“You’re in That Realm of Unpredictability”

Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence remains a significant problem in New Zealand with one in three ever-partnered women experiencing men’s sexual or physical domestic violence at some stage in their lifetime (Fanslow & Robinson, 2004). Internationally, men’s domestic violence toward women remains a significant issue (Garcia-Moreno, Jansen, Ellsberg, Heise, & Watts, 2006) with profound effects on women’s health (Ellsberg, Jansen, Heise, Watts, & Garcia-Moreno, 2008; Fanslow & Robinson, 2004; Ludermir, Schraiber, D’Oliveira, Franca-Junior, & Jansen, 2008). Efforts to curb such violence have turned to engaging men in its prevention (Kaufman, 2004; Pease, 2008). Pease (2008) argued that an important aspect of engaging men was the interrogation of masculinity to develop alternatives to hegemonic masculinity that are non-violent and egalitarian.

In earlier work on sexual policing of men by other men, Flood (2008) has maintained that one of the key features of gendered “support” for violence against women are homosocial arrangements. Flood and Pease (2009) stated that “gender is a consistent predictor of attitudes that support violence against women” (p. 127). This was also found in earlier work by profeminist and feminist researchers who argued for attention to patriarchy and male practices of control informed by attitudes that supported male dominance and entitlement (Stark, 2007; Yllo & Bograd, 1988). Other writers have contended that men are more likely to respond to anti-violence messages when they are delivered by other men (DeKeseredy, Schwartz, & Alvi, 2000; Flood, 2006). These arguments would suggest that a key approach for engaging men is to attend to the discursive power practices that support or “scaffold” (Gavey, 2005) violence against women and that are acted out in men’s talk. For this reason we argue that when attending to the prevention of violence against women, homosocial relational practices and the language or discursive mechanisms that support them cannot be ignored. We argue that attending to and exposing these mechanisms allow them to be resisted where they continue to exist. Equally, finding pockets of resistance that already exist within men’s talk, which challenge or disrupt the discourses that support violence against women, is an extremely important and often overlooked task (Casey & Smith, 2010).

Homosocial Arrangements

The suggestion that homosocial arrangements play an important role in helping to define many heterosexual men’s identities and behaviors has been well described within critical men’s studies. Kimmel (1996), for instance, has suggested that heterosexual men validate the “masculinity” of other men, compete for homosocial standing, and can just as easily withdraw approval and, therefore, status (see also Connell, 2005). Homosocial arrangements are often portrayed as involving commitment to a particular group of men rather than the self-disclosing intimacy often associated with women’s relationships (Nardi, 2007). For example, intimate revelations of one man to another may be sacrificed for status and to police masculine practices and cement homosocial bonds. These practices are often firmly established within the relationships between males from an early age. Oransky and Marecek (2009), for instance, have discussed the strategies adolescent boys engage in to perform masculinity. Despite experiencing a full range of emotions, they are often aware that discussing or displaying them in front of male friends is considered an indication of weakness.

Identification of such practices among some young New Zealand men has highlighted the ways in which they were reluctant to talk with other men about intimate heterosexual relationships and the problems they were having, because of the potential for their vulnerabilities to be exposed and ridiculed in homosocial contexts (Towns, 2009). As a consequence of this limited range of communication within homosocial interactions, when dealing with relationship conflict and stress, young men can often be provided with counterproductive “solutions” if their social group’s interactions tend toward reproduction of misogynistic or even proabuse discursive resources (see DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1993; Schwartz, DeKeseredy, Tait, & Alvi, 2001; Towns, 2009).

These sorts of homosocial bonding practices that silence some men have many implications for the prevention of domestic violence, as talking about such violence may offer opportunities for prevention work (see, for instance, DeKeseredy et al., 2000). Determining the discursive formulations that structure unhealthy masculine homosocial practices and the ways these enable violence against women will assist with prevention. However, these practices will be complex, relational, and built within the local histories of homosociality in a given context; thus, particular attention needs to be given to constructions of masculinity and masculine relationships at a local level.

