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Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality steps into the “mean girl” hype prepared
for battle, directly confronting damaging assumptions and stereotypes. Readers
will come away with newfound clarity and erce loyalty to girls who must ght
their way through a potent and troubling morass of sexism, racism, classism, and
homophobia for the visibility, respect, and dignity they deserve. This book is man-
datory for anyone working with girls, but especially those on the front lines of
education and criminal justice.
Lyn Mikel Brown, Professor of Education, Colby College, and author of
Girlghting: Betrayal and Rejection among Girls
Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality is an impressive effort to analyze young
women’s violence and the hype surrounding it through an intersectional lens.
McQueeney and Girgenti-Malone have brought together a distinguished group of
scholars who illuminate these intersections in new and important ways. A must-
read for those of us who hope to intercede on the criminalization of girls – in the
justice system and the public imagination.
Jody Miller, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers School of Criminal
Justice, and author of Getting Played: African American Girls,
Urban Inequality, and Gendered Violence
Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality is essential reading for scholars and students
and anyone in need of an intersectionalized understanding of “why girls ght.”
This volume is a comprehensive and skillful intersectional treatment of aggres-
sive and assaultive behaviors committed by girls and young women.
This volume provides necessary and up-to-date critical conceptualization of
aggressive and assaultive behaviors committed by girls and young women, paying
particular attention to the multiple intersecting identities of girls.
The chapters in this volume provide rigorous inquiry and analysis to combat
misinformed and stereotypical beliefs frequently perpetuated through popular and
social media about all girls and young women, but especially about girls of Color,
LGBTQ girls, and girls living with minimal nancial resources.
Hillary Potter, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University
of Colorado at Boulder, and author of Intersectionality and
Criminology: Disrupting and Revolutionizing
Studies of Crime
Girls, Aggression, and
Intersectionality
From media images of “mean girls” to the disproportionate punishment of Black,
Latina, and/or queer girls in schools and the justice system, girls’ aggression has
become a public concern. Scholars, educators, policymakers, and parents are
scrambling to respond to the perceived upsurge in girls’ bullying, peer pressure,
and aggression/violence.
Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality examines how intersecting social
identities – such as race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and others – shape media
representations of and criminal justice reactions to girls’ aggression. The book
focuses on three overarching questions: How do race, class, and sexuality inuence
media images of girls’ aggression? How do aggressive girls’ intersecting identities
affect law enforcement and criminal justice responses to their aggression? How
are diverse groups of girls trying to resist this labeling and criminalization?
Using intersectionality as a conceptual framework, this insightful volume
deconstructs a unitary analysis of girls’ aggression and transforms the mainstream
discourse that paints girls as inherently “mean.”
Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate
students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in elds including Sociology,
Gender Studies, Youth Studies, Criminology, and Media and Culture.
Krista McQueeney is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminology,
and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, USA.
Alicia Girgenti-Malone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology
and Criminal Justice at Merrimack College, USA.
59 Gender, Subjectivity and Cultural Work
Classical Music Profession
Christina Scharff
60 The Conundrum of Masculinity
Hegemony, Homosociality, Homophobia and Heteronormativity
Chris Haywood, Thomas Johansson, Nils Hammarén, Marcus Herz and
Andreas Ottemo
61 Body Image as an Everyday Problematic
Looking Good
Félix Díaz Martínez
62 Women, Horseracing and Gender
Becoming ‘One of the Lads’
Deborah Butler
63 Sexuality after War Rape
From Narrative to Embodied Research
Nena Močnik
64 Bodies, Symbols and Organizational Practice
The Gendered Dynamics of Power
Edited by Agnes Bolsø, Stine Helena Bang Svendsen, Siri Øyslebø Sørensen
65 Beyond Gender
An Advanced Introduction to Futures of Feminist and Sexuality Studies
Edited by Greta Olson, Daniel Hartley, Mirjam Horn-Schott, and Leonie
Schmidt
66 Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality
Transforming the Discourse of “Mean Girls” in the United States
Edited by Krista McQueeney and Alicia Girgenti-Malone
Routledge Research in Gender and Society
www.routledge.com/sociology/series/SE0271
Girls, Aggression, and
Intersectionality
Transforming the Discourse of “Mean Girls”
in the United States
Edited by
Krista McQueeney and
Alicia Girgenti-Malone
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Krista McQueeney and Alicia
Girgenti-Malone; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Krista McQueeney and Alicia Girgenti-Malone to be
identied as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-1-138-05931-3 (hbk)
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To my mother, Noreen, for encouraging me to pursue my
passions and be an advocate for social justice. Without
your erce love and unwavering support, this would not
have been possible.
