“Wherever There's Men,it can Happen”: Constructions of Violence Against Women by Young Adults in Ireland

Abstract

Given the growing concern about perpetration of violence against women (VAW) amongst young adults, this article examines how a sample (n = 27) of Irish young adults (18–24 years) construct the term VAW. Participants drew on personal experiences to describe the term and were cognisant of the gendered perpetration of domestic, psychological, and sexual violence. A group of participants, however, constructed narrow understandings of VAW that did not align with their routinized experiences of unwanted touching and sexual microaggressions. We call for initiatives to enable young adults to name and link together different forms of VAW.

Despite significant legislative and policy developments, violence against women (VAW) remains “a global public health problem of epidemic proportions” (WHO, 2013, p. 5). In a European Union (EU)-wide survey, a cohort of 18–29-year-olds reported greater levels of sexual harassment, physical and/or sexual violence, cyber stalking, and real-life stalking than older age cohorts (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2015). These trends are mirrored in Ireland, with a recent survey finding that 27.7% of 6,026 undergraduate students attending Irish Higher Educational Institutions had experienced sexual violence (Burke et al., 2020).

These statistics warrant an understanding of how younger adults construct and make sense of VAW. Such understandings are an important part of prevention work (Harris et al., 2015; Sundaram, 2013). Given also the importance of putting a name to experiences (Boyle, 2019; Harris et al., 2015; Sundaram, 2013), this article explores how a nonrepresentative sample of 18–24-year-olds in Ireland constructs and perceives the term “violence against women.” This issue has been significantly underresearched in Ireland, with there being only one, two-decade-old Irish study (Dublin Women's Aid, 1999) that explored how young people construct interpersonal violence. The data in this article comes from an Irish cohort of young people gathered as part of a European multicountry research project called PositivMasc, ¹ involving the four countries of Ireland, Israel, Spain, and Sweden. The aim of the project was to explore the discourses that people aged 18–24 in these countries use in their understandings of gender and VAW as well as to ascertain their views on how men in this age group may be supported in combatting VAW.

In the PositivMasc study, we focused on men and women between the ages of 18–24. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines young people as falling between the ages of 10 to 24 (Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, 2017). For the purpose of this article, we use the term “young people” to describe ages 10 to 17 and “young adults” to describe the age range of the sample in this article (18–24) but we recognize a lack of consensus by experts as to such definitions (Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, 2017).

Our article is informed by feminist insights which interrogate how “naming practices make more or less visible who is doing what to whom, and foreground different sets of connections” (Boyle, 2019, p. 21). As such, the article sensitizes us to the meanings young adults attach to VAW and the factors and assumptions that moderate how they come to understand these meanings as they do. As per similar studies (e.g., Anitha et al., 2021; Chung, 2007; Haglund et al., 2019; Jeffrey & Barata, 2017; Valls et al., 2008) on how young people and young adults understand experiences relating to VAW, data analyzed here is not generated from a representative sample (see the “Limitations” section for further discussion) but is intended to contribute to theoretical generalization (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). It provides original insights in that it is, to the best of our knowledge, the first-time young adults have been explicitly asked in qualitative research about their perceptions and understandings of the term VAW. This is significant as the term VAW is political in its calling out of women as experiencing disproportionate levels of violence and in its recognition that women are often the victims of violence because they are women (Boyle, 2019).

Drawing on 27 qualitative interviews with young adults in Ireland aged 18–24, we highlight their naming of men as the main perpetrators of VAW and their recognition of domestic, physical, psychological, and sexual violence. However, we also highlight how some participants construct narrow understandings of VAW which are inconsistent with their disclosure of experiencing and witnessing microaggressions and “everyday” (Boyle, 2019) forms of sexual microaggressions.

What's in a Name? Theorizing and Conceptualizing VAW

As Boyle (2019) contends, identifying a universally understood and accepted term that captures a myriad of violent behaviors enacted upon women is complex and remains the subject of ongoing debate (see also Frazer & Hutchings, 2020). Different definitions moderate how violence is understood and approached (Sundaram, 2013). In this article, we align ourselves with feminist sociological theorizing which emphasizes that the term VAW acknowledges gender and gendered power relations as a “fundamental factor in any analysis of violence against women” (Lombard & McMillan, 2013, p. 8).

Feminist perspectives have enabled women to speak about and name their intrusive and violating experiences (Boyle, 2019; Frazer & Hutchings, 2020; Kelly, 1988). This has led to a conceptualization of violence as a “continuum” (Kelly, 1988), which we believe is helpful in understanding young people and adults’ construction of VAW. This continuum emphasizes the “common character” of violence that women experience, namely “the abuse, intimidation, coercion, intrusion, threat and force men use to control women” (Kelly, 1988, p. 76) and is useful for encapsulating broader ranges of abusive experiences than those ordinarily recognized in dominant definitions of violence which conceive violence in legal terms (Tinkler et al., 2018) and where individuals associate violence with acts that produce “severe consequences” (Rousseau et al., 2020). We also recognize recent expansions of the term, for example, the “continuum of image-based sexual abuse” (McGlynn et al., 2017), which recognizes the use of technological and cyber-based platforms to enact VAW.

In keeping with the continuum concept, which does not imply any linearity of seriousness (Kelly, 1988), we also recognize “microaggressions” (Gartner & Sterzing, 2016), or “everyday” (Boyle, 2019, p. 25) forms of violence, as constituent elements of a broad understanding of VAW. Naming these microaggressions helps to reduce their tolerance (Sundaram, 2013) and can function as a form of consciousness-raising as individuals come to understand the injustices they have experienced (Fileborn, 2019). In keeping with feminist contentions, we argue against narrow definitions that focus on “infrequent, ‘high-severity’ forms” (Gartner & Sterzing, 2016, p. 492) of violence, which normalizes microaggressions against women, and aligns perpetration to individual pathology rather than deeper systemic gender inequalities (Boyle, 2019; Frazer & Hutchings, 2020). Such definitions inhibit upstream prevention strategies for tackling these microaggressions before they escalate into more legally actionable offenses (Gartner & Sterzing, 2016). This understanding of VAW links the micro and seemingly individualized and disparate violence experiences of women, to an overall problem of gender inequality.

