What Does Feminism Want?

This conference confirms the loss of a singular, unified women's movement under the pressures of race, sexuality and class and asks for new directions. The need to rethink collectivity suggests that identification is a priority for feminism rather than desire , which has been the dominant discourse of the psychoanalytical wing of the movement. There are psychoanalytical accounts of the group, but they will have to withstand New Labour's punitive address to the superego by its conservative personalizing of social issues. Thus the relation between psychoanalysis and politics is now a major issue, revealing as it does the problems of coercion in an environment where collective accountability has ceased to exist. Our models of the feminine can be neither Thatcher nor Diana both of whom occlude social accountability. Though the question of sexual difference has not gone away, we need to reformulate the problems, finding new forms of language and of public speech to address a wider constituency, and a radical politics that will reach beyond the academic world. Finally, arising from this, two questions need to be asked. What does feminism want a subject to be? Does feminism want something to serve in the place of some kind of truth?     

Police use of force: a transactional approach

Drawing on Tedeschi and Felson’s () theory of coercive actions for conceptual guidance as well as principles underlying the notion of a force continuum structure (i.e., proportionality and incrementalism), this research examines 3,544 police–suspect encounters from an observational study of the police in an attempt to better understand the transactional process of the police–suspect encounter. Results indicate, within the context of a force continuum structure, that officers escalated the level of force in about one of five encounters involving nonresistant suspects, and de‐escalated the level of force in three of four encounters involving resistant suspects. A series of logistic and multinomial regression models show that a number of factors differentially affect the manner in which officers apply force. The results suggest that before one can begin to judge the appropriateness of police force, one should measure and consider the extent to which force is applied proportionately and incrementally.     

Beyond Traditional Definitions of Assault: Expanding Our Focus to Include Sexually Coercive Experiences

Traditionally, studies examining sexual assault have not considered experiences of coerced consensual sex. This study sought to compare women who endorsed experiences of coerced sexual intercourse with women who reported more traditionally defined experiences of sexual assault and with a group of women who had experienced neither sexual assault nor coercion. The authors hypothesized that women who had experienced sexual coercion would show symptom elevations on a measure of interpersonal trauma-related symptoms that were more consistent with sexual assault victims than with non-victims. Among a sample of undergraduate college women (N=300), women who endorsed coerced sexual intercourse (8.7%) were compared to women endorsing experiences meeting the legal definition of rape (21%), women endorsing childhood sexual abuse (11.7%), women reporting both rape and childhood sexual abuse (6.0%), and women reporting no victimization experiences (52.7%). Analysis of the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI; Briere, 1995) clinical subscales confirmed that women who reported coerced sexual intercourse endorsed symptoms levels more consistent with the adult rape group than with the non-victim group.     

Women Police Officers and the Use of Coercion

Abstract

Despite numerous advances in the last thirty years, women police officers continue to face acceptance issues in a male-dominated occupation. Qualitative accounts of policewomen have noted that many of the integration barriers stem from traditional assumptions about police work, much of which revolves around the cultural mandate to display one's coercive authority over citizens. Female officers are often perceived as unwilling (or lacking in ability) to use coercion when encountering citizens. Unfortunately, little empirical evidence is available to support this claim, as gender studies that specifically examine the use of coercion have tended to focus on excessive force. Using data collected as part of a systematic social observation study in Indianapolis, Indiana, and St. Petersburg, Florida, this research examines both verbal and physical coercion that policewomen use in day-to-day encounters with citizens. The results of this study challenge one of the most fundamental stereotypes levied against women police officers. Contrary to traditional assumptions, female police officers (compared to their male counterparts) are not reluctant to use coercive force, and examinations of both verbal and physical force reveal few differences in not only the prevalence of each behavior, but also in the commonly associated explanatory factors. The article concludes with the implications of these     

Household-level predictors of the presence of servants in Northern Orkney,Scotland, 1851–1901

Servants were an important part of the northwestern European household economy in the preindustrial past. This study examines household-level characteristics that are predictive of the presence of rural servants using data from Orkney, Scotland. The number of servants present in a household is related to household composition, landholding size, and the marital status of the household head. In addition, the sex of the particular servant hired reveals that the labor of male and female servants is not fungible. The sex of the servant hired is related to the ratio of male and female household members of working age, the occupation of the head, household composition, and the size of the household's landholding.     