Krista McQueeney
To my mother, Christine, for being my greatest advocate
and closest friend. Your life is a true testament of a
mother’s unconditional love. Thank you from the bottom
of my heart.
Alicia Girgenti-Malone
List of tables and gures xi
About the contributors xii
Acknowledgments xvi
Introduction 1
KRISTA McQUEENEY AND ALICIA GIRGENTI-MALONE
PART I
Media representations of girls’ aggression and violence 9
1 Girls and violence: moral panics and the policing
of girlhood 11
MEDA CHESNEY-LIND AND LISA PASKO
2 Constructing the “bad girls” hype: an intersectional
analysis of news media’s depictions of violent girls 24
TIA STEVENS ANDERSEN, DEENA ISOM SCOTT, AND KELSEY COLLINS
3 Intersectionality and the news framing of “bad girls” 45
KRISTA McQUEENEY AND ALICIA GIRGENTI-MALONE
4 The female world of love and ritual violence: the Slender
Man case and popular news depictions of female adolescent
violence 72
KAREN HAYDEN
5 The new famous: deconstructing African American girl
ghts on social media 90
TAMMY RHODES AND ANDREA HUNT
Contents
x Contents
PART II
Criminalization and resistance 107
6 All the rage: contextualizing intersectionality and violence
in delinquent girls’ lives 109
LISA PASKO AND VERA LOPEZ
7 A critical review of sexism, racism, and aggression in female
survivors of sex trafcking 130
PATRICK KERR
8 Inappropriately aggressive and dangerously submissive:
Latina girls navigating and resisting racialized sexualization
in the New Latino Diaspora 153
KATHERINE CLONAN-ROY
9 A critical view of female bullying and aggression: Pacic
Islander girls confront patriarchy, racialization, and imperialism 174
KATHERINE IRWIN AND SANNA KING
Index 195
Tables
2.1 Descriptive information on news stories (1980–2015) 30
3.1 Dominant frames in newspaper coverage of cases 50
3.2 Race of female aggressor by dominant frames in newspaper
coverage 51
3.3 Sexuality of female aggressor by dominant frames in newspaper
coverage 52
4.1 Newspaper sources from LexisNexis search of Slender Man case 76
5.1 Themes in social media girl ght videos 94
6.1 Summary of interview data (percentage response by race/ethnicity) 114
9.1 Data sources and participants’ demographic characteristics 178
9.2 Demographic proles of quoted teens 183
Figures
7.1 Intersectional model of identity in sex trafcking 143
7.2 Multilevel model of oppression for sex trafcking survivors 144
Tables and gures
Meda Chesney-Lind is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Hawaii. She
has served as Vice President of the American Society of Criminology and Pres-
ident of the Western Society of Criminology and is nationally recognized for
her work on women and crime. Her books include Girls, Delinquency and Juve-
nile Justice; The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime; Female Gangs in
America; Invisible Punishment; Girls, Women and Crime; Beyond Bad Girls:
Gender Violence and Hype; and Fighting for Girls: Critical Perspectives on
Gender and Violence. She received the Bruce Smith Sr. Award “for outstand-
ing contributions to Criminal Justice” from the Academy of Criminal Justice
Sciences in 2001. She has also received the Donald Cressey Award from the
National Council on Crime and Delinquency for “outstanding contributions
to the eld of criminology,” the Founders Award of the Western Society of
Criminology for “signicant improvement of the quality of justice,” and the
University of Hawaii Board of Regent’s Medal for “Excellence in Research.”