How Young People and Young Adults Construct VAW

We specifically set out to interrogate and trouble young adults’ understandings, perceptions, and constructions of the term VAW. The only previous study which inquired into young adults’ construction of VAW is Harris et al.'s (2015) quantitative telephone-based study with a 16–24 age cohort. In that study, young adults (n = 1,923) were asked to use a Likert scale (from a list of six responses) to indicate which acts constituted “a form of violence against women” (Harris et al., 2015, p. 17).

Research on how young people and young adults construct terms related to VAW has asked about perceptions of “violence” (Sundaram, 2013), “aggression” (Tinkler et al., 2018), “dating violence” (Black & Weisz, 2005; Bowen et al., 2013; Sears et al., 2006), and “domestic abuse” (McCarry, 2009). With the exception of Tinkler et al. (2018, see below), these aforementioned studies comprise samples of ages between 11 and 17 years, with studies on older cohorts (e.g., 18–24 years) lacking, but they do provide sensitizing insights into how and why young people make the constructions they do. Studies find that young people can identify a broad range of behaviors that may constitute examples of violence and abuse, but their perceptions of situational factors and contexts moderate their labeling of such behaviors as violent (Lehrner & Allen, 2018; Sears et al., 2006). Jealousy, for example, has been labeled as abusive by young people if it occurs frequently or if it occurs alongside physical violence (Sears et al., 2006). Young people's construction of what constitutes “violence” is also moderated by the perceived severity of the violence (Bowen et al., 2013; Jeffrey & Barata, 2017).

Gender has also been shown to influence how young people construct violence. For example, men's violence has been shown to be constructed as abusive if the intent behind it is perceived to be negative, such as being underpinned by anger or intention to hurt (Lehrner & Allen, 2018; Sears et al., 2006), while young people aged 14 and 17 in Sears et al.'s (2006) study named young women's use of physical violence less as women were constructed as physically weaker than men (Sears et al., 2006).

Lombard’s (2013) work highlights the relational and temporal frameworks young people aged 11 and 12 use in moderating their perceptions of the “realness” of violence. Lombard's participants constructed violence that occurred among young people themselves including peers and siblings, as “‘dummy fighting,’ ‘pretend,’ and ‘unreal’” (Lombard, 2013, p. 1141). Boys defined “real” violence as something enacted by adult men and distanced their own behaviors from the label of “violence.” In contrast, while girls reported experiencing boys’ fighting as “real and name it as such” (Lombard, 2013, p. 1), the lack of adult validation meant they minimized it and constructed “real” violence as something that occurs in adulthood.

The nonnaming and labeling of sexual violence is also a common theme in research (Rousseau et al., 2020). As mentioned previously, only one Irish study (Dublin Women's Aid, 1999) has explored young people's perceptions of any form of violence. That mixed-method study (survey and focus groups) found that young people (aged 14–19) constructed rape as a very severe act involving force “plus additional violence, plus being held down, plus not wanting to have sex” (Dublin Women's Aid, 1999, p. 18). Similarly, in their in-depth interviews with young adults (aged 21–25) about aggression, sexual violence, and violence, Tinkler et al. (2018) found that participants construed “true” aggression with the infliction of physical pain. The participants did not correlate “violence” or “aggression” with their personal experience or witnessing of unwanted kissing, touching, or grabbing in public drinking venues. The young adults’ responses in that study “revealed an understanding of violence and aggression that conforms to the way the law reacts to sexual assault and harassment” (Tinkler et al., 2018, p. 41).

These studies show that young people and young adults construct violence through a range of cultural assumptions and beliefs relating to normalization, perceptions of harm, and whether such violence is validated by others as worthy of public concern. Our article adds to this literature by specifically focusing on the term VAW and focusing on an older cohort of young adults, a cohort whose understanding of VAW and cognate terms has been less explored. In the sections that follow, we discuss young people's narratives to interrogate their perceptions about perpetration of VAW, what types of acts constitute VAW, and where VAW takes place in Ireland.

Method

Recruitment and Sample

The data in this article were collected as part of the PositivMasc multicountry research project involving Ireland, Israel, Spain, and Sweden and focuses on responses from the Irish cohort of young adults. A total of 105 interviews were conducted with young adults aged 18–24 across the four countries, 27 of which were from Ireland. All countries aimed to conduct in-depth interviews with around 10–15 young adults and to organize four focus groups. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, our initial aim of conducting focus groups in Ireland was abandoned and was compensated by the recruitment of more participants for one-to-one telephone interviews.

The in-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with the Irish cohort between January and May 2020. Twenty-seven young adults (12 men and 15 women) aged 18–24 and living in Ireland for at least five years were interviewed. Fourteen interviews were conducted face to face, 12 through telephone (due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions) and one participant wrote an email response to the questions in the interview guide due to discomfort with the prospect of being interviewed. All participants are self-selected for the interview. Twenty participants were recruited via a paid Facebook recruitment advert. They led to the recruitment of five further participants via snowballing. One participant self-selected through an email advertising the study which was sent to all students at the University where the researchers are based, while another participant was recruited via a youth worker who is part of an advisory board for the project. The latter two recruitment methods were utilized for convenience sampling (Bryman, 2012). Before COVID-19 restrictions, the paid Facebook advertisement was targeted only to those within a 25 km radius of the University. Upon moving to telephone interviews, the advert was adjusted to target numerous cities and rural areas in Ireland.

