Sex before violence: girls, dating violence, and (perceived) sexual autonomy.

• Author: Hanna, Cheryl

INTRODUCTION

Something amiss is happening to adolescent girls on their way to womanhood. It appears that girls today are experiencing violence, both as victims and as perpetrators, to a far greater extent than a generation ago. (1) Thus, they are finding themselves more frequently in contact with the criminal justice system, both as victims and, increasingly, as defendants.

Two related trends are particularly troubling. The first is the rising tide of girl violence, which has received much literary attention. (2) The interest in girl violence is fueled by government statistics that show that even though violent crime rates are down overall, they are rising among women under age eighteen. For example, from 1993 to 2002, juvenile arrests for simple assaults rose forty-one percent for girls but only four percent for boys. (3) During this period, girls also experienced a seven percent increase in arrests for aggravated assault, while boys experienced a twenty-nine percent decline. (4) Even though boys are far more likely to engage in violent crime than girls, (5) this and other data suggest that aggression and physical violence play an increasingly prominent role in girls' behavioral repertoires. What is particularly striking is that forty-two percent of female victims of violent crimes by juveniles were victimized by other females. (6)

A similar amount of media attention and scholarly research has focused on dating violence. (7) Even though rates of domestic violence as measured by domestic homicides have fallen dramatically in the last fifteen years, (8) teen dating violence seems to be a serious, and arguably growing, problem among our nation's youth. Girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four are most at risk for non-fatal dating violence. (9) Some studies estimate that one-third of teenagers have been victimized by dating violence, (10) and one-fourth of teenage girls in relationships endure repeated verbal abuse. (11) This suggests that aggression is more commonplace among teen dating relationships today than it was a generation ago. More than half of teens know friends or peers who have been physically, sexually, or verbally abused. (12) While girls are more likely than boys to be severely injured in violent exchanges, (13) both girls and boys report that girls increasingly use physical aggression in their intimate relationships. (14)

What is even more troubling about these trends is that, if violence is becoming more common in the lives of young women, it comes after more than three decades of legal reform geared at advancing women's physical safety and personal autonomy. Women today still face subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, discrimination. Yet, young women born after 1985 have come of age in an era where most legal barriers to women's advancement in education and the marketplace have been removed. Young women have unprecedented access to reproductive choices, and have never known a time before Title IX. They excel in the classroom and on the playing field. These granddaughters of the women's rights movement are the inventors of girl power--that in-your-face, I-can-be-and-do-anything-I-want attitude. Why then would we see an increase in violence, both by and against them?

In this Article, I explore that question. In particular, I explore the phenomenon of girl violence by examining teen dating violence and girls' experiences with intimate abuse both as victims and as perpetrators. While there is a tendency to view women's experiences as victims of violence as separate and distinct from their experiences as inflictors of violence, the two phenomena are interrelated. A girl's violent victimization can lead her to victimize someone else, just as her own violence can lead her to violent victimization. (15) Indeed, recent research suggests that boys and girls who have been victims of violence are more likely to perpetrate adolescent violence. (16) Moreover, any exposure to violence within an intimate relationship puts a girl at risk of finding herself in the criminal justice system. (17) Thus, if we want to respond to the growing number of arrests of girls for violent crimes, we ought to ask what it is about girls, at this point in our history, that leaves them vulnerable to experiencing violence with such frequency.

One factor that may fuel the increase in girl violence is girls' willingness or desire to become sexually involved with boys. While much data suggests that sex and violence coexist in violent dating relationships, the relationship between the two has never been clear. (18) One could assume that boyfriends use violence to initiate a sexual relationship. (19) Recent research on teenage dating violence, however, indicates that violence most often happens after a young couple has consensual sex. (20) Thus, engaging in sexual activity within a dating relationship appears dramatically to increase the risk of physical and sexual violence. (21)

Adolescent girls often perceive that it is acceptable, even desirable, to have a sexual relationship with their boyfriends. For many girls, having sex is a way to express love for a partner. (22) Yet, girls are finding that an unintended consequence of their love, and their perceived sexual autonomy to express that love, is that men and boys will use violence to control them both sexually and socially. Sexual activity may also be the precursor to a girl engaging in violent behavior. (23) This is especially true if the girl has become more invested in a relationship because she had sex with her boyfriend. (24) She may then engage in violence out of fear and frustration that she may lose him. (25) These risks may be especially true for younger girls, who often lack the emotional maturity needed to handle the demands of a sexual relationship. While young women may perceive themselves as making choices about their sexual lives, they may have far less control than they think. For many girls, love, and the sex that accompanies it, becomes the gateway to violent relationships, as well as to other high risk behaviors such as alcohol and drug use. For a growing number of girls, it becomes the gateway to the criminal justice system.

What makes any discussion about girls and sexual behavior difficult is that the mere suggestion that a young woman's sexual autonomy may make her more vulnerable to violence often triggers a socially conservative response about the breakdown of sexual mores. Hostility toward women's social advancement often underlies this rhetoric. Unfortunately, social conservatives have co-opted the debate about sexuality and gender to such an extent that it is difficult, if not impossible, to suggest that certain strategies may help protect young women from becoming violent or becoming victims of violence. Yet, if we want to protect the autonomy and sexual freedom of young women, we must engage in conversations about girls and sexual behavior.

These conversations about young women and sexual behavior are especially important for lawyers and advocates. While the implementation of legal strategies such as civil restraining orders and more aggressive criminal prosecutions provide victims of intimate violence with greater legal options, there have been no studies which suggest that these strategies help prevent violence among teens. Thus, we must explore more proactive strategies, such as programs geared to reducing dating violence and sex education classes that fully inform adolescents of the risks of early sexual activity.

AGE AND INTIMATE VIOLENCE

During the past two decades, much theoretical and practical work on domestic violence has emerged. Many such works examine domestic violence through the gender lens. Domestic violence was initially understood within the larger context of gender discrimination, given that the vast majority of domestic violence victims are women. (26) More nuanced analyses followed, looking at the impact of race, ethnicity, class, disability, sexual orientation, and citizen status on domestic violence and our legal responses to it. (27) Such analyses have greatly aided our understanding of domestic violence and have helped shape the development of legal policies that respond to victims' needs. The relationship between age and domestic violence, however, has largely gone unexplored. (28)

Throughout one's life, as long as one is in an intimate relationship, one is always at some risk of domestic violence. Whether someone is fourteen or eighty years old, the primary reason one engages in verbal, physical, or sexual abuse against an intimate partner is a desire for control. (29) Violence is often triggered by sexual conflict, sexual jealousy, or a fear that the relationship is changing or will end. (30) The context for domestic violence is intimacy--both sexual and emotional. Yet, one of the reasons we often "miss" the young and the elderly in our analysis of domestic violence is that our culture denies that the young and the elderly engage in the kinds of romantic or sexual relationships that can lead to violence.

We often misconstrue violence by young people as being something other than domestic violence. We may attribute violence in dating relationships to individual social problems, or we may minimize it as innocent horseplay. It is telling that among the volumes of legal academic literature on domestic violence, for example, few articles focus specifically on adolescent dating relationships. (31)

Similarly, there is a popular misunderstanding that violence among the elderly is triggered by "caregiver" stress. (32) When abuse happens in the context of an intimate relationship, however, it is almost always an outgrowth of domestic violence. (33) Once an elderly couple reaches a certain age, we label it "elder abuse" when, in fact, it is the similar pattern of domestic abuse that we see among younger couples. (34) The overall pattern of behavior in violent relationships is similar regardless of the age of the...