New Zealand masculinities, like other Western masculinities, tend to be constructed as ruggedly independent. In the New Zealand context, these have been historically informed by a “crew” culture, involving strong bonds of loyalty between men (Belich, 1996; Phillips, 1996). In pioneering times, men were commonly involved in doing quite tough and dangerous work in crews or teams (e.g., on whaling ships, as soldiers, or as miners) and men’s loyalty and bonding or collective action were required for safety (Belich, 1996). The traditional form of hegemonic masculinity within New Zealand, as in Australia, emerged from these “crew” cultures, and while less prevalent today, continues to have some power in the production of homosocial bonds between men, idealizing macho strength, male dominance and entitlement, heavy alcohol consumption, male privilege, emotional reticence, and hierarchies where heterosexual men prevail over women and other men (Connell, 2005; Jackson, Gee, & Scherer, 2009; Law, Campbell, & Dolan, 1999; Terry & Braun, 2009). Within this masculine culture, men’s dominance of women is simply part of the natural social order and men are entitled to do what they like in the privacy of their homes (Adams, Towns, & Gavey, 1995; Connell, 2005; Towns, Adams, & Gavey, 2003). While dominance of this idealized form of masculine culture is waning, it still has the power to shape, as it blends with other forms of masculine expression, the identities of men within New Zealand (Allen, 2007; Terry & Braun, 2009).

The “crew” culture or homosocial bonding of pioneering days is manifested in contemporary New Zealand through the concept of mateship, which is most evident in the practices of camaraderie of the New Zealand rugby or rugby league teams, and is similarly evident in Australia where sporting prowess is valorized. It has also been found to be a dominant feature of Australian military men’s friendships (Flood, 2008). This concept of mateship, which privileges male homosocial bonding, male loyalty, and heterosexuality extends beyond the sporting field into many of the homosocial arrangements men experience, and appears to be a unique manifestation of homosociality for many men in Australia and New Zealand (Phillips, 1996).

There are clearly benefits for men in these mateship arrangements, which provide a source of connection to other men, but the more negative hegemonic practices of “crew” culture such as competition and hierarchies, status, loyalty, and homophobia remain intact. Furthermore, “crew” cultures such as those associated with some sports teams have been associated with violence toward women, particularly sexual violence (Messner, 2002). Identification with masculinities complicit with such homosocial ideals can place limits on men, preventing them from addressing important social and health issues (see Courtenay, 2000; Lee & Owens, 2002). Masculine “crew” allegiances can also produce a silencing effect when attempts are made to address negative features of masculine practices and heterosexual relationships. In a climate that privileges men, challenging masculine cultures that might produce violence is commonly constructed as “male bashing” (see, for instance, Ralston, 2007, p. 17) and diverted to focus on women’s violence against men (Pease, 2008).

These discursive responses to awareness-raising concerning men’s violence toward women can work to maintain the existing social order of male dominance and restore men’s domestic violence toward women to the private realm. For example, Towns et al. (2003) described some privacy discourses used by men who had used violence against their heterosexual partners that worked to silence talk of such violence, including “a man’s home is his castle” and “you don’t air your dirty washing in public.” The public/private divide has been described as impeding effective interventions into such violence (Bush, 1992), relegating justice to the public domain and effectively condoning the subordination and oppression of women in the private domain (Jecker, 1993). Jecker (1993) has described this public/private divide as a product of the development of the nuclear family in the 19th century and of the doctrine of gendered public and private spheres: Women’s concerns (caregiving, family, and free expression) were relegated to the private sphere, whereas men’s concerns (business, politics, and justice) were associated with the public sphere.

Discursive responses that insulate men from scrutiny about their actions in heterosexual intimate relationships effectively silence attempts at creating gendered violence awareness and work against the promotion of egalitarian relationships that protect women from such violence. Silencing theory explains the way language is used as a power practice through the strategic manipulation of discursive contexts that regulate what can and cannot be said (Theismeyer, 2003). In the context of domestic violence, the impact of these silencing effects is to maintain the existing gendered power arrangements which, for the prevention of men’s violence against women, is not acceptable (Towns & Adams, 2000; Towns et al., 2003; Towns, 2009).

Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis provides a means of identifying the ways language works to support men’s domestic violence toward women. Discourse analysis involves the close reading of texts for the linguistic resources that are present and utilized as a means to inform the research question under investigation. In the approach used to address questions about domestic violence, discourses have been understood to be part of the existing dominant social order or power “mechanisms” (Foucault, 1978, p. 86), historically and culturally constituted and productive (Adams et al., 1995). Language is therefore critically important to this approach, as conglomerates of forms of speech, phrases, commonsense statements, metaphors, and associated contradictory expressions can point to overarching dominant discourses that might otherwise go unnoticed. These dominant discourses can indicate the ways in which power operates through what are considered to be normative language practices. Part of the work of this form of discourse analysis is to identify the social and cultural supports that influence or produce the language associated with power practices. For example, using discourse analysis, Adams et al. (1995) identified the gendered rhetoric of male dominance and entitlement, which was used by men to justify and excuse their violence toward women. Towns and Adams (2000) identified discourses of perfect love and the influence of traditional love narratives that provide the cultural supports that silenced women from talking about such violence. Using discourse analysis, LeCouteur and Oxlad (2011) identified men’s use of the language of “morality” as a pivotal means for organizing and explaining their domestic violence toward women.

In this article, we describe the findings relating to mateship boundaries and loyalty from a discourse analysis of transcriptions of focus group discussions with “ordinary” New Zealand men interviewed about masculinity and the obstacles to engaging men in prevention campaigns on men’s domestic violence toward women. First, we describe the study. We then describe two themes that emerged from the analysis and that relate to homosocial arrangements: (a) the boundaries of mateship that silenced men from acting and (b) loyalty to the team. Finally, we describe the ways some men negotiated homosocial bonding to position themselves away from those mateship discourses that collude with men’s violence toward women. We conclude with the implications of our findings for prevention campaigns.

“Mateship” Privacy Boundaries and the Limits of Challenging Domestic Violence: “Cos You Would Never, Never Tell Your Mate That”

It was common within the focus groups for men to speak of the difficulty, within discursive mateship constraints, of challenging a friend who was violent toward their female partner. Often, a clear boundary between the “public” sphere (in which men’s friendships operate) and the “private” sphere (where men’s relationships with their partners exist) was implicitly (and less often, explicitly) distinguished. In the following extract, an exchange was begun by the interviewer asking the participants about challenging other men about their violence, a question promoted by some population-based campaigns:

Ioane’s explanation constituted a challenge to a mate as something that “would wreck the system,” “the bonding.” The terms “bonding” and “the whole system” were used to denote the particular formulation of friendships between his friends and himself. Within this construction of men’s friendships, relationships between men are defined by commitment to, rather than self-disclosing intimacy with, one another (see also Flood, 2008; Nardi, 2007). “Bonding” appears to be an unspoken investment in the “public” sphere, with the private sphere implicitly defined as “off limits.” Intimate friendships with another man would offer the potential for challenge of certain behaviors, but within the discursive constraints of mateship would be seen as a disruption to the boundary of normative male interactions. Feeling “uncomfortable” about this disruption was deployed as “enough” justification, a reason on its own to validate non-interference, and perhaps makes reference to the unconscious mechanisms that operate discursively to constrain mateship practices. Practices that run counter to mateship, or other traditional hegemonic masculine practices, feel “uncomfortable” because they operate outside rigid discursive boundaries often represented as commonsense or normative. Traditional hegemonic practices such as maintaining the public/private divide, on the other hand, because they are constituted as commonsense or normative, feel comfortable as they do not challenge the existing social order. This reaction is likely to be particularly salient in a novel situation where one feels out of their depth, such as finding out about a friend’s violence against their partner.

