“Becoming a Better Man”

Abstract

Childhood emotional abuse (CEA) is the most common and psychologically harmful form of child abuse. While there has been attention to how gender discourses and power relations frame other forms of interpersonal violence and abuse, there has been no research into the gendered dimensions of CEA. This article reports on the findings from a qualitative interview study with men who have these backgrounds. The study was framed by a poststructural feminist understanding of gender, discourse, and power and R. W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity and social practices of gender. Narrative-discursive analysis revealed a powerful discourse about “becoming a better man” in spite of abuse through practices of hegemonic masculinity, particularly the control of emotion and prevailing over abusers. The article considers the positive and negative implications for abused men’s subjectivities as well as those for women and wider gender power relations. The article also considers gender-aware approaches for social workers and other professionals working with individuals who have these backgrounds.

Childhood emotional abuse (CEA) is the least well-known but most common and psychologically harmful form of interpersonal abuse. While research into the negative impact on mental health of childhood sexual and physical abuse is well-established, CEA has only gained attention more recently. There is now growing evidence that it, too, has a serious negative impact on mental health for many individuals, perhaps even more so than other forms of abuse (Cheavens et al., 2005; Ip, Samra, et al., 2007; O’Dougherty Wright, Crawford, & Del Castillo, 2009). Much of the existing research into CEA and mental health is psychological and focuses on the individual vulnerabilities of abused individuals, taking a gender-neutral approach with little attention to the social contexts within which abuse takes place. While there is a sizable body of theory and research into the gendered aspects of emotional socialization (e.g., Seidler, 1989; Sanchez-Prada & Delgado-Alvarez, 2014), there has been little engagement with these ideas by researchers focusing on CEA. There is also a body of research that considers masculinities and men’s experiences of child sexual abuse (e.g., O’Leary & Gould, 2010; Kia-Keating, Grossman, Sorsoli, & Epstein, 2005), but there has been little specific examination of men’s experiences of CEA and how gender discourses and power relations might also frame experiences of this form of abuse. Lastly, feminist researchers have investigated the gendered dimensions of other forms of interpersonal violence and abuse, but as yet there has been no attention to CEA from feminist scholars. Moreover, most feminist research into violence and abuse understandably focuses on the impact on women (Buchanan, Wendt, & Moulding, 2014; Gavey, 2005; Reavey & Warner, 2003; Warner, 2009; Wendt & Zannettino, 2015). The research reported in this article is therefore the first attempt to elaborate the gendered dimensions of CEA for men and to consider the implications for subjectivities and mental well-being.

Constructing CEA

CEA cannot be understood as a single, universal phenomenon because, like all forms of interpersonal abuse, it is framed by specific social relations of gender, race, and class (May-Chahal, 2006). Bernstein and Fink (1998) define CEA as “a verbal assault on a child’s sense of worth and well-being, or any humiliating, demeaning or threatening behaviour directed toward a child by an older person” (p. 2). In essence, CEA involves a repeated pattern of damaging interactions of commission and omission conveying a sense of worthlessness, being unloved, flawed, unwanted, in danger, and conditional regard (Glaser, 2002). Emotional abuse is also an inherent part of all types of interpersonal abuse (Boulton & Hindle, 2000). Prevalence studies show that CEA is the most common form of child abuse (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2014; Stoltenborgh, 2012) and is the most strongly linked to the later development of mental health problems (Schneider, Baumrind, & Kimerling, 2007). In a review of studies from around the world, CEA was reported at a prevalence of 36% (Stoltenborgh, 2012). There were 53,666 cases of substantiated child abuse in Australia between 2012 and 2013, with 38% involving emotional abuse (AIHW, 2014). CEA is more commonly reported by women and girls, and women are also more likely to report mental health problems down track (Berzenski & Yates, 2011; Harper & Arias, 2004). In contrast to child sexual abuse and intimate partner violence, where most perpetrators are male and victims are female, both men and women perpetrate CEA, with fathers reported as slightly more likely to be perpetrators (Sedlak et al., 2010).

There is a sizable body of psychological research that links CEA to poor mental health in adulthood, although not for all abused individuals (Glaser, 2011). Adult mental health conditions that have been associated with CEA include anxiety and depression (Spertus, Yehuda, Wong, Halligan, & Seremetis, 2003), post-traumatic stress disorder (Spertus et al., 2003), personality disorders (Johnson, Cohen, Brown, Smailes, & Bernstein, 1999), eating disorders (Kennedy, Ip, Samra, & Gorzalka, 2007), and schizophrenia (Cheavens et al., 2005). Some psychological studies into CEA, particularly those focused on PTSD, suggest that childhood trauma leads to difficulties in emotional regulation and interpersonal relations (Schoedl, Costa, Fossaluza, et al., 2014). Other studies are concerned with identifying the “mediators” between abuse and mental illness, including “maladaptive schemas” such as vulnerability to harm (O’Dougherty Wright et al., 2009). These and other psychological studies also describe powerful feelings of shame, worthlessness, humiliation, and anger on the part of abused individuals (e.g., O’Dougherty Wright et al., 2009). Emotional abuse directly supplies the child with a negative sense of themselves, such as feeling “I am worthless” (Sachs-Ericsson et al., 2010, p. 492), and can be understood as an attack on another’s psychological integrity (Krause, Mendelson, & Lynch, 2003; Schoedl, Costa, Fossaluza, et al., 2014). However, the mediators and emotions identified in this research are commonly treated as signs of psychological dysfunction and as relatively fixed cognitive and emotional “styles” in the individual, detached from any wider social context. As such, then, abused individuals become positioned in psychological discourse as psychopathological, and the gendered, classed, and raced aspects of these experiences remain hidden.