Each country had differing rates of recruitment and different recruitment methods. ² For example, the Swedish team had received ethical clearance to offer a gift token to compensate for participant’s time, but we did not ask for it due to this being generally considered inappropriate by the University Research Ethics Committee in Ireland. In Ireland, recruitment was slow and took place over five months. Both the Facebook and email advertisement specifically named that the study related to “violence against women” and “young men's role in combatting violence against women.” It is possible that some young adults who saw the advertisement felt less familiar with the term than with terms such as “domestic violence,” “intimate partner violence,” or “dating violence” and thus, perceived the topic as less relevant to their own lives. Recruitment of young men also lagged behind that of young women. It is possible the explicit linking of young men to VAW might have been perceived as threatening to young men or as demonizing them (Carline et al., 2017), resulting in less men coming forward to discuss a topic such as VAW where their own gender is implicated in the problem.

The Irish participants lived in urban, rural, and suburban areas and identified their highest level of education as a mixture of secondary and third level. The interview duration was between 50 and 80 minutes. All names used here are pseudonyms and ethical approval was granted by the social research ethics committee of the university in which the research was based.

Questions

The interview guide explored topics such as young adults’ perceptions of gender relations in Ireland, their attitudes and perceptions of VAW as elicited through the use of vignettes, and their ideas on young men's roles in combatting VAW. The guide specifically explored how they perceive the term VAW itself. Participants were asked what comes to mind when they think about VAW; what acts or behaviors may be associated with the term; where VAW takes place; and their perceptions of who perpetrates VAW. The semistructured format facilitated further exploration of issues as they arose within the discussion. At the end of each interview, participants were also asked if there were any other issues they wanted to raise.

In this article, we make brief reference to the two vignettes (see the Appendix) depicting hypothetical scenarios of abusive situations which were included in the interview. These were read out to participants in a later segment of the overall interview, and they were asked to respond. What we term the “house party” vignette refers to a scenario where a young woman is touched on the buttocks at a house party without her consent. The “image” vignette refers to a scenario whereby a young man posts a nude photo of his ex-girlfriend online.

Analysis

All interviews were transcribed and inputted into the NVivo12 software package. The transcripts were predominantly analyzed using structural coding and subcoding methods (Saldaña, 2016). Structural coding involves the use of preconceived codes (which are open to redefinition throughout the coding process) to quickly code data based on a prior research question (Saldaña, 2016), namely, how young adults perceive the term VAW. Subcoding was then used to capture the detail of participants' answers to these questions and a list of codes falling under their respective “parent” structural codes was developed (Saldaña, 2016).

Results

Who Perpetrates VAW?

The participants in our study generally linked VAW to men as perpetrators, although there were variations in how explicit they made this link in terms of both naming men and the extent to which men were constructed as exclusive perpetrators of VAW. One participant, Siobhan (female, 22), captures the explicitness of naming men as perpetrators: “Wherever there's men, it can happen.” It was apparent in the interview that personal experience had very much informed Siobhan's view:

I’ve had a million and one bad encounters that were in some way or shape sexually or physically, you know, inappropriate and it has always come from men. It hasn’t happened from a woman once.

Explicit and implicit invocations of personal experience were a strong element of participants’ narratives around the question of perpetration. One of the participants, Eoin (male, 18), acknowledged that “anyone can become an abusive partner.” Despite this neutral construction, he implicitly invoked men as the main perpetrators of violence as he recalled his personal experiences of having witnessed socionegative behaviors that only involve men as perpetrators.

Other research (McCarry, 2009) has found that both young men and women can neutralize domestic abuse as a gendered phenomenon, and while both young men and women in our study noted that in a “technical” sense women can also perpetrate abuse, it was young women who were particularly assertive about this. For example, three young women argued that women can “almost be the worst” (Anne, female, 18) or, as both Laura (female, 23) and Emer (female, 18) remarked, be “just as bad.” For example, Laura initially said, “I suppose it's always the man,” when discussing perpetrators of violence, but then drew upon the Caroline Flack case (a deceased UK-based public figure who was arrested for alleged violence toward her male partner) to argue that women can also abuse both men and other women, as Flack was “slated” online by other women for her alleged violence. The personal experience of witnessing violence within her family enabled Sarah (female, 18); however, to take a slightly different perspective, in which she suggests that Flack's alleged violence could have come from her own possible experience of abuse: as she explains, “maybe he [the boyfriend] was mentally abusing her for her to go and hurt him then.”

Laura (female, 23) also drew attention to how women may comment on “every single thing that another girl is wearing,” pointing to women's use of disparaging verbal comments against other women. Similarly, Anne (female, 18) was particularly keen to highlight how women can abuse other women in the context of same-sex relationships and distinguished between men's and women's commentary about women's bodies. She stated that men engage in objectification whilst women engage “in actual criticism about another woman's body,” which “produces insecurity and damages self-esteem.”

When asked in various ways about who may perpetrate VAW, Emer (female, 18) was particularly adamant that she has seen “a lot of abuse on both sides” and reiterated that she holds this view despite having been a victim of “domestic abuse all year round” herself. Emer directly invoked her gender and her personal experience of violence to argue that women are “probably” more psychological in how they deploy abuse (see McCarry, 2009; Sears et al., 2006 for discussion of this) “because we’re just very insidious people, like, we’re very vindictive people … we just know how to get under the skin faster.” These observations of how women might engage in violence indicate a nuanced but gendered construction of violence perpetrated by women against women. Consistent with the literature (e.g., Bowen et al., 2013; Sundaram, 2013), when women are invoked as perpetrators, the participants in our study perceive them as perpetrating psychological/emotional abuse against men and women rather than engaging in physical and sexual forms of violence.

Other participants employed what we call a gender-critical framework, where they constructed VAW as a consequence of an imbalance of power between genders. When asked about how he perceived the term VAW, Michael's (male, 22) immediate response was “taking advantage of someone vulnerable. Toxic masculinity,” which he later defined as “feeling you can justify certain behaviours because you’re a man.” While Aaron (male, 23) associated VAW narrowly with domestic violence, he also contextualized it as underpinned by an overall dynamic of unequal power relations where “the woman would be under the cat's thumb basically, the way the Irish phrase goes, where it's like he is superior, she is inferior … ” He believed the term VAW is suited to describing situations where the man's violence stems from his intention to maintain a “status quo,” based on the man's assertion of his authority, or to punish what he perceives to be the woman's gender transgressions.

