Browse
Violence against marriage migrants became a critical social issue in South Korea in the late 2000s, and the government instituted various measures in response, partially adopting civil society organisations’ demands to protect migrant women. However, men’s rights groups also mobilised shortly after to advocate for the rights of citizen-husbands under the slogan of ‘male victims of international marriages’. Their campaigns targeted both the unscrupulous commercial matchmakers and their deceitful migrant wives. This article situates the victimised men discourse as a backlash against violence against women campaigns to reverse policy gains in the protection of women’s rights. The article argues that government policies have legitimised such discourse and used flawed ‘data’ to justify their policies. This article uses as data complaints submitted to the Korea Consumer Agency, a government regulator for consumer disputes, about international marriages and focuses on their mentioning of sexual relations, intimacy and sexuality. By doing so, this article demonstrates that men’s rights as consumers of marriage brokerage services are behind their claims of victimhood, and the victimhood discourse undermines the safety and human rights of migrant women. Moreover, a close look at the database about ‘male victimhood’ reveals severe human rights violations against migrant women.
This study focuses on the bridging roles of grassroots community groups from migrant communities in Australia, specifically in the context of domestic and family violence (DFV). Through in-depth interviews with 15 victim-survivors and 16 practitioners and community volunteers of Korean heritage, the study examines how members of the Korean community are attempting to fill the gaps in social support for victim-survivors of DFV and what issues, barriers and limitations they face. The results indicate that community members face multiple barriers in their efforts to fill gaps in service, which in turn affects the quality of their response to victim-survivors. This study argues that the emergence of a peer-support network is a response and even a partial solution to those barriers and limitations, challenging the traditional community groups (for example, ethnic churches) that used to serve as a main platform for the Korean diasporic community in Australia. A deeper understanding and engagement with these emerging networks are needed to fill the gap in the work investigating DFV response and prevention within Australian-Asian communities.
People in labour have a right in law and policy to say no to vaginal examinations. This should be uncontroversial: in almost no other space is it acceptable to penetrate another’s body without their say-so. Yet reports abound of women in labour having fingers inside their vaginas even after saying ‘no’. Some describe their experiences as being akin to rape.
This article argues that the framing of vaginal examination as routine may be seen as a form of authoritative speech that severely limits the ability of women and birthing people to say no to unwanted examination. Routine vaginal examination creates and determines the routine of labour care, delivers finding of fact in relation to progress of labour and creates normative and practical expectations of birthing people and clinicians. This constrains birthing people’s ability to prohibit vaginal examination on their body. This framing also presents a limited and inadequate conception of what a vaginal examination is, which further limits people’s ability to successfully say ‘no’.
Current understanding and conceptualisations of obstetric violence typically focus on abuse carried out on pregnant women during births in medical facilities. However, data from an empirical study of freebirthing in the UK (intentionally giving birth without health care professionals present) inadvertently exposed examples of obstetric violence during births at home. This is an under-researched area and such empirical examples are rare. The article introduces the literature on obstetric violence, highlighting some of its limitations with regards to understanding the phenomenon within the home setting. Using archival examples, it also demonstrates how obstetric violence in the home is not a new phenomenon, thus problematising any presumption that this type of violence is rooted in the hospital as institution. Further, data from The Freebirth Study both reaffirms and challenges current understanding of obstetric violence, particularly around consent, the temporal nature of the abuse and the ways it can manifest. Finally, with recent moves towards legislating against obstetric violence, the article argues for legislative change to recognise abuse in the home.
A crisis creates a time when normal problem-solving mechanisms are thrown into disarray. The COVID-19 pandemic plunged individuals and service systems into crisis. While recognising the destructive impact on health and well-being for those involved, the aim of this study was to explore opportunities for change created during a crisis, addressing the question: What has been learnt under COVID-19 about delivering domestic abuse services to perpetrators in the UK and Australia? Documentary analysis (31 documents reviewed in Australia, and 180 searched and analysed in the UK) and interviews (24 interviews with practitioners and policy and practice leads in the UK, and 11 interviews, and one focus group in Australia) were used to explore innovations in responses to perpetrators. Two key shifts in the delivery of services to men who use violence were identified: the pivot to remote delivery; and the emergence of interventions to provide accommodation and support for perpetrators. The study demonstrated that the policy window could open at a time of crisis to support innovative developments. Early evaluations highlighted positive developments. However, further research is needed to understand more fully the implications for safety and accountability.
Thomas Mathiesen’s theories, his activism and his scholarship are needed, important and useful for contemporary researchers concerned with social change and social justice. At this moment in time, when strong social movements and abolitionism are back on the agenda, Mathiesen’s theories can not only be revitalised, but moved forward in the everlasting unfinished fashion. Mathiesen’s work might be of support to researchers and activists confronted with the ‘system members’ as he calls them, to identify the structures of power one is up against and its strategies. His work provides a roadmap of how to handle repressive powers to reach the long-term goal of penal abolition. In this article, I will outline Mathiesen’s central theories of penal abolition as they are connected to political activism, then trace the role of the police in his abolitionism and, finally, I will argue for the relevance and development of Mathiesen’s abolitionist thinking in the contemporary and burgeoning field of transformative justice and police abolitionism. I aim to show the continuing relevance of Mathiesen’s theories for contemporary abolitionist movements and scholarship, and how they contribute to push these theories forward into new areas.
Thomas Mathiesen has been a source of inspiration for research in critical sociology, criminology, and the sociology of law for many decades. Mathiesen’s impact extends far beyond the academic realm, as his action research lives on. This intervention discusses the ongoing influence of Mathiesen’s action research approach, which integrates research, education, and societal impact. This is illustrated through an action research project we conducted in Denmark’s largest marginalised living area, where over 1,000 public housing units are being demolished, affecting approximately 2,500 residents. In the project, we experimented with different outreach legal aid approaches, considering our own positionalities, to gain knowledge about how to establish a legal aid infrastructure that could reach the unreachable. An ethical dilemma we faced was how we could engage with the people without inadvertently naming issues, particularly legal problems, of which they might not be aware. If the residents were unaware of these issues or did not consider them important, could we then inadvertently create and juridify new problems for them? Moreover, this intervention discusses how, in alignment with Mathiesen, we combined legal aid with legal clinical education, that is, training law students to become legal aid workers. We conclude that Mathiesen’s approach remains relevant, and by integrating his action research with decolonial thoughts, new insights may emerge to reach the seemingly unreachable.
Post-vaginal birth protocols frequently require women and other birthing persons to undergo rectal examinations. Protocols for these examinations, which we refer to as PVREs, vary widely, however, and there is a lack of agreement within the medical community concerning whether they are needed at all. This article explores women’s experience of PVREs in light of this ambiguity which, we argue, reflects and reproduces aspects of gendered power relations that are implicated in systemic sexual violence. We show that some women experience PVREs as sexual violence, the effects of which include guilt, self-blame, shame and sexual humiliation. Given its defining characteristics, we further argue that PVREs constitute a form of obstetric violence.