A small number of studies have specifically examined the gendered dimensions of psychological and emotional distress in CEA in an effort to explain why it appears to be more damaging to women. Harper and Arias (2004) specifically explored gender and shame in CEA in the United States; they found that women tend to experience overt shame and internalized feelings of self-blame, sadness, and depression, while men tend to experience bypassed shame, that is, denied shame and externalized feelings of anger and hostility. Similarly, Berzenski and Yates (2011) found that girls in the United States were more negatively impacted by CEA, with shame and feelings of low self-worth important to this. Also in the United States, Downs and Miller (1998) found that fathers’ physical and verbal abuse predicted mental health problems in daughters but not in sons, while mothers’ abuse did not predict problems in either daughters or sons (Downs & Miller, 1998). These findings point to differences in the perpetration and impact of CEA according to gender, but the authors do not attempt to theorize this further. As with all quantitative research into CEA, these studies use predetermined scales to group abusive behaviors together, such as “hostile rejection” in the Psychological Maltreatment Inventory (Harper & Arias, 2004) or “being insulted or sworn at” in the Conflict Tactics Scale (Downs & Miller, 1998). This means that the actual content, manner, and context of CEA are rarely elaborated in-depth: What is said and done, how, by who, and in what context therefore remains largely hidden from view.

The above studies do not attend to the gendered social context in which abuse takes place, either. A study by Hopton and Huta (2013) in the United States specifically examined treatment for men abused in childhood from the perspective that in order to understand gender differences in emotional distress following childhood abuse, it is necessary to examine the context of gender socialization. The authors draw on Pleck’s (1995) observation of a “masculinity ideology” in western cultures based on expectations of emotional control, achievement, antifemininity, and homophobia (Pleck, 1995). This is similar to Seidler’s (1989) view that the control of emotion and the denial of sexuality are central to the construction of masculinity. Pleck (1995) went on to develop a theory of “discrepancy strain” as the distress men can feel when they perceive that they have failed to live up to their internalized male code, often experienced as hidden shame. Hopton and Huta (2013) argue that the combination of traditional male gender socialization and childhood abuse (including sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse) creates “toxic amplification” of the typical gender role strain experienced by men and resulting self-blame and self-denigration (Hopton & Huta, 2013).

Previous research into masculinity and childhood abuse is largely based on psychosocial theories of gender or sex role socialization that aim to develop universal theories about the effects of abuse on men. Taking a sociological perspective, Connell (2005) theorizes gender as “a way in which social practice is ordered” which is generated within gender relations (p. 71). Connell argues that masculinities (and femininities) involve internal contradiction and disruption and are not fixed in time and place. But at any given time, there is nonetheless a “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell, 2005). Connell (2005) borrows from Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as “the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in social life” (p. 77). Connell argues that hegemonic masculinity is “the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (p. 77). Within this approach, then, masculinities are theorized as arising from dynamic and changing intersubjective gender relations within a wider gender order that, while not fixed, involves the domination of men over women. With its acknowledgment of gender power relations and the multiple and shifting nature of gender identities, it is Connell’s conceptualization of hegemonic masculinities that primarily guides the analysis of men’s narratives of CEA presented in this article. This analysis will also include consideration of the implications for social workers and other helping professionals who often provide counseling and support to individuals who have histories of CEA: as yet there has been no attention from within social work to the gender and other social dimensions of CEA and the implications for practice. The research reported on in this article seeks to address this gap.

Method

This article reports on the findings from a research study which explored the gendered dimensions of individuals’ experiences of CEA. The study sample included nine women and four men. The men’s narratives are the focus of this article: analysis of the women’s narratives appeared in an earlier paper (Moulding, 2017). Participants were invited into the studies through advertisements in newspapers and on campus. The advertisement invited individuals to participate if they had experiences of emotional or psychological abuse as children or adolescents and explained that interviews would focus on how individuals understood CEA to have impacted on their mental health. As expected, it was far more difficult to attract male participants, with just four men responding, all of whom were interviewed. However, while the sample is small, the study nonetheless provides some important preliminary insights into how men describe and experience CEA. Participants were involved in 1- to 2-hr interviews that were recorded and fully transcribed. Interviews were held in my university office. Interview questions included asking participants about the CEA and any other forms of abuse they had experienced, how they understood the CEA, the impact of CEA on them in childhood and as adults, and how they managed this. The study was not advertised as having a focus on gender, and no questions were directly asked about gender, but where participants volunteered gendered ideas or experiences, gentle probing questions were used to encourage further explanation. As part of conducting the research in an ethical manner, I was aware of the potential for participants to become distressed during or after interviews. The act of narrating experiences of abuse can be experienced as “retraumatizing” by research participants (Moulding, 2016). I took care to ask questions in a sensitive way, paused the interview if a participant became upset, and was prepared with referral information is needed. Only one participant experienced emotional distress during the interview but, like other participants, he reported primarily finding it helpful to narrate his experiences to an interested and supportive listener.

All of the men presented as heterosexual. Two of the men were under 25 years of age, and two were aged between 40 and 55 years. Two men described their backgrounds as working class and two as middle class. Three men had Anglo-Celtic backgrounds and one a South-East Asian background, although he was second-generation Australian. All of the men were undertaking university studies. This, along with their Australian cultural backgrounds, meant that these participants were probably better placed to reflect on their experiences and offer quite sophisticated narratives than some other groups of men without these advantages. In three cases, participants described their fathers or stepfathers as emotionally abusive, with two fathers also portrayed as physically abusive. None of the men described their mothers as abusive. One participant reported emotional and sexual abuse from his older sister. The participant with a South-East Asian background also described race-related peer bullying.

