"Why don't women commit crime?" this is what they teach in sociology

avantvernacular · 2013-06-26T13:43:18+00:00

Because if we don't convict them at the same rate, don't charge them at the same rate, and don't punish them at the same rate, and make legal exemptions for their actions, then as far as statistics is concerned, they didn't "commit" a crime.

synnndstalker · 2013-06-26T15:13:35+00:00

Freda Adler, an awesome criminologist, has done a ton of work showing that as women are given more rights in countries, they suddenly start committing more crimes. It's all about opportunity.

dungone · 2013-06-26T13:22:04+00:00

The other issue is that a lot of immoral behaviour is not criminalised (in Western nations). Paternity fraud, for example, is perfectly legal.

DimitriK · 2013-06-26T13:03:05+00:00

Girls never hit boys. It's not that they get excused when they do. It's just that it never happens.

CMOS222 · 2013-06-26T13:56:39+00:00

So Parson's theory is 58 years old and Carlen's theory is 16 years old, and the book offers no research to support either theor...oops, wait, not theories, arguments. And this is what passes for rigorous science?

catmoon · 2013-06-26T15:01:54+00:00

Let me first say that I only come to subreddits such as /r/Libertarian and /r/MensRights in order to have my views challenged and I'm often the lonely guy playing devil's advocate, but I find myself agreeing with you guys in this case.

There are legitimate sociological discussions to have. Our society does not treat men and women equally -- this is something that we can all agree on -- and it follows logically that men and women will behave differently as a result and will be treated differently by society. Equality should always be the goal.

I was curious what Carlen's argument is so I looked up her most recent book:

Women and Punishment: the struggle for justice (2002)

This chapter aims to explore the 'contemporary search for equivalence (Forbes 1992) in offending. It will trace the emergence, in England and Wales..., of categories of female offender that disguise the interplay of gender, age, class and race, and serve instead to produce and reproduce a spurious categorical equality that renders women punishable and makes it only possible, but necessary, for increasing numbers of them to be punished. The political and moral justification for such punishment is that either more women are committing punishable acts or more women are being discovered committing punishable acts. This chapter aims to argue that, while both these claims may be true, crime, as Nils Christie (2001) asserted, 'is a limitless natural resource' which we can mine as much or as little as we wish. The desire to 'mine' women's crime in the 1990s has been driven by a creative political will, not a reactive one.

She then argues that a gender-neutral policy is in fact more harsh against women because "'violent girls' and 'women drug dealers' are implicitly worse than their male counterparts because...they are 'doubly deviant' -- violating both the law and gender-role expectation."

It seems like she's arguing that because women experience greater societal backlash that this justifies weaker punishment for them overall.

What I wonder is how she expects us to use that model for other classifications. Should "religious" people receive shorter sentences too? They are violating God's law as well as the state's. Should politicians and celebrities? They are under much harsher societal scrutiny.

I am not an MRA -- I'm actually a rather liberal progressive -- but I don't think this is an ethical approach to address societal inequality. Unlike other civil rights policies that I support, which ensure equal treatment (such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Act), Carlen is suggesting that only unequal treatment is actually fair.

rapiertwit · 2013-06-26T13:09:30+00:00

This is a valid subject of inquiry. The title is crappy, clearly, but it's an interesting line of thought. Another way to phrase the findings is: "Boys need positive male role models," which is a very popular sentiment around here.

j5c077 · 2013-06-26T13:04:03+00:00

Or maybe its that women commit a similar amount of crime but consistently get lesser sentences if they are even convicted or even charged at all in the first place.

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2013-06-26T19:11:45+00:00

Because female criminals are often dismissed without charges?

SpanishGuy · 2013-06-26T13:48:40+00:00

It's not that women do not commit crime, it's that it looks like an accident, or self-defense, or get a pussy-pass, or isn't mentioned in the news...

Sociology: The art of deceiving.

HullBredd · 2013-06-27T15:13:40+00:00

You fucking dumbass. It's a sociological theory; as such, its existence is being made known to sociology students. This textbook is reporting on an existing argument, not making one. The textbook doesn't make any judgement on the theory's validity, either.

You're like the people that don't want evolution taught in schools because it doesn't fit with their worldview.

Viking83 · 2013-06-26T16:30:05+00:00

... and this is why my company doesn't hire grads in sociology or political science. Yes, yes, you can do analysis and whatnot, but you've been brainwashed for five years: we don't want to work with you.

