Mainstream media’s initial reporting on the 2020 murder of Hannah Clarke and their three children by her estranged husband Rowan Baxter morphed into debates containing victim blaming and reframing of the perpetrator as victim that served the online “manosphere”, QUT researchers say.
- Study of 108 articles on murder suicide of Hannah Clarke and her children by husband
- Some reports are part of emerging antifeminist ideology
- Such reports are used by men’s rights activists, Incels and pickup forums to legitimise their antifeminist ideology to justify misogynistic behaviours and violence against women
QUT researchers Elliott Bryan and Dr Shane Warren, from QUT School of Public Health and Social Work, said online antifeminist movements such as men’s rights activists, incels and pick up forums were collectively known as the “manosphere”.
“We analysed 108 articles on the horrific murder suicide in Australian mainstream media to study emerging antifeminist ideology that contributes to increasing rates of femicide and violence against women in Australia and other western societies,” Mr Bryan said.
“Manosphere communities share false or misleading news media content to legitimise their ideology and recruit new members.
“They often promote stories which give authority to narratives of victim blaming as well as perpetrator-exoneration by claiming they are the victims, which was evident in the reporting of Rowan Baxter’s murder of Hannah Clarke and their children, Aaliyah, Laianah, and Trey.
“The ‘men as victims of feminism’ narrative is also core antifeminist propaganda of the manosphere which draws members to their cause.”
Dr Warren said many of the debate and opinion writers refused to see family and domestic violence as a gendered crime, that is a crime against a person because of their gender and the roles associated with their gender.
“They depicted Baxter as an aberrant monster, a one-off – one report called him a ‘demon dad’ who was ‘watching as the flames take hold’,” Dr Warren said.
“Reading about a possessed demonic monster in horror fiction style does not necessarily represent an accurate picture of gendered violence as a prominent social issue in Australia, in which one woman is murdered a week on average at the hands of a male partner.
“Stories framed the incident as ‘unthinkable’ and ‘incomprehensible’ in a ‘suburban street’ further strengthened the aberrant theme and that the murders were not a gender-based crime.
“A dominant theme that emerged in analysis was that of men as victims of family and domestic violence, not solely women as in:
‘On this day there are plenty of violent partner relationships in court, but there is also a case of a man physically abusing his mum, a case of a woman accused of glassing her partner, and a case of a boy who attacked his brother.’ (The Courier-Mail, 7 March 2020).
“The men-as-victims theme was brought to the forefront and prompted much debate by Detective Inspector Mark Thompson’s remark in a press conference:
‘Is this an issue of a woman suffering significant domestic violence, and her and her children perishing at the hands of the husband? Or is it an instance of a husband being driven too far by issues that he’s suffered by certain circumstances into committing acts of this form?’.”
Mr Bryan and Dr Warren said commentators Bettina Arndt and Senator Pauline Hanson’s defence of Thompson’s “driven too far” comments, had helped rally antifeminist and men’s rights movements in Australia in the national grief and debriefing that occurred after this incident.
“Some reports had implied that Baxter was a loving father and that he murdered his children because he was ‘driven too far’ and was ‘allegedly distressed’ about child custody arrangements,” Dr Warren said.
The researchers said they had found broad victim blaming of Hannah narratives emerging across the articles.
“Especially that Hannah was too young when she married Baxter at 19 and he was 11 years older with a son from a previous relationship, with the implication that she should have known better than to marry a man with a suspect past,” Dr Warren said.
“Another theme was that Hannah was aware that she was living in a domestic and family violence relationship and did not leave in time.”
Dr Warren said the research showed how antifeminist narratives continued to be nurtured and promoted over time even when they were being resisted by strong feminist voices.
“The theme of victim-blaming and perpetrator as aberrant or ‘driven to’ murder and suicide increase the risk of women and children experiencing abuse and violence by legitimising the male perpetrators’ actions,” he said.
The manosphere under the microscope: a critical discourse analysis of the news media reporting of Rowan Baxter’s murder of Hannah Clarke and her family was published in Feminist Media Studies.
Top picture: Kameleon007, Getty Images.
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