The study was theoretically framed by a poststructural feminist understanding that gender inequalities are reproduced in historical, social, and political discourse (McNay, 1992, 2004; Weedon, 1997). As has been argued by Weedon (1997), language is “the place where actual and possible forms of social organization and their likely social and political consequences are defined and contested…it is also the place where our sense of ourselves, our subjectivity, is constructed” (p. 21). Subjectivity is therefore produced in a range of discursive practices which are very often highly gendered, and the meanings of these can be understood as sites of struggle over power (Weedon, 1997). As noted, the research was also framed by Connell’s concept of gender practice. Connell (2005) talks about “doing gender,” arguing that gender is interactional and “a way in which social practice is ordered,” so that “when we speak of masculinity and femininity we are naming configurations of gender practice” (pp. 71–72). In drawing on poststructural feminist understandings of gender and power, and Connell’s concept of interactional gender practice, the study approached discourse, social practices, and gender power relations as inherently intertwined, with subjectivities understood to be situated and intersubjective (McNay, 2004).

Narrative analysis was used to analyze the interview data (Riessman, 2008). The analysis operated at two levels. First, it attended to how the men narrated and constructed subjectivities in the context of abuse, including the discourses they mobilized to explain the impact of abuse. The experience of abuse is arguably a feminizing one in that it is women and girls who are more generally seen as its “natural victims” (Warner, 2009) while the position of “abuse victim” conflicts with dominant notions of masculinity (Hopton & Huta, 2013), perhaps including the idea that a male should be able to protect himself from abuse. Examining how men construct CEA and its impact can therefore throw light on how gender discourses frame individual understandings of abuse and the relationship to subjectivities. Second, the analysis also attended to how gender discourses, practices, and power relations constitute CEA itself, as depicted in the men’s narratives. The analysis therefore engaged with both the discursive and the material dimensions of CEA in line with McNay’s (2004) theoretical concept of situated intersubjectivity. I undertook an initial thematic analysis of the interview data (Braun & Clarke, 2006) both across and within individual narratives. Next, I rewrote individual stories into biographical accounts, so that their overall structure could be examined (Riessman, 2008). Narrative analysis explores not only the “what” of language but also “how” and “why” experiences are told in certain ways, including the cultural resources individuals draw on and what is achieved through telling in particular ways (Riessman, 2008). As part of attending to the symbolic aspects of identity, I noted how individuals actively constructed and performed their identities within narratives and interviews, and I identified the discourses and related social practices involved in this. One important element of this involved consideration of the gendered nature of the interview context itself, particularly with a female researcher interviewing male participants. As pointed out by Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2001), the research interview represents an encounter in which masculinity is potentially threatened because interviews are controlled to some extent by the interviewer. This may be particularly so if the interview includes a critical perspective on masculinities where gendered assumptions are questioned (Schwalbe & Wolkomir, 2001). Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2001) point to men minimizing emotion and giving limited information in interviews as a way of maintaining a level of control. I attempted to manage this by asking questions in ways that centered their perspectives and interests, as well as by (gently) asking the men directly how they felt about certain experiences, as advised by Schwalbe and Wolkomir. The men offered detailed and rich responses to my questions; however, they also tended to describe their emotional reactions to abuse through predominantly masculinized feelings and behavior. The fact that I am a female researcher may have enhanced this tendency to perform a masculine identity, although this does not mean that the men did not experience abuse in this way (Schwalbe & Wolkomir, 2001). Schwalbe and Wolkomir (2001) argue that the influence of interview context, including the researcher’s gender, is not necessarily problematic if the interviewer is alert to how it might be affecting participants’ “identity work” and attempts to take this into account. In the Discussion section, I consider where and how the context of the interview may have affected the men’s self-presentation. The following analysis includes extracts of talk from participants to illustrate key themes as well as some paraphrasing of the stories to provide context and narrative structure. Pseudonyms are used to protect participant identities.

Results

The following analysis reveals the centrality of hegemonic masculinities in the men’s narratives of CEA and explores both the advantages and disadvantages of these for men’s subjectivities and gender power relations. The analysis works at the two levels described earlier in unpacking the gender discourses and practices the men drew on to construct the impact of abuse on their lives and in identifying the gender discourses, practices, and power relations constituting the abuse itself. Initial thematic analysis identified three main themes across the narratives about the nature of CEA and its impact on participants: sport, work, and “being the man”; controlling emotional responses to abuse; and “becoming a better man.” In the first theme, the men portrayed the abuse they had experienced as structured around stereotypical discourses and practices of masculinity, including being pushed to achieve in sports and abuse focused on achievement in work and studies. Connell (2005) identifies these realms as central to hegemonic masculinities. In the second theme, the men center practices of emotional control in their descriptions of the psychoemotional impact of abuse. This is consistent with the insight that hegemonic masculinity establishes its power through the idea that it embodies the “power of reason” as opposed to “irrational,” feminized emotion (Connell, 2005). The last theme constructed abuse as an inherently competitive social practice between the abuser and male victim, with the victim ultimately vanquishing his abuser and becoming a better man by prevailing and winning.