While women spoke about young men's “entitlement” in relation to sexual violence and how “men are conditioned to objectify women” (Anne, female, 18), it was young men who adopted a more gender-critical framework in terms of constructing perpetrators as men who exploit contexts where “there is an inequality of power” (Darragh, male, 19). Drawing on his personal experience of having worked in a bar, for example, Seán (male) recounts times when he had to stop a “fella going at a woman.” He linked the term VAW with “men [who] feel they have the right almost to do whatever they want.”

In summary, the majority of participants invoked men as perpetrators of VAW, though there were some disclaimers to this, and young women interestingly tended to invoke violence perpetrated by women. In discussing who perpetrators VAW, participants also invoked personal experiences in forming their constructions.

What Counts as VAW?

Physical and Domestic Violence

All participants linked VAW in some way to physical violence. Almost half immediately linked physical violence/abuse to VAW when asked what images come to mind when thinking about VAW. The remaining participants raised the issue as the discussion continued, naming specific acts of physical violence/abuse such as beatings, punches, slapping, smacking, and “physical forcing” (Michael, male, 22). Relatedly, almost half of the participants immediately linked VAW to domestic violence/abuse. These were not necessarily the same participants as those who cited physical violence. Some mentioned physical violence without invoking the relationship between perpetrator and victim while others linked both in the same response, as Amy (female, 24), states, “Well, like immediately I kind of think of, like, physical violence, obviously, and then I think of, like, domestic abuse and then people being stuck with partners.”

The participants’ responses about VAW evoking physical and domestic violence were mostly characterized by conviction and clarity, with VAW being quickly and explicitly associated with physical and domestic violence. As Brian (male, 24) explained, “Domestic violence is … the most well-known and probably historical image of violence against women.” Participants’ predominant understanding of VAW as constituted by physical violence perpetrated in the domestic setting, is consistent with the literature (Burman & Cartmel, 2005; Harris et al., 2015). What is notable is that, with the exception of Aoife (female, 24), Emer (female, 18), and Grace (female, 18), who immediately disclosed having known about or directly experienced domestic violence, participants did not generally draw upon their experiences in making these links. As Philip (male, 23) notes, domestic violence is “the classic” image of VAW, and the ubiquity of this form of violence may mean that personal experience is not necessary for it to be readily understood and named as a form of VAW. For other forms of violence, however, personal experiences may play a more significant part in their constitution and recognition as forms of VAW.

Psychological Violence and Control

The continuum of VAW stresses the link between many forms of violence beyond physical attack (Frazer & Hutchings, 2020). Interestingly, more than two-thirds of participants raised psychological violence and control, including emotional, mental, and verbal abuse, in their construction of VAW without the interviewer specifically asking about this category. This indicates a strong association of VAW with psychological or emotional abuse and control. For example, Chloe (female, 22) noted, both “emotional abuse and control issues … they typically kind of go hand-in-hand.”

Another participant, Eva (female, 22), expressed indecision about putting “mental abuse” into the category of VAW but when asked if controlling behavior could be classed as violence, she experienced a moment of realization, explaining “I haven’t thought of it that way. I’ve never put that into the category of violence, but like when you think about it really it is.” Overall, participants recognized the reality of psychological abuse, manipulation, and control and its pernicious effects. Four participants argued that many people experience psychological abuse but “don’t even realise it” (Eoin, male, 18). Grace (female, 18) who immediately linked VAW to “emotional abuse” due to family experience, argued that children and young people are forming romantic relationships earlier in life, yet lack the education to identify signs of abuse: “ … they don’t have the knowledge. So, they’ll look at even emotional abuse, (and) say, ‘oh, it's not violence because he's not hitting me.’”

The importance of recognizing emotional abuse was asserted by Aoife (female, 24) and Grace (female, 18) who both constructed psychological abuse as worse than physical abuse, a view which again was based on personal experiences. Grace explained that VAW immediately reminded her of “Oh, God. Without getting too deep, like my father!” She believes that too many people associate VAW with a “black eye or, you know, a cut,” but asserted that her personal experience has left her with a clear belief that “emotional abuse is ten times more damaging to, not only the woman, but any children or family she has in the house as well.”

Aoife's (female, 24) narrative is particularly powerful. Drawing on her experience of working as a neurosurgical nurse, she estimated that around 90% of the women she worked with who had required surgery due to physical abuse “have not pressed cases” (sic). What is disturbing is that although she had witnessed and helped treat grievous forms of brain damage and “traumatic injury,” she believed that such injuries are:

… actually nothing compared to the non-physical … You know, you can have a subdural [brain bleed or trauma], you can nurse them back and you can fix their blood pressure … there's a drug for everything—but there's not for, you know, the mental damage that has happened to these women.

Participants’ recognition that VAW can consist of psychological violence coheres with scholars who have noted that psychological violence may be the most prevalent form of abuse and underpin all other forms of VAW (Barter, 2009). Participants also named more specific behaviors that comprise psychological and emotional violence including; continuously “checking up on where the woman is” (Darragh, male, 19), “looking at you in a certain way” (Kate, female, 23), “controlling and domineering” (Michael, male, 22), “emotional blackmail” (Aoife, female, 24; Emer, female, 18), “gaslighting” (Philip, male, 23; Julie, female, 20), “screaming” (Grace, female, 18; Kate, female, 23), “making comments” (Carrie, female, 22), “gossip” (Eoin, male, 18), “insulting” (Philip, male, 23) and as Sarah (female, 18) explains, “violence through texts, like bullying, so putting someone down … [making] up things about something that isn’t true.” Sarah's response is based on her personal experience of having a young man spread the rumor that he had sex with her. She explained that this resulted in “everyone” laughing at her, which is precisely the aim of such “relational aggression” (Aghtaie et al., 2018).

