The more outside of the male-based norms and stereotypes a woman or girl strayed, the more likely she was to be assessed as either "mad" or "bad"-the former pathologized the woman and thus slightly alleviated her degree of personal responsibility and blame for the immorality. The latter label, on the other hand, clearly placed full blame and responsibility on the woman. One might well inquire as to what has really changed. The same processes are still used by the media, by too many authors (e.g., Pearson, CSC research, etc.), and by the regressive forces of the right, albeit with new labels and sometimes convoluted commentary.

Christie Barron points out that:

[The media] often decontextualizes the acts of crime for public consumption. When youth crime is presented in a social, economic and political vacuum, it appears as if nothing else is occurring in society except kids doing bad things.... Most of the establishment authorities agree that there were ever-increasing numbers of girls involved in violent crimes.

One of the psychiatric social workers asserted: "I've been working with kids since the late '60s and I've seen more females involved in violent acts, more involved in gangs; it may be a wannabe type of situation." One of the probation officers stated that girls became involved in violence because of " trivial stuff" such as someone making a bad comment. She also stated that the number girls involved in violent crime has increased but not necessarily to the level of violence of the boys.

The youth I talked with provided a context for any increase in female violence. "...There should be recognition of circumstances in the youth world relative to their own existence and experience, as opposed to circumstances important to the criminal justice system situated in the adult world." In commenting about the media depiction of young women as violent, one of the young women interviewed by Barron indicated: "I think media looked at the wrong thing; they looked at what [the girls] do but not why. They don't care; they just want to make money" (84-85). Moreover, as she astutely pointed out, the media consistently failed to focus on how degrading and violent prostitution is for the girls involved.

Barron further states that:

violent youths have become "folk devils," to whom are attributed characteristics that feed societal panic but clash with the youths' perceptions of self. Youths are pathologized within professional discourse and portrayed as unremorseful monsters in need of medical treatment. Explaining youth crime as an individual problem denies the structural and cultural barriers that youths say contribute to their actions. These professional stereotypes are reproduced and confirmed as 'truths' through such powerful institutions as the media. (67)

The Differences Between Men's and Women's Violence

The manner in which young women and girls behave "violently" has been largely ignored or minimized historically. Where and when it is addressed, violence by women and girls tends to either be seen as a function of masculinity or a lack of femininity, or as an indication of extreme behaviour often characterized as madness. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in terms of addressing violence perpetrated by young women is that most of the "research" in this area is, in fact, the postulating of theory by academics that often does not include the voices and/or experiences of women and girls themselves. Some notable exceptions are Christie Barron's research, Justice for Girls in Vancouver, and the National Youth in Care Network, as well as that of a group of researchers who work out of the University of Glasgow in Scotland under the name of Girls and Violence.