Not because you aren't a good worker, but we don't want to sit next to you in the lunch bar listening to your social construct this or that. True story.

giegerwasright · 2013-06-26T13:58:05+00:00

Well. First. The type of crimes that women commit tend to be different then the type of crimes that men tend to commit. For example, when a man wants to kill someone, he usually uses a direct method. Stabbing. Choking. Bombs. Shooting. It's brutal, it's efficient, it's final. It's also really easy to catch with modern forensic technology. That's the downside to the effectiveness of it. Women who decide that they want to kill someone will either poison them or get someone else to do it for them. It is much harder to catch a poisoner then a shooter or stabber. And when you get someone else to do it for you, you might be able to get away with it.

And that leads us to how women tend to commit their crimes. With proxies. Why take the risk yourself when you can just nudge someone else into it with a dangling carrot or some blackmail?

Dylan5019 · 2013-06-26T14:30:02+00:00

Those studies are over 15 and over 50 years old. Who teaches this shit? When I took sociology courses we only used studies that were within 5 years unless literally nothing else existed.

DavidByron · 2013-06-26T17:51:09+00:00

"Why don't White people steal like those blacks do?"

JasonWaterfall · 2013-06-26T14:45:22+00:00

[permanently deleted]

dungone · 2013-06-26T13:34:41+00:00

[permanently deleted]

nnnslogan · 2013-06-26T14:12:13+00:00

Unbelievable.

falconheart · 2013-06-26T19:13:51+00:00

The hell? I know plenty of women that commit very legitimate crimes! They just get away with it more often because police aren't looking for women.

Aaod · 2013-06-26T15:31:06+00:00

I agree with some of the arguments already presented but I see three of which have not been mentioned. The first is women are more likely to have someone to provide for them such as a husband/family or the state in other cases. This in turn makes it so they have less reason to commit crimes to monetary reasons.

Certain things are seen as less of a direct challenge to who they are due to their gender role being less strictly enforced. Among many poor males they have nothing but who they are so they overcompensate via their image and are in their mind forced to defend themselves over small slights. A poor female has less avenues for someone to slight her than a poor male.

Profiling women are less likely to be targeted by police or given a pass due to bias. Some of the most successful shoplifters are middle aged white women because security rarely targets them this in addition to law enforcement taking a gentler approach with women leads to the current state. We have all heard of women talking or crying their way out of traffic tickets have you ever heard of a male being able to do so?

Unenjoyed · 2013-06-26T17:00:53+00:00

Are you saying that's a required text book in a current university course on sociology?

kniteli · 2013-06-26T19:32:56+00:00

Was this picture taken with a stick of butter?

Smokey_666_1989 · 2013-06-26T14:09:23+00:00

Hate to be that guy, but source? What book is that from?

palagoon · 2013-06-26T15:43:45+00:00

As a Sociology grad student on the outs with my program (just trying to find a nice, soft landing spot before my funding runs out), I cannot tell you how tickled I am that all of this insanity is getting out.

This is standard sociology. Standard.

The people who fight against this bullshit? They're the radicals.

Marx0r · 2013-06-26T18:26:45+00:00

My college sociology class spent 2 whole classes on sexual abuse. 4 whole hours on "rape culture" and whatnot and not a single mention of male victims or female perpetrators.

newmobsforall · 2013-06-26T18:27:50+00:00

I would say that one of the biggest contributing factors is that women can get men to perform crime for them, while technically remaining free of conspiracy, and when they are involved in crime, they have an easier time making themselves out as a helpless bystander or victim.

theonlyguyonreddit · 2013-06-26T15:08:06+00:00

I failed sociology because the teacher had a manditory assignment where we had to write a paper on "why men hate women" instead I wrote "why women hate men" based of the same information she provided

MRMRising · 2013-06-26T20:05:21+00:00

Atleast part of the reason woman commit less crime is that there is less social pressure on them as providers. Even without feminism, woman are generally provided & protected in society. Crime is a fleeting moment of outrage in a otherwise poweless life. If men had more control over there own lives, there would be less male crime.

ExiledSenpai · 2013-06-26T14:42:57+00:00

How old is this book?

Callumlfc69 · 2013-06-26T14:45:11+00:00

When I took Sociology in High School (probably because it was High School) I don't necessarily remember the course being so sexist. It was 3 years ago though so I could be wrong or have been oblivious.

thesnakeinthegarden · 2013-06-26T16:29:47+00:00

Or it's about two theories that back a specific set of statistics that you just project your bullshit onto.... man.

