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Criminology- Gender-Justice : Samantha Jeffries

Gender is a socially constructed system of bi-categorization that encompasses roles, behaviors and expectations
related to what society considers to be feminine or masculine. It involves unequal power relations and cultural
representations of gender. It goes beyond biological sex and is influenced by socialization, cultural norms and
institutions.

Tutorial:

Characteristics and behaviors associated with:

- Masculinity: dominant, no feelings, protective, arrogant,

- Femininity: submissive, patience, compassionate, kind, maternal, emotional

Learn by socialization, family, school, social media, peers

WEEK 2 / LECTURE

1. Main(male)stream criminology and women’s criminalization

Criminalization is gendered but mainstream criminology is lacking when it comes to explain the gendered
nature of crime, but up until the 1960’/70s most criminologist was men.
Feminist criminology is a paradigm that studies and explains criminalization and victimization, as well as
institutional responses to these problems, as fundamentally gendered. Feminist criminologists are critical
criminologists and activist scholars who emphasize the importance of using the research knowledge they
acquire to influence the creation and implementation of policy and practice that will alleviate oppression
and contribute to more equitable social relations and social structures.
At the heart of any feminist criminology is the recognition that gender is a basic organizational element of
social life and social structure. Feminists maintain that gender is embedded in all social interactions and
processes of everyday life as well as all social institutions. The social world, in short, is fundamentally
gendered and as such, criminalisation, victimisation and criminal (in)justice system responses to both will
also be gendered (Renzetti, 2013)
 Biological Theories
Created by Lombroso in 1895, according to him “...the ordinary female criminal is particularly unnatural,
she is masculine and virile and shows no inversion to all the qualities which specially distinguished the
normal women; namely reserve, docility and sexual apathy”(Lombroso 1895, cited in Heidensohn, 1996:
114)
- Less born female criminals
- Female criminals are masculine & biologically abnormal
This will be approved by Thomas (1907, 1923, 1967), according to him women’s nervous system requires
love and this leads them to crime.
 Differential Association (1939) Sutherland only refers to women briefly women boring & dull
What about the gendered nature of socialisation?
• Girls have less deviant friends than boys
• Girls experience more social constraints than boys
 Labelling Theory (1963)
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Created by Howard Becker in 1963, even if he only refers to women briefly, according to him there is
some stereotypical labels attached to women. They are seen as nags & sex objects.
What about the gendered nature of labelling ? Becker ignores the gendered way in which women are being
labelled as ‘outsiders’ themselves. But it seems that females are less likely to be labeled as deviant.
 Merton’s Anomie (1938)
Does not consider gender relations. Women as a societal group should experience higher rates of anomie
than men so why don’t they commit more crime?

 Albert Cohen (1955), girl gangs?

Young women offend less often than young men because they have not adopted the goals of modern
capitalist society?
Critical criminology
• Originally omitted women
• Not concerned with gender power only power relations in class terms between men
 Otto Pollak (1950) “The Criminality of Women”
Women are inherently deceitful, manipulative and vengeful because they can hide menstruation,
pregnancy and fake/hide orgasm. So the society (and men) help women hide their criminality.
2. Feminist criminology : criminalized women
The 1970’s, Liberal Feminism (second wave of feminism : liberal feminism)
“Feminist scholars were dissatisfied with the failure of mainstream criminology to recognise issues of
gender inequality at all, as well as with the failure of critical and radical criminology to consider the
relationship between inequality and crime outside the narrow context of economic disparities....In
particular, feminist criminologists protested the exclusion of women’s experiences in emerging ‘general’
theories of crime, which were being developed by mainstream criminology using almost exclusively male
samples to predict patterns of male delinquency ” (Burgass-Proctor, 2006: 30)
• Carol Smart (1976) ‘Women, Crime and Criminology”
The women’s Liberation Hypothesis
• Adler (1975) & Simon (1975), Liberal Feminist Analysis
• Social structural hypothesis of gender & ‘crime’
• Feminist movement leading to increases in women’s ‘offending’
• Feminist movement leading to changes in the nature of women’s ‘offending’
The Women’s Liberation Hypothesis
• First women centred theoretical approach
• Feminism brings out women’s competitiveness and makes them behave more like men
• The women’s movement has opened up structural opportunities to increase women’s offending
Shift from liberal to radical feminism: Patriarchy is a sex/gender system in which men dominate women and
what is considered masculine in more highly valued than what is considered feminine. Patriarchy is a
system of social stratification, which means that it uses an array of social control policies and practices to
ratify male power and keep girls and women subordinate to men” (Chesney-Lind, 2006: 9)
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Social Control Theory, Frances Heidensohn (1996) What compels conformity?

Women in control - Women being controlled
• at home (children, marriage)
• in public (men force and violence, notion of reputation and ideology of separate spheres) But also by fear
to by assault and the guiltiness
• at work (low pays with long hours, women’s place in the home)
• in social polices

Women ‘offend’ less because they experience tighter bonds to and control from society
Pathways Feminism (90’)  A ‘whole of life approach’ that maps the life experiences leading women into
the criminal (in)justice system
The lives of criminalised women are characterised by:
• Extensive childhood and adulthood victimization (victimize by men)
• Mental ill health including substance misuse (higher rate of depression, suicide attend)
• Male influence/control (play adjunct or secondary role)
• Economic marginalisation
• Familial caretaking
Pathways Feminism of Kathy Daly (1994), Pathways to the New Haven Felony Court
Women:
• Harmed and harming
• Street
• Battered
• Drug connected
• Other (economically motivated)
Men:
• Harmed and harming
• Street (not caractririze by abuse)
• Drug connected
• Costs and excesses of masculinity
• Explosive violence
• Bad luck
• Masculine gaming
Pathways Feminism outside of the west
• ‘Deviant’ lifestyles (early adolescence adulthood, women are more likely to be pushed by abused at
home, and mare pushed by their peer groups).
• Economically motivated (supporting children but also aging parents)
• Harmed and harming ( abused, neglect, perpetration of violence, women are more likely to be also
abused by partner)
• Naivety, deception and being caught up in the “offending’ of others
• Adulthood victimisation and harmful intimate relationships ( it’s a women specific pathway)
Pathways Feminism contributed to the development of gender-responsive policies and practices
particularly in prison contexts. Treatment programs modified to take into account the unique circumstances
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of women. Prison practice changed to recognise the unique circumstances of women e.g. non-invasive
body searches (gender sensitive practice)
Pathways feminism
• Impacted on the development of international human rights standards for women prisoners
• The United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures (the
Bangkok Rules) approved in 2010 in recognition of the specific need and attention to women offenders.
Third wave of feminism (intersectionality). Some type of women are more likely to be criminalized that
other like women from racial and ethnic minority groups or with fewer economic resources.
Constrained agency/choice : women offending are often because but also against the gender society
‘Crime’ often presented itself as a way for women to express agency within the confines of their
constrained gendered circumstances. For example, many of the women on the economically motivated
pathway ‘offended’ to break free of patriarchal family structures, take control over their lives, and give their
children the opportunity for a better future. The ‘offending’ of those on the domestic violence pathway
occurred in the wake of the women extracting themselves from abusive intimate relationships with men.
For the harmed and harming women, ‘crime’ was an expression of anger in the wake of multiple
victimisations while those on the ‘deviant’ women pathway, challenged normative conceptions of
womanhood through their expressed enjoyment of living a deviant/criminal’ lifestyle (Jeffries, et.al., 2019)