Ioane’s earlier construction, “Cos you would never, never tell your mate that. Or anyone,” suggests that speaking to one’s mate (or anyone else) about such behavior runs counter to the commitment practices associated with the masculine ideals with which he aligned himself. His emphasis “never, never” lends weight to the strict, generally unspoken, discursive rules that govern mateship practices, and which limit the possibilities for talking to another man about his gender-based violence. One interpretation of this rule is that to challenge another man constitutes judgment of another man’s “private” practices, which runs counter to mateship values that promote cohesion or “bonding” between men. At a later point, when pressed as to whether the discomfort of disrupting boundaries was enough to limit a challenge, Ioane elaborated on why this challenge might be problematic by referring to the implicit concern about a violent confrontation:

When asked to describe the obstacles to talking to a mate about his behavior toward a girlfriend, Ioane’s statement “nothing pretty much” suggests that the obstacles to challenging a friend about such behavior, when stripped of mateship discourses and reconstructed from an outsider’s perspective, may be rendered meaningless, but the cost of challenging or confronting another was potentially violence. The obstacles appeared difficult to describe, an implicit, rather than explicit, ideal for male relationships. Challenging a man’s intimate relationship practices with women, in which violence against women might operate, is constructed as entering the “personal domain” and thereby operating within an entirely distinct context from mateship, which is aligned with traditional hegemonic masculine rules enforced through the potential for violence.

In Ioane’s accounting of how male friendships operate, if a man decides to confront a mate about such actions he would. The inference, however, is that a challenge to a mate will potentially result in violent confrontation. Another man in the study, John, described knowingly entering dangerous discursive territory and suffering being beaten up in a confrontation with two young newly acquired “mates” when he challenged their potential sexual violence toward a young woman. In his account, the act of ensuring the safety of the young woman required him to actively internally negotiate mateship values (of bonding and shared heterosexual access) and the alternative ethical male practices taught by his mother. The argument is that, at least within certain constructions of masculine friendships, men need to prepare for violence if they want to confront certain mates about their violent practices toward women or if they want to practice actions that counter such violence. “Boundary crossing,” while apparently possible within this formulation, is something that some men would hesitate to do because of this unspoken, implicit threat of violence. There are implications for the safety of women and also for the well-being of those men who do not want to act unethically and according to what might be implicitly constituted as normative mateship practices, policed and enforced by violence. When the alternative to violent enforcement for these men is to collude with gender-based violence, which runs counter to basic humane practices, questions arise about how these men discursively and emotionally manage the ethical consequences, the emotional effects, and the discursive dilemmas that arise through mateship requirements.

There are other considerations associated with mateship that, at least within constructions of hegemonic masculinity, require careful expression by the men involved: That is the potential for mateship bonding to be constituted as of a homosexual nature. Rules relating to the private/public divide in these kinds of homosocial arrangements influence the form of relationships mates have, precluding intimacy while promoting commitment to the mates. Traditional hegemonic masculinity or “orthodox masculinity” (Anderson, 2009) has been described as promoting homophobia; the potential to be constructed as gay is deplored and homosexuality is constituted as violating the rules of masculinity (Anderson, 2009; Connell, 2005). Violent responses to questions about intimate heterosexual relationships, while reinforcing rules about the public/private divide, also distance the man from intimacy with his mates and constructions of him or the relationship with his mate as homosexual, thereby validating his heterosexual masculinity consistent with discourses of traditional hegemonic masculinity.

Given the notion that some men constructed the boundaries of mateship and the risk of violence against themselves as precluding them from challenging others, how might these men go about speaking about a man’s violence toward his partner? While the threat of violence appears to work to bring a man who might step outside accepted practices into line, some men spoke of “safe spaces” where the boundaries might be crossed:

Trevor distinguished between a man who approaches him about problems in his relationship and a man whom he might approach to talk about his use of family violence. He then argued that depending on who initiated the discussion, he would respond in distinctively different ways. In the former situation, he constituted his reaction as unproblematic (“Fine” “I can’t stop myself talking”). In the latter, he constituted the effect on him as risky (“it brings up all sorts of fear issues” “how are they going to react” “everything like that”). These “risk” phrases were used to raise the possibility of an unpleasant, even fear-provoking reaction on the part of the man approached, and like Ioane’s account, they portray the potential obstacles involved in a man talking to another man about his family violence. They serve to illustrate why Trevor constituted such an approach as “bloody hard.”