Katherine Clonan-Roy is Assistant Professor in the Curriculum and Founda-
tions Department at Cleveland State University in the College of Education
and Human Services. She completed her doctorate in the Education, Culture,
and Society Division of the Graduate School of Education at the University of
Pennsylvania and has a certicate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies.
Her research interests center on the relationships between gender, sexuality,
adolescent development, and education. She received her bachelor’s degree in
Spanish and Women’s Studies from The Ohio State University in 2009 and her
master’s degree in Secondary Science Education from American University in
2011. Before coming to Penn, she taught high school biology and chemistry
in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Working with girls in DCPS
who simultaneously experienced structural violence and ercely resisted the
oppressive power dynamics in their schools and social worlds inspired her
research interests and work today.
Kelsey Collins received her BA in Sociology from Saint Mary College 2015 and
is currently a PhD student in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Univer-
sity of South Carolina. While at Saint Mary College, Kelsey received a Student
Contributors
Contributors xiii
Independent Study and Research Grant for her work Attacking Masculinity: An
Examination of Hegemonic Masculinity in Two Television Series. Her research
interests include girls’ delinquency, feminist theory, restorative justice, and
rehabilitation programs in the criminal justice system.
Alicia Girgenti-Malone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology
and Criminal Justice at Merrimack College. She received her PhD in Crimi-
nology and Justice Policy from Northeastern University in 2014. Her doctoral
dissertation, “The Intersection of Victim Race and Gender in Capital Cases:
Evidence from the Capital Jury Project,” examined the effects of victim char-
acteristics on capital jurors’ decision to impose a death sentence. Her research
areas include jury decision-making in capital cases, constitutional challenges
to the death penalty, and race, gender, and social class inequality in the crimi-
nal justice system. Her work has been published in the Criminal Law Bulletin,
Race and Justice, and Police Practice and Research.
Karen Hayden is Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal
Justice at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts. Dr. Hayden
earned her PhD from Northeastern University and her MA and BA from the
University of New Hampshire. Dr. Hayden’s areas of interest include girls,
women, and crime; rural crime; society and law; and cultural criminology. Her
work has appeared in Contemporary Sociology, Studies in Symbolic Interac-
tion, and Teaching Sociology. She also wrote chapters in the edited volumes
Against Urbanormativity: Perspectives on Rural Theory and Reimagining
Rural: Urbanormative Portrayals of Rural Life. She has two books in prepara-
tion: one on society and law and one on images of rural people and rural crime
in popular culture.
Andrea Hunt is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Ala-
bama. Her research and teaching focuses on diverse families, race and eth-
nicity, gender, and social justice. She has facilitated numerous workshops on
working with diverse families, techniques for teaching about social inequality,
and developing cultural competency among practitioners. She is also a vio-
lence prevention educator and delivers bystander intervention training for stu-
dents and the community.
Katherine Irwin is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii
at Manoa. Her research areas include gender, race, and class analyses; criti-
cal youth studies; women and drug use; youth violence; girls in the juvenile
justice system; and delinquency prevention programming. She is the coauthor,
with Meda Chesney-Lind, of Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Violence, and Hype
(Routledge). Her most recent book is Jacked Up and Unjust: Pacic Islander
Teens Confront Violent Legacies (University of California Press), which is
coauthored with Karen Umemoto. Her ethnographic work has been published
in numerous journals such as Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, Critical
Criminology, Feminist Criminology, Race and Justice, and Qualitative Sociol-
ogy, among other venues.
xiv Contributors
Deena Isom Scott is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and
Criminal Justice and African American Studies Program at the University of
South Carolina, Columbia. She earned her PhD in Sociology from Emory Uni-
versity in 2015. Her research interests include criminological theory, justice,
violence, and the intersectionality of race and gender. Her research has been
published in the Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality, Journal of
Contemporary Criminal Justice, Journal of Criminal Justice, and Journal of
Ethnicity in Criminal Justice. Her work aims to bring race and gender cen-
tral to the criminological literature by addressing how social psychological
processes help explain the emergence of negative outcomes across age, class,
gender, and racial lines.