Feminist criminology: violence against women

1970’s radical feminist activism made visible these type of violence:
• Domestic violence
• Rape
• Sexual Harassment
• Stalking
Radical feminist theoretical framework
• Conflict sociological perspective/critical criminology
Radical feminism Patriarchy: Dictates that men should dominate and control women and women are
weak, passive and less valued. System of social stratification
• Domestic violence and rape
• Weapons of control wielded by men over women to maintain their dominant position within the gender
hierarchy
• Individual level expression of patriarchy
Radical feminism - Rape and sexual assault
• Functions as a social control mechanism, all women are afraid of rape
• A weapon used by men to maintain power and control
“In a deeply ingrained sexist culture, rape and other forms of aggression are an integral part of a larger
sexist ideology that serves to perpetuate the power of men over women” (Hills)

“Rape is nothing more nor less than a conscious process of intimidation, by which all men, keep all women
in a state of fear” (Brownmiller, 1975)
Radical feminism – Date rape and sexual assault
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“There is no way of knowing which man may be a rapist and which man is not. As such, men are able to
benefit from a system that keeps women in a position of relative defensiveness and fear – rape becomes a
weapon of male supremacy which simultaneously maintains male supremacy” (Funk,1993: 33)
 Domestic Violence (home is valued but also can be the place for abused)
Physical abuse
- Direct assaults on the body, use of weapons (including objects)
- Assault of children
- Locking the victim out of the house, sleep and food deprivation
Sexual abuse
- Any form of pressured/unwanted sex or sexual degradation, causing pain during sex,
coercive sex without protection
- Making the victim perform sexual acts unwillingly and criticising or using degrading insults
Emotional abuse:
- Victim blaming, undermining victim self-esteem and self-worth, emotional blackmail. Verbal abuse
including swearing at and humiliating the victim, focusing on intelligence, sexuality, body image or
the victim’s capacity as a parent or spouse.
- Social isolation - the systematic isolation of the victim from family and friends, instigating and
controlling relocations to a place where the victim has no social circle or employment opportunities
and preventing the victim from going out to meet people.
- Threats regarding custody of children, asserting the justice system will not believe or support the
victim, destroying property, abusing pets and driving dangerously.
- Spiritual abuse – denial and/or misuse religious beliefs or practices to force victims into subordinate
roles, misuse of religious or spiritual traditions to justify physical violence or other abuse.
Financial abuse
- Controlling all money, forbidding access to bank accounts, providing an inadequate ‘allowance’,
preventing the victim seeking or holding employment and taking wages earned by the victim.

Domestic violence as coercive control

... a central element of domestic violence is that of an ongoing pattern of behaviour aimed at controlling
one’s partner through fear (for example, by using violent or threatening behaviour) ... the violent behaviour
is part of a range of tactics used by the perpetrator to exercise power and control ... and can be both
criminal and non criminal in nature (The National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and Children)

Domestic violence can’t be adequately understood unless gender and power are taken into account. We
need to consider the connection between domestic violence and patriarchy. Domestic violence comes from
male dominance within families which is part of a wider system of male power (aka patriarchy)...male
dominance within families is neither natural or inevitable but it occurs at women’s cost

Domestic violence, like rape, is patriarchy being acted out at the individual level and when it is
acted out at the individual level it then reinforces patriarchy...it reinforces male power over women
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....The abuse of women by their husbands or boyfriends, similar to rape, keeps women under the control of
men...abuse whether it is physical or threatened, reduces the control that a woman has over her life while
increasing the perpetrators control...power may be asserted in many forms, physically (battering), sexually,
economically, and verbally. Male power perceived and real, limits the freedom and rights of women
(Belknap, 2005)
• Domestic violence
Violence signifies crossing a boundary in which violation and degradation, previously unacceptable in a
loving relationship, are now used as tools of power and control. [Domestic violence] is far more than a
single event, even for the women who is hit once, because it teaches a profound lesson about who controls
a relationship and how that control will be exercised...self-consciously exercised, violence temporarily
brings a man what he wants – his wife acquiesces, placate him, or stops her demands. As a form of
terrifying intimidation, violence signifies that the man’s way will prevail even when the woman struggles
against this imposition. Leaving her in a constantly vigilant state, violence forces a woman to worry about
the time, place or reason for the next attack.
Domestic violence
• The radical feminist conceptualisation of domestic violence as being about male power and control was
not something that was ‘pulled out of thin air’
• Grew from the day to day work of battered women and activists who struggled to make sense of the
victimisation that they saw
• The power and control wheel

Tutorial
Articles about domestic and family violence, coercive control and psychological abuse by Clare Murphy, PhD
(speakoutloud.net)

What is coercively controlling violence?

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A. What are the common features of coercive control?

Coercive control goes beyond physical abuse and use one-side power game in order to exercise power and
control over the partner. There is many features such as violent behaviors : physical and verbal,
manipulation, emotional blackmail, humiliation, degradation, intimidation, restriction of freedom and
personal rights or even crazy making.
B. What tactics do perpetrators commonly use?
Use of children, technology, sexuality…
C. What are the impacts on victims?
Complete lack of self-confidence, loss of interest in life, self-destructive behavior (suicide attempt, self-
harm), isolation.
D. How has feminism helped us to understand the gendered nature of coercively controlling domestic
violence?
Helped women to feel more empowered, raise awareness, be more conscious about coercive and abuse
behaviors
Coercive control is domestic violence, can entail subordination by :
- Violating physical integrity
- Denying victims of respect and autonomy
- Isolation
- Control through denial of access to resources for personhood and citizenship
Why is leaving a coercively controlling relationship so difficult for victims ?
- Financial abuse
- Fear to start again, no self-confidence.
- Fear for children safety
- Hope
We talked about the financial aspect, the victim may not have the material means to leave, no money, no
people to get help. Psychological abuse can also totally destroy her confidence in being able to leave, start
over and even live without him. There is also a dimension of hope that he can change and become loving
again, linked with the fact that women are often linked to "care", so she can tell herself that with enough
love and effort he can change and be like at the beginning.
Week 3 : lecture
Putting the gender of men into criminology
1. Mainstream criminology and men VS. feminist criminology and men

Sex and by extension gender is the strongest predictor of criminal legal system involvement. Men commit the vast
majority of ‘crime’ in our society, but they also commit more ‘serious crime’ (i.e violence) than women. Criminology
of the last five decades has started to talk about gender and crime but the focus has mainly been on women and the
gender of men (masculinity) has only recently been explored.

Introduction:
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Following the emergence of men’s studies in the 1980s, criminologists in the 1990s turned their attention to men as
gendered beings and explored the significance of masculinity to crime and punishment. James Messerchmidt
unpacks the connection between masculinity and “offending”, what is about men as men and boys as boys that leads
them to commit more crime and crime of a more serious nature than women and girls ?

“Criminology has been marked by a long history of masculine bias, yet men as men and boys as boys have never been
the object of criminological enterprise. While criminological theory and research have concentrated on men and boys
as normal subjects, the gendered man and boy, like women, has been almost notoriously hidden from criminological
history”
(Messerschmidt, 1993: 15)

 Biological essentialism

According to Lombroso certain natural characteristics predispose men to offending, there was a natural distinction
between men and women that explains sex differences in crime. Testostrerone make men naturally more aggressive
and risk taking than women.

 Ealy social explanation

According to sex role theorists, biological differences predetermine social outcomes (e.g shuterland’s differencial
association theory) boys have more ‘delinquent’ friends than girls and they are socialized differently.

