ABSTRACT
Explanations of male violence towards women can fall into the trap of constructing monolithic and universalistic concepts of masculinity: male dominance is effected through actual physical violence. While this is undoubtedly a probable consequence of such acts, this view over-simplifies the processes involved in the constitution of masculinity, and may even take at face value some of the representations of masculinity as 'naturally' aggressive. Instead, masculinity has to be seen as a range of possible positions which men constitute over time in relation to others and in relation to cultural representations of masculinity which may be varied and conflicting. The same clearly applies to femininity and indeed to subjectivity in general (cf. Moore, this volume; cf. also Pleck 1981). Violence is a possibility that derives from a context in which power differences, usually with a material basis in the sexual division of labour, are implicit and explicit in the cultural constructions of gender which give to certain representations of masculinity a dominant status.
