Fighting for Her Honor

• Author: Katherine Irwin,Corey Adler
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Date: 01 October 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1557085112436837

Feminist Criminology

7(4) 350 –380

© The Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085112436837

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436837FCX7410.1177/1557085112436837Irw

in and AdlerFeminist Criminology

1University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Katherine Irwin, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Saunders Hall 247, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA

Email: Kirwin@hawaii.edu

Fighting for Her Honor:

Girls’ Violence in Distressed

Communities

Katherine Irwin1 and Corey Adler1

Abstract

Since the 1980s, delinquency researchers and urban ethnographers have increasingly

placed girls’ violence in the center of their inquiries. Within recent scholarship, there

are several looming questions such as how much of girls’ violence is shaped by the

same forces motivating violent boys and how much is shaped by concerns unique

to girls. This study draws on data from a 6-year qualitative study of violence among

Pacific Islander high school students in Hawaii.

We explore how girls’ violence attends

to gender as well as to the rampant economic, racial, ethnic, and political dislocations

that threatened family survival in adolescents’ communities.

Keywords

female violence, community distress, gender, ethnographic research, multiple inequalities

Introduction

Up until the 1980s, the community distress and violence literature focused explicitly

or implicitly on young men and their violent quests to “be somebody” in communities

in which conventional opportunities for success are few and far between. Indeed, a

conceptual line can be traced from classic criminological statements about gangs and

street corner boys (Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Cohen, 1955; Merton, 1957; Miller, 1958;

Shaw, 1930; Shaw & McKay, 1942) to contemporary analyses of marginalized boys’

and young men’s violent quests for respect and autonomy. For decades, marginalized

males have been seen in similar ways: as emphasizing trouble, toughness, and auton-

omy (Miller, 1958); projecting a “tough guy” or “street” image (Oliver, 1984; Wilkinson,

Irwin and Adler 351

2001); cleaving to a “compulsive masculinity” (Oliver, 1984); striving to become

“badasses” (Katz, 1988); and using violence to display their “nerve” or “juice,” and

to seek retaliation against those who harm them (Anderson, 1999). In essence, vio-

lence has historically been seen as a resource for men to accomplish their masculinity

(Messerschmidt, 1993, 1997) in locations ravaged by poverty, race-based segregation

and demoralization, and the rampant failure and underfunding of civic institutions

meant to serve inner-city residents.

Despite a long-standing male bias, researchers examining violence and community

distress in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s have increasingly focused on girls.

Despite the effort to place girls’ experiences at the center of attention, the historic

masculine bias presents lingering challenges. One challenge is that femininity has not

been framed in terms that allow for an easy coupling between femininity and violence

for girls. As Heimer and De Coster (1999) note, traditional femininity has been associ-

ated with traits such as “a high capacity for nurturance, a tendency toward passivity

rather than aggressiveness, and physical and emotional weakness” (p. 282) as well as

“sexual discretion, sociability (rather than competition) . . . and submissiveness” (De

Coster & Heimer, 2006, p. 145). Within this traditional understanding of femininity,

“violence is generally considered femininity’s polar opposite” (Jones, 2010, p. 76).

The seeming contradiction between traditional femininity and violence means that

contemporary researchers have had to grapple with some common challenges, includ-

ing how violent girls contend with traditional femininity proscriptions at the same time

that girls, like their male counterparts, struggle for survival at the axis of multiple

inequalities.

Researchers of girls’ violence have addressed the applicability of femininity pro-

scriptions and girls’ struggles against multiple inequalities in different ways. Looking

at the contemporary girls’ violence and community distress literature, there are at least

three traditions, including the emergence of a resilient femininity thesis (Jones, 2004,

2008, 2010; Leitz, 2003; Ness, 2004, 2010), an emphasis on patriarchy in violent girls’

lives (Artz, 1998, 2004; Artz, Nicholson, & Magnuson, 2008; Batchelor, Burman, &

Brown, 2001; Burman, Brown, & Batchelor, 2003; Brown, 2003; Joe & Chesney-Lind,

1995; Morash & Chesney-Lind, 2009; Schaffner, 2006), and a gender convergence/

divergence tradition (Miller, 2001; Miller & Mullins, 2006, 2009). While presented

here as distinct, these contemporary perspectives in fact intersect in important ways.

For example, most researchers agree that gender matters for violent girls growing up

in communities in which racial, class, and political alienation present formidable chal-

lenges to all residents.

The importance of gender inequalities as well as intersections of racial, ethnic,

class, and political alienation for violent girls came to the fore during a 6-year qualita-

tive study of violence among Pacific Islander high school students, most of whom

were Native Hawaiian and Samoan. By looking at violent Pacific Islander girls and

their experiences in schools, peer groups, and families, we attempt to broaden the

explanations of girls’ violence. More specifically, we take into account violent girls’

gender identity constructions, their attempts to gain respect, and the ways that girls’