AppleMutt · 2013-06-26T16:42:17+00:00

Maybe in your sociology but not in any of the classes I had. My -female- professor was very careful to not put out any bias statements or hits. A ground rule of ideology was pure un-corrupted logic in her teachings about group behavior.

spacepup13 · 2013-06-26T17:52:29+00:00

The problem with this is it is just one perspective not all. Much like Psychology there are different disciplines and beliefs. In fact in all the sociology classes I have taken only one really follows this belief.

2013-06-26T18:32:15+00:00

Ha. The problem with this is that people see these "theories" and then take them as facts when they're extremely outdated beliefs. I can confirm that in psychology we know the difference...

unkz · 2013-06-26T19:21:09+00:00

I note that the heading specifies a particular theory of why women don't commit crime. Does the next section detail a different theory? How many theories are considered, and what are they? This single image excerpt doesn't tell us much.

EtovNowd · 2013-06-26T19:46:25+00:00

Women cause no crime because their value does not depend on possessions, but it does on body proportions. This is why you can't ask the question, why don't men have suffer as much from bulimia/anorexia as women do? That's because female value is dependent on body size (and youth).

You should speak against this sociology class and call them out on their BS

cutcoguru · 2013-06-27T05:49:05+00:00

And this is the same group that deplores women being reduced to "damned whores and God's police". Irony much?

Alkaven5 · 2013-06-27T08:34:51+00:00

Women are statistically less likely to commit violent crime, although the gap closes in more gender-balanced societies. That's a fact.

Deftonez · 2013-06-26T15:14:12+00:00

Hey, hey, guys....this was written 1955, calm down. This was probably very true then. BUT WHY ARE THEY STILL REFERENCING IT NOW?!?!?

lazlounderhill · 2013-06-26T16:28:35+00:00

"Why are women so successful at commiting crimes, at avoiding/deflecting detection, and when detected, prosecution?"

gnarlywinter · 2013-06-26T17:08:16+00:00

Sociologist here. All this data you shared is way old. New studies show that women are ALMOST as likely to committ crime as men now. Furthermore, women lead men in areas like check fraud, fraud and even petty larceny. I have a question for you. Why did you post some outdated shit from 1955? Sociology is a science that moves forward using yearly UPDATED data to devise methodology. This was just a woman hatin post. Get it together dude because this is bitch shit.

kinyutaka · 2013-06-26T15:14:18+00:00

So... Casey Anthony is a man now?

whoisthis11 · 2013-06-26T15:42:47+00:00

It does say theory.

boss1000 · 2013-06-26T17:39:25+00:00

I don't get it. Everything in that image, though hard to read, is true. We're all shackled by gender roles.

TracyMorganFreeman · 2013-06-26T20:09:59+00:00

Women condemned for acting in an unfeminine way when they commit crimes?

So, if they act more masculine by committing crimes, they would have a similar conviction and sentencing rate, right?

fishing-for-downvote · 2013-06-27T04:07:12+00:00

500th death penalty execution in Texas begs to differ

chucknorrisinator · 2013-06-26T15:54:07+00:00

The problem in sociology textbooks (particularly those used in a 1301 class) is that they draw on studies that are generally accepted in the field. As you'll note, the first study is from 1955 and the findings are accurate for 1955. Women were raised to be caretakers/genteel, so the odds of a woman committing a violent crime was diminished.

The "guardians of domestic morality" quip in the reference to Carlen, I think draw on an historical movement in early America (post-Revolution) referred to as Republican motherhood. Women began clamoring for a way to participate in the new country's political system. Rather than being given voting rights and to, at least temporarily, satiate their desires, Republican motherhood was put forward as a means whereby women (through raising their children) influence the next generation of men to be moral and responsible (and would vote accordingly.) Sociology is a science; it's just dominated by those who disagree (i.e. dislike men.) Let's not abandon the field to feminazis!

spermjack_attack · 2013-06-26T14:11:50+00:00

People don't really subscribe to Parsonian social theory anymore... it's like way out of date and contemporary social theorists have moved away from nomothetic social theory.

So it's a little misleading to say they teach this is sociology. This looks like a history of social theory course/lecture.

2013-06-26T16:57:14+00:00

Wow this is the most retarded thing I have ever seen.

This kind of shit right here is why I don't trust a lot of college educated people. Especially people who study sociology. There is some real meat to sociology but all this pro-feminist shit from that discipline is just garbage.

Women commit crimes all the time and they also do not live up to very high moral standards. Furthermore the advancement of feminism and the increased social agency of women has caused them to commit even more crimes and behave even worse than ever before.

