Mean girls have become violent girls .. and they are proud of it
HATE crimes against women are a growing problem and one that I’ve addressed many times over the course of my career.
The perpetrators of this violence are overwhelmingly male and more generally we also usually associate physical violence with boys and men. But one reader recently emailed me to ask about women’s violence and how that might differ from the violence that we encounter which is used by men.
The email ended with a simple question – “are women violent?”
The standard answer in the past to a query of this kind has been to suggest that women can be and a limited number are violent, but that they often use different forms of violence from men.
The violence of girls and women was often seen as verbal, rather than physical – although that did not mean that it didn’t hurt just as much – and many readers will know only too well how words can demean, belittle and cause grief and pain.
However, there is growing evidence from research conducted by the criminologist Dr Susan Batchelor at Glasgow University to suggest that girls and women are now much more likely to use physical violence in ever increasing numbers.
The research also suggests they have become more deeply embedded in subcultures such as gangs, where violence is commonplace. Girls and women are now much more likely to arm themselves with knives, bottles and bats.
Alarmingly, they are more likely to report that the violence they use is in some sense “meaningful” – they are proud of it, rather than ashamed – as it reinforces group solidarity and enhances their personal status.
Are you surprised by these findings? Perhaps not but one thing that did surprise me when I interviewed Dr Batchelor was her explanation as to why she had first become interested in this research area.
Susan explained that when she was a teenager at school in Perth she learned that she would have to use violence against other girls to survive and that over time she became good at being violent.
Initially she had to use this violence to counter being bullied but she quite quickly realised that not only was she skilled at the punching, kicking and hair pulling but she also quite enjoyed the feelings that came when she was fighting.
Things escalated to such an extent that other girls would challenge Susan to test their own fighting abilities and eventually after one fight too many she was suspended from school. Her journey from school exclusion to academic success is incredibly inspiring and seems to me to be worthy of a Hollywood movie.
Susan’s childhood experiences have formed the basis of her research programmes at the university and she has now published articles about girl gangs, violent female offenders and has conducted research with female gang members imprisoned in HMP & YOI Cornton Vale in Stirlingshire, which has challenged stereotypes about Scotland’s street culture.
There she found that adopting a tough, aggressive approach by the women that she interviewed was an unavoidable aspect of their lives when growing up in a “rough” neighbourhood and that they grew to enjoy the “thrill” of violence as much as boys and men. Often Susan found that the women described using violence when they were “bored”, as it “broke up the day” and that it “gave us something to pass the time”.
In other words, we should not think of physical violence as something that is only “done” by men performing masculinity but as something which is now much more common to both genders.
I hope that all those violent girls and women that Susan encountered in her research find their way out of violence – and are perhaps inspired by her own personal journey into a much more peaceful existence.
Scotland’s leading crime expert’s fascinating column with his own take on the warped world inhabited by crimelords, killers and creeps