Criminology Goes to the Movies: Crime Theory and Popular Culture

10. “Let Her Go”: Feminist Criminology and Thelma & Louise

| 153 10 “Let Her Go” Feminist Criminology and Thelma & Louise The open road. Blue skies. The great American West. Traditionally these have been settings for cowboy movies about men’s adventures, masculinity , and male bonding. So how do two women wind up in this landscape , on the lam with state and federal law enforcement in close pursuit, speeding through conventionally masculine terrain in an attempt to reach Mexico? In a word, violence. Specifically, violence against women. Thelma & Louise (1991) stands out as one of film history’s first, most celebrated, and most controversial visions of women on a crime spree. In some respects their story parallels the way in which feminist criminologists forged ahead into mainstream criminology, a criminology, they will tell you, created largely by and for men. Feminist Criminology For feminist criminologists, there are no grand theories to explain crime; rather, there are multiple forms of experiences with crime that derive from the ordinary lives of women. Feminist perspectives in criminology are consequently very much concerned with ways of knowing and respectful of the multiplicity of perspectives that gendered experience offers. The way criminological questions are framed and research results interpreted are issues to which feminists give careful attention, for criminological knowledge itself has a masculine bent that to most seems simply universal or natural. Feminist criminology focuses on ways in which crime and its social contexts are structured by sex (meaning biological characteristics) and gender (meaning the characteristics attributed to men and women). Feminist criminologists analyze both female and male criminality, since gender affects both. Similarly, feminist criminologists study the impact of gender on the treatment of women and men within the criminal justice system, whether 154 | “Let Her Go” they be offenders or workers. It has become clear that gender even shapes the nature of criminal justice institutions.1 Another aspect of the feminist agenda is to analyze ways in which gender and crime intersect with race. Black females, white females, black males, and white males, because they are all differently located in social structure, have radically different experiences with crime and criminal justice. Ethnicity , age, social class, and even geographical region affect the crime and punishment of men and women. Yet another central concern of feminist criminology is violence against women—rape, sex crimes, and intimate partner abuse—and it also studies traditional theories of crime, not only to uncover the male-centered biases that have shaped them but to understand the gendered nature of criminological knowledge more generally. Kathleen Daly, an important theorist in feminist criminology, speaks of four major areas of inquiry within contemporary feminist scholarship.2 First comes the nature of gender in relationship to crime, including the factors that can explain male-female differences in rates of lawbreaking and arrests (the famous “gender gap,” in which over time and in all countries, females have had much lower rates of offending). Second, Daly mentions differences in the pathways that lead girls and women on the one hand, boys and men on the other, to lawbreaking. A third major focal point of feminist research has been gender differences in the social organization of offenses—how different kinds of illegal acts are defined and ranked in seriousness in relation to gender. A fourth major area concerns the role of gender in broader areas of life, including the effects of criminality on ways in which men and women take care of themselves and find food and shelter. Daly’s work does not stop here. She and another well-known feminist theorist , Meda Chesney-Lind, have written about ways in which their field differs from conventional criminological inquiry.3 Their points are widely cited and particularly useful in that they define the key concept of gender upon which feminist criminology is built. They define gender not as a natural fact but as a complex social construction that plays a key role in the ordering of all aspects of social life and social institutions. In a patriarchal society, gender relations and constructs of masculinity and femininity are not balanced but biased in favor of men, who maintain social, economic, and political dominance. Consequently, systems of knowledge, including criminology, reflect men’s views, meaning that the production of knowledge is always gendered . Finally, they insist that women should be at the center of criminological inquiry, not peripheral, invisible, or “add-ons” to theories about male offending. “Let Her Go” | 155 Feminist criminology began with a critique...