Men's Gender-Role Conflict, Defense Mechanisms, and Self-Protective Defensive Strategies: Explaining Men's Violence Against Women from a Gender-Role Socialization Perspective (From What Causes Men's Violence Against Women?, P 89-116, 1999, Michele Harway and James M. O'Neil, eds. -- See NCJ-180821)

• NCJ Number: 180826
• Author(s): James M. O'Neil; Rodney A. Nadeau
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 28 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter presents a conceptual model and 10 hypotheses to explain how gender-role socialization predisposes men to violence against women; it also presents hypotheses regarding how men's violence against women is triggered.

Abstract

The authors hypothesize that the formation of a sexist masculine gender-role identity can lead to distorted gender-role schemas that produce fears of femininity and fears about being emasculated. The gender-role conflict that men experience with women can be emasculating to them and produces fear, anger, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, defensiveness, and feelings of loss of power and control. From their perspective, men develop three self-protective, defensive patterns of gender-role conflict, including power and control, restricted emotionality, and homophobia and heterosexism. The authors theorize that these patterns are activated when men experience threats to their masculine gender-role identity from women. The authors hypothesize that when these self-protective defense mechanisms break down, men's violence can be triggered. Typical triggering situations that stimulate power conflicts and abuses of power in heterosexual relationships include the use of money, jealousy, flirting, affairs, in-laws, parenting, division of labor, sexual problems, friends, career transitions, religious and moral dilemmas, unemployment, relocation, the use of alcohol, and threatened or actual divorce and separation. The more intense the conflict, the greater the possibility for psychological violence. When the man perceives he is losing power and control in the relationship, feelings of emasculation; deep, negative emotions; and threats to masculine gender-role identity can become intolerable. Under these conditions, the defenses and self-protective defense strategies that once worked become less effective, leaving the man feeling out of control with his raw emotions of fear, anger, self-hatred, and rage toward women, femininity, and usually himself. 1 table