Sport, Work, and Being the Man

Analysis of the first theme, “sport, work, and being the man,” demonstrates how CEA experienced by males can be constituted through specific discourses and practices of hegemonic masculinity in stereotypically masculine realms of endeavor. Lachlan is in his early 20s and middle class. He experienced CEA from his father from childhood into his late teens. Lachlan described significant abuse focused on playing football, his father’s “favorite game.” Lachlan admitted that in spite of excelling at football, he did not very much enjoy it, particularly as he got older and developed other interests, but he felt he had no choice in the matter. However, the time came when he wanted to give it up:

With any other parent I think that they’d say, do what you want to do, and this turned into a very, very big problem, which I think this is where the abuse actually really started big time…. I wanted to stop playing football. My father acted like an absolute animal for a couple of years and he actually didn’t let me stop…. It was all about him…. I got tonsillitis, right?…. [and he was] using profanities and things like that, he forced me to go…. the way that he treated me was like a dog, almost like, you know, he just wanted me to play, he didn’t care that I was [sick]…he was just really cold towards me, like a dog [that] we assume doesn’t really have the emotions that a human being does that are really complex.…He wasn’t being a father, basically…. No empathy whatsoever. And that is only one example. And I think that example pretty much illustrates that many other things that he did were along those lines. It was all about him because of his dissatisfaction with his life, led to out-lashing on other people, particularly me, being the eldest son it often just came out on me. (Lachlan)

Lachlan described being treated “like a dog” that “doesn’t really have the emotions that a human being does,” drawing on a discourse about human rights that enabled him to position his father’s behavior as a fundamental transgression and morally wrong. More specifically, while Lachlan’s father is depicted as tough and harsh on the surface, he is seen to be fundamentally weak underneath, projecting his sense of worthlessness onto his son by “out-lashing on other people, particularly me.” Lachlan later described his father as “the appearance of a man” rather than a “real man,” with the incapacity to manage and control emotions and behavior tantamount to a complete failure of masculinity. The management of emotion is therefore presented as central to what it means to be a man. There are similar themes in Paul’s narrative. Paul portrayed much of the emotional and physical abuse he and his brothers experienced at the hands of their father as concerned with success and failure in the worlds of work, study, and male social groups (or “mates”). Paul’s background is working class, his family migrating from Britain to Australia in the 1960s when he was a child, and his narrative is framed by this historical class background. Paul described the nature of his father’s attacks on his sons:

The thing about my dad is—I won’t say never but he wasn’t physically violent on a lot of occasions but enough to keep you scared. And he would threaten it, like he used to say “I don’t smack my kids, I punch them with the fist”…he would give us lectures…he would berate you, he would call you, he would tell you that you are never ever going to amount to nothing…. All you’re going to be is a labourer. This was his way of encouraging you to study hard and get a job…. And his favourite phrase was “You are nothing” and he would usually say it at the top of his voice two inches away from you, nose to nose. (Paul)

Paul depicted his father’s abuse as framed by a working-class discourse that presupposes limited achievements and aspirations for working class boys (Stahl, 2014). However, like Lachlan, Paul also explained his father’s accusations of impending failure as very much a function of projecting his own sense of worthlessness and failure onto him (and his brothers) rather than deficiencies in himself:

He had no self-esteem of his own because he had ruined his life and he knew it through the drinking…. And his way of getting any self-esteem, because he couldn’t build himself up, was…[to] level the playing field because if I’m here and they’re [the sons are] down here…. I’ll pull them down…but of course, typical of an alcoholic, his friends thought he was the best thing out under the sun. Oh he was fantastic. (Paul)

Paul went on to explain how his father had to be “the man”:

He’s got to be the man. And he used to boast about us kids in front of his mates. He had to sit there, because he used to take us down the pub but he had to babysit us because mum was working and he wasn’t, he would take us to the pub and you had to sit there and listen to him brag on you to his friends and you’re thinking “But when I get home you’re going to call me useless and an idiot and beat me up” and you think…. And that was so hard because you couldn’t say anything to him. (Paul)

Paul spoke of his father’s behavior with disdain. Like Lachlan, he presented his father as a failed man because he had “no self-esteem” and took this out on his sons. He also portrayed him as pathetic because he publicly bragged about his sons while bullying them in private. Lachlan and Paul also emphasized the fact that their families were financially dependent on their mothers’ paid work as a further illustration of their fathers’ inadequacies both as fathers and as men. In both cases, then, the fathers were seen to be weak men because they were not supporting their families and because they were not in control of themselves and their feelings. As noted earlier, the control of emotion is central to hegemonic masculinities: In these accounts, Lachlan and Paul’s fathers represent a failed masculinity that violently projects itself onto others in order to retain some semblance of power and control. The control of emotion was central to the other two narratives, too, but more in terms of how the men described managing the emotional aspects of abuse.

Controlling Emotional Responses to Abuse

Ben and Henry specifically focused on the control of emotion as central to the way they managed the impact of abuse. Ben is in his 40s. He primarily experienced race-related bullying from peers as a child and teenager, but also harsh treatment from his step-father, including a victim-blaming response to the bullying. Ben said that he would “shut down” in response to the abuse but, inside, it would be “a big ball of fire” that he would “condense” and that “it would be red…the red would be hot and then…. I’d just [go] like ‘grrrrr’.” Thus, Ben would be angry but he would push this feeling down until it later erupted. Henry is in his 20s. He was emotionally and sexually abused by his older sister, and he explained how he taught himself to deal with his feelings toward her by plunging his hand into scalding hot water:

I remember one thing I kept doing when I was younger was I would fill the bathroom sink up with like really hot water and stick my hand in it, and I found that the longer you could hold your hand in the water, the more control you had over yourself, and therefore the more control you could have over your emotions. So, I basically managed to shut off most of my emotions until I was about 22, 23’ish. (Henry)