Girls are supervised more carefully and the behavior in accordance with social codes taught them with greater care
and consistency than is the case with boys. From infancy girls are taught that they must be nice, while boys are
taught that they must be rough and tough; a boy who approaches the behavior of a girl is regarded as a ‘sissy.’ This
difference in care and supervision presumably rested originally on the fact that the female sex is the one which
becomes pregnant. The personal and familial consequences of illicit pregnancy lead to special protection of the girl
not only in respect to sex behavior but in reference to social codes in general”

(Sutherland, in Messerschmidt, 1993: 16)

Sex role theorists brings gendered differences in ’crime’ down to a set of gendered stereotypes and then proceeds to
discern empirical patterns and construct theoretical explanations consistent with these beliefs. Grounded in the
western societal construct of the sex/gender binary. Gender is a social construct the western sex/gender binary is not
at all natural or inevitable.

Gender must be understood as an identity construction effected through performativity within the confines of social,
historical and cultural systems of regulation and power. Masculinity and feminity varies between societies and across
time and it is not always linked to biological sex. Gender is not always assigned to people according to their sexed
body, in fact in some societies their a multiple genders (e.g “Third gender” people in Thailand and Mexico). Younger
generations in the west are increasingly challenging/breaking down the sex/gender binary.

Our concept of what is natural and what natural differences consist of, is itself a cultural construct, part of our specific
way of thinking about gender...Gender is a practical accomplishment – something accomplished by social practice”
(R.W. Connell, 1987: 76)

The active creation of gender is not free or unconstrained as it takes place in the context of well-established and
unequal social structural power relations. There are normative ideals, or dominant versions of femininity and
masculinity that influence how gender is enacted within any given society and anu given historical moment. These
ideal versions of femininity and masculinity have a profound effect on people’s lives.

Like femininity, normative ideals of masculinity can be subverted, rejected or simply unmet, but normative ideals of
masculinity like femininity are institutionalized and its effects are real and frequently constraining. The dynamic
nature of normative gender expectations means it can also be used as resource, something that can be deployed
strategically for a particular end.
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Mainstream criminology has failed to comprehend what it is about men as men and boys as boys that impels them to
commit more ‘crime” and more serious types of ‘crime” than women and girls.

In sex role theory, individuals display little if any creativity; their actions, including crime, are simply the result of their
sex role. For sex role theory, gender is simply internalized and becomes resolute and unvarying. This ignores the fact
that men are active agents in their social relations, and fails to account for the intentions of social actors and how
social action is a meaningful construction in itself....sex role theory obscures the work that is involved in producing
gender in everyday activities...gender is not simply shaped and established beforehand, it is accomplished through
social action (Messerschmidt, 1993)

 Liberal feminism

According to liberal feminism gender roles resolute in equality for women, women need to be treated the same as
men. Acknowledged gender inequality and its impact on the social dimensions of behaviors, not interested in men as
gendered beings, primarily interested in women.

Research indicated that aggressiveness has been found to co-vary consistently with male crime, and this trait is
stronger among males than among females for reasons not altogether explained by culture. More importantly,
perhaps, the universal observation that males are naturally stronger and more aggressive, coupled with a strong
cultural emphasis on male violence...generates expectations and rewards that increase the likelihood... of male
involvement in aggressive behaviour (Steffensmeier and Allan, 1991)

 Radical feminism

Women are different from men and should be extended special treatment to over-come gender-based
discrimination. Goal to understand masculine dominance and to develop strategies for its elimination. Focus on
men’s violence as a patriarchal tool and fails to acknowledge that there are differences between men and different
groups of men.

Radical feminists bulldoze away the complexity in which men do gender and violence differently in our society.
Radical feminist theory can not explain the complexities of men’s violence, it homogenizes men, and as such,
provides an inadequate explanation for men’s behavior… the reasons for men’s violence is more complex than just
patriarchal power maintenance.

2. Doing gender : men and masculinity / masculinity and crime

Gender is much more than a role or an individual characteristic, it’s a mechanism whereby social action both reflects
and contributes to the reproduction of the gendered social structure. People “do gender” in response to normative
socio-cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity. By doing gender people can reinforce and sometimes challenge
dominant notions of gender. To put this another way, gender performativity is both an indication and a reproduction
or gender social hierarchies.

 Doing masculinity
- Bringing the agency/social structural divide
- Challenge the notion that gender performativity is show how natural and inevitable.

There are multiple masculinities:

- Macro social: Men are positioned differently in the social structure this impacts on the masculinity that they
do (e.g working class masculinity, heteronormative masculinity)
- Micro social: masculinity will be done differently at work, on the sport field, at the pub, with partners…

Hegemonic masculinity is the normative/unobtainable ideal, it’s culturally honored and glorified symbolically and
institutionally. It’s characterized by : authority, control, competitive individualism, independence, aggressiveness,
heterosexual assertiveness and the capacity for violence. Hegemonic masculinity is constructed in relation to
femininity, marginalized and subordinate masculinities and links to patriarchy.
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“Hegemonic masculinity can be defined as the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently
accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the
dominant position of men and the subordination of women”

“Hegemonic masculinity embodies a ‘currently accepted’ strategy. When conditions for the defence of patriarchy
change, the bases for the dominance of a particular masculinity are eroded. New groups may challenge old solutions
and construct a new hegemony. The dominance of any group of men may be challenged by women. Hegemony, then,
is a historically mobile relation”
(Connell, 2005: 77)

Hegemonic masculinity is an ideal and cannot really be obtained but all men benefit from it to a certain extent. It’s
the patriarchal dividend or complicit masculinity.

Oppositional masculinity is the manifestation of explicit resistance and possible challenges to hegemonic forms of
masculinities as well as to femininities. Can result in hyper or toxic masculinity. Some men can reject hegemonic
masculinity but in doing so they open themselves up to backlash.

It is men, not women, who slay dragons and fight in defence of the innocent. The literary heroes of boys’ worlds are
fearless warriors, flying aces, crime fighters....it is males who both use and receive violence....and because it is so
tightly tied to masculinity, aggressions becomes central to the notion of manhood” (Campbell, 1993 pp 30-31)

According to James Messerschmidt, violence is a resource for doing masculinity, a way to correct subordinated
positioning in the social structure. Whether or not violence is invoked will depend on the other recourses men have
available to them. But remember not all subordinated men turn to violence as a resource and even relatively
privileged men can be violent. He also talks about sexual assault as a resource for doing masculinity. The boys
attempted to overcome their lack of masculine resources and subsequent feelings of masculine inadequacy by
committing sexual crimes. The boys attempted to invalidate their subordinate masculine status at school and in their
lives in general by reconstructing an oppositional masculinity through sexual violence.

“I was inadequate, I really didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t make a fool out of myself. So I thought it was better to
rape a woman. Plus, if I fucked a woman, I didn’t have to feel gay. So, that’s what I told myself. I had to start doing
something. That’s when I started having sex with an older female, my aunt”

Boys who commit sexual assault grew up with strong message about hegemonic masculinity including verbal,
physical and sexual abuse. They can also be victims of peer abuse at school, learnt from their peer group that
heterosexual conquest was an important aspect of hegemonic masculinity. Attempt to invalidate their surbordinate
masculine status by invoking an oppositional masculinity through sexual violence, a hyper masculine display of
hegemonic masculinity.

Stephen Tomsen explored homophobic/hate crime, killing as a form of oppositional masculinity. In a culture that
promotes strong links between violence and masculinity, this violence serves a dual purpose of constructing a
masculine and heterosexual identity for perpetrators trough a simultaneous involvement with violence and clearly
establishing gay men as an opposed group of social outsiders.
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Tutorial week3 : criminology and pathways feminism

- What is pathways feminism?

