Male victims: control, coercion, and fear?

Recent changes to Scottish and English laws to recognise coercive control as a specific form of domestic violence and abuse raises some interesting questions about the impact of gender and abuse within wider structural power systems. Research demonstrates that the ‘impact’ of abuse (all types of abuse) disproportionately impact on women as victims, particularly cumulative impacts caused by coercion and control as patterns of abusive behaviours. Stark frames these patterns theoretically as crimes against the person or liberty crimes, in Europe we might talk about these as violations of human rights. What these cases show however is the impact of coercion when linked to fear. Increasingly research about the impacts of abuse on male victims and male perpetrators, have also recognised that there are negative consequences, particularly in relation to mental health outcomes, for men when talking about abuse. This chapter will look at accounts of men, as victims and perpetrators of DVA in order to explore how they talk about restrictions on their freedom and fear. By exploring these cases, this chapter will consider, from the evidence we already have, what the implications of coercive control may have on our understanding of the gendered nature of DVA.