Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence

EPILOGUE: MORAL PANICS,VIOLENCE,AND THE POLICING OF GIRLS Reasserting Patriarchal Control in the New Millennium

241 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 241 EPILOGUE MORAL PANICS, VIOLENCE, AND THE POLICING OF GIRLS Reasserting Patriarchal Control in the New Millennium Walter S. DeKeseredy Ten years ago, Meda Chesney-Lind (1999) observed that many academics, journalists, politicians, and members of the general public were accessing “one of the oldest traditions within criminology—sensationalizing women’s violent crimes” (1). This statement still holds true in North America today and there is ample evidence that “things are set to get worse” (Silvestri & Crowther-Dowey, 2008: 106). Ironically, at a time when crime discussion is dominated by calls for more prisons, more executions, and “what about the victim,” a market remains for belittling female crime victims (DeKeseredy, 2009; Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1994). Growing numbers of conservative fathers’ rights groups, academics, politicians, and others intent on rolling back the achievements of the women’s movement fervently challenge research showing high rates of male-to-female beatings, sexual assaults, and other highly injurious forms of female victimization that occur behind closed doors (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007; Stanko, 2006). Moreover, while many people, especially men, are quick to point out human rights violations in totalitarian countries, they simultaneously whitewash or ignore the victimization of women in their own so-called democratic societies (Kallen, 2004; Silvestri & Crowther-Dowey, 2008). And, it is not surprising that despite scores of journal articles and studies showing that men are more violent than are women in heterosexual relationships, we continue to hear the 242 FIGHTING FOR GIRLS highly injurious mantra “But women do it too.” Of course, no commentary on the antifeminist backlash is complete without mentioning government cuts to women’s programs, which is another prime example of “patriarchy reasserted” (Dragiewicz, 2008). There is an important battle being waged over the nature of women’s violence and aggression. Similarly, as pointed out throughout this book, there is, in typical U.S. style, a “war on girls” (DeKeseredy, 2000). Some well-known and widely used weapons in this war are “condemnatory media images” of teenage girls, such as those involving relational aggression in Hollywood movies like Mean Girls (Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2008; Schissel, 1997). Such films, statistically rare cases of brutal female violence reported by the media, and untrue claims of a major surge in female youth violence like that offered in James Garbarino’s (2006) controversial trade book See Jane Hit fuel moral panics about girls deemed to be in conflict with the law or who use various means of rebelling against patriarchal dominance in schools, dance halls, at home, and elsewhere. The concept of the moral panic was developed by Stanley Cohen (1980) to describe a situation in which a condition, episode, person, or a group of persons come to be defined as a threat to society. The objects of moral panics are usually people. Certainly, the media, together with some social scientists, lawyers, agents of social control, and other “experts,” have jumped on the bandwagon to transform girls who violate a myriad of patriarchal gender norms in the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world into folk devils. A folk devil is “a socially constructed, stereotypical carrier of significant social harm” (Ellis, 1987: 199). As vividly pointed out by contributors to this volume, many girls are labeled as being made up of “sugar and spice and everything evil” (Schissel, 1997: 51). The chapters in this volume stress what may seem painfully obvious, but worth stating again nonetheless: the criminal justice system helps reassert patriarchy. As Mike Males reminds us, there are no convincing data to support the ubiquitous media images about girls’ violence. That said, these media constructions do fulfill another purpose; they encourage a social understanding of female violence that supports what Meda Chesney-Lind (1997: 152) calls “equality with a vengeance—the dark side of the equity or parity model of justice that emphasizes the need to treat women offenders as though they were ‘equal’ to male offenders.” Nevertheless, those favoring getting tough on girls’ violence obviously aren’t interested in using more punitive means of dealing with young men who sexually assault female dating partners and acquaintances “in numbers that would numb the mind of Einstein” (Stephen Lewis cited in Vallee, 2007: 22).Consider that largeand small-scale surveys consistently show that approximately 25% of female undergraduates experience some variation of this crime on an annual basis (DeKeseredy & Flack, 2007). 243 EPILOGUE A burglary or robbery rate this high would turn a high school or college campus...