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Kenney (2002) advocates for expanding LT to include victimization of major traumas. He notes, and others have found, the many ways that familial, social, and systemic responses to victims of significant trauma often silence them and even label them as deviant (Kenney, 2002; Wortman & Lehman, 1983; Young, 1991). To this end, a study of women abused by their partners found that their help-seeking decisions are often negatively influenced by past abuse, including childhood victimizations, making it difficult to disclose or trust (Burgess-Proctor, 2011). Indeed, Schur (1984) suggests that women “do not really have to engage in specific acts to be defined and responded to as deviant. Physical appearance—and in a sense perhaps even the mere condition of ‘being’ a woman—can lead to stigmatization” (p. 190). Frigon (1995) traces the long history of punishing females (and to some degree, males) for not conforming to their “appropriate” gender roles, including the execution of hundreds of thousands of lesbians and thousands of gay men for heresy in 15th- and 16th-century France during the Roman Catholic Inquisition and the long history of executing women charged as “witches.” Thus, a distinction for the criminal woman appears to fall into “mad” (mentally ill, including the rejection of culturally prescribed gender roles) and “bad” (just pure evil) (Frigon, 1995). Words such as hysterical (notably derived from the Greek word for uterus and tied to being female) and promiscuous are rarely used to describe boys and men (i.e., restricted for labeling women and girls). This is consistent not only with Wodda and Panfil’s (2018) sex-negativity that is also sexist but has had disastrous ramifications for girls and women in the criminal legal system (described in more detail in Chapter 6).

One area that is related to LT is a growing body of incarcerated people and those advocating for them, addressing how those incarcerated with terms like “offenders” suggest that this is their defining characteristic, and moreover, they are inherently law-breakers. Consistent with LT, such a practice is criticized for resulting in the labeled individuals’ inability to view themselves as law-abiding, and thus, their ability to become law-abiding (see Willis, 2018).

A key question in the application of LT to girls and women is determining whether there are gender differences in how offenders are labeled. For example, the possibility that girls are less likely than boys to be labeled or viewed as delinquent might help explain their lower arrest rates. On the other hand, perhaps before the second wave of the women’s movement, women were more protected by chivalry (addressed in greater detail in Chapter 6), and the growing incarceration rate of women in the United States reflects a harsher labeling of girls and women since this time (Leonard, 1982). Still another possibility is that women and girls are labeled more harshly for some crimes, while men and boys are discriminated against for others. The second key question in applying LT to girls and women is the second tenet of LT. Part of this process is the finding that women and girls are more likely (than men and boys) to take on feelings of shame when they or others identify them as deviant or “offenders” (T. A. Hayes, 2000).