Henry called this self-harming practice “dissociation from my feelings,” and this was depicted as a way of gaining mastery over emotion. Henry went on to describe himself as “sociopathic” and as having developed violent sexual dreams because of the emotional and sexual abuse. He said “the violent impulses sort of progressively got worse, and then…I kept going, yeah no, I’m not going to turn around and belt that fuckwit [my sister], and eventually [it] just started…my dreams instead.” Thus, the dreams are understood to have started because he repressed his urges to be physically violent toward his sister, although he said he later used violence against her to stop the abuse once he had grown bigger than her. Below, he explained how he began to use drugs to suppress the violent dreams:

Well, one of the reasons I started smoking weed when I was near the end of high school is because of the dreams I kept having. I understood the theory behind, or the idea or whatever behind having sex dreams, like as a release and a cathartic thing. My dreams were like something out of Friday the 13th. Q: Okay, so quite violent? A: Quite violent, very, very vivid and realistic. And I never woke up with like a hard-on or anything like that, but I did always feel calm, relaxed and happy the next morning. Q: Okay, so they didn’t leave you with feelings of fear or, you know, discomfort? A: No, I quite enjoyed them. I quite enjoyed them, which is why I started smoking weed because it stopped me dreaming. Q: Okay, so why did you want to stop them then, if they had a relaxing effect? A: Because I kind of wanted to do it while I was awake. Q: Okay, so, how did that make you feel? A: Like it was a really bad fucking idea. Q: So that did frighten you or it concerned you? A: Yeah, more concern than frightened because I didn’t want to, well, it’s not like I didn’t want to kill people around me it’s more that I didn’t want to suffer the consequences thereof. (Henry)

As can be seen above, when I probed further into what it was that made Henry want to suppress the dreams, he said that it was because he did not want to “suffer the consequences” of killing rather than because he saw it as wrong or upsetting to hurt people. He expanded on this by adding that he would “never feel a drop of guilt” if he had acted:

It’s not something I’m going to go and do. I mean I know I could do it and never feel a drop of guilt about it, or anything like that. Q: Really? A: Yeah. Q: Explain that. A: I don’t know. Q: How do you know that you wouldn’t feel a drop of guilt? A: Because I’ve imagined doing it and just…go ‘cool, what would this feel like to do that, nope, wouldn’t care’…so I’m pretty sure I could do it and not care, but it’s not something I’m going to go and do. (Henry)

This lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse is in part why Henry sees himself as sociopathic and why his psychologist agrees with this diagnosis. Henry’s dreams and impulses are now under control through treatment, as is the ongoing depression he experiences. Ben also talked about how he learned to “shut out” things in his life as if “switches go off and on.” Related to this, he also talked about learning how to get what he needed from people in a very instrumental way because of his experiences of abuse:

This idea of positive attitude had started, you know, from quite young because I’d also lynched onto people who would have said something which gave a…because I didn’t have a father. Well I did, my stepfather but he didn’t really say much at all…but what I used to do was I used to take what I needed, and what I wanted and I was very aware what I was doing, very aware…. Even if it’s just one thing a day from one person. I see people as Lego and I would just take the piece that I need, you see, and when I was…and I would then build up my idea about what a man should be. Q: You’d take the bits that were useful to you? A: Yeah exactly. (Ben)

Ben portrayed people as objects that he uses to get his needs met, seeing himself as entitled to do this because “I didn’t have a father” and this allowed him to “then build up my idea about what a man should be.” Ben depicted a calculated process of drawing on others in order to “become a man” in the absence of a father figure and positioned himself as entirely aware and in control of what he was doing, even proud of it. He went on to say, “I feel very emotionless within my…relationships. I really don’t feel anything.” He also described many of the women he had had relationships with as “just too much hard work.” Ben therefore presented himself as emotionally detached from others, including his female partners. While both Ben and Henry described their abuse-related lack of emotion as bringing certain advantages through detachment from others, their narratives also involved a level of concern that this was not “normal,” with Ben hoping that he could have successful intimate relationships in the future and Henry clearly worried about himself.

Another distinctive way that the men talked about managing the emotional impact of abuse was by laying blame entirely with their abusers. All of the men depicted themselves as realizing from a relatively early age that they were not to blame for the abuse they endured and that, instead, the problem lay entirely with their abusers. Along these lines, Lachlan described coming to realize by adolescence that his father was “actually a fairly angry guy but I still could never really challenge the notion that it was his own doings that led him there.” He also saw himself as, “absolutely, completely innocent, I haven’t done anything.” Paul described trying to please his abusive father by working hard at school but when he brought home a positive school report and his father failed to acknowledge it he said, “something just clicked inside my head. It was just ‘you’re wasting your time’.” Henry portrayed his sister as entirely responsible for his abuse, describing her earlier as “a fuckwit.” Ben described a powerful realization that he was on his own at 12 years of age after being blamed by his unsupportive stepfather for race-related bullying from his peers:

[My stepfather] said, “What did you do? You must have done something wrong.” And I just looked at him like, what would you know, you’re one of them [white people] anyway. [I] went to my room and I had this epiphany, I sat in my room and I said “Well, you come here alone and you leave alone and stuff just happens in the middle” you know? (Ben)

For Ben, it was contra mundo—him against the world—reflecting masculinity discourses about separateness and detachment from others as well as the lonely experience of racial bullying in a predominantly white community. Locating the responsibility for abuse entirely with their abusers can be understood as a masculinized practice because it involves an externalization of emotion, although this does not mean that the men did not also experience hidden shame and self-blame (Harper & Arias, 2004; Hopton & Huta, 2013). Nonetheless, it did mean that talk of self-blame, guilt, and shame was completely absent from the men’s narratives, which contrasted sharply with those of the women. I will consider later how gender identity work and the act of narrating CEA in an interview context may have played a part in this.

