Gendered Hate: Exploring Gender in Hate Crime Law

Notes

151 1. Why Does Gender Matter? 1. vawa provides several strategies to address the flaws and deficiencies of state laws in regard to violence against women, and to provide assistance for victims of gendermotivated violence. The law has been reauthorized in 2000 and then again in 2005. It will be discussed at greater length in chapter 2. 2. The terms“bias crime”and“hate crime”are often used interchangeably within the literature due to the similarity of the concepts. Thus, I have chosen to use the terms interchangeably throughout the book. 3. According to the Anti-Defamation League (2008), forty-five states and the District of Columbia have enacted penalty-enhancement statutes. For a more thorough discussion of the different types of hate crime provisions, see the report on hate crime legislation written by the Center for Women Policy Studies (2001). 4. Haider-Markel (1998) discovered through interviews with local activists that sexual orientation had originally been included in Oklahoma’s hate crime legislation but was deleted in order to get the bill passed. 5. Although some women may blame rape victims by questioning the victim’s behavior prior to the offense (for example, blame may be placed on the victim due to her choice of clothing or whether she had been using drugs or alcohol), research consistently demonstrates that women indicate greater sympathy than men do for rape victims , and that men are more likely than women to blame rape victims for the offense (Anderson, Cooper, and Okamura 1997; Black and Gold 2008; Pollard 1992; Whatley 2005). Moreover, research has shown that although women may blame the victim in order to deny their personal vulnerability, men may blame the victim in order to justify the behavior of the rapist (Lonsway and Fitzgerald 1995; cited in Melton 2010). 6. The states that, in addition to Washington, D.C., include gender in their hate crime legislation are: Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana , Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee , Texas,Vermont,Washington, and West Virginia (Anti-Defamation League 2008). Notes 152 | Notes to Pages 13–14 7. Often the gender category is misunderstood as including only crimes against women. Although this book focuses on crimes against women, I agree that the gender category could also include crimes against men if they are selected as victims because of their gender, and the category could also include transgendered individuals (and other gender identities) in situations in which there is not a separate “gender identity” category in the bias crime statute. 8. The feminist approach is one of the main perspectives used in studying violence between intimate partners; the other main perspective is often called “the family violence approach” (Kurz 1993, 253) or the “gender symmetry” argument (Belknap and Melton 2005). This second perspective asserts that men and women are equally violent within intimate relationships (Johnson 2008, 3) and thus challenges the feminist perspective . According to the gender symmetry argument, women commit violent acts against their male partners just as often as men commit acts of violence against their female partners. These findings are generally based upon survey research utilizing the Conflict Tactics Scale (Belknap and Melton 2005). Despite the growing acceptance of the family violence approach within certain circles, feminist scholars continue to challenge this perspective on several grounds (Belknap and Melton 2005; Miller 2005, 22). For instance , studies relying on the Conflict Tactics Scale are criticized because they fail to consider the context of the violent incident. Specifically, these studies do not examine why the offender was violent—whether the violent act was triggered by past abuse or used as self-defense, or whether it was used to dominate or terrorize one’s partner (Miller 2005, 18–19). Ignoring the context of the incident makes it difficult to accurately assess the degree of harm (both physical and mental) associated with the violent act. Moreover , as Miller explains, even if feminist studies of intimate partner violence are challenged by proponents of the family violence perspective, two of the most well-respected national victimization surveys (the National Crime Victimization Survey and the National Violence Against Women Survey) consistently“reveal dramatic differences in rates of intimate violence, lending strong support that the gender distribution is asymmetrical ”(2005, 21). For further discussion of the debate between the feminist approach and the family violence perspective, see Belknap and Melton 2005; Kurz 1993; and Miller 2005. 9. In her study of...