- What has pathways feminism taught us in term of the gendered nature of criminalisation ?
- How might the knowledge from pathways feminism be used, or how is it being used, in policy and practice to
better meet the needs of criminalised women? Not invasive searchers in prison, limited strip-searching, men
yelling in prison, mental health support, domestic violence education.

The pathways of feminism are the life experiences that brought women to court, Kathy Daly identified five pathways:

Women:
• Harmed and harming (victimization)
• Street
• Battered
• Drug connected
• Other (economically motivated)

Men:
• Harmed and harming
• Street (not characterized by abuse)
• Drug connected
• Costs and excesses of masculinity
• Explosive violence
• Bad luck
• Masculine gaming

A ‘whole of life approach’ that maps the life experiences leading women into the criminal (in)justice system
• The lives of criminalised women are characterised by:
• Extensive childhood and adulthood victimization (victimize by men)
• Mental ill health including substance misuse (higher rate of depression, suicide attend)
• Male influence/control (play adjunct or secondary role)
• Economic marginalisation
• Familial caretaking

What are the characteristics of a “real man” in Australia ?

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- Dominant
- Authority
- Capacity for violence:
- Independence
- Need to be sexually active with women
- Drinking culture/ eat meat
- Need to provide the money.
- Physically fit
- Tough
- In control
- Respected
- Feared

What about characteristics of men who do not “measure up” ?

- Feminine
- Small
- Introvert

What happens if boys and men do not fit the hegemonic ideal of manhood ?

- Questioned sexuality.
- Excluded

Masculinity and violence

What, in your experience are the impacts of hegemonic masculinity on boys and men ?

- Positive: Confidence, confident presence

- Negative:

Can you think of some examples from our society where the connection between masculinity and violence is
emphasised ?

- Sport : boxing, rugby

- Being protective
- In the media/movies (no Disney which a princess saving a boy)

Why do some people consider it “male-bashing” to point out that boys and men commit most violence?

- Because it’s mainly emphasized

What effects does some men’s defensiveness have on our willingness to be honest out the disproportionate amount
of violence perpetrated by them ?

Most homophobic fate crimes are perpetrated by a particular group of people in our society. Who and how can an
understanding of hegemonic, subordinate and oppositional masculinities help us to unpack this ?

- Men
- Young
- Working class/ upper class
- White

WEEK 4 : LECTURE “Queer criminology”

A. Queer criminology & criminalising homosexuality

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Criminological and criminal (in) justice research has been heteronormative, assuming traditional sex-based gender
roles and heterosexual orientation. As a result, non-normative sexual orientations, gender identity and/or gender
expression remain relatively unrecognised and under-examined. Which in turn means, that the needs of LGBTQIA+
people are not always effectively responded to.

Queer criminology is a theoretical and practical approach that seeks to highlight and draw attention to the
stigmatization, the criminalisation and in many ways the rejection of the queer community as both victims and
offenders, by academe and the criminal legal system.

It provides us with the intellectual tools to address the historical exclusion of LGBTQIA+ people from criminological
theorising and research. Queer criminology was coined relatively recently, since the late 1990s, but only used
substantially since around 2014 to describe and categorise empirical studies on these topics.

There is 2 types of queer criminology:

- Critical
- Activist

The problem with the mainstream/orthodox criminology is that it’s not critical (power? Oppression?). The
overwhelming majority of mainstream criminological engagement with the sexual orientation and gender identity
occurred prior to the 1980s and was concerned with whether “homosexuality” a term mistakenly used to describe
both non-heterosexual sexualities and gender non-conforming identities/expressions—was a type of criminal (or
non-criminal) sexual deviance. The nature of this engagement was a reflection of the stigma attached to
homosexuality and LGBTQ people in Western legal, social, and political spheres. Anti-sodomy and sexual psychopath
laws had central roles in these prior criminological discussions. These discussions also often included damaging
characterisations of LGBTQ people as criminals, psychopaths, and perverts (Buist and Lenning, 2022).

Seeking to address the hetero/cis normativity of mainstream criminology by responding to the needs of Queer
communities and providing a space within which queer perspectives can be drawn into criminology

• Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice (Petersen & Panfil 2014)

• Special issue on Queer/ing Criminology in a major international criminological journal, Critical

Criminology (Ball, Buist & Woods 2014)

• Specific projects dedicated to violence against, and the policing of, LGBTIQ people (Berman &
Robinson 2010; Ristock et al. 2011)

• Queer experiences inside criminal justice systems (Duggan 2012; Mogul et al. 2011; Stanley & Smith
2011)

• Queer experiences as agents within the criminal (in)justice system (Colvin 2012

Queer : A former term of homophobic and transphobic abuse that has been reclaimed and embraced by a range pf
activists in order to signify a more positive embrace of non-normativity.

In criminology Queer describing persons who assume an array of defined sexual orientation and gender identity
categories, including but not limited to : gay, lesbian, trans or bisexual. The unwieldiness of the acronym LGBTQIA+.
It’s challenges and subverts phenomena that are viewed as stable and determined.

- Debunking the notion that sex, gender, and sexuality are essential/fixed.
- Challenging the stability of concepts, methods, and assumptions of conventional social science research

What does Queer mean in criminology?

- Catch 22

 Exclusion
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 Diluting demographically-relevant social differences

Queering criminology (something that needs to be done, not a label/categorisation)

‘‘Queer’’ might best be understood as ‘‘…an ongoing and necessarily unfixed site of engagement and contestation’’
(Ball, 2012: 534)

Homosexuality is still prohibited by law in many countries and can include punishment by death. It promotes a global
culture of homophobia and heteronormativity, it’s the importance of British colonization. Additionally, same sex
intimacy is no longer criminalized in western nations, but homophobia is still rife.

Historically in wester societies was a crime to disguise or masquerade in public. Taday trans people continue to be
arrested for their appearance often under the guise of solicitation offences (e.g : walking while trans).

US Bathroom Bills (law) e.g. 2016 North Carolina Public Facilities & Privacy Act (HB2 or House Bill 2)

Why? To protect cis women and girls from sexual assault by trans women. No factual basis but…restricting trans and
non-binary youth from using the restrooms that match their gender identity does correlate to an increased risk of
sexual assault to them.

B. Queer criminology & victimization

Hate crime are frequently experienced by LGBTQIA+ people, it’s include: verbal abuse to physical violence and it take
place in a diverse range of social setting/institutions. The perpetrators can be a stranger, family member, co-worker…
and its impacts can be physical, psychological, social or economic. Hate crime are inextricably linked to violent
ideologies such as homophobia or transphobia, as well as a host of other “ism” (racism, sexism, ethnocentrism…).

Hate crime can be defined as an offence which is known to the criminal law and is committed in a context that
includes identity-based hostility. An offense become a hate crime when the victim has a specific protected identity
and the offender is motivated to commit the offense because of that actual or perceived identity. This can include
violence, threats, intimidation, vandalism, property damage or other crimes. Hate crime causes harm to the queer
community beyond the directed victimization of individuals.

In the US sexual orientation and gender identity are not always included, but this is not the case in Australia. Hate
crime in Australia is rarely prosecuted, as of 2019, only 21 people have every been convicted of a hate crime in
Australia. New South Wales inquiry into hate crimes against gay and transgender people 2022. Police responses
considered grossly inadequate. The is no official hate crime data.

Media portrayals : Reductive, essentialist and in some case degradinf and habitually dehumanizes trans victims and
denies their victimhood, which obscures the reality of this social problem.

- Misgendering
- Deadnaming
- Victim blaming

Intimate partner Violence : Occurs at similar or higher frequency to IPV in heterosexual/heteronormative

relationship but it’s kept into shadow. There is also a unique forms of coercive control : threat to “out” victims and
unique barriers to help-seeking, of course homophobia and transphobia including internalized play a role.