Patrick Kerr is Associate Professor and Licensed Clinical Psychologist at
West Virginia University School of Medicine–Charleston. He is the director
of the WVU Dialectical Behavior Therapy Services Program and specializes
in the treatment of traumatic stress disorders, suicidal behaviors, and nonsui-
cidal self-injury in adults and adolescents. He is the author of multiple peer-
reviewed papers in his areas of expertise, including a recent book chapter on
human trafcking. Dr. Kerr is currently a member of the West Virginia Human
Trafcking Task Force and the West Virginia Child Fatality Review Team and
is Vice President of the West Virginia Council for the Prevention of Suicide. He
is also active in national organizations, including Health, Education, Advocacy
Linkage (HEAL) Trafcking; the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive
Therapies; and the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Sanna King received her MA in American Studies from Columbia University,
and she is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the
University of Hawaii at Manoa. For nearly a decade, Sanna has advocated for
juveniles, especially girls, who are involved in the criminal justice system.
Sanna has worked with a creative literacy program and an adolescent re-entry
initiative at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York. Since moving to
Hawaii, Sanna has been facilitating classes in the juvenile detention facility on
Oahu. She is a certied facilitator for Girls’ Circle, a gender-specic interven-
tion for girls, and she also provides a drop-out prevention program in one high
school on Oahu. Her dissertation examines how gender, race, ethnicity, class,
and colonial legacies create varying challenges for court-involved youth, and
especially how schools and jails are coupled for youth in Hawaii.
Vera Lopez is Associate Professor in Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State
University (ASU). Dr. Lopez’s research areas include adolescent delinquency,
sexual risk taking, substance use, and prevention research. Most of this work
focuses on justice-involved girls’ relationships with parents and partners with
a special emphasis on Latinas. Dr. Lopez’s work has been featured in a num-
ber of journals, including the Journal of Family Issues, Journal of Youth and
Adolescence, Latino Studies, Journal of Adolescence, Youth and Society, Femi-
nist Criminology, Family Relations, and Criminal Justice and Behavior. She
and her ASU colleagues recently published an edited book, Adolescent Girls’
Contributors xv
Sexualities and the Media, that is currently available via the Peter Lang Medi-
ated Youth series.
Krista McQueeney is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Crim-
inology, and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. She
received her PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. Her research focuses on the intersections of mass media, identity, and vio-
lence. Dr. McQueeney’s articles have appeared in Social Problems, Journal of
Contemporary Ethnography, Journal of Prison Education and Reentry, and
Violence against Women, among other venues. Her current research explores
the consequences of school disciplinary policies for girls of color and LGBTQ
youth.
Lisa Pasko is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminol-
ogy at the University of Denver. Dr. Pasko’s research centers on the treatment
of girls in the justice system, evaluation of gender-responsive programming,
and understanding girls’ life histories and pathways toward offending. She
is coauthor of The Female Offender and Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected
Readings. In addition to writing book chapters and technical reports, she has
published her work in several journals, including Social Justice, Women and
Criminal Justice, Sexualities, Critical Criminology, Journal of Ethnic and Cul-
tural Diversity in Social Work, and Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology.
Tammy Rhodes is the Program Coordinator/Administrative Assistant in the Uni-
versity Success Center at the University of North Alabama. Her work focuses
on academic advising and retention of academically at-risk students special-
izing in rst generation minority students. Her research interests include diver-
sity in higher education, feminist criminology, sexual exploitation of juvenile
girls in minority communities, and female serial killers. She has developed
programming on the political culture of the United States, the school-to-prison
pipeline, body image, race relations, and antihazing programs.
Tia Stevens Andersen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminol-
ogy and Criminal Justice, a Research Afliate at the Research Consortium on
Children and Families, and an Afliate Faculty Member in African American
Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her research interests
include girls’ delinquency and programming, gender and racial inequalities in
the juvenile justice system, feminist theory, and the intersection of race, class,
and gender. Her work has been published in Feminist Criminology, Youth
Violence and Juvenile Justice, Justice Quarterly, and Criminal Justice and
Behavior.
