Intimate partner psychological abuse: What we knew and what we experienced

Abstract

This doctoral research is designed to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of IPPA in adolescent relationships, using an intersectional perceptive to specifically focus on the victimisation of Black adolescent girls in England and to understand how adolescent girls learn about intimate partner psychological abuse (IPPA). Black feminism and the framework of intersectionality helps to highlight differences in how an individual or a specific group of people experience the world (Crenshaw, 2017; De Coster & Heimer, 2021). Black women and girls in England can view and experience the world through multiple lens including the lens of girlhood/womanhood, ancestral culture lenses, English culture lenses and other subsections of their identity. However, Black women and girls also uniquely experience a world where gendered oppression (e.g. sexism and violence against women) and racial biases (e.g. anti-black racism and stereotypes about Black people) collide and intertwine uniquely to affect Black women. To date past literature has not specifically explored IPPA perpetrated against Black adolescent girls in England. How IPPA is experienced, what is taught to Black adolescent girls about IPPA, and the factors affecting their perceptions of IPPA is not yet fully understood. As the unique IPPA experiences and needs of Black adolescent girls have not deliberately been considered in research in England, it is difficult to fully apply past studies about IPPA to the experiences of Black adolescent girls.