Becoming a Better Man

As noted earlier, the men’s narratives included a discourse about becoming a better man in the face of CEA. In the above analysis, Ben referred to “building up his idea of what a man should be” in the absence of a father. Lachlan and Paul talked about vanquishing their abusive fathers and surpassing them as better, more ideal men. While Ben and Henry’s chief abusers were not their fathers, their narratives also included not dissimilar themes of prevailing over abuse and abusers. For example, Henry earlier talked about vanquishing his abusive sister through physical violence once he had grown bigger than her. In setting the scene for vanquishing his father, Paul characterized the abuse he experienced as fundamentally competitive in nature. He said, “for him to encourage you, to say you can study…would mean that he was saying that you were better than him and he couldn’t do that.” Paul’s father was therefore presented as using abuse to prevail over, and be superior to and better than, his sons. Paul added that his father could not acknowledge when he won an apprenticeship, the pinnacle of success in his father’s eyes, because “it was more like ‘I’ve told you’re not going to get an achievement, now you’ve gone and got one…you can’t do that to me’.” Paul went on to talk about surpassing his father in having gone to university, and he also talked with some satisfaction about reaching a greater age than his father, having earned much more money and being much more successful in his work than his father:

They weren’t turning points but they were the best moments in my life in regards to my father—one was when I turned 50 because he didn’t make it that far and when I—and I realised this—and I didn’t do the maths until later when I was at university but I realised when I left work I was earning in excess of five times what he would have ever earned in the best years of his life…But I worked out my dad probably never got over $20,000 in his entire life…. It still would be three or four times of what he got…and now…Well this [time at university] is my second time to succeed. (Paul)

Paul also talked about the importance of his Christianity and the leadership role he has taken at his church in helping others to manage their lives as part of his success in managing his own difficulties. Lachlan’s narrative similarly drew on a discourse about vanquishing his father. He went on to describe how once he had grown in size, “it got to a point where he knew, like almost like a coward, he would intimidate me physically and would hit me when I was younger, but as I got older it was like, ‘Do you want to go?’ you know? I don’t think so, not any more.” Lachlan went on to describe how matters eventually came to a head:

As I was finishing [the final year of school] things got really bad between myself and my father, simply because as I was getting more intelligent and becoming more open to how the world actually is and how adults should behave, I realised that what he’s doing is just not on…because of [my studies] my eyes were being opened to the world and I realised that my father’s got big, big problems. And it was at that stage where I was almost—it was a desperate attempt on my behalf to try to challenge him to make him see his wrongs, but he would always battle me and defend his position. Q: so you were starting to buck up against each other? A: Oh, locking horns all the time…[he would say things] to me and I’m absolutely, completely innocent and I haven’t done anything. I think, [I] just snapped…. So we got into a bit of a fight, and then the day after, I think it continued on and locking horns over something, and then he threatened me and he said, ‘oh’ you know, ‘I’ll put your head through the wall’, or whatever and I’m like, ‘Yeah, well fucking bring it on’, you know, ‘do you want to go?’…I was, I’m 18 at that time. Q: So you’re fully grown? A: Oh yeah, bigger than I am now, because of sport and things like that, and that’s not right behaviour. That’s not, you should never, ever resort to physical violence to solve your problems, but it’s like the father against son, things just blow out of proportion sometimes and, ultimately it’s the father’s responsibility, but he doesn’t, he’s incapable of dealing with things on a proper level. (Lachlan)

Lachlan’s talk about “locking horns” with his father draws on the analogy of stags in the wild fighting for supremacy, and how it was “the father against the son” because his father was “incapable of dealing with things.” Lachlan presented himself as effectively stepping into the corrective, parental role, judging his father’s behavior and striving “to make him see his wrongs.” However, he also retaliated physically because he had grown taller and stronger than his father. He went on to say that his father later apologized to him, but that:

His apologies were never really the apologies that I wanted. I wanted him to be proactive and be a man and be a father and come before me and confess that he made mistakes and he’s not proud of them but he’s going to work towards being a better man, and I never got that. It was almost like a submissive defeated apology. (Lachlan)

Lachlan went on to say that he has become a Christian and has forgiven his father: “I’m working toward slowly just forgiving him and trying to maintain some kind of contact with him, even though our relationship can’t be what I would hope for, as a son to a father.” A little similarly to Ben earlier, Lachlan also asked himself in the absence of a positive father figure, “What is it to be a man?” He went on to say that “I don’t think I would have been the man that I am today if it were not for all the lessons that I’ve chosen to learn and gain from that abuse.” He clarified that being a man means “to be the leader, to be a teacher and to be strong” and “to see things for what they are, to have the courage to admit your failures.” Lachlan also said that there are “the soft skills of being a man,” too, such as needing to be “intimate…there are times that you have to put your pride away, listen to people, take what they have to say seriously, be empathetic to their emotions.” Lachlan clarified that women “can be just as strong as men are” but that they are “more vulnerable” and that “men are given certain qualities that help them be there [for women]…they stem from the primal qualities of like being able to shut certain parts of your mind off when you need to deal with problems.” Thus, Lachlan drew on a discourse of natural gender difference that positions men as more rational and as better able to control their bodies and emotions than women (Connell, 2005).

