public and the private within the contemporary British military in relation to domestic abuse. The impacts of this upon victim-survivors' help-seeking experiences are discussed.

Reproductions of global security: accounting for the private security household

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“…However, given the aforementioned, folding the identity of women into their husband's life in the military produces fluid gender divisions whereby traditional gender norms are only upheld at various stages of military life. As noted by Gray (2016) in her study of domestic abuse within the British military, the divide between public and private in the military community is influenced by the processes of the institution and operational effectiveness, resulting in moments when the distinction between the public and private spheres appears porous and moments when it seems rather fixed. The relationship between public and private extends to the American case where spouses are generally relegated to the private sphere where her domestic work is not only assumed but subordinated to the work of her husband; however, her role is actually quite public within this particular community as that aforementioned extension of her husband.…”

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“…Whether in traditional media settings or in newer ones (e.g., through drone technology), feminist approaches to research on (the) media offer critical insights into issues around visibility: whether marginalized men become visible to the media when in the military (Alexander, ); the differential treatment of killed servicewomen as attached to men (husbands or fathers) in contrast to servicemen being treated as individuals, rendering servicewomen less visible (Basham, ); the mass collection of data via drones and the weaponization of the media (Franz, ); or, the fact that the typical focus on the military as being in the public (rather than merging with the private) sphere ignores the necessary contributions (often) civilian women make to keeping the military going (Gray, ; also see Enloe, ).…”