`Real' violence?: Gender and (male) violence — an Australian perspective

Based on the findings of an exploratory study this article focuses on the ways in which a group of South Australian practitioners, engaged in work with men who are violent towards their female partners, construct and understand male violence. Evident in the participants' understandings of violence is a tendency, firstly, to dichotomize violence into two `types' — that directed towards other men and that directed at women; and, secondly, to categorize violence as either `normal'/ unremarkable (male-to-male violence) or gendered (`domestic' violence). In distinguishing between gendered violence and `other' violence, such as that between men in the public sphere, the latter is constructed as `ordinary' violence, worthy of intervention in only certain, `extreme' or excessive, circumstances. It is argued that these understandings, based upon a conflation of masculinity and violence, reflect the broader context of gendered power, disciplinary knowledge and expertise, and have significant implications for the ways in which male violence is explained and addressed, and, in the Australian context, the associated marginalization of domestic violence as an area of professional intervention.