Contextualizing women's violence and aggression: Beyond denial and demonization
Meda Chesney-Lind a1 a1 Women's Studies Program, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822
meda@hawaii.edu
Abstract
This commentary focuses on the role played by constructions of
women's violence in the maintenance of male control over women.
While actual women's violence tends to be denied, pathologized
or minimized, cultural constructions (particularly in the media) of
women's violence tend to demonize it. Both of these androcentric
cultural processes fail to illuminate the actual sources of the gender
gap in violent behavior and instead tend to normalize male aggression
and to cultivate female passivity.
