Masculinities and the Lived Understandings of Bystander Responses to Everyday Violence

Similarly, men in younger age groups figure strongly in violence against women and domestic assaults (Messerschmidt 2004) and they comprise the bulk of offenders in episodes of public disorder and a broad range of confrontational disputes and attacks on strangers and acquaintances. [...] This article aims to fill part of this gap in research understanding of the male experience of violence and reservations about bystander intervention to prevent violence, with a discussion of the results of a series of focus groups that particularly concerned the balance between the necessity and real-world risks of such intervention. [...] Questions and discussions drew out the distinction between direct participation in violence (as a perpetrator, v ictim, or both) and the more indirect role of talking about and viewing the violence of other people (see Tomsen and Gadd 2019). [...] Key discussion themes included the distinctions between the private and public and individual and group contexts of violence; notions of understanding including respect, blame, and fairness; the status of different abused or assaulted victims; the physical danger and other serious risks of intervention in disputes; and the gendered elements of participation in violence or interventions against vio. [...] Readiness and Credible Force When discussing how to deal with the perpetrators of abuse and violence in a range of incidents and any failure to dampen perpetrator aggression, the young men in these groups claimed that some harm can only be stopped by the measured use of believable threats or physical force.