Trevor noted that being invited to cross the boundary was a different matter. The underlying threat of violence was diminished, and speaking about the private sphere (on the inviter’s terms) was welcomed because of the initial self-disclosure. This hypothetical scenario was reinforced by a material example from a member of the group and supplies some insight into the possible fissures in the boundaries of mateship to which Trevor and others subscribed. While discussion about the private sphere is normally avoided and constructed as extremely difficult to cross, a man wanting to talk about his “problems” gave other men license to help “fix” the issue. There was a strong sense that the rules of masculine relationships were still being followed in this hypothetical situation, and that the man being violent toward his partner still maintained some control or agency over what was spoken about and how much “fixing” was allowed. “Fixing” things would be permitted as a suitably masculine activity within traditional hegemonic discourses of masculinity.

In Ben’s construction, an approach by him to a man who uses violence toward his wife or girlfriend would depend on the relationship Ben had with the man. While acknowledging the risks, he argued that certain men might be more approachable than others:

Like Trevor, Ben differentiated between men he might successfully engage in conversation and those he might avoid talking to about this topic. He represented knowledge of the person and “equity” as providing possibilities for breaking the silence produced by the public/private divide. He differentiated between being able to approach someone whom he is able to sit down and talk to (“Hey . . . I hear that you might be having some problems”) and a “risky” situation where he did not know the man so well. He depicted violence as occurring “at a point where someone snaps” and in this rendition draws on justifications for violence as an out of control action (see also Towns, Adams, & Gavey, 1996), something he had experienced in his “upbringing,” where violent responses were normative.

By constituting men who use violence as “in that realm of unpredictability,” he draws on the man’s potential for violence. Later, he more explicitly conflates unpredictable actions with physical violence (“they’re going to lash out at you”). This potential for violence is used to explain why “a lot of guys would just . . . stand back.” With this phrase, he represented the ways most men govern their behavior in response to the potential risk of violence from another man. Many men who act in this way would not want to appear to collude with the man’s violence against his woman partner, but inaction will potentially have ramifications for the woman who may continue to experience the effects of this man’s violence without some active signal that what he is doing is wrong. Concerned men who want to act ethically in this context will presumably seek other means of intervention that will not entail harm to themselves or others.

Loyalty to the “Team” of “Men”: “I’m Inherently Wary in Any Situation That Purely Spotlights it on Males in Domestic Violence”

Another reason men suggested they would be wary of challenging other men was the suggestion they needed to be loyal to men in general. Such formulations were also tied to the notions of mateship, but in this case referenced a broader loyal relationship with all other men, setting men in opposition to all women. As such, men in this study seemed to be doing the discursive work that DeKeseredy’s (1990) male support model might predict (see also DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1993), producing and reproducing social contexts where justifications for violence against women might be drawn upon and normalized.

Public discourse about men’s violence against women in the focus groups was sometimes constructed as oppressive toward all men and therefore needing some resistance (see Crooks, Goodall, Hughes, Jaffe, & Baker, 2007, for further discussion concerning this issue). Of importance for this study was how “ordinary” men responded to the attempts made in current campaigns to engage men in the prevention of men’s domestic violence toward women. Some current campaigns in New Zealand focus specifically on men’s domestic violence toward women, and this context framed the discussion from which the following extracts were drawn. The men’s words show the ways men worked up the notion of women and men operating as gendered “teams” and the requirement that men be loyal to the “team” of all men.