Our passion for intersectionality began during our graduate studies. Both of us,
in our separate programs, pursued research agendas that centered on an intersec-
tional analysis of race, gender, and inequality. Moving beyond gender-only or
race-only frameworks enabled us to unpack the experience of race, gender, and
sexuality in new and exciting ways that refused to essentialize or overgeneralize
differences. We were excited to apply that understanding to the current project and
to build a community of scholars who shared our conviction that intersectional
analysis matters for the study of girls’ aggression and the policing of girlhood.
Luckily for us, the editors at Routledge agreed that the project was important, and
they have been incredibly supportive and helpful throughout the process.
An edited volume is a truly collaborative effort, and it has been a pleasure to work
with such a talented mix of promising and established scholars of sociology, crimi-
nology, psychology, and women’s studies. First and foremost, we would like to thank
all the contributors for their dedication to this project and for allowing us to support
their incredible work throughout the editorial process. We also would like to thank our
editors at Routledge, Emily Briggs and Elena Chiu, for their enthusiastic support of
the project and their willingness to work with us through several challenging points.
We would like to acknowledge the support of a Merrimack College Faculty Devel-
opment Grant in the initial stages of the development of the book. Thank you also to
our outstanding colleagues who have provided encouragement and a sounding board
for ideas about the book and the publishing process – Brittnie Aiello, Karen Hayden,
Isabelle Cherney, Sherryl Kleinman, Michael Schwalbe, and Gordene Mackenzie.
No acknowledgment would be complete without thanking the loved ones
who support our work and bring joy to our lives. We thank our families, Noreen,
Charles, and Mary Beth McQueeney and Lindsay McQueeney Hanrahan and
Christine and Aaron Girgenti, and Ashley Oladehin for their support and encour-
agement over the years. You have always inspired and challenged us to be our
best selves, and this book would not have been possible without your care and
inspiration. Krista would like to thank Tracy Mitchell for her enthusiasm, humor,
and undying positivity – you have kept me grounded and encouraged in ways that
I could never have done for myself. Alicia would like to thank Vincent Malone
for his unwavering fortitude and selessness from beginning to end. Finally, we
are grateful to each other for the intellectual camaraderie, stick-to-itiveness, and
patience necessary to see our rst book project through to publication.
Acknowledgments
Krista McQueeney and Alicia Girgenti-Malone
Introduction
In March 2017, social media posts claiming that 14 Black girls went missing in
Washington, DC, within a span of 24 hours went viral. A call to action with the
hashtag #MissingDCGirls started trending on Twitter. Within days, hundreds of
residents turned out for a town hall meeting to demand accountability from police
and news outlets for neglecting the story; activists mobilized for candlelight vig-
ils; and the Congressional Black Caucus petitioned the US attorney general and
the FBI to investigate. Before long, however, reports debunked the notion that
there had been a sudden uptick in the number of missing girls of Color. In fact,
it was DC’s Metropolitan Police Department that publicized the cases on social
media, creating the false perception of a sudden crisis. Some news outlets attrib-
uted the story’s traction to the Black Lives Matter movement and its underlying
anger with and mistrust of law enforcement (Stolberg, 2017). Yet, the problem of
media underreporting and law enforcement neglect of missing children of Color
was neither emotional nor ephemeral: it was a long-standing symptom of struc-
tural inequality.
It is possible that, as news outlets and the Metropolitan Police claimed, the
missing girls were running away from difcult situations at home (Stolberg,
2017). Statistics indicate that girls run away more often than boys and that chil-
dren of Color go missing more frequently than White children as a proportion of
the population (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2013). But, if this is true,
why? How do interlocking systems of inequality – racism, sexism, heterosexism,
and economic oppression – push girls of Color to run away from home more often
than White girls and boys? How does media coverage of missing persons, and
the resources law enforcement invests to nd them, map onto gender, race, class,
and sexuality? Through what mechanisms are runaways and exploited children –
especially girls of Color, poor girls, and LGBTQ youth – funneled into the crimi-
nal justice system?
