Familicide, Gender and the Media : Gendering Familicide, Interrogating News

This book examines the complex issue of familicide-suicide – the murder of a partner and children followed by suicide. The purpose of the book is two-fold: to advance a feminist sociological analysis of familicide as a form of gender-based violence, and to examine how it is reported on in news. The first section contextualises interpretations of familicide against the dual ascendancy of – and contestation around - feminist and mental illness discourses in public policy and debate. Advancing a feminist sociological analysis of familicide-suicide, it shows the value of ‘continuum thinking’ for understanding complex and varied forms of gender-based violence. Section Two examines Australian news reporting on familicide-suicide, showing the ways cultural assumptions about domestic and family violence and mental illness shape news reporting. It analyses how discourses of gender, disability, age, and the ‘family’ serve to rationalise certain news frames and reflects on the thorny ethical issues inherent in reporting on familicide. Arguing for a nuanced approach to gender-based violence and how it is reported, this book will be of interest for scholars of gender and violence, as well as media and journalism. Contents About the Author List of Tables Part I Contextualising Familicide 1 Introduction Familicide, Gender, and the News Context: Domestic Violence in the Spotlight Why Examine News Representations? Methodology Data Gathering Theoretical Framework A Note on Terminology References 2 The Gender(-Based Violence) Wars Charting Contestations Paradoxes: Politics and Gender-Based Violence in Australia Gendered Violence or Just Violence? Contested Domestic Violence Research Developing Deeper Understandings of Gender and Violence Incendiary Issues: The Politics of Gender in Filicide Reporting and Research A Brief Note on Anti-feminism References 3 A Framework for Gender-Based Violence What’s in a Name? Defining Gender-Based Violence Mapping Gender in Gender-Based Violence Gendering Intimate Partner Violence Intersections and Gender-Based Violence Gender-Based Violence and Children Gendering Varied Forms of Violence References 4 Gendering Familicide Tackling the Complexity of Familicide The Research on Familicide: State of the Field Familicide: An Overview Types of Familicide Continuum Thinking in Relation to Familicide Gendering Familicide: Identity, Interaction, and Structure References 5 Notes on Gendering Filicide What About Mothers Who Kill? Filicide Research: State of the Field Gendered Drivers of Filicide When Women Kill Their Children When Men Kill Their Children ‘Altruistic’ Filicide Silencing Children and Parent–Child Power Relations Disability and Filicide Filicide as Gendered Violence References 6 Complex Connections: Mental Illness/Distress and Familicide What About Mental Illness? Empirical Connections: Mental Illness and Family Murder-Suicide Mental Illness and Familicide: Tensions in Public Discourse Feminist Resistance to Psychocentrism Sociological Approaches: Beyond Positivism A Feminist Sociological Approach to Mental Illness/Distress Gendering Mental Illness/Distress Gendering Mental Illness/Distress in the Context of Violence Familicide and the Gendered Production and Mobilisation of Distress The Patriarchal Contexts of Mental Illness/Distress References Part II Familicide-Suicide in the News 7 The Cases Familicide-Suicide Cases Under Analysis 2014: The Hunt Familicide 2015: The Milne Familicide 2016: The Manrique Familicide 2018: The Miles Familicide 2020: The Baxter Familicide References 8 Journalistic Complexities: Framing, Interpellation, and Talk-Back ‘They Printed What?!’ Reckoning with the Complexities of News Framing Framing in News Representations Those Who Represent the World Are Part of the World Familicide Representations in Context Non-journalist Social Actors and the Framing of News Defining Sources in the Coverage of Familicide ‘Talk-Back’ in the News Not an Easy Thing References 9 Forensic Reporting and the ‘Mystery’ of Familicide ‘We May Never Know’ Isolated Incidents Unknowable An ‘Ordinary Family’ Mass Murder, But ‘No Violence’ Forensic Reporting and the Hollowness of Minutia Mysterious Minds References 10 The Mental Illness/Distress Frame He Just ‘Snapped’ Contexts: Mental Health and Domestic Violence Discourses in Australia Familicide and the Mental Illness/Distress Frame Manifestations of the Mental Illness/Distress Frame The Overt Language of Mental Illness Perpetrators Without Control Family Tragedies Without Agents of Violence Sad Men, Failed Men Nice, White, Middle-Class Families Suffer from Mental Illness, Not Patriarchy Lack of Contextualisation The Effects of the Mental Illness/Distress Frame Talk-Back: Challenging the Mental Illness/Distress Frame Beyond Either/Or’s References 11 Troubling Intersections: Disability and Childhood Inflecting Representations of Familicide: Disability and Childhood Essentialising Mental Distress as an Outcome of Caring for People with Disabilities Tacit Victim-Blaming of People with Disabilities Superfluous References Complexities: Sources and Ableism in News Reporting The Effects of Implicating Disability as Cause ‘We Should Be Critical’: Talk-Back Against Disability Narratives Addressing the Link: Violence Against People with Disabilities Child Victims: A Brutal Silencing Representational Justice for Children and People with Disabilities References 12 Notes on Filicide-Suicide Reporting Maternal and Paternal Filicide-Suicide in the News Existing Research on Gendered Representations of Filicide Filicide-Suicide Coverage 2015–2020 Mental Illness/Distress Frames Children, Beyond Tropes or Symbols (and Why We as Feminists Should Care) References 13 Framing Domestic and Family Violence It's Up to Us to Make These Lives Matter When Familicide Is Recognised as Domestic Violence How Domestic and Family Violence Is Usually Presented in News The ‘Horrific Incident’: Early Reporting on the Baxter Familicide Thematic Reporting and the Recognition of Patterned Abuse A ‘Gutless Monster’ ‘Ideal Victims’ The Arndt Affair Tentative Progress: More Work to Be Done Later Reporting: A Post-script References 14 Conclusion: Working with Complexity The Argument Concluding Remarks References