In a number of focus group discussions, the participants worked to question the construction of men as those responsible for men’s domestic violence toward women by positioning women as equally violent to men. For instance, Viv drew on the “two to tango” discourse (see Adams et al., 1995) to highlight the “impossibility” of knowing how the violence occurred and whose “fault” it was:

Depictions of men’s violence toward women that involve positioning women as equally violent using the adage “it takes two to tango” have been identified in the texts of male offenders who attend stopping violence programs (Towns et al., 2003). The phrase works to justify men’s violence as a consequence of a woman’s provocation. Similarly, phrases such as “get up the nose of their husband” or “it’s like a red rag to a bull” were also found to be used by men who had used violence to describe women’s provocation and to justify and excuse men’s violent reactions (Towns et al., 1996).

Positioning women as equally violent to men ironically draws on gender equity discourses to nullify gender as a discursive interpretation of men’s domestic violence toward women. In the extract above, the other men recognized the adage and offered agreement (“oh absolutely”), also aligning themselves with the “two to tango” discourse. Most of these men did not identify as violent toward women, but they appeared to be drawing from and reproducing the discursive resources used by men who are, which suggests that these justifications are broadly held within the community. In another focus group, Finn also represented women as equally culpable, suggesting that he chose to align with men in general when thinking about the issue of violence against women:

Finn constructed the problem of men’s violence toward women as involving a conflict between equals. With these linguistic moves, he shifted the focus away from the power relationship that exists when men are violent toward their intimate women partners (Stark, 2007) and worked to nullify gender as a discursive interpretative framework for the issue. Men’s violence toward women becomes “violence in a relationship,” and the violence is removed altogether with the phrase “a conflict” albeit “on an escalating scale.” The use of the word “conflict” and the euphemism “on an escalating scale” suggests a level of discomfort with the explicit reference to violence. Finn reconstructed such violence as “a symbiosis” and “interwoven stories,” and both phrases again draw on the notion of an interaction between equals and repositioning the interaction away from a relationship of power. His utilization of the word “dysfunctional” suggests problems with these interwoven stories, but again avoids referencing any relationship of power typical in the context of men’s domestic violence toward women.

Further work on positioning women as equivalent to men in the context of domestic violence occurs through Finn’s work on harm. While Finn does not completely gloss over the difference in strength between men and women, he positions them as “equal” through the use of the phrase “two creatures,” which allows him to address the question of harm. His acknowledgment of the context of this research being men’s violence toward women is made through his reference to “blokes who damage physically,” but he does not make any reference to the woman as the recipient of this violence and so avoids acknowledging any explicit harm that the woman may have experienced. The situation of the comment “damage happens emotionally as well” after the reference to physical harm that “blokes” do, sets up a contrast between these forms of harm, and in so doing allows the listener/reader to infer that it is women who are doing emotional harm. Other participants similarly made gendered references to men being physically violent and women being “equally” emotionally violent. In these accounts, any gendered account of harm is discounted because women engage in acts that are harmful too, although there is material evidence of greater harm experienced by women (Stark, 2007).

Finn also used the extreme case formulation (ECF; Pomerantz, 1986) “always” when referring to the “symbiosis” of this interchange of violence, placing emphasis on the word. ECFs work in conversation to make an argument more persuasive by using extreme judgments of a given scenario (Edwards, 2000; Pomerantz, 1986). In this case, the implication of its usage is that men’s physical violence always exists in relation to women’s emotional violence. One cannot exist without the other; therefore, solely blaming men for violence is overly simplistic. The references Finn makes to “passive aggressive” and “co-dependence” are not explicitly assigned to men and women, but are also gendered in that they are commonly used to describe women’s acts rather than men’s.

