lavender-labia:
nerdydyke:
Yes, certain crimes. Typically that involves if she kills a lot of people, or she kills her children or partner.
While women MAY be punished more harshly for certain crimes, men get punished more harshly in regards to every other crime. Therefore, wouldn’t…
I think it’s relevant to point out that the idea of male perpetrators generally causing greater injury isn’t necessarily true, as Dutton & Nicholls examine in the study found here. While differences do exist, they’re not nearly as great as many advocates are claiming, and even then these levels are vulnerably to skewing due to societal norms. We can see this in many earlier studies, particularly those working from crime data. A woman who walks into a hospital looking like she’s been assaulted is very likely to be questioned as to whether she was a DV victim. A man is less likely to be asked, and more likely to be believed if he claims other origin….not to mention less likely to seek medical attention in the first place.
The same problem affects many types of study, as any study that rates injury based on subjective interpretation or police data will overreport the injury to women, underreport the injury to men or both at once because men will (for various reasons) generally set the bar for “serious” or “severe” injury higher. For example, most women would likely rate a black eye as “serious injury,” but many if not most men would likely consider it to be minor, especially if they’ve ever played contact sports. When we add societal pressure for men to downplay their own injuries, especially injuries received at the hands of primarily female partners the skewing can become bad enough to render the data utterly misleading.
Even this itself is somewhat misleading, though, because when we look at the actual acts themselves we see that the disparity in injury we do see is likely a result of men simply being stronger or more durable rather than differing levels of violence. It would almost sound like victim-blaming, actually, effectively claiming that men’s victimization “counts less” not because their attackers are less determined or vicious but simply because they’re better at defending themselves. This seems to be an extension of the societal construct of “men as invulnerable” which allows us to ignore their victimization.
~Neko