The Terrorist and the Girl Next Door: Love Jihad in French Femonationalist Nonfiction

This paper explores the theme of Love Jihad in “true sex crime” novels, French mass-market paperbacks where a journalist or author recounts the temoignage of women who suffered sexual violence at the hands of Muslim men. Semiotic analysis of visual and textual representations shows a melodramatic triangle of female victims, Muslim male perpetrators, and heroic readers. These stories reflect, dramatize, and sexualize broader social constructions of the monstrous Muslim; from Far-Right conspiracies of The Great Replacement to femonationalist debates about veils and republican values. In the final section, the paper explores how visual and verbal tropes from these popular discourses reappear in political speech and media from the National Rally.

Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire: Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance Among Portuguese Male Perpetrators of Intimate Partner Violence

This study aimed to analyze the fit of the four-factor model of the 29-item and 12-item Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) on a sample of Portuguese male perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV; N = 279) and to test the measurement invariance between sample type (forensic and non-forensic) and sentence type (prison and community). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) did not support the four-factor model of the BPAQ 29-item version. The four-factor model of the BPAQ–short form (BPAQ-SF) showed a good fit. Sufferable values for internal consistency and good values for convergent and discriminant validity were found. Cross-sentence measurement invariance using the present sample and cross-sample measurement invariance of the BPAQ-SF using a previously collected sample of students was established. Overall, our results support BPAQ-SF as a valuable brief and psychometrically reliable measure of aggression for use with both individuals from the community and IPV perpetrators with different sentences.

Intersections of race and gender in sexual assault trials

This essay traces the development of intersectionality theory within the field of language and gender in relation to research on the language of rape trials. In early work on the topic, I used Judith Butler’s notion of the ‘rigid regulatory frame’ to understand the cultural intelligibility of certain kinds of rape victims in the legal system and the unintelligibility of others. But the inequities that complainants often experience in rape trials are not merely the result of sexism; rather, it is sexism and racism which together interact to disadvantage complainants and protect white male perpetrators, who occupy a privileged position within these contexts vis-à-vis men of colour. In line with recent work in the field, I end with an analysis of a rape case that demonstrates the necessity of attending to nonhegemonic masculinities and intersectionality.

Domestic violence in the Old Testament and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A question of identity

With the global COVID-19 pandemic and different levels of lockdown being enforced across the world, domestic violence has escalated at an alarming rate. The restrictions on movement that lockdown has placed on countless women forced them to share a confined space with their abusers and the effects of this abuse are devastating. These women’s identities are at stake. In a space dominated by their male perpetrators, they are at risk of becoming mere shadows of their former selves. All too often, they also lose their lives. This dire state of affairs brings to mind two women in the Old Testament, Tamar of Genesis 38 and Tamar of 2 Samuel 13, and how they were subjected to domestic violence. This article studies the plight of these women. Through the exegesis of these narratives, I highlight the similarities between the accounts of domestic violence and what we see globally today. The aim of this study is to add the names of the biblical Tamars to our collective list of names of women for whom we unite weekly against gender-based violence in the #ThursdaysInBlack campaign.Contribution: This is a contribution from the field of biblical studies. The exegesis of two Old Testament narratives highlights the similarities between ancient accounts of domestic violence in situations of lockdown and what we see globally today. It calls for a recognition of women spanning the course of history who have suffered domestic violence.

The Father, the Son, and the Abuser: The Portrayal of Male Victims of Intimate Partner Homicide in the News Media

Media research on intimate partner homicide (IPH) has primarily focused on male perpetrators and female victims. This study analyzed 203 English-language news articles of IPH involving male victims and female perpetrators for the year 2019. Using thematic analysis, we identified two main themes: doubting the victim (who is the victim?) and victim recognition (“he didn’t deserve this”). The findings suggest that male victims of female perpetrated IPH tend to be blamed for their victimization and represented as non-ideal and illegitimate victims in the news media.

Socio-demographic and psychosocial characteristics of male and female perpetrators in intimate partner homicide: A case-control study from Region Västra Götaland, Sweden

Risk factor studies on male-perpetrated intimate partner homicide (IPH) are often compared with studies on intimate partner violence (IPV) or non-partner homicide perpetrators. This not only excludes female perpetrators, but also fails to take socio-demographic and psychosocial differences between perpetrators and the general population into consideration. The aim of this study was to examine male- and female-perpetrated IPH cases, and to compare socio-demographic factors in IPH perpetrators and in matched controls from the general population. Data were retrieved from preliminary inquiries, court records and national registers for 48 men and 10 women, who were perpetrators of IPH committed in 2000–2016 and residing in Region Västra Götaland, Sweden. The control group consisted of 480 men and 100 women matched for age, sex and residence parish. Logistic regression, yielding odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), was performed for male perpetrators and male controls to investigate associations for selected socio-demographic and psychosocial characteristics. This was not performed for females due to the small sample size. Female perpetrators were convicted of murder to a lesser extent than male perpetrators. No woman was sentenced to life imprisonment while five men were. Jealousy and separation were the most common motivational factors for male perpetration while the predominant factor for female perpetrators was subjection to IPV. Statistically significant differences were found between male perpetrators and male controls in unemployment rate (n = 47.9%/20.6%; OR 4.4; 95% CI 2.2–8.6), receiving benefits (n = 20.8%/4.8%; OR 5.2; 95% CI 2.3–11.7) and annual disposable income (n = 43.8%/23.3% low income; OR 5.2; 95% CI 1.9–14.2) one year prior to the crime. Female IPH perpetrators were less educated than female controls (≤ 9-year education 30%/12%) and were more often unemployed (70%/23%) one year before the crime. Male and female IPH perpetrators were socio-economically disadvantaged, compared with controls from the general population.

Parricide in Thailand: Its Causes, Characteristics, and Factors

To date, studies as to parricide have mostly pertained to Western contexts. This study is the first exploratory research to consider parricide in Thailand alongside its patterns, causes and factors within this specific socio-cultural context. In-depth interviews were employed with 21 male perpetrators of parricide serving sentences in three prisons in Thailand. These interviews found that the victims had abused and committed domestic violence against the perpetrator prior to the parricide. Furthermore, the act of parricide in each case derived from the anger of, and unplanned use of weapons (i.e., sticks, kitchen tools and farming tools) by, a sole perpetrator.

I Do It, but I Decide With Whom

Social interactions and communication shape the desires and preferences of men and women. While it is true that some men have modified their behavior due to feminist women, the same happened with some women, who changed attraction patterns thanks to new alternative masculinities (NAM). This study examines the latter, focusing on social interactions mediated by language, as a crucial element to impact and change the desires of people. For this purpose, six autobiographical interviews were conducted with women aged 19–39 years, from two different countries and continents, paying attention to the narratives of their sexual-affective relationships. Using the communicative methodology, interactions have been analyzed from verbal communication and nonverbal communication, based on the consequences of the actions rather than intentionality. The results of this study show how dialogic communicative acts with NAMs influenced some women who first defended or justified actions of male perpetrators to later prefer to support female survivors against their perpetrators. Analysis reveals that communicative acts grounded in such language that enacted the desire of NAM for women of solidarity have shaped some memories of women of relationships with dominant traditional masculinities (DTM) and, ultimately, contributed to change their attraction and election patterns.