Adam Messinger (2020: 5) five myths of :

1. LGBTQ IPV is rare

2. LGBTQ IPV is less severe

3. LGBTQ IPV abusers are masculine

4. LGBTQ IPV is the same as all other IPV

15

5. LGBTQ IPV should not be discussed

Responses by service providers and the criminal (in)justice system continue to be woefully 1inadequate.

C. State violence and criminal (in) justice

Negligence is most pervasive form of state violence against Queer people. CJS largely uninterested in attending to the
crimes committed against Queer people but there is no hesitance to arrest, charge, and punish Queer ‘offenders’.
Queer people experience high levels of police harassment and abuse

Dwyer (2011, 2015), interactions between police and LGBTQ youth in Australia : Young people reported police
harassment for “looking queer” and become distrustful of police as a result. Police do not take victimisation seriously
which impacts peoples ability to seek help

Some research, primarily in the U.S. context, examines bias in courtroom for LGBTQ defendants and victims.
Prosecutors draw on a range of tropes of the “gay criminal” (Buist & Lenning, 2016; Dennis, 2018; Mogul et al., 2011)
that demonize LGBTQ people or present them as mentally ill or as predators. Transgender prisoners encounter a raft
of injustices in prison, caused by institutionalised transphobia and cisnormativity, which is most apparent in the
dominance of sex-segregated prisons.

There is no official date on LGBTQIA+ “offending”.

- Youth sex work: a strategy of survival, lured in by force, fraud and coercion (technically trafficking).
- Adult sex work: A survival strategy and police mistreatment.

Queer pathways, hypothesis queer pathways will likely feature:

- Family exile and associated homelessness

- Barriers to employment
- Discriminatory practices within the criminal (in)justice system such as police targeting, harassment and
abuse.

Queer pathways: Alvarez and Munoz (2021), transwomen in Costa Ricca, Lives characterised by:

- Leaving home during the early teen years to escape familial transphobia and abuse.

- Low levels of education due to high levels of transphobic harassment and bullying at school

- Having to secure paid work at a young age to support themselves but finding this difficult
due to limited education and trans discrimination in the job market.

- High levels of drug consumption and other mental health problems. Drug use as a form of
self-medication, a coping mechanism for familial and societal rejection, discrimination, and
internalised angst

- High levels of victimisation (i.e. physical, psychological, sexual and economic)

- State and structural violence, including police mistreatment and abuse.

Motivations :

- Economics necessity
- Threats
- Drug consumption
- Vengeance
- Other

Hereth et al. (2021), US research: transwomen with a history of criminal legal involvement had experienced:

1
Cruellement/lamentablement/dramatiquement
16

- High levels of interpersonal violence victimisation, including childhood, intimate partner, and transgender-
related abuse
- Trans prejudice and exclusion
- High levels of homelessness
- Engagement in sex work for survival
- Police harassment

Also see your reading for this week Jeffries, et al (2022) Phu-Ying-Kham-Phet (Transwomen’s) Pathways to Prison in
Thailand.

Panfil (2017) the lives of gay gang members

- ‘Offending’ as resistance
- The men interviewed for this research were “not running away from their marginalization rather they were
resisting racist, classist and heterosexist forces that excluded and devalued them”

Week 4 TUTORIAL: Queer criminology

How do stereotypes about women of colour and lesbians contribute to the criminalization of women?

- Satanic panic
- Demonization of homosexuality

How does intersectionality play a role in this case ?

- Gender
- Sexuality
- Race
- Class

Would the case have played out differently (if so how) if the women was not latins lesbians?

ENG-CovArtboard 1 (ilga.org)

67 + 2 UN member: consensual same-sex sexual acts in private : illegal

- 32 in Africa

Week 5 lecture: gender & interpersonal physical violence

A. Introduction

There is different forms of violence:

- Physical: violence inflicted by one person towards another²

- State violence: violence at the hands of law enforcement
- Structural: like inequality, central to securing and maintaining unequal structures of power and oppression,
on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, class, etc… large scale, brutal and visible. It’s embedded in the routine
of everyday life and binds different aspects of hierarchy and domination together making it an incisve entry
point for thinking about intersectional power and oppression.

Domestic violence sits under the banner of violence against women/gender based violence sits under the banner of
violence against women/gender based violence. The harm and causes, which is patriarchy, of which are well
accepted.

- United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993)

- United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979)

Violence against women is a violation of their human rights:

17

- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Domestic violence in the media :

- Sleeping with the enemy (1991)

Watch clip here: https://youtu.be/6w-68kXgr_E
- Gaslight (1944)
Watch the clip here: https://youtu.be/0ToLfQU2xmg
- The invisible man (2020)
Watch the clip here: https://youtu.be/WO_FJdiY9dA

Domestic violence & intersectionality:

- Patricia Hill-Collins: violence binds different social hierarchies together.

- Kimberlé Crensshaw: African American women’s experiences of domestic violence results from intersections
of racism and sexism making them different from the experiences of white women and requiring analysis of
structural positioning that incorporates race and racism. The matrix of violence (Richie and Eife, 2020)
- Indigenous women have higher rates of victimisation, it is the impact of colonialism and neo-colonialism
(white Australia is still colonising).

“Domestic violence is, ultimately, a construct of both racism and sexism which cannot be separated” (Duff, 1994:
37)

“Our oppressions are not interchangeable “ Lucashenko (1994: 21)

“unity among Indigenous men and women are significant in ways that are irrelevant to non-Indigenous
Australians” (Nancarrow, 2006: 88)

Indigenous women risk factors:

- Social stressors
- Geography
- Substance misuse
- Poor health and disability
- Loss of family
- Living with violence in childhood

Underlying causes:

- The trauma of colonialism/neo-colonialism

- The trauma of structural violence
- The trauma of state violence

“Indigenous women’s identities have been forged within a cauldron of colonial oppression. They may not simply view
reform in terms of gender equality alone; this must be complemented by place-based strategies designed to empower
Aboriginal people” (Blagg et al., 2018:7)
18

Citizenship status: migrant and refugee women experience higher rates of domestic violence especially those who
don’t have citizenship:

 1 in 3 women experiences some form of domestic or family violence

 91% reported controlling behaviours
 42% reported physical/sexual violence
 23% reported that the situation got worse during Covid-19
 Temporary visa holders reported the highest levels of domestic and family violence

Migrant-related controlling behaviors:

- Threats to report you to Immigration or have you deported

- Threats to withdraw sponsorship
- Threats to prevent other family members from accessing visas or travelling to Australia
- Threats to have the woman deported while her child/ren would remain in Australia
- Threats to send your children to another country to be cared for by extended family
- Threats to the women’s children in some other way in relation to the women’s visa

Chiu’s (2017) Research exploring women who immigrated to Hong Kong from mainland China

 Domestic violence in the context of fewer welfare rights and financial need
 Social isolation
 Inability to access services/support
 Fear of being compelled to leave the country

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801216659940

Women living with disability or older have higher risk of financial abuse and are at risk from a wider range of people
(support person, healthcare workers), with some specific types of abuse:

- Withholding of medication
- Neglect of personal care
- Preventing the use of mobility devices

LGBTQIA+ people abuse and control can be specifically related to sexuality or gender identity such as threat of
outing, there is some transphobic abuse:

- Misgendering
- Disparaging bodies
- Pathologizing transgender

There is a lack of service provision for LGBTQIA+ people, there are not welcoming, unsuitable to their needs due to
gender-based framework that assure a cisman perpetrator and a ciswomen victim. LGBTQIA+ people are in the
matrix of violence both structural and state violence: homophobia & transphobia but also socio-economic
marginalisation.