Girls, aggression, and intersectionality
What media accounts missed and community activists understood was intersec-
tionality. Intersectionality, a theoretical framework developed by Black feminist
scholars,1 analyzes how race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and other social
categories – as distinct but intersecting systems of inequality – shape identity,
Introduction
Krista McQueeney and Alicia Girgenti-Malone
2 Krista McQueeney and Alicia Girgenti-Malone
lived experiences, and life outcomes. While scholars have long studied inequal-
ity from a gender- or race-only perspective, intersectionality views “race, class,
gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, among others, as mutually constructing sys-
tems of power” (Collins, 2002, p. 11). Although intersectionality theory is not
new (see Crenshaw, 1989; 1991), it has grown considerably in the social sciences
over the past few years (Collins & Bilge, 2016; Potter, 2015). Criminologists and
sociologists have only recently begun to interrogate the ways in which girls’ and
women’s intersecting identities inuence their experiences with crime, victimi-
zation, and criminal justice outcomes (Burgess-Proctor, 2006; Chesney-Lind &
Jones, 2010; Jones, 2010; Miller, 2008; Potter, 2008, 2013; Richie, 1996).
This volume uses an intersectional perspective to analyze how multiple iden-
tities and oppressions contribute to aggressive behavior and differential justice
system outcomes for girls of Color, poor girls, and LGBTQ girls. Although our
focus is on the criminalization of girls’ aggression – not missing persons – there is
considerable overlap between the contemporary “problem” of mean and aggres-
sive girls and the missing DC girls’ case. First, just as DC activists raised aware-
ness that media outlets disproportionately cover missing persons cases involving
White women and girls, the media’s “mean girls” – that is, young women who
use indirect aggression to win favor among boys and to gain status within the
adolescent pecking order – are White, middle class, and heterosexual (think the
Hollywood blockbuster Mean Girls). In the same way that media accounts of
missing (White) children can fuel “moral panic” – a media-hyped threat to the
safety of “our” children (Best, 1990) – the media’s love affair with “mean girls” is
a grossly exaggerated threat to “good girls” and respectable femininity (Chesney-
Lind & Irwin, 2008). The authors in this volume go even further by empirically
examining the racialization and sexualization of the moral panic surrounding
girls’ aggression. For example, when the stories of aggressive young women of
Color are picked up by news outlets, they are almost always depicted as violent
predators. As Chesney-Lind and Pasko (this volume) put it, “the clear message
in the contemporary coverage of girls’ violence is that while White girls might
be ‘mean,’ the kind of aggression and violence that requires criminalization (and
incarceration) is being committed almost exclusively by girls of Color, often liv-
ing in marginalized, low income neighborhoods.” Additionally, when queer and/
or trans girls of Color are represented by media, they are often vilied for their
purported gender disorders, gang afliations, and anti-male rage (McQueeney &
Girgenti-Malone, this volume). Intersectionality compels us to analyze these
unmistakable disparities in media representations of young women in order to
transform simplistic understandings of girls’ aggression and move beyond the dis-
course of “mean girls.” Examining the social consequences of media representa-
tions for the experiences of and criminal justice responses to young women across
diverse social locations deepens our understanding of race, class, and sexuality
inequities among women and girls in the justice system.
Second, we must take a step back to consider the social and structural con-
texts that contribute to girls’ aggression (see Irwin & King, this volume). Media
accounts of the missing DC girls failed to interrogate why rates of missing per-
sons are higher among girls of Color than among other children. So, too, the
Introduction 3
popular discourse surrounding mean girls often fails to take social context into
account, thus fueling public alarm that girls are signicantly more aggressive and
violent than they were a generation or two ago and that today’s girls are as aggres-
sive as boys. This ignores empirical research suggesting that boys are actually
meaner and more aggressive than girls (e.g., Artz, Kassis, & Moldenhauer, 2013;
Orpinas, McNicholas, & Nahapetyan, 2014) and feeds into essentialist notions
of girls as cruel and combative, always scheming to put down and one-up other
girls. This discourse blames girls for aggressive behavior – or behavior perceived
as aggressive (e.g., assertiveness) – when it should be understood in the context
of interlocking systems of privilege and disadvantage. As scholars have shown,
aggression among Asian Pacic Islander (Irwin & King, this volume) and Latina
girls (Clonan-Roy, this volume) is often a response to the constraining rules of
femininity and patriarchy and to the racialized mistreatment these girls contend
with daily from peers, school ofcials, parents, and society at large. Similarly,
research has shown that LGBTQ youth are often criminalized for self-defense,
public displays of affection, and violations of gender norms (Snapp, Hoenig,
Fields, & Russell, 2014). Seen in this way, it is young women and LGBTQ youth
who speak up and ght back against bias who are most likely to be labeled as
aggressive and/or violent. Insofar as intersectional identities differentially shape
experiences with abuse and bullying, women and girls may act out aggressively
for different reasons. Programs aiming to prevent violence and counsel aggres-
sive girls and gender-queer youth must critically explore intersectional identities
and incorporate these insights in their intervention strategies, policies, and prac-
tices. Programs informed by an intersectional perspective must focus on “giving
voice” to girls of Color and allow them to discuss their lived experiences with
impunity (see Irwin & King, this volume). Promoting social justice, developing
critical consciousness, and building resiliency among girls of Color are only a few
noteworthy recommendations made by authors in this volume (see Clonan-Roy;
Pasko & Lopez, this volume).
