Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 61

Flavin (2001) points out that ignoring the role of gender in criminological theories denies how gender not only shapes girls and women’s experiences and behaviors but how gender also impacts boys and men’s experiences and behavior. Similarly, Naffine (1996) contends that feminism, particularly using masculinity, is suitable to assess why offending is gendered, dominated by men and boys. Notably, Delgado and Stefancic (2017) define critical race masculinism as the application of CRFT “to the construction of male norms in society” (p. 171). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to detail, but MT also holds important potential for addressing the gendered aspects of fear of crime.

In his 1993 book, Masculinities and Crime, Messerschmidt stresses that masculinity is key to explaining criminality, which needs to be viewed through how gender, race, and class are interconnected and intersect with three gendered social structures: labor, power, and sexuality (J. Messerschmidt, 1999). Accounting for differences among males, Messerschmidt describes how middle-class white males can use power structures, such as a good education and respectable careers, to establish masculinity and provide for themselves and their families. Lower-class males and males of Color have fewer legitimate options, however, and thus are more likely to use crime and delinquency to prove masculinity. Accounting for gender differences, it is far more important for males than for females to show power or to need to prove masculinity. Messerschmidt effectively uses these variables of class, race, and sexuality to explain rape causality, the differential treatment of males and females who are sexually active, and participation in various crimes and offenses ranging from sexual harassment to robbery and homicide.

Messerschmidt’s book has been criticized not only for its portrayal of racial and socialist feminism (Daly, 1994; Hearn, 1994) but also for reinforcing racist stereotypes of African American men and boys, including neglecting middle-class Black men, and emphasizing “the history of white men in the cities, rather than the impact of slavery on black men or black men’s own histories” (Hearn, 1994, p. 634). Bottcher (2001) criticizes Messerschmidt for failing to understand what gender tells us about crime by focusing on how gender “is expressed or enacted in crime”: He does not “fully reveal the process by which crime becomes a resource for doing masculinity” (p. 896). Similarly, Laidler and Hunt (2001) question how we are to understand women and girls’ involvement in offending if crime is a mode for “doing” masculinity. Their extensive study found that “to be entirely feminine and respectable in their highly marginalized communities is unrealistic and dangerous” (p. 665). A study of the role of gender and masculinity in violent retaliations in urban street life found that male-on-male retaliations were the most common violent retaliations and frequently involved “doing masculinity” to regain respect, but that the second most common violent retaliation was female-on-female, typically in a dispute over a man (Mullins, Wright, & Jacobs, 2004). (Female-on-male was the least common type of street retaliation violence.)

E. Anderson’s (1999) classic “code of the street,” from his ethnography of the same name (Code of the Street) about predominantly African American Philadelphia neighborhoods, describes how aggressive and even violent retaliation against interpersonal attacks and insults are necessary to ensure one’s safety and maintain or gain respect, particularly for young Black men. It can also be described as how justice is meted out and regulated in impoverished urban areas. The code of the street has been found in numerous studies since the publication of Anderson’s book, including four books based on ethnographic studies of the lives of youths in different urban neighborhoods: Rios’s (2011) Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys in Oakland, CA; N. Jones’s (2010) Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence in Philadelphia, PA; Panfil’s (2017) The Gang’s All Queer in Columbus, OH; and J. Miller’s (2008) Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence in St. Louis, MO.

N. Jones (2010) describes girls’ use of violence ranging from those who are reluctant to fight and do so only when they feel they have to (“good girls”), to girls whom she describes as “girl fighters” or “ghetto,” who fight and win fights on a regular basis. Jones found two paths to becoming a “girl fighter.” The first is the girl who learns young, typically in elementary school that being a good fighter provides her with a status among peers and more power to subvert such powers of control as parents and teachers/principals. The second is the girl who, after elementary school, is taught by male family members how to protect herself against violence in order to be less vulnerable in violent situations. Jones (2010) concludes, “For these girls, adolescent fears of violating traditional expectations regarding what it means to be feminine are at times trumped by concerns for personal safety and survival” (p. 154). Stated another way, “They accept as a fact of life that ‘sometimes you got to fight’” (p. 154). Panfil’s (2017) book, an ethnography of gay young men in gangs, most of whom are of Color, draws on “the code of the street,” masculinity, and symbolic interactionism perspectives and through an intersectional gender, race, class, and sexuality lens. For example, the men identify “fagging out” (a reclaiming of this highly offensive label) as “acting stereotypically gay (flamboyant) in overt and aggressive ways, to show that flamboyant can also mean being fierce to defend oneself” (p. 189). The Gang’s All Queer provides rich data for understanding gender performance, drug-selling, sex work, violent crime, and gang members’ preference for legal (over illegal) work.