B. Domestic violence: women as perpetrators

Lesbian domestic violence is a feminist discomfort because it’s focusing on women as abuser shifts attentions away
from men, and there is a risks stigmatising lesbian women feeding backlash against feminist.

Lesbian domestic violence is the same that hetero domestic violence: physical abuse, sexual violence, emotional &
psychological/verbal abuse, but there is also a use of other coercively controlling tactics as isolation and economic
abuse or outing.

Omen perpetrating violence in cis heterosexual relationship occurs at far lower rates than men, women are less likely
to use physical violence including threats, furthermore physical violence is less severe and oftentimes used in self-
19

defence of in relation to men’s violence. The good victim is white and middle class. However women mainly use
verbal abuse and women do not exert ongoing control or manipulate fear in relationship like men.

Men who are victims of women’s violence experience disbelief there is no concept of the ‘battered man’

 McCarrick et al (2016)
 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10896-015-9749-z
 Documentary “Abused by my Girlfriend”
 See: https://documentaryheaven.com/abused-by-my-girlfriend

• Carceral (white) feminism, the problem with criminalisation

Mandatory and pro-arrest policies are leading to the greater arrests of women when domestic violence incidents are
reported to the police. Black women in the United States and Indigenous women in Australia have especially borne
the brunt

- Cross-filing of protection orders are fuelling the “abuse to prison pipeline for women” (Durfee, 2021)
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801220958495?journalCode=vawa

The assumption that the state knows best in terms of tackling gender-based violence reflects the ‘colonial gaze’.
Where victims/survivors experience the state as repressive due to colonisation/neo-colonialism, state intervention in
cases of domestic violence is not viewed as benign protection (Blagg & Anthony, 2019)

- The case of Tamica Mullaley in Australia

- See https://theconversation.com/carceral-feminism-and-coercive-control-when-indigenous-women-arent-
seen-as-ideal-victims-witnesses-or-women-161091.

Coercive control: Burman and Brooks-Hay (2018) caution the incorporation of psychological abuse may criminalise
women’s attempts to protect themselves or their children from a male partner – a process described by Tolmie
(2018) as ‘mutualisation’. There is a risks over-criminalisation.

the criminal (in)justice system, and adversarial legal systems particularly, are not well suited to appreciating the
nuances of the diverse meanings of coercive control

 meeting evidentiary standards can be difficult

 A lack of meaningful action or change

Success of grass roots NGOs

 E.g. INCITE! And Black Lives Matter See:

https://incite-national.org/
20

 Seeking transformative justice

 E.g. Creative Interventions See:

https://www.creative-interventions.org/

 Uganda – seeking reconciliation and redress beyond the criminal (in)justice system (Polavarapu, 2019) see:
 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3188271

Critiquing the carceral feminist critique

Is it really a binary choice between informal community-based solutions and criminal justice approaches, which
portrays the state as inevitably punitive? There could be models of state intervention that prioritise welfare over
criminal justice, the state is an essential actor in effecting widespread structural change such as social and economic
redistribution of wealth

• See Terwiel (2020) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0090591719889946

C. Men who kill.

Homicidal violence is a masculine resource deployed to establish dominance over other men in a confrontational
situation where a man perceives challenge to his honor of status (Polk, 1994; Messerschmidt, 2012)? Often fulled by
alcohol consumption.

LGBTQIA+ hate crime: The motivation for fatal violence in these cases ranges from establishing dominance over
putatively wicker men, expressing outrage at the perceived transgressive gender identity of sexuality of the victim or
a response to humiliation over feeling a deficit of masculinity (Thomsen,2009). Trans panic defense, cultural
construction for queerness as “unmanly” and transphobic stereotypes.

There is also hate crime against homeless man, shore up the perpetrator’s sense of hegemonic masculinity via
exerting domination over weaker men but can also express disgust for the victim’s perceived failure to achieve
masculinity (Allison & Klein, 2019).

Mass shooting in the US: the cultural standard of hegemonic masculinity induces aggrievement and humiliation in
some boys and young men who feel they do not match up, their response is excessive violence to achieve the status
to which they feel entitled.

Incel communities:

• ‘involuntarily celibate’
• embrace misogynistic constructions of gender identity, which position men as naturally superior to women
• social progress of women is viewed as a threat to men and masculinity
• Mass shooters who identify as incels react to gender role stress with homicidal violence as an extreme
display of masculinity

Documentary Inside the Secret World of Incels available here:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbjrFV31h1Q

• The case of Elliot Rodger a terrorist misogynistic

Homicide: the killing of women:

- Women’s death through homicide is more likely to take place in private and domestic settings than men’s
deaths.
- Intimate partner homicide is a significant risk for women worldwide and is a marker of gender inequality.
- The murders of women in intimate relationships often follow years of domestic violence victimisation.
- Leaving an abusive relationship is a particularly high risk time for women.
21

- jealousy and controlling behaviour are significant precursors.

- intimate partner killing is a way of restoring dominant masculinity where men perceive it to have been
undermined (Messerschmidt, 2017)

Femicide: is the misogynistic murders of women or the killing of women by men because they are women.

 Latin and South America

Includes the structural violence of gender inequality (Corradi et al., 2016)

 See: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0011392115622256

the murders of women and girls is not simply ‘private’ tragedies but consequences of structural violence and the
failure of the state to intervene in women’s safety.

 Palestine

femicide is socio-political, resulting from economic legacies and interwoven with colonialism (Shalhoub-Kervorkian,
2003)

 See: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/342590?journalCode=signs

Women who kill violate norms of femininity such as gentleness, nurturance and care, which is transgressive in terms
of gender, there is the cultural archetype of the “femme fatale”. There are comparatively rare, comprising around 10-
20% of convictions worldwide and usually takes place in domestic space, in fact women rarely kill strangers. Women’s
most likely victims are their own children, followed by a male partner. Neonaticide is the killing of a new-born within
the initial 24 hour of its life, is almost exclusively committed by women and most often follow a concealed pregnancy,
sometimes such cases are the result of failure to seek medical attention rather than intentional killing.

Women who kill their intimate partners are frequently in the context of an abusive relationship, it’s the problem with
the “battered women” defence.

Women killing other women are extremely rare, it can be an outcome of an abusive relationship: women who kill
female partners have often deployed abusive and controlling behaviors in the relationship. Dowry murder is when
the mother-in-law perpetrate or are accomplices to the murders of their daughters-in-law, motivated by
dissatisfaction with their dowry. The misuse of the limited power women can be exerted as mother-in-law within the
patriarchal institution of family. But it can also be an outcome of intimate partner abandonment.

WEEK 5 TUTORIAL: gender & interpersonal physical violence

Domestic violence are the most common gender-based violence, and experiences of DV make intersecting power
relations visible.

 If Tamica Mullaley had been a white woman, would this story have played out differently?

Yes of course, If she'd been white, the police probably wouldn't have arrested her in the first place and would have
used considerable resources to find the child. And large media coverage.

 What is Richie & Eife’s violence matrix?

22

 What is the salience of this matrix in term of aboriginal and Torres strait islander women’s experiences of
domestic violence in Australia?

This shows that aboriginal and Torres strait islander women experience several types of violence, in both the private
and public spheres and of different types at a higher level that white women. They experience physical and sexual
assault more easily because of the social disenfranchisement. Intersectionality: sexism, classism, racism…

 What are the underlying factors that make understanding factors the context of violence as experienced by
indigenous women different from that of non-indigenous women?

