Negotiating Victimhood: Applying the Techniques of Rationalization to the Experiences of Queer Male Victims of Intimate Partner Violence in the United Kingdom

Using interviews conducted with forty Queer British men who have experienced Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) from a male partner, this study adapts Ferraro and Johnson's techniques of rationalization to examine how individuals negotiate the label of victimhood in the context of a coercively controlling romantic relationship. Though often considered a respected social identity, victimhood is also associated with weakness and powerlessness thus turning it in many victims' minds into a symbol of deviance or stigma. The paper demonstrates that these Queer male IPV victims drew on three of Ferraro and Johnson's techniques to avoid identifying with victimhood and to rationalize their abuser's behavior. The study contributes to the wider literature on both Queer experiences of IPV and accounts through demonstrating that victims' rationalization of abuse must be understood as adaptative responses to the coercively controlling nature of their relationships. In this context, their rationalizations are heavily influenced by their abuser's coercive control and are not the products of individualistic rational choice as other studies have suggested.