Aggression: Is Masculinity Criminogenic

1
Aggression Is Masculinity Criminogenic?
2
Crime and Masculinity

• When we examine biological factors and their
  relation to crime, no other factor is as
  significant (statistically and culturally) as
  gender or sex.
• Men are far more likely to commit crimes in
  general men are far more likely to become
  involved in violent and aggressive types of
  crime men are far more likely to form criminal
  subcultures (such as gangs and organized crime)
  men are far more likely to be involved in crimes
  of victimization men are far more likely to
  become involved in public forms of violence
  associated with sports and political events.
• Therefore, gender and crime are positively
  related. That is, crime is more likely to come
  from men.

3
The Male Gender A missed category?

• It is clear that patriarchy is an important
  social category that helps us to understand many
  aspects of the social worlds inequalities.
• However, James Messerschmidt, questions the
  incompleteness of this type of analysis. Some of
  these incomplete analyses place men into a single
  category where women are good, men are bad,
  plain and simple. And it is this essential
  badness that leads to patriarchy and violence
  against women (Messerschmidt, 43).
• This tendency to see men in a stereotypical way
  ignores both how masculinity actually is linked
  to crime and, equally important, how various
  types of masculinity are related to different
  types of offending (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball,
  219).
• Is gender difference and its affects on crime
  biological?

4
Hegemonic Masculinity

• Messerschmidt has adapted Connells notion of
  hegemonic masculinity.
• Males are generally socialized into this type of
  masculinity from a very early age. It is,
  essentially, a culturally approved script that
  allows men to define themselves and achieve
  masculinity. This is done through work in the
  paid-labor market, the subordination of women,
  hetero-sexism, anddriven and uncontrollable
  sexuality (Messerschmidt, 82). It further
  involves practices toward authority, control,
  competitive individualism, independence,
  aggressiveness, and capacity for violence
  (ibid).
• Men are constantly under pressure to accomplish
  or demonstrate their masculinity in ways that are
  consistent and emblematic of this culturally
  approved script.
• Men who do not fit into this dominant idea of
  masculinity will suffer the abuse of fellow men
  who see things in traditional gender terms.

5
Socially Approved Ways to Achieve Masculinity

• How do men achieve a masculine identity?
• As we have stressed, this is not achieved without
  effort at both the psychic and social level.
  That is, men struggle with their own identity and
  self-perception as well as the ways in which
  others perceive them.
• This identity may be achieved through socially
  approved channels such as success in school (?)
  success in sports success in employment as well
  as the related respect in the eyes of others.
• If these goals are blockedthat is, if the
  legitimate means to accomplishing masculinity are
  not availablethen males must find other ways of
  showing their masculinity.

6
Doing Gender

• According to Messerschmidt, crime is a central
  method or a critical resource that is used by
  males experiencing goal blockages. They do
  gender as a way to announce their masculinity
  and defend their essential identity.
• In the face of emasculation, men can employ crime
  was a way of showing others that they have
  guts, are fearless, and are real men.
• Crime is, in other words, a recognized yet
  illegitimate route to masculinity in our society
  it is a way to achieve a masculine identity.
• However, these responses are different depending
  on race and class as well as particular social
  and personal situations.

7
Masculinity and Structural Location

• White middle class boys are able to achieve
  masculinity through success in sports and in
  school, all the while knowing that professional
  work lies in their future. The emasculating
  features of school are accepted in exchange for
  certain nonviolent expressions of masculinity
  such as vandalism or binge drinking.
• White working-class boys are less likely to
  achieve success in school, defining it instead as
  sissy stuff. Accordingly, they often manifest
  an oppositional culture in school and are
  involved in pranks and other types of disruptive
  mischief. Outside the classroom, they do
  gender through theft, fighting, or perhaps, hate
  crimes. White working class boys may often have
  a lot of uncontrolled aggression combined with a
  lack of knowledge of the source of their
  oppression or lack of life chances. Therefore,
  they may be prone to placing blame on different
  races, immigrants, and/or women.
• Racial-Ethnic minority and working class boys are
  likely to find school boring, unrelated to their
  future lives, and humiliating.

8
Re-affirming Masculinity

• A common theme of masculine types of crime is
  their attempt to re-establish a lost sense of
  masculinity.
• Often humiliation and disrespect (which is
  usually misunderstood in terms of its source) is
  passed onto victims.
• When boys become men, these same feelings of
  emasculation can be passed onto adult forms of
  crime.
• Therefore, the re-attainment of respect and the
  establishment of a renewed masculinity is a key
  feature of much male violence.

9
Masculinity and Violence Against Women

• According to Messerschmidt, the domestic assault
  of women is a resource for affirming maleness
  (149).
• His claim is that such violence will be more
  prevalent among men who are in economically
  precarious positions, whether in the working
  class or unemployed. A status strain is a very
  strong element.
• These men lack traditional resources for
  constructing their masculinity and, as a result,
  are more likely than middle-class men to forge a
  particular type of masculinity that centers on
  ultimate control of the domestic setting through
  the use of violence (149).
• Quite simply, the inability to prove masculinity
  in the public realm makes the demonstration of
  masculinity in the home all the more salient. In
  other words, battering serves as a suitable
  resource for simultaneously accomplishing gender
  and affirming patriarchal masculinity (150).
• However, is domestic violence a lower class
  problem only?

10
An Oppositional Culture Gender BinarismIs this
the problem?

• Male
• Active
• Public (out of home)
• Rational
• Aggressive
• Sexually-promiscuous
• Natural wanderers
• Physically powerful
• Criminally dangerous
• Up-front and direct
• Crimes of violence
• Users of sexual services

• Female
• Passive
• Private (in the home)
• Emotional
• Reserved
• Sexually-reserved
• Natural care-givers
• Physically weak
• Victims of crime
• Secretive and deceptive
• Crimes of deception
• Sexually exploited