 Professor Watego has argued that Tamica’s story raises a problem with the series “look what you made me
do” which call for the criminalization of coercive control to protect DV victims. Why does professor argue
this? Why is the criminalization of coercive control considered problematic by a first nations people?

First nation people and in particular women risk to be more criminalized or denied, furthermore its really difficult to
prove not physical violence like verbal or emotional.

 How might patriarchy and gendered analysis of masculinities help us to understand incel violence?

They use oppositional masculinities,

 When we consider incel violence within the context of patriarchy and masculinities, how “extraordinary” is it
really?

The idea/mentality is not really extraordinary but the form seems to be.

WEEK 6 LECTURE / SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Sexual violence is a gender based violence but also un human rights violation, it secures and reproduces gender
oppression, as well as other hierarchies of power and subjugation.

Global prevalence of sexual violence

 35% of women experience physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime (World
Health Organisation, 2017; World Bank, 2019)
 7% of women are sexually assaulted by someone other than an intimate partner during their lifetime (World
Health Organisation, 2017; World Bank, 2019)

Lifetime prevalence of non-intimate partner sexual assault for women up to:

 12% Asia
 16% Australasia
 15% Europe
23

 21% Latin America

 21% Africa
 13% North America (Dworkin, et. al, 2021)

Rates of sexual violence are highest for:

 Young women (aged 16-24)

 Trans persons
 People with disabilities
 Ethnic and racial minority women
 First Nations women

Few women seek help and fewer still report to police.

Feminist understandings: sexual violence is patriarchal violence: sexual violence, particularly rape is a primary means
through which men subjugate women (Brownmiller, 1975).

- Intersectionality
- Ignoring men’s victimization
- Ignoring victimization beyond the normative sex/gender binary

Sexual violence includes a range of experiences, connected by a lack of consent from the victim, it’s a continuum
connected to patriarchy and should not however been seen in hierarchical terms. Sexual violence is surround by a
range of harmful societal myths and stereotypes such as the “real rape” that is committed by a cis man stranger
against a cis woman/girl and involves vaginal penetration. Victims should report it as soon as possible afterwards and
the “ideal victim” is white, heterosexual and fights back or resists. But it’s important to notice that victims usually
know the perpetrator, most do not report it, not everyone fight back, and the white heterosexual cis women are not
proportionality at the highest risk.

Other harmful societal myths and stereotypes would be that:

- Victims provoke sexual violence.

- False claims are frequent.
- Sexual violence is perpetrated by a few individuals.
- It happens in the dark in a deserted public space.

The “rape culture”:

- Normalizes, encourages or even permits sexual violence.

- Victim blaming.
- Objectification and sexualization of certain groups in ways that devalue them and make sexual violence
permissible.
- Division between private/public space.
- Underpinned by normative constructions of femininity and masculinity.
- Racialized/class-based understanding of gender that construct white middle/upper class women as more
virtuous and vulnerable.
- Hetero and cis normative.

Sexual violence happens also online by creating sexualized images without consent, disseminating sexualized images
without consent, permits digital harassment such as unsolicited “dick pics”, trolling or abusive gendered/sexualized
responses.

62% of 18–54-year-olds in Australia have experienced technology facilitated sexual violence at least once, with digital
harassment and stalking by intimate partners being the most frequently experienced examples (Powell & Henry, 2019
24

 Race, ethnicity and indigeneity

There has been sexual violence during slavery and colonization, rape has been woven into the social fabric of
Australia since the British invasion, when white men first wielded rape as a weapon of colonization against
indigenous women  white narratives of pathological indigenous communities. Indigenous Australian are 3.4 times
more likely to be sexually assaulted that non-indigenous Australians (Australian institute of Health and Welfare,
2018), because there is a negligent state response.

There is also a ethnocentric media portrayals  The rape and murder of Jyoti Singh

The Jyoti Singh case, also commonly referred to as the Nirbhaya case, was a high-profile gang-rape and murder case
that occurred in Delhi, India, in December 2012. A 23-year-old physiotherapy student named Jyoti Singh was brutally
gang-raped and assaulted by six men on a moving bus. The severity of the assault led to her death a few days later,
sparking outrage and massive protests across India and internationally.

The incident highlighted not only the heinous nature of the crime but also the broader issues of gender-based
violence, inadequate legal frameworks, and societal attitudes towards women's safety.

Repercussions on the Law: The Jyoti Singh case had profound repercussions on the legal and social landscape in
India, leading to significant changes in laws, policies, and public perception:

Legal Reforms:

 The Indian government introduced swift legislative changes to address concerns related to gender-based
violence. The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, was enacted, which expanded the definition of sexual
assault, increased penalties for rape, and introduced new offenses like acid attacks and stalking.
 Juvenile Justice System Changes: One of the accused was a minor at the time of the crime. The case raised
questions about the treatment of juvenile offenders in serious crimes. As a result, the Juvenile Justice (Care
and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, was amended to allow for the trial of juveniles aged 16 to 18 years as
adults in cases involving heinous offenses.
 Fast-Track Courts: Special fast-track courts were established to expedite the trial of cases involving crimes
against women. This was done to ensure quicker justice and to discourage lengthy trials.
 Enhanced Sentencing: The case prompted amendments to the sentencing provisions for rape and sexual
assault. Convicts could now face stricter punishments, including the death penalty in cases of extreme
brutality that resulted in the victim's death.
 Public Awareness and Advocacy: The case ignited a nationwide conversation about women's safety, gender
equality, and the importance of changing societal attitudes. The incident led to increased public awareness
and activism against gender-based violence.
 Safety Measures: The case spurred discussions about improving public transportation safety, increasing
street lighting, and implementing other measures to enhance women's safety in public spaces.
 International Focus: The global media coverage of the case drew international attention to issues of violence
against women in India and around the world.

Overall, the Jyoti Singh case played a pivotal role in galvanizing efforts to address gender-based violence and improve
the legal and societal responses to such crimes. While challenges remain, the case led to important legal reforms and
heightened awareness of the need for gender justice and women's safety.

 Gender, sexuality and heteronormativity

Experiences of sexual violence/responses to it are shaped by constructions of gender and sexuality, rape myths stem
from cisnormativity and heterosexist understandings of sex and sexuality. In this context, men are not the “ideal
victim” of sexual violence and women do not fit the stereotypes of perpetrator. Gay men who are raped by other
men be “doubly victimized” through facing homophobic attitudes that they are nor “real” men and are somehow
blameworthy (Javaid 2018).

- Not recognizing anal penetration as rape.

25

- Only recognizing women are victims.

- Not recognizing being forced to penetrate someone as rape.
- Rape as more serious than sexual assault (in Australia Victoria is progressive while Queensland not so much).

Rape law has/or often does preclude women who are sexually violent. We may need a gender-neutral rape law,
gender neutrality maybe consistent with formal equality, it may also operate to render invisible a particular dynamic
which has historically been a focus for feminist concern, that is women and girls make up the majority of victims and
men make up the majority of offenders.

Women perpetrating child sexual abuse (young children):

- Not really criminal

- Not really women
- When it’s a teenage boy: absence of malice.

Women to women sexual violence (invisible):

- Challenges hegemonic femininity and feminist assumptions about lesbian relationships.

- Significant barriers to disclosure.
- Difficult to access support services and be taken seriously by law enforcement.

Trans women experience particularly high levels of sexual violence:

• Intersection with race/ethnicity etc.

