The Effect of Societal Images on Women Regarding Crime
It is difficult to understand how women victims, offenders, and professionals are viewed and treated in the CLS without first understanding the images of women in society. Feminist research includes documenting that women have been dichotomized into either “Madonnas” or “whores” (Feinman, 1986; McDermott & Blackstone, 2001, p. 89). These sexuality-driven images of women and girls are both historic and current in the societal and formal/system processing of women and girls as offenders, particularly regarding their sexuality (Chesney-Lind & Merlo, 2015; McDermott & Blackstone, 2001). In her paradigm-shifting book, Black Feminist Thought, P. H. Collins (1990) identified four “interlocking” sexist, racist, classist controlling images of Black women in the United States: mammies, matriarchs, Jezebels, and welfare mothers. Mammies are a controlling image caricatured from slavery but of the postslavery, financially exploited Black women hired to do the emotional and household labor in white homes that would otherwise be expected of white wives and mothers. This is at the expense of the Black women’s own families given their time in white homes. Matriarchs are the controlling image that condemns Black women for failing their own children (often while they were financially exploited doing the emotional and domestic labor in white homes) with a corresponding devastation on society from these women’s supposedly errant and irresponsible Black children (then adults) (pp. 74–75). “Such a view diverts attention from the political and economic inequality affecting Black mothers and children and suggests that anyone can rise from poverty if he or she only received good values at home” (p. 74). Third, Jezebels are Collins’s controlling image of Black women as sexually aggressive or “whores,” an image also originating in slavery and justifying the sexual exploitation and assault (e.g., wet nurses and rape) of Black women and girls (p. 77). Finally, welfare mothers are Collins’s controlling image related to the “breeder” image of slavery combined with Black women’s increasing dependency on the “welfare state” since World War II. Clearly, these images portray the lasting impacts of slavery while not only denying the legacies of slavery and racism interlocking with sexism and classism, but actually fostering the continued stereotyping and oppression of Black womanhood.
Young (1986) challenges the Madonna/whore typology to the extent that it may apply only to white women. She claims that whereas the Madonna/whore dichotomy implies a good girl/bad girl dichotomy, categories for women of Color include no “good girl” categories. Instead, she views women of Color as falling into four categories, all of which are negative. The amazon is seen as inherently violent and capable of protecting herself; the sinister sapphire is vindictive, provocative, and not credible; the mammy is viewed as stupid, passive, and bothersome; and the seductress is sexually driven and noncredible as a victim or professional (Young, 1986). These are like P. H. Collins’s (1990) “controlling images” of Black womanhood. DeFour (1990) discusses the additional ramifications for women and girls of Color regarding sexual harassment. She argues that these women may be more at risk of sexual harassment victimization yet receive the least serious responses due to societal portrayals of them as “very sexual” and “desiring sexual attention” more than their white sisters. DeFour points to cultural myths portraying Latinas as “hot-blooded,” Asian women as “exotic sexpots,” and Native American women as “devoted to male elders” (p. 49). Thus, not only are women and girls treated differently than men and boys for identical sexual behaviors, but among women there is often discrimination in expectations due to damaging myths.
The widely known 1990 movie Pretty Woman received numerous accolades as a romantic comedy. The movie portrayed a sex worker who married one of her patrons. One could argue that the effect of this “feel-good” movie on girls would be, “Wow! Sex work/prostitution results in finding handsome, rich, doting, wonderful husbands!”—hardly the message mainstream U.S. culture supports. The movie Thelma and Louise released shortly thereafter, in 1991, depicted two women taking a road trip during which one, Louise, shoots and kills a man trying to rape the other, Thelma, in a parking lot outside of a bar. Louise fears (it would seem legitimately, given information provided later in this book) that she is going to receive serious prison time for killing the man attempting rape. This results in the two women trying to evade the police. Despite six Oscar nominations and one win for Thelma and Louise (and one Oscar nomination and no wins for Pretty Woman), a significant number of people, including journalists, portrayed Thelma and Louise as a “bad” message for girls. Notably, the reviews for Pretty Woman never came to that conclusion. One could argue that the takeaway message is “sex work is fun and rewarding and helps women find wealthy, attractive, and doting husbands, but don’t shoot a man trying to rape your friend.”
A final example of popular images of criminals that are gendered and raced is the way school shootings are portrayed in the media. The media have ignored the strong gender and race patterns of school shootings: The perpetrators are primarily white boys, and the targets have disproportionately been girls (Danner & Carmody, 2001; Farr, 2018; Moore, 2003; Newman, 2004; Steinem, 1999). Farr’s (2018) careful and comprehensive analysis of 29 kindergarten through 12th grade U.S. rampage1 school shootings (31 shooters) between 1995 and 2015 found all the shooters were boys, 81% were white (13% were full or part Native American and 6% were Latino), and 97% (all but one) identified as heterosexual. Three-fourths of the shootings were in high schools, and 93% were in suburban or rural schools. Farr refers to the pressure of masculinity status for adolescent boys—to be cool, tough, straight (heterosexual), and repudiate femininity. Farr found all school shooters were made aware of failures at masculinity by classmates, through such means as “emasculating bullying, rejection by girlfriends, and marginalization in general” (p. 93).
Certainly, it is ideal that girls reject unwanted flirtation and romances, so this is not to blame girls who have broken up with or have never had any interest in being with boys who later became shooters. The 2018 Parkland, Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting occurred after Farr’s (2018) data collection, but one of the victims, Shana Fisher, had been increasingly aggressively pursued by the shooter (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-shooter-20180519-story.html). Farr found many school shooters reported rejection by a girlfriend or potential girlfriend, and many “described their experiences of sexualized physical victimization by male peers, such as being tea-bagged (having another boy shove his genitals in their face), having another or other boys urinate on them, having their head pushed into the toilet)” (p. 82). In addition to their masculinity status failings, “all of the shooters had at least one of three long-standing personal troubles: psychiatric disorder, family dysfunction, or situational volatility” (p. 93). Thus, rampage school shootings are impacted by cultural demands about adolescent boys’ masculinity status but also clearly intersect with personal troubles. Notably, one recommendation that Farr concludes with is requiring schools to address “adolescent masculinity issues in their curriculum” (p. 94).
1Farr’s (2018) definition of a rampage school shooting is one where the intent was to kill multiple people, at least one of whom was a student, or firing into a group of people that included at least one student.
Summary
Given the history of criminology as “one of the most thoroughly masculinized of all social science fields … the phrase ‘feminist criminology’ may well seem something of an oxymoron” (Britton, 2000, p. 58). Feminist criminology has been growing since the 1970s and is having an increasingly strong impact on this male-dominated field: “Feminist criminologists have been at the forefront in pointing out that when women and other marginalized groups are ignored, devalued, or misrepresented, society in general and the understanding of crime and justice in particular suffer as a result” (Flavin, 2001, p. 271). Relatedly, in 2006 H. Potter developed Black feminist criminology through her research on how “Black women experience and respond to intimate partner abuse and how the criminal legal system responds to battered Black women” (p. 106).
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