Sexual Violence

Over half of the participants raised the issue of sexual violence without any specific prompting by the interviewer and all but one of these disclosed having personally experienced, witnessed, or heard about instances of sexual VAW within their close contacts. Their responses beg the question as to whether their linking of sexual violence to VAW may be based on a memorable personal experience. Two male participants in this study explained that they came forward for an interview on the basis of being a close contact with a woman who had been sexually victimized.

A gender disparity was present in how sexual violence was raised, with 10 women and five men raising it unprompted. Furthermore, some young women's responses were more elaborate and referred more to instances of sexual violence they had personally experienced, witnessed, or heard about within their close contacts:

Well, this whole side of sexual abuse is massive … I couldn’t name a woman now around my age who has not experienced some sort of sexual violence in the past. (Grace, female, 18)

Young women were also more nuanced in the discourses they employed around sexual violence. Young men tended to refer to “rape” more and while they also named specific terms such as “sexual violence” and “sexual abuse,” women drew upon these terms more often, as well as naming more specific acts such as “inappropriate touching” (Amy, female, 24) “smacking someone's ass” and individuals who “will put their hands on you” or violate “your personal space” (Carrie, female, 22). Feminist literature has pointed to the “everyday” sexual microaggressions women encounter (Kelly, 1988; Sundaram, 2013) and it is possible that the women here are indeed formulating these more nuanced constructions due to their personal experiences of such microaggressions. However, as this article will demonstrate, there are significant disjunctures between some participants’ personal experiences of violence and their understandings or constructions of sexual VAW.

The ambiguity or confusion that women may experience in recognizing and naming sexual violence was raised by some participants. As Siobhan (female, 22) highlights, “when you talk about it [rape], a lot of people would imagine kind of a drunk girl in a short skirt going home and getting raped, but it really isn’t.” This image of forced intercourse by a stranger in a public place has constituted a dominant “rape script” (Rousseau et al., 2020) against which victims interpret their experiences of sexual violence, often leading to the nonlabeling of violent and intrusive experiences as rape because they are inconsistent with this script (Rousseau et al., 2020). Carrie (female, 22) acknowledges that such images are part of the reason why some women may not recognize that “rape isn’t just something that happens, you know, in an alleyway” and thus, may experience ambiguity in naming “what's gone down” in sexual encounters, as she elaborates:

See, it's one of those [things] that I personally find I end up with quite a bit of confusion around and I think a lot of others do. Because I would know a number of people who when you tell—when they tell a story of sex where like that was non-consensual or situations where you’ve kind of, say, oh, well, there was [sic.] blurred lines of consent, most people—like whether I might—like I certainly find people themselves would kind of say that was technically rape.

Such ambiguity in recognizing and naming sexual violence is well documented in the research literature (Jeffrey & Barata, 2017; Kelly, 1988; Rousseau et al., 2020).

It was also evident in some participants’ narratives that experiences and scenarios were described that legally constitute sexual violence but were not directly recognized or named by the participants as such. In a small number of narratives, there was nonrecognition or nonnaming of image-based sexual abuse (McGlynn et al., 2017) as constituting part of the continuum of VAW. For example, Aoife (female, 24) initially constructed an understanding of VAW that was strongly based on physical and psychological violence within the context of domestic violence. However, when the image-based vignette was introduced, she revealed significant familiarity with the existence of such behavior and commended its construction within the study as a problematic issue.

Yeah, I think this is actually awful … it's actually good that people are identifying that this is such an issue. I’ve had friends in secondary school, I’m sure like 13 or 14, that this had happened to … I’ve seen guys do this. God, I was actually working with a girl years ago that was an air hostess and lost her job over it. (Aoife, female, 24)

Similarly, Laura (female, 23) and Eoin (male, 18) initially linked VAW to the context of a relationship. Laura did not focus on the issue of sexual violence, yet when image-based sexual abuse was “centered” (Tinkler et al., 2018) through the vignette, she also shared three clear examples of having witnessed or known about this abuse and which she took as constituting a serious issue that “happens all the time.” Lastly, Eoin came forward for an interview having known a close female friend who had recently experienced sexual assault. When the image-based vignette was introduced, he appeared momentarily unsettled by his realization that he had in fact known about a similar case years before, disclosing that “It actually happened to one of my friends. It's weird that a lot of this I’ve seen in my life. That's worrying. Yeah, she was only 13, 14.” In the next section, we highlight further examples, where participants’ awareness of certain practices which they view as problematic, does not translate into the naming or construction of these behaviors as examples of VAW.

Whose Concern and Business is VAW?

When asked where they perceive VAW might occur, participant responses were quite polarized. Ten participants perceived that VAW could occur “literally everywhere” (Siobhan, female, 22), and cited a wide range of settings including workplaces, schools, colleges, hospitals, care homes, public transport, social media, online spaces, and even while driving a car. Their responses demonstrated a critical awareness of the pervasiveness of VAW across a diversity of private and public contexts. Siobhan, when asked where VAW takes place explained:

Everywhere. As a woman I know it happens everywhere because we can’t go anywhere or do anything without it happening in some shape or form, you know … a lot of people would imagine kind of a drunk girl in a short skirt going home and getting raped, but it really isn’t. So, it really happens in the home, it happens in school, it happens in the workplace, on the streets, literally everywhere …

In contrast to these participants who constructed VAW as something which could take place in myriad contexts, around half of participants constructed it as an “Inside. Intimate” (Finn, male, 18) or “private thing” (Chloe, female, 22) that occurs “in the home setting” (Michael, male, 22) or “behind closed doors” (Conor, male, 22; Darragh, male, 19; Eva, female, 22; Fiona, female, 24; Laura, female, 23) and gave three reasons why this is so. First, perpetrators keep their violence out of sight to avoid moral sanctioning, as Eoin (male, 18) explains, “You don’t want people thinking bad things about you.” The second reason relates to the possibility of bystander intervention in public spaces, as Cormac (male, 23) explains, “there's going to be somebody around, whether you’re in town or you’re in a shop or you’re at a club or something … there's going to be somebody there that's going to back you up straight away.” Finally, Aoife (female, 24) argued that VAW occurs in “the household all the time,” since in public settings, “anyone can report an assault”; in other words, VAW is perpetrated outside of public view in public spaces due to perpetrators’ fear of formal or legal sanctioning. In sum, these participants argued that perpetrators enact violence in contexts where there are barriers to audible and visual perception (Goffman, 1959) because otherwise, members of the public might recognize the violence, aid the victim and/or sanction the perpetrator.