This gender-nullifying effect further reinforces loyalty to mateship and the team of men (the victimized “bad bastard”) who are now represented as in opposition to the team of women (the glorified “good woman”). The constructions of equal violence and harm run into some difficulty at a realist level as they conflict with evidence that most physical violence that women experience from male partners is accompanied by emotional violence designed to control (Jacobson & Gottman, 1998; Pence & Paymar, 1993; Stark, 2007), and therefore men are implicated in the use of emotional violence as well as physical violence. It also relies on the acceptance of the other group members and interviewers that somehow “co-dependence” and “passive aggressive” actions can be equated with physically hurting somebody. Despite these difficulties, Finn was able to continue this occasioned explanation without censure from other members of the group. This lack of challenge from the group might represent the effective silencing he has produced through his linguistic maneuvers and manipulation of the discursive context, and the resultant production of ambiguity about who is responsible for men’s violence toward women. The men’s silence has ramifications for the issue of violence toward women associated with (elite) men’s sports teams and their performances, where some men are complicit with, and party to, sexual violence toward young women (Robinson, 1998). Their silence could also be indicative of another obstacle to men’s talk of this issue. Connell (2005) has argued that men’s guilt about being a man occurred for some men when confronted by concerns about such gendered practices. One participant openly spoke of his own feelings of guilt about all men’s violence when explaining why some men attempt to shift responsibility away from men’s violence toward women’s harmful actions.

Rhys more explicitly made reference to all men and all women operating in opposition to each other:

With the statement “if you’re advocating on behalf of women then you’re almost on their side,” Rhys explicitly positioned men and women as in competition and drew on notions of men’s loyalty to the team of all men. The interviewer then invited Rhys to reflect on this idea of competition with her question about winning and losing, and Rhys responded with a question that depicted the encounter as the consequence of “a power struggle.” He then suggested that the problem of violence occurs due to women trying to resist the power and dominance men have over women, and presumably also in society more generally. While he did not explicitly blame women with this statement, and in fact simultaneously offered some blame of men (“the male . . . they always want to know they are, higher than a woman”), the implication again is one of violence being a consequence of men and women operating in a dysfunctional manner together, and there being a team divide of “sides.”

In the following, Viv discussed this same issue of the positioning of men and women, when men’s domestic violence toward women is explicitly focused upon, referencing the interaction as a “game”:

Family Court statistics in Aotearoa/New Zealand indicate that at least in relation to the seeking of protection orders, men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence and women the victims (Families Commission, 2009). Viv’s construction of this issue as one that is “overdone” raises questions about how the material reality and gendered nature of domestic violence might be raised when men such as Viv and Finn constitute this gendering as implicating all men as perpetrators and all women as victims. In a very tangible way, they are demonstrating loyalty to a particular “side” of the issue, and often do so while other men around them remain silent or even agree with their assessment of the situation.

The phrase “blame game” again situated men and women in opposition to each other. With this construction of a “game” involving men and women, Viv evoked the notion of winners and losers, of a competition between men and women who attend the Family Court. In this way, violence against the women in question was depicted as a side issue, not as key to the situation as the gender politics that are on display. Viv argued that these politics are “based on feminist ideology,” constructing the portrayal of men as perpetrators of violence in the Family Court as not being based on fact, but rather produced by feminists promoting a particular ideological point of view. By this reference, he implicated feminists in the blaming of men for violence toward women, and “feminist ideology” as inherently negative and anti-men. Viv aligns himself with the opposite side, that of men, even men who likely are perpetrators of violence against women.

In the following construction, Finn’s loyal adherence to the “team” of “men” appears to prevent him from being able to isolate some men as offenders, and any attempt to address domestic violence becomes constructed as a threat to the moral integrity of all men. This positioning of all men being perceived as perpetrators was explicitly articulated:

In this construction, the inevitable positioning of all men as the offender in any discussion of domestic violence (which is perpetrated by a minority of men) evokes questions of men’s moral standing, which is problematic for some men. This construction drew on the idea of domestic violence as gendered and all men as potential offenders to locate aligning with either men or women in such campaigns as a moral decision. Due to the risks of being “cast in the role of an offender” simply by being a man, Finn suggested that men will avoid the issue (in discussion, but potentially in challenging another man’s violence) as they are “terrified.” Indeed, as we have seen here, some men in Aotearoa/New Zealand have openly stated their discomfort with or opposition to violence against women campaigns such as White Ribbon Day because, in their view, the campaigns cast all men as perpetrators.