• Crossing the Line: Lived Experience of Sexual Violence among Trans Women of Colour from
Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Backgrounds in Australia

• https://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:57044/

Discrimination towards people with disabilities, couple with attitudes towards women in patriarchal societies, put
women and girls with disabilities at increased risk of sexual violence. United nations: young people with disabilities,
especially girls are far more vulnerable to violence than their peers without disabilities being nearly three times more
likely to be subjected to sexual violence.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2022)

 1 in 4 (25% of) women with disability experience sexual violence after the age of 15 compared with
15% of women without a disability.

 1 in 14 (6.6% of) men living with a disability experience sexual violence after the age of 15, compared
with 3.9% of men without a disability.

See: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/contents/justice-and-safety/
violence-against-people-with-disability

Perpetrators are often caregivers at home or in institutional settings.

Disability hate crime:

 Targeted violence, abuse, harassment and public disorder towards ‘disabled’ individuals, communities and
their environments.
 Sexual violence has been identified as a dominant method of disability hate crime towards women and
underscores the importance of evaluating the intersections of both gender and disability when attempting to
understand the experiences of hate crime victims.

See your reading this week from Healy (2021)

Disabled people face many barriers to justice, they often not believed due to myths:
26

- Pertaining to the sexuality of people living with disabilities

- That people living with a disability lie or exaggerate
- People with disabilities don’t get sexually assaulted
- Police maybe dismissive because victims maybe seen as readily influenced and make poor witnesses.
- Reporting is difficult if you are in a dependent relationship with the perpetrator.
- Lack of support services

Older women as victims of sexual violence are largely excluded from the literature. For example, the goal of the “Me
Too” movement was to illuminate hidden acts of sexual violence, but it has left one group almost untouched by this
feminist wave. Older women victims of sexual violence were left out of the public discourse and are marginalized in
the academic discourse (Lowenstein Lazar, 2020: 212)

See: https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1222&context=mjgl

Most research on sexual violence, including feminist research, has focused on young and middle-aged women. In
feminist literature and activism and the theories of intersectionality have focused mainly on race, socioeconomic
status, and sexual orientation. The critique of essentialism, arguing that first and second wave feminist theories
focused on gender as the sole identity in women’s lives, has hardly acknowledged the combined effect of age and
gender and its unique complexities (Lowenstein Lazar, 2020: 212). Older women are not “suspected” of sending
confusing messages regarding sex, wanting it, “inviting” the rape, or lying about it.

What about elder abuse?

- Elder abuse encompasses physical, emotional, verbal, financial, and sexual violence. It also includes neglect
and abandonment of elderly people that causes harm of distress.
- Elder abuse can occur in the home, inflicted by family members or other caregivers, and in institutional
settings, such as nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Victims of elder abuse are disproportionately women, aging is feminized. Lifetime gendered socioeconomic power
relations  Feminisation of poverty: term referring to the gender dimension of poverty— the notion that women are
poorer than men and that women are overrepresented among poor people.

Sexual abuse of older women (as is the case for all victims) is a violation of human rights and a significant cause of
injury, illness, loss of productivity, isolation and death. It’s violating women’s right to safety and security and the right
of physical and mental health.

 Sexual harassment

Street harassment is unwanted sexualized verbal and non-verbal behaviors in public/semi-public places. It can be
experienced by men, particularly gay men but is disproportionality experienced by women and girls and mostly
perpetrated by men. Vera-Gray (2016) defines street harassment as men’s stranger intrusions on women in public
spaces. It’s a harassment who took place in commonplaces and every day, it limits women and girls access to and
freedom within public space (vera-gray).

Ilahi (2009) street harassment in Cairo : https://www.ocac.cl/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Nadia-Ilahi-Gendered-

Contestations-An-Analysis-of-Street-Harassment-in-Cairo-....pdf

certain social groups experience higher levels of harassment than other like LGBTQIA+ people and Muslim women.

This harassment is infrequently reported to police around 10%, “real rape” are more likely to be reported, and few
report will result in response. In Australia for 9 out of 10 victims who report to police “no formal legal redress will
occur” (Daly, 2010) and the increased frequency of reporting is not leading to more convictions.

 The criminal (in) justice system

The police

 Re-victimisation/secondary victimisation or secondary rape

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 Extends/exacerbates trauma
 See: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fvio0000072
 A form of state violence
 Intersection with other social structural oppressions
 Male victims of sexual assault/rape  [Male rape] victims are rarely believed [by the police] and thought to
be responsible for not being man enough to fight off an attacker ... many male victims report that the
treatment they receive by the police ... is worse than the offence itself (McMullen, 1990: 114)
 Homophobia/hegemonic mascunlity in police subculture
 ‘Credible’ victims
 ‘Credible’ criminals

I.e. racism, colonialism, classism, heterosexism etc.

Sexual violence support services:

- Underfunded
- Exclusion and lack of support for particular groups: trans women, lesbian, older women, women with
disability, first nation women and male victims.

What about sexual violence on campus:

• Australia National Student Safety Survey (2022): Sexual harassment

• One in six (16%) sexually harassed since starting their studies

• One in 12 (81%) in the preceding 12 months

• Female students (10.5%)

• Transgender students (14.7%)

• Non-binary students (22.4%)

• Male students (3.9%)

• Sexuality diverse students

• Pansexual (21.5%)

• Bisexual (17.7%)

• Gay or lesbian (12.3%)

• Heterosexual (6.4%)

• Students aged 18 to 21 years (11.7%)

• Students aged 22 to 24 years (8.4%)

• Students aged 25 to 34 years (5.5%) or older

• Students with a disability (13.7%) (compared to 7% of other students)

Most students reported the most impactful incident they had experienced involved male perpetrator/s (84.0%)

 One in twenty (4.5%) had been sexually assaulted since starting their studies
 1.1% in the preceding 12 months
 Female students (1.4%)
 Transgender students (14.7%)
 Non-binary students (22.4%)
 Male students (0.6%)
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 Sexuality diverse students

 Bisexual (3.0%)
 Gay or lesbian (2.0%)
 Heterosexual (0.8%)
 Students aged 18 to 21 years (1.9%)
 Students aged 22 to 24 years (1.1%)
 Students aged 25 to 34 years (0.5%) or older
 Students with a disability (2.4%) (compared to 0.9% of other students)

Most students reported the most impactful incident they had experienced involved male perpetrator/s (85.7%)

There is a low level of reporting particularly in LGBT people and people living with disabilities. It’s a problem to
focusing on individual perpetrators, we need to think wider about culture of the uni : masculinity, heteronormativity,
racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism…

 The problem with punitiveness (carceral feminism)

 Racialised and working-class men are more vulnerable to punitive treatment via university disciplinary
measures (Phipps, 2018)

See https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315612997-14/lad-culture-sexual-violence-students-
alison-phipps

 The Stanford Rape Case

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50196744-know-my-name

 The Hunting Ground (2015)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAcO6byawpo

 Feminist activism

1970s rape/sexual assault defined as a feminist issue/ a form of violence against women a gender-based violence.

• Rape crisis centres

• Take Back the Night/Reclaim the Night

• Privileging the experiences of white women

1980’s

• Feminist understandings in mainstream media

• 1988 The Accused

• Date rape and feminist backlash

Contemporary social movements  Mixing of digital and direct action :

 #EndRapeCulture (South Africa), 2016

 #BeenRapedNeverReported
 #YesAllWomen
 #YouOkSis
 Websites such as Hollaback, Stop Street Harassment and the Everyday Sexism Project
 #MeToo
 Prioritising the experiences of white, privileged women
 Aboriginal women in Australia
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 https://theconversation.com/for-indigenous-women-the-metoo-movement-is-a-deeper-fight-against-racism-
power-and-oppression-124502

In summary sexual violence binds different forms of domination and oppression together : individual, state and
structural.