It is this group of participants who constitutes an interesting but concerning avenue of analysis, since their constructions of what constitutes VAW do not appear to be clearly aligned with their experiences of violence. While they clearly link VAW to the context of relationships and to acts that are hidden from visual and audible perception as discussed above, these understandings are revealed to be narrow, as they later disclose in the interview having known about, witnessed, or experienced examples of sexual VAW that were enacted in public. Eva's (female, 22) narrative is a good example of this disjuncture. She first associates VAW with:

Domestic abuse at home … this physically hitting and stuff … I would say mostly behind closed doors … Because I think a lot of people, if they saw something in public, you know, there's a change of other people stepping in, right, and you getting caught.

Yet when presented with the party vignette, Eva reveals experiences that do not align with how she initially constructed VAW:

This is such a big thing … Oh, it's so common, yeah … I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a night out and someone's just like grabbed my ass or something for no reason … Yeah, it's rotten. It's actually a really big problem … The majority, like actually I would say all, of the girls I know have gone through this like a million times … it's happened and you don’t even turn around. It's just—what are you going to do? … I mean, it happens to so many people … but because again it's so dark and there's so many people, you probably didn’t even see who did it. What can you do only take it?

When discussing the house party vignette, Amy (female, 24), Aoife (female, 24), and Laura (female, 23) all similarly highlighted the ubiquity of these microaggressions for “every woman in Ireland” (Aoife), including themselves, despite having linked VAW to the private sphere in the context of a relationship as implies in their narratives thus far, as Laura articulates, “Oh, it's so common, like … I’ve been grabbed so many times on nights out. Like being in a nightclub you get your ass smacked … it's such a common thing.”

The initial linking of VAW to the private sphere, and a subsequent recognition of its occurrence in public spaces, is a common feature of these participants’ narratives. A difference, however, relates to gender. While young men's narratives also displayed these disjunctures, they are more pronounced in young women's narratives, since not only have they witnessed and known of such microaggressions, but they have also experienced them and were keen to convey and stress to the interviewer that these were key and pervasive issues for them.

Why does this disjuncture exist? Eva's (female, 22) narrative gives some indication. One reason relates to the physical and social organization of the public settings of pubs or nightclubs in which VAW might occur. The crowded and darkened atmosphere creates “barriers to perception” (Goffman, 1959; also Kavanaugh, 2013). This enables perpetrators to systematically enact microaggressions without fear of detection or bystander intervention. Yet this does not explain why these microaggressions are not problematized.

What is significant however is that despite the seemingly ubiquitous nature of these microaggressions the behavior of the perpetrators has not been problematized by broader society. Specifically, the ubiquity of these microaggressions lessens their perceived immorality (Tinkler et al., 2018) and for individual women themselves, it is those acts that are uncommon that are more likely to be memorized and recognized as problematic (Tinkler et al., 2018). These microaggressions are thus, normalized as inconvenient aspects of nightlife contexts that are not worthy of public concern (Fileborn, 2019; Gartner & Sterzing, 2016; Kavanaugh, 2013; Tinkler et al., 2018). Since these are not more broadly named and constructed as forms of VAW in public fora, it is difficult for women to see these microaggressions as elements of the broader structural dynamics of men's violence (Boyle, 2019) and so, they do not readily name them as key aspects of VAW. As Emer (female, 18) explains, “women don’t give out about it because, you know it happens so much regularly now … if I’m going on a night out … I know for a fact that it's going to happen.” The sense of resignation in Emer's narrative is concerning and draws attention to how normalization and ubiquity feedback onto each other. The normalization lessens the perceived immorality and promotes a sense of resignation which in turn contributes to the normalization of microaggressions and to the inhibiting of women's disquiet and protestation.

Another factor that moderates the naming and problematization of these microaggressions is the perception of their “low- severity” (Gartner & Sterzing, 2016). Indeed, consistent with other empirical literature (Bowen et al., 2013; Fileborn, 2019; Jeffrey & Barata, 2017; Tinkler et al., 2018) there was some evidence that participants categorized violence along hierarchies of severity or harmfulness with both the context and the nature of the violence influencing where it is placed on the hierarchy. Amy (female, 24), for example, perceived VAW as inclusive of “inappropriate like touching and stuff [that] would happen in like a club or whatever” but also ambiguously characterized it as “kind of violence in a way” [emphasis added]. Amy appeared to link physical aggression to the private sphere only as she also argued that “it's unlikely that a guy is going to come up and punch you in the face in the street.” Similarly, when asked about the term VAW, Laura (female, 23) linked it with the “rape of complete strangers” as well as domestic violence. The point is that they both initially linked VAW to physical injury (also, Tinkler et al., 2018), with Laura invoking the stereotypical “stranger-ambush rape model” (Weiss, 2009, p. 814) that is bound up with notions that “real rape” involves serious physical injury (Weiss, 2009). When asked directly if they would consider the commonplace microaggressions within nightclubs as VAW, both Laura and Aoife (female, 24) associated nightclubs with more physical or escalatory forms of violence:

Yeah, I think for like acute happenings I think very much like after clubs when drink and drugs are all involved. I read about an incident on the paper, like. Someone was dragged behind a van, an intoxicated young woman. (Aoife)

The point we make here is that it is possible that these women do not systematically locate the microaggressions they both experience and see other women experiencing, on the continuum of sexual VAW due to perceptions by both themselves and wider society in general, that only “severe” or legally actionable offenses constitute forms of violence (Fileborn, 2019; Tinkler et al., 2018). It might also explain why the women who Carrie (female, 22) has known are also unsure about the attribution of labels to their intrusive sexual experiences.