Confronting Terrorisms: Group Motivation and Successful State Policies

Much of the recent debate among policymakers and in recent scholarship focuses on how states should respond to terrorism: whether they should use harsh policies to punish terrorists and thus deter future acts, or concentrate on root causes and reduce incentives to use terrorism. Often ignored in this discussion are the characteristics that distinguish terrorist groups from one another, and that influence the effectiveness of a state's actions. This article examines group motivation—national-separatism, revolution, reaction, or religion—as one key trait, and finds that these different “terrorisms” do affect the relative success of various counterterrorist policies.     

Sexual offenders with learning disabilities: risk,recidivism and treatment

Abstract

While the literature on the assessment, treatment and management of non-learning disabled sexual offenders is well established, it is only in recent years that researchers and clinicians have focused on sexual offenders with learning disabilities. In contrast to mainstream sex offender treatment programmes, there are few evaluated community-based treatment programmes for sexual offenders with learning disabilities, and of the small number of published studies that describe treatment programmes, most are based on small samples and few have been validated empirically. Sexual offenders with learning disabilities differ from their non-disabled counterparts in several important ways, having implications for management and treatment. Due to methodological differences between studies, the prevalence of sexual offending by men with learning disabilities is not clear. However, in some studies, the sexual recidivism rate of offenders with learning disabilities is 6.8 times and 3.5 times that of non-disabled sexual offenders at 2- and 4-years’ follow-up, respectively. Sexual offenders with learning disabilities are also at greater risk of re-offending in a shorter time period. There remains an urgent need for further research into the assessment of risk and whether components from mainstream treatment programmes can be adapted to meet the needs of learning disabled sexual offenders. Approaches to working with sexual offenders with learning disabilities and programme development are discussed.     

Sexual grooming of children: Review of literature and theoretical considerations

Abstract

The current review aims to outline the existing understanding of sexual grooming. Issues of poor definition, the adoption of the term “grooming” and the prevalence of sexual grooming will be discussed. Consideration will be given to how prominent theories of child sexual abuse often neglect sexual grooming. This will be followed by a detailed account of the existing knowledge within the literature. Three types of sexual grooming were thus identified: self-grooming, grooming the environment and significant others and grooming the child. Based on these findings, a new definition of sexual grooming is suggested. Furthermore, the findings correspond well with current models of the sexual offence process. A more comprehensive understanding of sexual grooming is required to facilitate a preventative approach to child protection.     

Decisions to offend in men who sexually abuse their daughters

Abstract

A group of nine intrafamilial child molesters of daughters and stepdaughters from Canada and the United Kingdom were interviewed about their analysis of opportunities to sexually offend. Questions focused on the evaluation of immediate and life circumstances surrounding the offence, including how the offender defined, created and responded to opportunities for offending. An equally important goal was identifying strengths in resisting opportunities and coping with spoiled attempts. The interviews were transcribed and subjected to grounded theory analysis. Consistent with the rational choice theory of criminal behaviour the majority of offenders identified information and decision-making processes used to evaluate opportunities for offending. Themes related to offender and victim characteristics, as well as situational factors, are identified and discussed with respect to risk and protective factors. Offenders described positive relationships, greater social/community connectedness and successful employment as present in their lives when not offending. These elements are consistent with positive approaches to sexual offender treatment and management.     

Development and preliminary validation of The Multidimensional Sexual Coercion Questionnaire (MSCQ)

Abstract

The goal of this study is to present the development and validation of a sexual coercion assessment instrument for college students, the Multidimensional Sexual Coercion Questionnaire (MSCQ). An exploratory factor analysis for ordinal Likert data, followed by a confirmatory factor analysis in 762 college students, revealed seven factors. These pertained to commonly noted tactics such as pressure to have sex, exploitation, relational manipulation as well as less commonly measured tactics of humiliation and two clusters of tactics pertaining to forced compliance based on past coercion. Although several other measures exist, this measure was designed specifically for college students and therefore includes a wider array of tactics than generally considered. The measure also makes an attempt to include more nuanced and difficult-to-measure coercion strategies. The MSCQ is likely to be of interest to researchers and clinicians who wish to consider a more nuanced analysis of sexual coercion dynamics among college student, young adult and general populations.