Lachlan, Henry, and Ben all understood themselves as having gained an additional advantage in controlling emotion through their experiences of abuse. Ben went even further, saying, “I think I’ve clearly walked the path of destiny and I think that [it] was one of these instances that if I couldn’t handle it, it might not have come.” Ben therefore believes that he was abused because he is especially strong and he went on to say how he has gone on to “champion the underdog” and has adopted aspects of Buddhism to “teach people how to be positive.” Further to this, Ben described how he now interacts with others as a result of this learning:

I will tell you in no uncertain terms, using my eyes and using my tone of voice, because it’s a practiced technique, and tell you that you’re just not to do that ever again and that will be it because you know I’ve always been [through my work], the three C’s, clear, concise and correct. When I speak to you, this is how I’m going to speak to you and because I need it done like this, like that, okay? (Ben)

Ben saw the abuse he experienced as enabling him to learn particularly well how to command authority and control over others, using his body through the tone of his voice and eye contact in his interactions with others. In Lachlan, Paul, and Ben’s narratives, then, prevailing over abuse and abusers, and becoming men who are strong, in control of themselves, and are guides to others, is central to becoming better men.

Discussion

The men’s narratives of CEA involved significant gendered dimensions including depictions of abuse focused on stereotypically masculine areas of endeavor, an emphasis on learning to master emotion through self-control, a laying of responsibility with abusers, the use of physical violence in response to abuse, and discourses and practices of competition, vanquishing the abuser and becoming “a better man.” Accounts about becoming a better men were specifically constructed as redemptive narratives, where the painful event of abuse is “redeemed, salvaged, mitigated, or made better in light of the ensuing good” (McAdams, Reynolds, Lewis, Patten, & Bowman, 2001, p. 474, cited in Thomas & Hall, 2008). The men’s narratives also included themes of quest, with adversity presented as a major personal challenge requiring the individual to be “more than they have been” (Frank, 1995, p. 128). The valued identities that the men strived for in their narratives clearly aligned with hegemonic masculinity through the idealization of individual responsibility, rationality, emotional control, and emotional detachment (Connell, 2005; Gill, Teese, & Sonn, 2014; Pleck, 1995; Seidler, 1989). Other valued characteristics about leading and guiding others more specifically reflected the religious beliefs and practices of three of the men. Lachlan’s narrative also included a positioning of women as naturally more emotionally vulnerable while Ben portrayed women as emotional “hard work.” This, and the more general idealization of emotional control across the men’s narratives, is characteristic of the distancing from and devaluation of the feminine that is so central to the establishment of hegemonic masculinities (Connell, 2005).

Themes about emotional control and achievement have been previously identified in the wider masculinity literature on normative expectations of masculine gender role (see, e.g., Kilmartin, 2007; Levant & Kopecky, 1996): This study has shown how these themes can specifically play out in CEA experienced by males. The discourse identified in the analysis about becoming a better man and prevailing over abusers has not been previously identified in the literature on masculinities, and it adds further insight into how men can mobilize hegemonic masculine identities to manage the impact of abuse in ways that women cannot. This consistent valuing of emotional control, rationality, emotional detachment, and competitiveness across the narratives in part reflects the fact that, in spite of shifting sexual politics in western societies over the past five decades (Franzway, 2016), there continues to be fewer questions about what is valued in a man than there are for women. However, it is also important to consider that in the act of narrating the experience of CEA to a female interviewer, the men may have (unconsciously) emphasized hegemonic forms of masculinity to safeguard and preserve their performed identities as men (Schwalbe & Wolkomir, 2001). In their wider day-to-day lives, it is possible they engage in a broader diversity of masculinities that are not necessarily hegemonic. Nonetheless, though, masculinity was presumed to be a unitary and fundamentally good thing in the men’s narratives where to be “a good man” was something worth striving for, bringing positive self-identity, social status, and benefits. Underpinning this is a male-centered conceptualization of gender and identity, with “manhood” and “personhood” taken to be entirely synonymous with each other (Pease, 2010). The rhetorical device used by the men throughout their interviews of naming themselves as “men” rather than as “persons,” and talking about how to be “good” or “better” men, reflects this male-centered assumption. The women never named themselves as women nor talked about how to be good or better women, referring to themselves only in gender-neutral terms. This is interesting because it has been argued within feminist theory that it is women who can never appear as nongendered subjects (Weedon, 1997). In participants’ talk about themselves, it was only the men who presented themselves in heavily gendered terms. In deploying the cultural sleight of hand of male centeredness, where a person is a man and a man is a person (Pease, 2010), the men were simultaneously and inevitably reinforcing their personhood when they built up their masculinities.

In contrast, most of the women struggled to find a positive sense of self for many years after abuse, with the negative and contradictory nature of the femininity discourses and practices they had encountered largely serving to undermine identities. Hence, there was no counterpart discourse about being a “good or better woman” because “femininity” and “womanhood” carry with them a host of potentially negative meanings and practices that undermine personhood and socially valued identities (Wirth-Cauchon, 2001). Perhaps somewhat obviously, then, there was no “better woman” discourse in the women’s narratives because there is no “hegemonic femininity,” reflecting the fact that women continue to be subjugated in gender power relations and particularly so through experiences of abuse. As such, “no win” femininities often left the women with the impression that they were somehow to blame for their abuse and that there was something fundamentally wrong with them (Moulding, 2016). It is noteworthy that while contemporary women continue in their struggle to be treated as persons and the equals of men, we find men distancing themselves from women by talking about themselves first and foremost as men. This discursive tactic is a subtle and effective way of excluding women from full consideration of personhood, rights, and entitlements in the face of continuing claims to these privileges. I am not suggesting that individual men are necessarily consciously aware that this is what they are doing, though, when they use “masculinity” as shorthand for “personhood.”