Another reason for the disjuncture between participants’ constructions of VAW and their own experiences, relates to the perception that VAW is only perpetrated in private because otherwise, individuals will intervene. As Cormac (male, 23) argued, others will “back you up straight away” or will immediately formally report it.

The narratives of other participants, however, highlighted a disjuncture between their construction of VAW as a private issue that occurs in hidden domestic contexts and their expressed awareness that violence also occurs in more public settings. Chloe's (female, 22) narrative spotlights this disjuncture well, as she also reconciles it by suggesting that some acts of VAW that occur in public settings can in effect be rendered private in the sense that other people fail to acknowledge it or respond to it as a public problem:

Like I would never have witnessed violence against women particularly in public. Like I think it is quite a private thing. Like I would consider violence against women to be taking place in the home. But then in terms of sexual assault, like, I would have known a lot of stories that would have happened at house parties or things like that, which would definitely fall into that category. And that would have been much more public, but I suppose equally is private because everyone thinks it's nobody's business. (Emphasis added)

The discursive shifts in this narrative are instructive. Chloe first notes that she has never witnessed VAW since it occurs within the home. She then realizes that she has heard about acts of violence that have technically occurred in “public.” This seemingly contradicts her initial point, but she implicitly notes that the private dimension of violence does not just relate to the spatial location where it occurs. In drawing attention to the fact that violence is frequently perceived as “nobody's business,” she highlights a crucial point that sexual VAW is “hidden” or “private” in the sociological sense as described by C. Wright Mills (1959), namely, though violence may be publicly performed, it is “not necessarily viewed as a public problem” (Ponton, 2018, p. 71).

The gap that Chloe (female, 22) reveals in relation to her initial perception of VAW is appreciated more when we examine her narrative in the later part of the interview. In the above narrative, there is a personal distancing that takes place. She argues she has not personally witnessed VAW. Instead, she has “known” about instances of unwanted touching and implies that she has not personally experienced violence. However, when the issue of unwanted touching and sexual assault was centered through her reading of the house party vignette, Chloe's initial perceptions of not having witnessed VAW are significantly contradicted:

I actually like—I’ve experienced and seen all of these things. Like that situation happened to one of my really good friends. A guy just came up in a club and reached up her skirt and then ran off … whenever it's happened to me, I’ve immediately turned around and like completely like torn the guy out of it … I remember like one night I got really, really annoyed about it because it had happened to me like a good few times that night. And then my friends were kind of going, oh, God, like, don’t—like stop kicking off. And I was just like … You know, like it's unfair because it ruins your night, but then it ruins everyone else's night because you get annoyed about it.

Chloe's narrative again highlights the ubiquity of these microaggressions, and this again considerably contrasts with her earlier construction of VAW as something that only happens in private. So far, we have highlighted how social norms minimize microaggressions and are marked as unserious, which feeds back into the dynamics of normalization. Yet Chloe's narrative, similar to that of Laura's (female, 23; i.e., “I’ve screamed at the person”) and Emer's (female, 18; “women don’t give out about it”), shows that these microaggressions do cause harm, a finding consistent with research (Kavanaugh, 2013).

As Chloe (female, 22) highlights, even on a single night out the cumulative impact of these microaggressions can be exhausting, but since expressing this frustration and harm can trigger anger that may “ruin” the night out for everyone else, women must, as Eva (female, 22) pointed out “take it.” In effect, what these women describe is the added emotional labor and frustration involved when they place their emotions aside and trivialize their experiences to try and enjoy the social freedoms they are entitled to. While Chloe's (female) friends may have trivialized her experience, it is possible their urge for her to subdue her frustration stems not merely or solely from their own trivializing attitudes, but from the emotional demands that consistently responding to both one's own and/or a friend's experiences of microaggressions may entail (Fileborn, 2019).

What the extracts so far clearly problematize is the cultural perception that these microaggressions do not constitute violence and/or warrant public responsibility or broader social responsibility for addressing the problem. The implication is stark: young women are experiencing frustrating and harmful “everyday” microaggressions, yet these are culturally trivialized and normalized and while they are occurring, not “behind closed doors,” but in public, they are treated as if they are private concerns.

A final disjuncture discernible in participants’ narratives relates to their perception that perpetrators keep violence “behind close doors” to avoid condemnation and prosecution and participants’ actual experiences, which indicate a much more complex reality. Some participants argued that perpetrators keep their violence behind closed doors because their moral status may be discredited. However, they later invoked experiences and explanations that point to the opposite explanation: that VAW can in fact maintain or raise the social status of men and can only do so if enacted in the view or knowledge of others (Bolton et al., 2021).

A good example of this disjuncture comes from Conor (male, 22), who argued that men are “not going to do it [the violence] around their friends” but will instead “keep it secret” to avoid moral or possible criminal sanction. When the image vignette was introduced, however, Conor recalled an incident of a woman friend having had an intimate video of her shared by her then-boyfriend and his explanation for the then-boyfriend's motivation is in opposition to his initial perception:

He just showed his friends and people he wasn’t even that close with. He showed them just because it's a naked girl, she's good-looking, and “oh, look, I’m banging her” …

In other words, the public sharing of the video provided an opportunity for the man to emphasize his heterosexual masculinity, status, and power. Again, despite their own perceptions that VAW occurs “behind closed doors” due to perpetrators’ fear of moral condemnation and formal sanctioning, Aoife (female, 24), Cormac (male, 23), and Eoin (male, 18) attributed precisely the same motives to young men's harassing and abusive behaviors when they later described witnessing, knowing or experiencing unwanted touching, street harassment, and image-based sexual violence. These points highlight that amongst some members of society (such as particularly young men), not only are some instances of sexual harassment and violence not problematized, but that may be in fact be glorified.

