"You have to bow right here": heteronormative scripts and intimate partner violence in women
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2017
TITLE AUTHOR(S): N.Sanger, I.Lynch
KEYWORDS: LESBIANS, PARTNER VIOLENCE, RISK BEHAVIOUR, WOMEN
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 9827
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/10989
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/10989
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Intimate partner violence is increasingly recognised as occurring not only between heterosexual partners but also in same-sex relationships. Heterogendered relationship norms have been identified as intersecting with other social inequalities to create and sustain power differentials between partners 'and fuel violence' yet remain largely unexplored in relation to women's same-sex relationships. Building on existing feminist research we explore the use of gendered scripts in South African lesbian and bisexual women's accounts of relationship norms and practices. We apply a feminist poststructuralist lens to focus-group discussion data to investigate how such scripts are drawn on to either uphold or challenge violent and coercive relationship practices. The findings illustrate the salience of heterogendered norms and demonstrate how violent practices become possible in contexts of deepening socioeconomic impoverishment , such as in post-apartheid South Africa, where race, space, gender and sexuality are tied to attempts at reclaiming respectable personhood. Efforts to dismantle inequitable gendered power relations and attendant violent practices require both macro-interventions aimed at shifting structural constraints on lesbian and bisexual women's agency, as well as micro-processes aimed at scripting equal power relations between partners as desirable.-
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