Power and agency: Characterisations of the female victim of family violence
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865818794804 |
| Author | Antonia Kent |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Power and agency:
Criminology
2019, Vol. 52(3) 348–367
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Characterisations of
The Author(s) 2018
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the female victim
DOI: 10.1177/0004865818794804
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
of family violence
Antonia Kent
Elsternwick, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
This article explores the divergence between how female victims of family violence characterise
themselves and how they are characterised by the police officers who respond to family violence
incidents. It posits the socially constructed nature of female victimhood and how such construc-
tions create totalising discourses which affect policy, community attitudes and even the self-
perceptions of abused women. In the following study, Michael Halliday’s lexicogrammar theory
was applied to public texts from the 2015 Royal Commission into Family Violence to facilitate an
investigation into how the names given to the actors in discourse, and the verb processes used
to describe the actions of those actors, contribute to the emergence of discourses on power
and agency. Although these discourses are used to represent the power dynamics of family
violence, they are revealed here to be at odds with the experiences of abused women, who
named themselves and their capacity to act in a variety of different, often conflicting, ways. I
conclude that new discourses need to be forged which better speak to women’s experiences of
abuse and respond more effectively and sensitively to their needs.
Keywords
Affected family members, agency, family violence, female victim characterisations, female
victim narrative, police perceptions, power, victimhood perceptions
Date received: 22 November 2017; accepted: 23 July 2018
Introduction
Since the women’s movement in the 1970s successfully propelled family violence out of
the shadows of the private sphere and into the public imagination, society has struggled
Corresponding author:
Antonia Kent, School of Social and Political Sciences in the Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne.
Email: antoniakent2@gmail.com
Kent
349
to reach consensus as to how the female victim should be framed. There has been a
tendency to regard abused women as helpless and passive, in relation to both preventing
the violence and leaving abusive relationships. However, such interpretations ignore
the reality that women resist, flee and live with violence every day. Placing victims at
opposite ends of the agency spectrum has created dramatically opposing characterisa-
tions that have sparked heated public debate, but brought few solutions to the problems
faced by abused women.
If we believe, with some feminists, that victims should be agentic, powerful ‘survi-
vors’, do we then deny sympathy and assistance to those who refuse to leave violent
partners? If some abused women are indeed helpless, will they be acknowledged as
legitimate victims in a society that, as Dunn (2012) suggests, values resistance and
autonomy? While representations of victim experiences are a powerful tool for both
social and political reform, there is a pressing need to acknowledge the sensitivities
and complexities of abuse, whilst ensuring that our ability to speak about victims in a
productive and positive manner is not impeded.
The present study seeks to reconcile two separate, but interrelated, bodies of schol-
arly knowledge, the first of which identifies the importance of language as it applies to
family violence (Berns, 2004), and the second conceives victimhood as contingent on
social attitudes and assumptions (Christie, 1986; Quinney, 1972; Spalek, 2006; Walklate,
2011, 2012.) Integrating these areas of research facilitates an in-depth examination of
how language is used to construct discourses pertaining to the female victim of family
violence. The study resists the assumption that victimhood is self-evident and ahistor-
ical, and adopts MacDonald’s (2016) suggestion to view language through a critical lens,
particularly with regards to how the act of naming is an act of power.
Two key stakeholder perspectives who presented to the Royal Commission into
Family Violence in 2015 are used in this study to explore the female victim as discur-
sively produced identity. The research is founded upon the notion that characterisations
of victims, which are often deeply embedded and unchallenged, saturate our social and
political institutions. The future of family violence reform is therefore contingent on
contemporary perceptions and attitudes.
Key terms
• Code of Practice: the Code of Practice for the Investigation of Family Violence governs
police responses to family violence in Victoria and was first developed in 2004 and
recently updated in 2017.
• Affected Family Member (AFM): a term used in policy and legal settings, which refers
to the family member affected by the events occurring in a family violence incident.
• Other Party (OTH): the other individual involved in the family violence incident.
• Primary aggressor: this term is defined in the Code of Practice as ‘the party to the
family violence incident who, by his or her actions in the incident and through known
history and actions, has caused the most physical harm, fear and intimidation against
the other’ (2017, p. 16).
• Victoria Police Family Violence Risk Assessment and Management Report (L17): the
Code of Practice requires this form to be completed by Victoria Police for every
350
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 52(3)
reported family violence incident and captures information on the incident itself, the
AFM, the OTH, risk factors and any actions taken by police.
• Intervention order (IVO): an order made under Victorian law to protect someone
from a violent family member.
Shaping family violence and victimisation
Within the scholarly literature, there is considerable consensus regarding the importance
of examining how language is applied to social issues (Dunn, 2005, 2012; Foucault,
1982; Holstein & Miller, 1990; MacDonald, 1998). Such a position implicitly responds
to several propositions about language (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). The first may be
considered a truism; that language allows us to make sense of our social world.
The second, however, is subtler; that language actively creates social realities. That is,
we use language not only to mirror the social world but also to transform and manip-
ulate it. Language structures policies, produces bodies and in doing so, creates
different realities (Foucault, 1982). When these processes are unconsciously applied to
controversial social issues such as family violence, they can become insidious.
Foucault’s (1982) claim, that language is always operating within systems and net-
works of power, is useful here. When individuals communicate ideas, they are dispersed
and interpreted in the social realm, and through this process social and cultural ideas are
constructed (Garcia & McManimon, 2011). These ideas then compete for legitimacy and
dominance, and it is through the effective deployment of discourse that these power
struggles are resolved. Through the close examination of language, we not only explore
how certain ideas are constructed, but expose the systems of power which are operating
to ensure these ideas assume the status of natural or inevitable knowledge.
The powerful influence of discursive practices is particularly evident in the slow
transformation of family violence from something that was hidden from public view,
and therefore tolerated, to behaviour that was regarded as abhorrent and deserving of
punishment (Featherstone & Trinder, 1997). Though wife abuse was outlawed in the
19th century, the law remained unwilling to intervene in what was considered a private
matter (Siegel, 1996). According to Berns (2004), it was not until the Battered Women’s
Movement in the 1970s that this response was successfully overturned. The act of
naming wife battering as a specific form of violence allowed women to contextualise
their experiences. It also successfully increased the visibility of violence to ensure that it
was no longer relegated to the domestic sphere (Kelly, 1988).
These interconnections between language and social phenomena extend to notions of
identity and selfhood. As a society, language allows us to construct categories or ‘types’
to make sense of the world around us (Burr, 2015, p. 54). It is through this lens that
victimhood has been increasingly scrutinised. According to Quinney (1972), whose work
is preoccupied with how victims of crime come to be considered as such, ‘a victim is a
conception of reality as well as an object of events’ (p. 314). That is, a person needs to be
perceived to be deserving of empathy for having suffered unfairly before they will be
considered a victim (Christie, 1986). Victimhood is, therefore, an ambiguous character-
isation; a ‘claim’ that can be granted or denied by society (Dunn, 2012, p. 16). Butler’s
(1988) post-structuralist perspective suggests that the victim is a repetitive and stylised
performance motivated by benefits and sanctions. The rewards for ‘becoming’ a victim
Kent
351
may include sympathy or access to services. Penalties may involve stigmatization or the
denial of self-determination (Merry, 2003).
The best way to frame female victims of violence has been met with considerable
uncertainty within scholarly literature. Prominent discourses have been confined to a
conflicting dichotomy in which the victim is either passive and powerless, or manipula-
tive and agentic. As the former, she is...
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