While the capacity to draw on hegemonic masculinities, particularly practices of controlling emotion, enabled the men to use power and control in ways that brought personal and social benefits, this does not mean that they did not suffer through abuse because they did. Paul experienced severe depression for many years and Henry lives with the marginalized and pathologized identity of “sociopathy.” There is not space to elaborate this further here, but because Henry experiences a quite extreme level of emotional detachment as well as sexually violent fantasies, his narrative involved less celebration of masculinity than the others and a more obvious struggle with identity and depression. This research is qualitative and the sample is small, so it cannot make claims about the prevalence of mental health problems between the men and the women as a result of the gender discourses and practices constituting abuse. Nonetheless, it was certainly the case that in line with aspects of Harper and Arias’ (2004) findings, there was much more emphasis in the women’s narratives on the so-called internalizing problems of shame, guilt, and self-blame as well as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm, and dissociation. While two of the men had struggled with their mental health, the so-called externalizing practices of emotional detachment and anger toward abusers were also common to all the men’s narratives and almost entirely absent from the women’s. There is evidence that individuals who attribute maltreatment to factors external to themselves do better than those who attribute it to internal factors, such as rejection of themselves as “bad” people (Doyle, 2001). What this analysis shows is how processes of attribution can be framed by gendered social discourses and related practices. However, while the men did not describe internalized emotions of shame, low self-worth, and practices of self-denigration to the same extent as the women, this does not mean they did not experience them. As identified in previous research, abuse-related shame is often hidden or denied by men (Harper & Arias, 2004; Hopton & Huta, 2013), and this needs to be taken into account by social workers and other helping professionals, particularly if sexual abuse has occurred in addition to CEA (Hopton & Huta, 2013). However, what this research study has shown is not only that men’s emotional reactions to CEA can differ from women’s but that the actual abuse itself can be distinctive in terms of its gendered content, orientation, and gendered social context, inviting different responses from men and women.

These findings have implications for how we as practitioners approach helping and supporting men who are struggling with the consequences of CEA. Three of the men who participated in the study had consulted with helping professionals about their struggles after abuse. In Paul’s case, it took many years for the practitioners he saw to eventually connect his emotional breakdown with the abuse he had experienced as a child and to shift their approaches accordingly. There is a growing awareness among professionals about the role of abuse-related trauma in the backgrounds of individuals with mental health problems and the importance of trauma-informed care (Kezelman, 2011; Kezelman & Stavropoulos, 2012). However, much mainstream mental health practice takes a “gender-neutral” approach to childhood abuse (Moulding, 2016). The findings emphasize the importance of approaching practice with individuals who have experienced abuse through a gender-aware lens that situates abuse-related emotional distress in its gendered social context. This includes awareness that men’s experiences of abuse-related shame and other negative emotions are often hidden. More recently, there have been developments in therapeutic approaches for men who have experienced childhood abuse including emotional abuse. Hopton and Huta (2013) report on the Men and Healing Program in the United States, which integrates a male-centered focus into trauma treatment. This includes attending to the effects of abuse on emotions, development, identity, gender socialization, relationships, and processing traumatic memories. The program also provides opportunities for men to renegotiate their ideas about masculinity to find ways that allow them to feel positive about being a man. Hopton and Huta (2013) also emphasize the need for practitioners to acknowledge that men’s and women’s actual experience of abuse are distinctive, not just their reactions to it. Importantly, though, as social workers we need to move away from fixed binary conceptualizations of masculinity and femininity, so that we can better support individuals as persons who live in diverse contexts characterized by fluid and shifting gender identities and relations. Social workers and other professionals also need to work together with parents, policy makers, and the wider community to address the prevention of all forms of childhood abuse, not just sexual and physical abuse (Larkin, Felitti, & Anda, 2014). This should include developing meaningful relationships with the children and families at risk of CEA and other forms of abuse, so that therapeutic work can take place in addition to practices of risk assessment (Ferguson, 2016).

This research purposely placed gender at the center of investigation because of the lack of attention to CEA and masculinities. The analysis included some attention to how gender intersects with race and class, but this was not its main focus. A limitation of the study was that it did not fully attend to how race and class intersect with gender in CEA. Future research could examine and compare men’s experiences of CEA across a diversity of cultural and class backgrounds.

Conclusion

This article represents the first attempt to examine how gender discourses, practices, and power relations both constitute CEA and frame men’s responses to it. The analysis showed that discourses and practices of hegemonic masculinity were central, particularly a centering of emotional control. While this brought some benefits to the men, it also risks entrenching male gender identity within a relatively traditional hegemonic masculinity. As practitioners who support individuals with histories of abuse, it is crucial to bring to our work an awareness of the gendered nature of abuse and its emotional implications in men’s and women’s lives. This includes placing persons at the center of practice rather than heavily gendered identities hinged on traditional notions of masculinity and femininity. As is widely recognized by feminist scholars, traditional gender identities and power relations are often highly disadvantageous for women in terms of mental health and well-being while, at the same time, denying men’s emotional vulnerabilities. CEA appears to be a profoundly gendered experience and working in this area offers important opportunities for helping individuals challenge the gendered practices they have been subjected to through abuse as part of forging more satisfying subjectivities and relationships in their everyday lives.