The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
The theories presented in this chapter either directly include victimization or have more regularly included victimization over time. Feminists often struggle with balancing sexism and misogyny—and how they intersect with racism, poverty, heterosexism, and other types of oppressions—in addressing girls and women’s agency (self-determination). On one hand, it is important to document and discuss both offending and victimization, together and separately, and in terms of structural, legal, and cultural barriers to equality (which themselves can be victimizations, such as gross travesties of justice within the criminal legal system). On the other hand, it is inconsistent with feminism to portray girls and women as having no agency or resiliency, even when they are marginalized in numerous serious and intersecting ways (e.g., see Maher, 1997, p. 1). Documenting the serious denial of individual and systemic agency many victims and/or offenders face, and how this seriously limits their choices, including in some cases, for survival, must be balanced with not portraying girls and women as weak and lacking in courage. Although it is imperative to document women and girls’ offending “within a constrained, gendered, raced, and classed environment” (Schwartz & Steffensmeier, 2017, p. 131), it is also vital to include women and girls’ strengths and resiliency.
Sterk (1999) captures this dichotomy of agency in her study of crack-addicted women: “On the one hand, they saw themselves as victims, but on the other they recognized themselves as important, independent actors” (p. 173). Garcia-Hallett’s (2019) study of maternal identity and offending reveals “how mothering under neoliberalism may introduce circumstances where some women feel pressured to offend in the name of their maternal role—protecting and providing for their children” (p. 235). Some women’s initial offending is done to provide for their children. J. Miller’s (2001) book One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender identifies girls’ paths to gang membership and both the offending and victimization included gang activities. But Miller also describes the empowerment and equality that gang membership provides these girls in gangs. Miller notes not only how gang membership increases the risk of victimization but also how the allure of gangs partially comes from an escape from sexual assaults and other abuses that are often perpetrated by their family members.
Feminist scholars and advocates must constantly address how power is taken away but also honor the resiliency of survivors, much as Indigenous and African American scholars have done in addressing the fighting back and resiliency from the victims of the most shameful parts of U.S. history: the extreme horrors of genocide, stealing land, and kidnapping and enslaving people (e.g., Du Bois, 1899; Foran, Snarr, Heyman, & Slep, 2012; Muhammad, 2010). Similarly, in Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson (2015) poignantly documents the power of hope and resiliency among some individuals currently in or recently released from U.S. prisons under the appalling prison conditions, whose incarcerations resulted from outrageously biased, unfair, and sometimes illegal, police and/or court decisions. In their study of women sex workers’ agency, aptly titled, “First and Foremost They’re Survivors,” Shdaimah and Leon (2015) powerfully conclude, “Prostitute women exhibit creative, resilient, and rational conduct. Rejecting victimhood, our respondents demonstrate moral reasoning, make choices, work systems that dominate their lives, and assert power and control when they can. Their resistance, while serving a symbolic function, also expresses their system savvy and self-advocacy that produce measurable benefits” (p. 326).
Critical Theories
Critical Criminology Theory (CCT)
In the late 1960s in the United States and early 1970s in Britain, a more radical perspective entered the ring of criminological theories (Naffine, 1996). Conflict theory is grounded in Marxism and thus often referred to as Marxist theory or radical theory. Although Karl Marx himself wrote very little about crime, his perspective on class struggle and on social relations under capitalism are the basis for conflict/Marxist/radical and critical criminology theory (CCT). Just as Marx’s focus was on class and the means of production, but not on gender/women or race, we will see that has sadly been the legacy of CCT. Conflict/Marxist/radical and critical criminology (CCT) theories typically embrace a more structural, political, and economical perspective than the theories discussed in Chapter 2, proposing that rather than looking at the offender, we should focus on society, particularly law-makers and powerful interests. This approach assumes that laws are biased, reflecting the needs of the upper class, and thus enforcement of these laws is inevitably unjust. To these conflict/Marxist/radical and critical criminologists, then, crime itself is politicized and defined by the powerful elite. Therefore, the key to solving the crime problem is changing the economic system (Bonger, 1969), which is highly political.
The conflict/Marxist/radical perspective on criminology was crystallized and even renamed the “new criminology” and “critical criminology” with the publication of I. Taylor, Walton, and Young’s books of the same names (The New Criminology [1973] and Critical Criminology [1975]). Other criminologists have also helped develop this perspective (e.g., D. M. Gordon, 1973; Platt, 1974; Quinney, 1972, 1975; Schwendinger & Schwendinger, 1970). The new criminologists viewed society as two-tiered—with harmful wealthy capitalist men beyond the arm of the law, and working-class men offenders who should be regarded as “resistors” to the “real criminals” (the capitalists) and thus should be viewed with appreciation and sympathy (Naffine, 1996, p. 44). Common criticisms of the new criminology were that it was overly simplistic and generalizing (Leonard, 1982, p. 161).
The new criminologists were also roundly criticized by feminist criminologists for ignoring women, girls, and gender (Heidensohn, 1985; Howe, 1994; D. Klein & Kress, 1976; Leonard, 1982; Allison Morris, 1987; Naffine, 1996). One example was their failure to recognize that economic factors alone cannot explain gender differences in criminal behavior; they require a political analysis as well (Leonard, 1982). In a refreshing departure from the numerous accounts of critical criminology that fail to address the “woman question,” in 1976 Klein and Kress (1976) wrote an insightful article discussing how the status of women and sexist oppression were relevant to radical criminology. Other Marxist-feminist accounts state that because sexism is directly tied to capitalism, sexism governs the economic, social, and legal aspects of our lives (J. W. Messerschmidt, 1988; Rafter & Natalizia, 1981). Most feminist criticisms of CCT are from the view of offending; however, Naffine (1996) points out that the new criminologists either outright overlooked rape and intimate partner abuse or documented them uncritically (p. 45). A book on radical criminology published in the late 1989 devoted only five pages to women and gender (M. J. Lynch & Groves, 1989). Both CCT and cultural theory offer great collaboration with feminist theory, and it is hoped that CCT and cultural criminology theory will do this more regularly (see K. J. Cook, 2016). On an encouraging note, some more recent evaluations state that radical criminologists are finally “getting it” regarding their history of ignoring gender and feminism (see Britton, 2000; DeKeseredy, 1996). Chapter 14 includes transformative critical feminist criminology as proposed by leading feminist criminology scholars Chesney-Lind and Morash (2013).
Critical Race Theory (CRT)
In the 1970s, critical legal studies (CritLS) emerged from a radical group of predominantly white male legal academics (see Crenshaw, 2002; Wing, 1997). The CritLS scholars questioned the objectivity of laws that they claimed for centuries had inherently oppressed the poor, people of Color, and women, either outright or in their applications (Crenshaw, 2002; Seiler, 2003). Some people of Color and women who were scholars in the radical left worried that however well-meaning and radical the CritLS component was, they seemed unable to promote an analysis beyond the white male elite lens through which they viewed the world (Wing, 1997, p. 2). These scholars, led by Derrick Bell, started critical race theory (CRT) in the mid-1970s, and it fully emerged in the late 1980s (Wing, 1997). Delgado and Stefancic (2017) define CRT as a “progressive legal movement to transform the relationship among race, racism, and power” (p. 171).
Bell’s (1973) book, Race, Racism, and American Law, is an early treatise of the many ways U.S. law discriminates by race. The originators of CRT believed that the civil rights movement had