Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. (Marie Curie)
Prologue: The Story Behind This Book
Stalking always appeared a psychological enigma to me and this is the main reason I wanted to study this kind of conduct in the first place. My academic interest in stalking and its impact began when I was studying for my masters in psychology. I was intrigued by the obscure and elusive nature of this behaviour, the psychopathology of stalkers and the feelings they induced in their victims. As such, the primary reason I decided to examine stalking victimisation for my doctorate was to reveal the impact of stalking and help victims and their voices be heard and taken seriously. I was also interested in examining the way the criminal justice system and other people responded to victims based on the latterâs perspectives and experiences. To this end, I carried out in-depth interviews with 26 self-defined victims of stalking who were recruited through a range of different pathways such as Victim Support, National Stalking Helpline, local universities, domestic and sexual violence advocates and womenâs safety workers.
The aim of this book is not so much about offering definite answers about stalking, its aetiology and remedies. It is more about shedding light into different perceptions and meanings victims attached to their experiences, picking up and reflecting on the nuances, challenges and ambiguities involved in this form of intimidation and problematising what lies beneath the surface of these accounts. I hope this book offers the impetus for opening up a wider, critical, scholarly dialogue on violence, victimhood, relationships, intimacies, harms, justice, power and control, inequalities, moral culpability, human rights and social responsibility.
Theoretical Framework, Stance and Space for Explanatory Plurality
Men can be targeted and stalked (Harmes and Forde 2018) but the majority of stalking victims are women (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2014; ONS 2016). The study on which this book is based was premised on my belief that stalking is a tool of control and subordination used primarily by men to destabilise, disempower and deprive women of their independence and autonomy and that is generally employed as a means to (re)-assert control and power. As such different feminist approaches were employed as sensitising âconceptual toolsâ (see Bryman 1988; Silverman 2007) to approach and understand stalking as a gendered phenomenon but also as a complex and multifaceted behaviour.
Initially a radical feminist stance was adopted to guide my understanding regarding stalking victimisation. Radical feminism maintains that women are oppressed and victimised as a result of a patriarchal social system in which women are coerced into subordination (Britton 2004). Proponents of this perspective maintain that the victimisation of women cannot be fully understood and acknowledged unless it is adequately contextualised within the meaning of patriarchal structures and relations which normalise and sustain it (Gelsthorpe and Morris 1988; Ballinger 2007). In that light, my study was based on the belief that stalking is a form of violence that is used by men to dominate and oppress women and that this form of abuse is facilitated and underpinned by social patriarchal structures, gender inequality and power imbalance between men and women both in the social realm and within relationships.
Under the umbrella of radical feminism, stalking was also examined as a corroboration of the power and control models. Power and control models conceptualise male violence against women as a way of maintaining superiority and ensuring womenâs subordination by using specific power and control tactics such as rape, physical violence and different types of harassment and threats (e.g. sexual, verbal, physical) or else through âsexual terrorismâ (Sheffield 1993, p. 73; Smith 2005). It has been shown that stalking is used as a means of coercive power and control through the fear it induces (Brewster 2003; see also Stark 2007). As such, revisiting the notion that women are constantly oppressed and victimised by men living in a patriarchal social system, stalking could be considered as another form of interpersonal aggression and tactic used to exert power and control over women and maintain or restore menâs superiority (Gadd 2002; Brewster 2003). It should be conceded that not all men resort to or condone violence against women but even witnessing and not reacting to it reveals the effort to maintain patriarchal values and structures intact (Smith 2005; Ballinger 2007).
The covert social control mechanisms employed by men neutralise womenâs victimisation and thus make it difficult to explore and reveal the extent of gender-based violence (Stanko 1990). As a result, the next epistemological option for my study was feminist empiricism: feminist empiricism promotes scientific research which takes into consideration both genders and stresses the importance of experience as a sound exploratory tool for revealing âtruthsâ regarding violence against women (Smart 1995). In particular, the core essence of feminist empiricism is that sound knowledge can be achieved through womenâs experiences since âexperience gives the theory a much-desired materiality or concreteness and most importantly it can claim validity or scientificityâ (Smart 1995, p. 76). Hence, a feminist empiricist approach aligned with my aim of giving voice (empowering) and interviewing victims of stalking about their experiences and would help understand the way this form of violence is used to compromise womenâs autonomy.
In the same vein, given that my study sought to understand the meaning and impact of stalking through victimsâ different experiences, feminist postmodernism was also incorporated into my theoretical framework. Feminist postmodernism maintains that there is not only one unanimous âtruthâ to be revealed through womenâs experiences as each woman lives and perceives social subjugation in a different way (Smart 1995). I therefore adopted a feminist standpoint approach seeing the revelation of womenâs experiences of crime not only as an important source of knowledge but also as an active intellectual and political effort to combat womenâs social oppression (Smart 1995). As a consequence, the bookâs underpinning research and key theses should be also seen as an implement of social and political change for âthe personal is politicalâ (Gelsthorpe and Morris 1988, p. 104) and global (see Chakrabarti 2017).
Nevertheless gendered violence and its different manifestations such as domestic violence, rape and stalking are complex and can be underpinned, facilitated and sustained by various socio-cultural, interpersonal and individual processes and factors that intersect and interplay at different levels and in multiple ways such as psychopathology, social learning, relationship dynamics, dysfunctional attachment styles, personal attitudes and distorted cognitions. Many participants in my study (see Chapter 3) provided insightful comments and observations about the nature and motivational dynamics of their pursuit that often reverberated literature on the aetiology of stalking. Therefore, while maintaining a theoretical feminist lens and acknowledging the fact that men often use stalking as another tool of intimidation and violence against women, the experiences of stalking victims can also be seen and understood in the light of other theoretical perspectives that incorporate the personal characteristics and individual...