Within the accounts of Finn and many other men, the underlying notion of loyalty to the “team” is constructed as a “truly masculine” moral response, but it remains grounded in a discursive dilemma. By supporting men in general, they are not at risk of losing validation from other men, and thus the basis of their masculinity, which has very old historical foundations in Western cultures and patriarchy that ascribed moral superiority to men and evil to women (Holland, 2006). The flipside of this is that by aligning with all men, they risk being supportive of men’s violence against women. Even as they criticized the gendered approach to violence, many of the men were also quick to point out that they themselves were not inclined that way. Some men were able to articulate their non-alignment with men’s violence toward women with examples of discursive and material practices that valued women, suggesting a way forward for prevention.

Negotiating “Mateship” Boundaries and Loyalty: “It’s Not What I Want and I Don’t Associate With People Like That”

As noted, loyalty to the team came with a price: It often created an ideological dilemma (Billig, 1991) as men in the focus groups had to attend to a careful balance between identification with their “mates” (which may include “all men”), but not identification as an offender. Within many forms of masculine sense-making, men give validation to other men’s masculinity (Kimmel, 1996). Women are often constructed as unable to do this (except perhaps indirectly through sex), so when a rhetoric of “sides” exists, alignment with women in the area of domestic violence has the potential to make a man’s masculinity suspect. However, most of the men were careful not to align with offenders in general, often speaking of these men as “other” to themselves and the masculinity with which they identified.

Alex, who openly distanced himself from traditional patriarchal values, described this “violent man” in contrast to himself and his friends:

Alex depicted men who use violence toward their women partners as a certain “type” with whom he does not want to associate. This statement suggests that he associates such men with a certain form of masculinity that Alex is readily able to identify, but with which he does not align. With the statement, “This is how I treat my wife, this is how you should treat your wife,” he used directly reported speech to more graphically illustrate the invitation such men make to others to engage in the sort of reprehensible behavior they use toward their wives or girlfriends. This reported speech allows him to depict such men as working within certain strict rules of gendered conduct, which they attempt to enforce on other men. Reported speech is normally used in a fashion similar to scientific discourse, to lend veracity to an account, doing so by evoking the context of the original discussion (Holt, 1996). In direct reported speech, the person speaks using the method of active voicing to quote a person directly. This gives a factual reading (or hearing) to the account and also works to give a sense of objectivity to the current story, accentuating its status as verbatim recall (Abell & Stokoe, 1999).

By articulating his response to such an invitation (“No. You don’t, no I don’t”), he was able to demonstrate a way to resist being drawn into a masculinity that supports gender-based violence and his determination not to collude with such an invitation. The statement also worked to distance him from the values of such men, situating him in opposition to the practices of men who identify with masculinities that support violence against women. His final statement, “I wouldn’t try to change that person,” leaves open a number of interpretations—for instance, that such a person would not change if confronted or, given the nature of the man that he alluded to earlier, that avoiding any further confrontation would avoid the potential for violence.

In this account, Alex appeared to show some awareness of different expressions of masculinity. He referred to himself in terms that align with Wetherell and Edley’s (1999) ordinary masculinity, contrasting himself (and the men he would chose as friends) with a more negative expression embodied by “others.” This formulation had something in common with John’s account; John commented that “better mates can steer you one way, or bad mates can steer you another way.” These men signaled a distinction between the mateship discourses described earlier that depict all men as members of the same team. In Alex’s and John’s constructions, there are other ways of being a man and of mateship than those that have all men using or excusing gender-based violence. Such accounts provide examples of resistance within the talk of men who may not necessarily identify as profeminist (in contrast to the men in Casey and Smith’s [2010] study), but may still position themselves as anti-violent. These data suggest that there are stable discursive structures for resisting talk that supports violence against women within “ordinary” men’s talk.