Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 95

A study examining the context of assaults committed by 65 violent women offenders reported that the motivations were often aggressive responses to aggression from those designated as their victims (Sommers & Baskin, 1993). “These women are not roaming willy-nilly through the streets engaging in ‘unprovoked’ violence. They are frequently thrust in violence-prone situations in which the victim enters into it as an active participant, shares the actor’s role, and becomes functionally responsible for it” (Sommers & Baskin, 1993, p. 154). However, the respondents’ aggression was typically more aggressive than that of their victims. The authors describe these women as primarily associated with others involved in crime, who become increasingly socially and psychologically alienated from conventional life (p. 156). These women’s assaults were described as “often impulsive and unorganized,” frequently involving weapons and occurring when they were intoxicated (p. 152). One fifth of the assaults were planned, and these usually involved vengeance, “either related to money or false accusations” (p. 152). Fourteen percent of the assaults were related to drug-dealing.

A study of youth arrests found no gender differences in being victims of either simple or aggravated assaults, but girls were more likely to perpetrate simple assaults and boys were more likely arrested for aggravated assaults (Tisak, Tisak, Baker, & Graupensperger, 2019). An analysis of three decades of NIBRS data (1985–2015) found that all-or-solely-male-perpetrated aggravated assaults (26%) were almost twice as likely as all-or-solely-female-perpetrated aggravated assaults (15%) to be of intimates/family, while all-or-solely-male-perpetrated aggravated assaults (30%) were almost 3 times as likely as all-or-solely-female-perpetrated aggravated assaults (11%) to be of strangers (J. Schwartz et al., 2015). Notably, aggravated assaults committed by all-or-solely-male perpetrators (69%) were 6 times as likely as those committed by all-or-solely-female perpetrators (11%), so men/boys are still committing even aggravated assaults against intimates/family far more often than women/girls. The percentage of aggravated assaults with acquaintance victims did not vary much by gender (64% of all-or-solely-female-perpetrated and 56% all-or-solely-male-perpetrated). Mixed-gender-perpetrated aggravated assault victims were 50% intimates/family, 38% acquaintances, and 12% strangers. Finally, among aggravated assault incidents, those with all-or-solely-male perpetrators (29%) were 5 times as likely as those with all-or-solely-female perpetrators (6%) to use guns, and 15% of mixed-gender-perpetrated robberies used guns (J. Schwartz et al., 2015).

Another analysis of 2010 NIBRS data on juvenile assaults found that three quarters (74.2%) were simple assaults and most had no or minor injuries (97.4%) (Vaughan, Pollock, & Vandiver, 2015). However, these were gendered: 7.5% of girls’ and 11.2% of boys’ assaults were classified as aggravated (as opposed to simple) assaults (Vaughan et al., 2015). Boys’ assaults were more injurious than girls’ assaults, and boys were 12 times more likely than girls to use a firearm. One of the main gender differences in these juvenile assaults was the victim–offender relationship: Boys were 6 times more likely than girls to assault a boy or man, twice as likely to offend against someone under age 13 (as opposed to 25 to 44 years old) and somewhat more likely than girls to assault individuals closer in age, “especially acquaintances and boyfriends or girlfriends” (Vaughan et al., 2015, p. 30). Girls were more likely to assault “older family members, especially parents and stepparents” (p. 30).