My study examines trauma informed practice (TIP) policies in BC, Canada.
My chosen methodology, what is the problem represented to be (WPR) (Bacchi
2009), makes politics visible in policies. I am interested in the effects of trauma
policies on women who experience male violence. How does discourse produce
certain effects and constitute specific subjects within these texts?
I extend a politicized analysis of TIP policies, specifically, an in-depth
feminist post structural analysis. I advance an understanding of the effects of policy,
particularly for women who have experienced male violence and who receive
services under the TIP guidelines. I note the absence of an intersectional analysis
and the lack of attention paid to power relations, specifically associated with the
provision of care within the health care system, the construction of the traumatized
female subject and the absence of a social justice lens in TIP policies.
My study addresses the meanings, and resulting practices arising from the
TIP policy and its impacts on women's lived experiences. My feminist post structural
analysis provides a critique of TIP policies glaringly absent from the literature. I
examine available literature, which evaluates TIP. My analysis deepens the
understanding of the policy's inherent assumptions by revealing the problem of
trauma, as represented in TIP policies.
I explore the emergence of the dominant concept of trauma in the completion
of a genealogy of trauma. I uncover the commonly accepted trauma ethos, a set of
principles and beliefs about violence against women that has set the path for a
trauma discourse in BC's guidelines, policies, and programs. I explore my interest in
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the ontology of trauma, the nature of trauma itself and the way of being when
trauma has occurred. While exploring this interest through a genealogy of trauma, I
identify five historical figures; the traumatized female figure, the assaulted woman
figure, the wounded veteran figure, the colonized Indigenous woman figure and the
emancipated woman figure.
My study explores how women are obscured and invisible in policies
intended to address violence against women. I demonstrate that this invisibility
results in gender-neutral policies-if there is no gender-based violence- we,
therefore, do not have to think of gender-based treatment. The patriarchal erasure
of women from trauma policies continually repositions what the problem is
represented to be.
These policies constitute women as the less valued subjects, fundamentally
damaged and flawed. Trauma policies shape women as people who can damage
staff; assuming they are a source of trauma infection; they can infect staff with their
trauma resulting in vicarious traumatization of staff. Trauma policies characterize
the traumatized female subject as fundamentally different from the staff or the
professional expert. Only certain kinds of women can be traumatized, the mentally ill and
substance-using women. My study exposes the presupposition embedded in policies that
only certain women are violated, and other women are unlike them. This trauma
discourse is grounded in racism, colonialism and sexism, built on stereotypical
patriarchal representations of women, resulting in the stigmatization of women who
experience male violence. / Graduate / 2022-08-25
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/13398 |
| Date | 17 September 2021 |
| Creators | Seeley, Terri-Lee |
| Contributors | Strega, Susan, Worthington, Catherine |
| Source Sets | University of Victoria |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | Available to the World Wide Web |
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