Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 29

One could argue that the primary legacy of the positivists from the 1990s are the researchers promoting the biosocial and evolutionary theories (BSETs). Since the 1990s, BSET theorists have gained increasing recognition for their claims that we cannot ignore biology in the commission of crimes or even blaming victims (at least in part, responsible for their victimizations). Biology as the “driver” is troublingly reminiscent of the early positivist theories. Notably, Saleh-Hanna (2017) compares the Global North’s current “biosocial evolutionary perspective with criminology’s positivism, witnessing how this alliance infects and colonizes mainstream conceptions of crime and justice” (p. 691).

A 2009 article, “What Biosocial Criminology Offers Criminology,” while making a strong plug for the theory, only very briefly addresses gender and then does so in sexist contexts. Wright and Boisvert (2009) claim that men are more violent than women because women’s mating preferences are for the biologically competitive men (who will provide for them and their future children). However, it is unclear, and indeed counterintuitive, why women would prefer violent men and why they would be better providers and fathers. A large BSET study using U.S. federal sentencing data found that both men and women committed less physical aggression during property offending if they were parents (as opposed to nonparents) (Boothroyd & Cross, 2016). Although the authors did not have access to the individuals’ testosterone levels, they concluded that parental status was related to physical aggression due to lowered testosterone levels because other studies have reported lower testosterone levels during parenthood (which seems like a bit of a scientific leap to make).

L. Ellis (2004, p. 144) believes that the Y-chromosome and testosterone predispose most males to criminality in the form of nonplayful competition and victimizing behaviors around the onset of puberty “as they start their reproductive careers,” although other research insists “there is no evidence of an increase in aggression coinciding with puberty” (Archer, 2009, p. 259). Another study “proving” the link between male sex hormones and crime was a study of college students’ self-reported criminality and “androgen-promoted” physical traits, such as body hair, body strength, and penis size; as predicted, the men who reported the largest penises, most body hair, and so on, reported the most violent criminality (L. Ellis, Das, & Buker, 2008). L. Ellis et al. (2008) do not seem concerned that the men “doing gender” as hypermasculinity might also exaggerate their strength, body hair, and penis sizes. Alternatively, Archer (2009) believes that “physical aggression occurs as an innate pattern of behavior [by age two in both sexes] that is subsequently inhibited by social learning, to different extents in boys and girls” (p. 265).