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Gender & Society
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DEGENDERING THE PROBLEM AND GENDERING THE BLAME

Political Discourse on Women and Violence

NANCY BERNS

Drake University

This article describes political discourse on domestic violence that obscures men's violence while placing the burden of responsibility on women. This perspective, which the author calls patriarchal resistance, challenges a feminist construction of the problem. Using a qualitative analysis of men's and political magazines, the author describes two main discursive strategies used in the resistance discourse: degendering the problem and gendering the blame. These strategies play a central role in resisting any attempts to situate social problems within a partiarchal framework. It is argued that this is a political countermovement to the feminist constructions of domestic violence as opposed to a serious concern about women's violence and male victims. Three major implications this resistance discourse has are the normalization of intimate violence, the diversion of attention from men's responsibility and cultural and structural factors that foster violence, and the distortion of women's violence.

Gender & Society, Vol. 15, No. 2, 262-281 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/089124301015002006
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