Third, just as the activists for the missing DC girls transformed intersectionality
into a movement for racial and gender justice, scholars of girls and aggression must
reach beyond the Ivory Tower to turn intersectional knowledge into action. As Kim-
berlé Crenshaw (2015) has noted, as long as socially marginalized young women
and girls continue to be left in the shadows, the promise of intersectionality remains
unrealized. The work presented in this collection takes the position that we must
foreground the experiences of the young women and girls whose lives and struggles
continue to be ignored and misrepresented by public ofcials and the media – girls
of Color, poor girls, and LGBTQ girls. Additionally, intersectionality calls for activ-
ism by, for, and with the most marginalized (and highly policed) young women in
our society. For example, Kimberlé Crenshaw has used her platform as a scholar
and advocate to call attention to the issues facing girls of Color. Since 2015, she
has spearheaded three major social media campaigns through the African American
Policy Forum – #SayHerName, #BlackGirlsMatter, and #WhyWeCan’tWait – that
shine a spotlight on the effects of state-sanctioned violence and the school-to-prison
pipeline on African American women and girls. #SayHerName mobilizes peo-
ple to make Black women visible at rallies, conferences, and other spaces where
4 Krista McQueeney and Alicia Girgenti-Malone
state-sanctioned violence against African Americans – an issue typically framed as
affecting African American men and boys – is discussed. #BlackGirlsMatter, which
was launched in conjunction with a highly touted research report, raises awareness
about the consequences of zero-tolerance policies for girls of Color, who are often
left out of conversations and interventions addressing the school-to-prison pipeline.
The #WhyWeCan’tWait campaign advocated for girls and women to be included in
President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper,” a nationwide program that addressed
the challenges facing young men and boys of Color.
As Clonan-Roy (this volume) and Pasko and Lopez (this volume) argue, young
women and girls, especially girls of Color, often respond aggressively when
they are abused, discriminated against, and/or disregarded. As a result, teachers,
parents, juvenile justice practitioners, and other adults must be trained to work
more effectively with young women and girls across difference, to deconstruct
discriminatory practices and stereotypes, and to promote critical consciousness
among girls. Gender- and culturally sensitive interventions, together with trauma-
informed programming, can foster the empowerment of all girls and reshape the
policies and practices that funnel girls into the juvenile justice system. As Arnold
(1990, p. 163) presciently stated, “If we are to witness a drop in the numbers of
imprisoned women, legislators and policymakers need to reevaluate what hap-
pens to young girls who are victimized by gender, class, and race, and stop blam-
ing the victim by processing and labeling her as deviant and/or criminal.”
The contributors to this volume advance an unprecedented dialogue about the
intersectional nature of female aggression and its consequences for girls of Color,
poor girls, and LGBTQ girls. Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality applies
the principles of intersectionality to empirically identify the root causes of girls’
aggression and devise solutions to the criminalization and mistreatment of young
women of Color and gender-queer youth. The readings in this volume represent
a powerful response to Potter’s (2013, p. 315) call: “it is time for intersectional
criminology to be taken seriously and more broadly incorporated within the aca-
demic discipline of criminology.”
