Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 79

Substance (alcohol and drug) use, abuse, and selling (SUAS) research is complicated given that some circumstances of use are legal (e.g., alcohol use is legalized by age, marijuana is medically or even recreationally legalized in some states, prescription drugs can be legally and illegally sold and owned) and it can be difficult to distinguish between use, abuse, and addiction. SUAS has historically been conducted on men. Regardless of gender, this research has focused on the most economically and socially disenfranchised. As SUAS research has advanced in scope, including women/girls and the enfranchised, gendered (as well as class and race) distinctions have been found. Notably, “women are the fastest-growing segment of substance users in the United States” (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019, p. 699).

At least eight gender differences in SUAS have been documented. First, research consistently finds SUAS is largely male-gender-related for alcohol (Bègue & Roché, 2009; C. A. Green, Freeborn, & Polen, 2001; Hussong, 2000; Kaufman, 2009; Pinhey & Wells, 2007; Svensson, 2003) and most drugs (Payne, 2009; Pinhey & Wells, 2007; Svensson, 2003). Given that the “magnitude of the gender gap, however, is said to vary by stance, life course position, and shifts in control” (Cutler, 2016, p. 1134), the rest of the gender differences to some degree account for these variations. As such, the second gender difference is the disproportionate (sexist) societal and legal disapproval of women and girls’ (relative to men and boys’) substance use, including when it is legal (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019; Haritavorn, 2019; Luthar & D’Avanzo, 1999; Maher & Curtis, 1992; Sterk, 1999). The third SUAS gendered distinction is that criminalizing the use of drugs/alcohol while pregnant is an example of a gender-specific law (addressed in the following chapter)—a law that criminalizes one gender/sex. Fourth, some SUAS research documents gender/sex differences in the body’s response to substances (e.g., gender differences in absorbing and metabolizing) (Ait-Daoud et al., 2019). This has had profound impacts on driving-under-the-influence of alcohol (DUI) laws, which will be noted in the following chapter. Fifth, women and girls are far more likely than men and boys to be in a position to have to exchange sex and companionship for drugs from a dealer, romantic partner, pimp, or other user, or do sex work to buy drugs (T. Cheng et al., 2019; Inciardi, Lockwood, & Pottieger, 1993; Inciardi, Pottieger, Forney, Chitwood, & McBride, 1991; Lichtenstein, 1997; Maher, Dunlap, Johnson, & Hamid, 1996; Ratner, 1993; N. Rodriguez & Griffin, 2005; Sterk, 1999). Sixth, relative to boys and men, girls and women are more likely to use drugs to “self-medicate” for depression, anger, or trauma (Erickson, Butters, McGillicuddy, & Hallgren, 2000; R. D. Evans, Forsyth, & Gauthier, 2002; Inciardi et al., 1993; Mason, Hitchings, & Spoth, 2007; P. Smith, 2019). Or, as poignantly stated by Haritavorn (2019) from her study on Thai injection drug users in the context of structural violence, “Hence, women using drugs have to find specific ways of dealing with their lives in a social world that constitutes the condition for their suffering” (p. 200). Seventh, women and girls are more likely than men and boys to report using drugs to lose weight (e.g., Cutler, 2016; Strauss & Falkin, 2001), which is also an indication of the social construction of gender in society. Eighth, in general, men and boys use a larger variety of drugs than do women and girls (e.g., Cutler, 2016). Many of these gendered findings will be described in more detail in the remainder of this SUAS section.