Cheating wives and vice girls: The construction of a culture of resignation

SynopsisThis article examines the way in which discursive knowledge about women victims of violence in the UK is shared and circulated through newspaper reports. News reports play an important role in the reproduction and dissemination of notions about who may be seen as more or less ‘deserving’ of violence. Through an analysis of particular news reports in the Daily Mail, in relation to women who have been exposed to violence, I suggest that the discursive knowledge relating to women as victims, along with particular discourses about the concept of violence serve to obscure the immanence of such violence. Furthermore, through adopting an explicitly anti-feminist stance, the Daily Mail in particular is complicit in perpetuating particularly negative ideas about women victims and women's role in their own victimization. Ultimately, therefore, it can be demonstrated that a culture of resignation in relation to violence against women exists. As a consequence of this culture, much violence is seen as inevitable and mundane and consequently remains an intrinsic feature of society.