MacaRat · 2013-06-26T18:25:52+00:00

VolumeZero · 2013-06-26T14:27:05+00:00

Imagine if women were allowed to be the major dictators of the world, there would never be any conflict and everyone would be happy. /s

MR_Movement · 2013-06-26T16:59:15+00:00

Laws are created to target specific groups of people or actions. African American males make up 7% of the population in America yet are 40% of the prison population [source]. For example, the laws against crack cocaine use and possession imposed sentencing which was 10 times greater than pure cocaine use and possession. Pure cocaine is a mainly upper class caucasian drug while crack is a lower class African American drug. Hence, the laws targeted African Americans [source].

As it stands, drugs (47.1%), violence (20%), and sex (6%) are the actions most being prosecuted [source]. These actions are mainly male dominated actions. We are criminalizing male instincts and behavior. Yes, women get a pass when they are caught doing these things (men get 63% more time than women for the exact same crime on average) [source].. But the laws themselves are biased to begin with. They target things that men do. The males of the human race are more violent and sexual. We have targeted violence and sex as crimes in America. We could just as easily targeted shop lifting, embezzlement, and gossip mongering, all of which are mainly done by females (well, gossip mongering is not a crime but it should be) [source].

According to the statistics, African Americans commit more crimes than any other race. But it is not that the African Americans are genetically inclined to be evil, it is that the American justice system has created laws to target them. And that is what they have done with men. We have created a system that targets men and not women. It is not that women do not do bad things, it is that we do not target them for it. If spreading rumors (slander), shop lifting, and embezzlement were targeted by the law enforcement community instead of sex, drugs, and violence, we would see a switch in the gender roles in prison. Crime is defined by society through laws and the enforcement of those laws. In America, according to the statistics, we have decided that being a man is a crime.

NoSoul_Ginger · 2013-06-26T21:00:36+00:00

So girls don't commit crimes? Sure... And cows can fly, Aragorn was an orc, Xbox one will be a bigger hit than PS4 and I am Megan Fox.

2013-06-26T23:25:29+00:00

If I (as a woman) rape a child, falsely accuse a man, beat my SO, steal, cheat, rob, or whatever I will probably never be charged with a crime because I am a 'guardian of domestic morality'.

But if my brother so much as steals a candy bar he will be in Court for exhibiting his 'compensatory compulsory masculinity'.

ThePigman · 2013-06-27T01:33:41+00:00

Never, ever trust academia. It is there primarily to serve the ruling interests.

cltlny · 2013-06-27T05:21:40+00:00

This is actually pretty valid, have you ever studied gender and society?

BeatDigger · 2013-06-26T16:00:21+00:00

Men committed 88.8% of all homicides from 1980 to 2008.

wisdumb · 2013-06-26T18:02:46+00:00

From a sociology standpoint that is correct. All all female jury will cast a harder judment on a woman in court.

mazzyTuff · 2013-06-26T14:40:56+00:00

Hmm, it couldn't be that crime is defined in terms of immoral things men do.

2013-06-26T16:02:05+00:00

The Unknown history of misandry. haha

losesomeweight · 2013-06-26T17:23:54+00:00

funny thing is that if you remove the obvious bias towards women in this, feminists would get angry because it's essentially putting women in a 'guardian' type role, lol

Ding_batman · 2013-06-26T23:53:01+00:00

Does anyone know what book this is from? I would like to see it in context before making a comment.

MartinSe · 2013-06-27T11:03:10+00:00

Look at some fucking statistics, you misandrists. Women commit more crime than men, they just don't go to jail for it.

FatherReason · 2013-06-26T15:05:18+00:00

Is it just me or does this actually make a tiny little bit of sense?

TehJohnny · 2013-06-26T14:37:18+00:00

Why don't women commit crime?

The same reason why they don't do anything of note aside from spreading their legs and popping out children.

Open your window and take a look outside, at the roads & buildings, can you see anything built by women?

eeezo · 2013-06-26T17:26:51+00:00

They are teaching THEORIES. Two different theories on that particular page of the textbook - but you conveniently don't show images of all the other stuff that's in that textbook.

cody_au · 2013-06-27T07:00:06+00:00

Title	"Why don't women commit crime?" this is what they teach in sociology
Author	Jeffoxxy
Upvotes	561
Comments	316
Date	June 26, 2013 1:00 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1h3s9w/why_dont_women_commit_crime_this_is_what_they/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-dont-women-commit-crime-this-is-what-they.1170145 https://theredarchive.com/post/1170145

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