Discussion

Our findings suggest that the “classic image” of physical and domestic violence can be readily and quickly associated with VAW, indicating the successful attempts of feminist activism to elevate a “private matter” to one of state and public concern (Ponton, 2018). Participants also drew attention to less recognized forms of psychological violence such as verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, and gossip about a partner and invoked personal experiences in their understanding. There was an indication that some young women may be more nuanced than men in naming different forms of sexual VAW, but as Carrie (female, 22) highlighted, other women may experience ambivalence in naming sexual violence. Indeed, we too found disjunctures in terms of some participants’ nonnaming and linking of sexual violence to VAW. Image-based abuse was not initially invoked by some participants as part of the continuum of VAW, despite their knowing of such cases and/or experiencing it. Furthermore, despite clearly linking VAW to domestic violence that occurs “behind closed doors,” a group of young adults in the study disclosed having had some experience with sexual VAW in public settings. We found examples of some young adults not linking “everyday, routine, intimate intrusions” (Boyle, 2019, p. 25) such as unwanted touching and street and nightclub harassment, to VAW. Consistent with the literature (Jeffrey & Barata, 2017; Kelly, 1988; Tinkler et al., 2018), they constructed narrow understandings of VAW and did not incorporate these microaggressions as part of the continuum of VAW, despite experiencing and constructing them as harmful.

These disjunctures in participants’ nonnaming and nonlinking of such microaggressions to VAW are concerning. When these microaggressions were implicitly problematized in the interview vignettes, young women were able to recall multiple experiences and examples of these and stressed to the interviewer the ubiquity of such experiences and the harm they cause. The nonrecognition of sexual harassment and assault is, of course, a recurring theme in the literature (Jeffrey & Barata, 2017; Kelly, 1988; Tinkler et al., 2018). What concerns us here, however, is that this nonrecognition occurs even amongst a small sample of young adults who have awareness and interest in the topic of VAW, and who are motivated and comfortable in talking about it. Their personal experiences of microaggressions, in particular, constitute the basis for political consciousness but they have not here, translated into political understandings. Understanding these experiences as part of the continuum of VAW would provide them with a framework and language for naming and grappling with such microaggressions (Fileborn, 2019; Frazer & Hutchings, 2020).

Though our sample is limited, we suggest our findings contribute to research which contributes to theoretically generalizing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) the meanings of local data on how young people and young adults construct and make sense of VAW (e.g., Anitha et al., 2021; Chung, 2007; Haglund et al., 2019; Jeffrey & Barata, 2017; Valls et al., 2008). The findings are relevant for future research and for education and awareness-raising initiatives, particularly those designed to empower young adults to identify and name different forms of VAW. The use of vignettes helped to illuminate and highlight the disjunctures between young adults' narrow understandings of VAW and their own broad experiences of violence. Research and practice-based initiatives could usefully employ both vignettes and other photo-based methodologies (e.g., Sundaram, 2013) depicting a wide variety of hypothetical scenarios. Such methods would enable broader inquiries into both young people's and young adults' naming literacies and the underlying assumptions and social norms that inform and delineate boundaries of inclusion and exclusions in young adults' naming of different forms of violence. The value of such approaches in educational or practice initiatives has been flagged (e.g., Rousseau et al., 2020; Stout, 1991) especially with regard to education on microaggressions (see Gartner & Sterzing, 2016).

We found evidence that “low-severity” (Gartner & Sterzing, 2016) sexual violence microaggressions in particular are not seen by some young adults as a public concern. Bystander intervention strategies have been proposed by the Irish Department of Education and Skills (2020) as a means of addressing sexual violence and our findings suggest the need for these types of initiatives but also for robust awareness-raising campaigns targeted at young adults which focus on delivering clear messages about what constitutes violence. This social validation of different behaviors as violent would appear to be key in extending and consolidating awareness of the continuum of VAW as understood by young adults. This, as well as the aforementioned need for education and bystander initiatives, may also facilitate an opening of greater political consciousness among young adults (Fileborn, 2019) and help them to come to recognize their experiences as shared and important rather than as individualized and trivialized.

Limitations

Achieving representativeness was difficult as recruitment for the study was slow, and time was not on our side to build a representative sample. In advertising the study, we explicitly used the term “violence against women” and it is possible that other terms such as “gender-based violence” may have resulted in greater uptake of participants as this may be seen as implicitly less demonizing, particularly for young men. As such, future research on VAW could use gender-based violence as part of the language in recruitment strategy whilst framing the analysis in terms of VAW. Nevertheless, our article contributes to theoretically generalizing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) the meanings of VAW amongst young adults.

Despite problems with representativeness in this article, given the consistency of some participants’ understandings with similar literature, particularly around how young adults do not recognize sexual microaggressions, we would argue that such understandings among the broader population of young adults are likely to be poorer. Participants constituted a self-selected sample for whom the term “violence against women” was likely familiar and/or who perceived it as relevant and salient to their own lives and experiences. What this article has highlighted are thematic and conceptual sensitivities and nuances in their constructions, especially around sexual violence, and which stakeholders, activists, and particularly educators can draw upon to contextualize and think about when discussing and raising the consciousness of VAW with young adults.

Given these limitations, future research would do well to explore differences in subpopulations of young people and young adults. We strongly encourage educators to be sensitive to differences between young people's and young adults' understandings and to not assume that many are aware, to take one example, that psychological violence and control constitute forms of abuse. Educational endeavors which start where young people and young adults are at can overcome the representative limitations of this article.

Conclusion

The term VAW recognizes and foregrounds connections between various forms of violence and constructs them as an “occasion for a shared, public discourse of political protest and action” (Frazer & Hutchings, 2020, p. 203). The article suggests that a constellation of interconnected factors relating to social norms impedes young people in naming and recognizing the continuum of VAW, in drawing connections between various instances and types of violence (Boyle, 2019), and in naming them as a serious public issue, rather than as trivial and individual private problems. This is particularly the case for sexual microaggressions. Challenging these microaggressions thus remains “nobodies business” and they persist as private issues despite occurring in public space because they are treated as if they are and perhaps should be left “behind closed doors.” Without a very conscious and concerted effort to acknowledge, name, and sanction these forms of VAW, it is likely that many young adults will continue to demonstrate gaps in naming literacies and consciousness around the issue of VAW.