Narrative and structure of the volume
Girls, Aggression, and Intersectionality is organized in two parts: “Media Repre-
sentations of Girls’ Aggression and Violence” and “Criminalization and Resist-
ance.” In Part I, the authors critically examine the stories that various forms of
media (e.g., news media, social media) tell about aggressive young women. While
a few scholars have analyzed media images of aggressive girls (e.g., Artz et al.,
2013; Barron & Lacombe, 2005; Behm-Morawitz & Mastro, 2008; Ryalls, 2013),
there is little to no research empirically examining media narratives from an inter-
sectional perspective – that is, one that accounts for the interlocking nature of
race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and other systems of oppression. We begin with
a step-back chapter, “Girls and Violence: Moral Panics and the Policing of Girl-
hood,” in which Chesney-Lind and Pasko review the evolution of the moral panic
surrounding mean and violent girls, paying particular attention to how it has been
racialized. The other essays in Part I offer among the rst empirical examinations
Introduction 5
of girls’ aggression in the media from an intersectional perspective. In Chapter 2,
“Constructing the ‘Bad Girls’ Hype: An Intersectional Analysis of News Media’s
Depictions of Violent Girls,” Stevens Andersen, Isom Scott, and Collins examine
racial and ethnic differences in the crime-news framing of violent girls, using a
content analysis of articles published in major news outlets. In Chapter 3, “Inter-
sectionality and the News Framing of ‘Bad Girls’,” McQueeney and Girgenti-
Malone analyze how the racialized news framing of girls’ aggression is fractured
through the prism of gender/sexuality in their study of six landmark cases involv-
ing White girls and girls of Color. While the White, heterosexual female victims
of girls’ aggression were framed as ideal victims, queer and trans young women
of Color who claimed self-defense against homophobic or transphobic attackers
were vilied as “unnatural” women and violent predators. In Chapter 4, “The
Female World of Love and Ritual Violence: The Slender Man Case and Popular
News Depictions of Female Adolescent Violence,” Hayden examines how gender,
race, age, and class intersected in news coverage of the Slender Man case, in which
two 12-year old, White, working-class girls allegedly stabbed their classmate 19
times as a sacrice to the Internet horror character Slender Man. Over and above
the seriousness of the offense, consideration of the social positionality of and
media fascination with the female perpetrators is key to understanding how the
case played out in the adult criminal justice system. In the nal chapter of Part I,
“The New Famous: Deconstructing African American Girl Fights on Social
Media,” Rhodes and Hunt analyze the social media spectacle of African American
girl ghts, which are gloried on viral video sites and blogs such as World Star
Hip Hop. As African American girls struggle to navigate multiple oppressions,
they may ght other girls to gain respect, to make a statement that they are not to
be messed with, and to ensure their survival in the streets.
The readings in Part II, “Criminalization and Resistance,” use an intersectional
perspective to unpack the complex contexts behind girls’ aggression and violence.
In addition to interrogating the intersecting racialized, classed, and sexualized
milieus that differentially shape young women’s use of aggression and violence,
the authors in Part II illuminate the creative and dynamic strategies that diverse
groups of young women use to resist this labeling and criminalization. In Chap-
ter 6, “All the Rage: Contextualizing Intersectionality and Violence in Delinquent
Girls’ Lives,” Pasko and Lopez analyze narratives of assaultive behavior among
20 Black, White, and Latina female offenders (ages 15–22) to understand how
exposure to violence, victimization, economic disadvantage, broken parental
bonds, and lack of social and mental health resources shaped the young wom-
en’s pathways toward violence. Although these adversities affected all the young
women in the study, they were particularly detrimental for the girls of Color. In
Chapter 7, “A Critical Review of Sexism, Racism, and Aggression in Female
Survivors of Sex Trafcking,” Kerr reviews the literature on young female sex-
trafcking survivors, contextualizing aggression among survivors as a product of
intersecting gender, racial/ethnic, and economic disadvantages. Shifting the sex-
trafcking paradigm from a unidimensional to an intersectional lens opens new
directions for models of service provision that are dynamic enough to meet the
needs of survivors with a diverse array of interwoven identities.
