Reading Analyses

April 2, 2010

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

The Myth of Mean Girls

By MIKE MALES and MEDA-CHESNEY LIND

IF nine South Hadley, Mass., high school students — seven of them girls — are proved to have criminally

bullied another girl who then committed suicide , as prosecutors have charged, they deserve serious

legal

and community condemnation.

However, many of the news reports and inflamed comm entaries have gone beyond expressing outrage at

the teenagers involved and instead invoked such cas es as evidence of a modern epidemic of “mean girls”

that adults simply fail to comprehend. Elizabeth Sc heibel, the district attorney in the South Hadley case,declined to charge school officials who she said were aware of the bullying because of

their “lack of

understanding of harassment associated with teen da ting relationships.” A People magazine article

headlined “Mean Girls” suggested that a similar cas e two years ago raised “troubling questions” about “teen

violence” and “cyberspace wars.” Again and again, w e hear of girls hitting, brawling and harassing.

But this panic is a hoax. We have examined every ma jor index of crime on which the authorities rely. None

show a recent increase in girls’ violence; in fact, every reliable measure shows that violence by girl s has

been plummeting for years. Major offenses like murd er and robbery by girls are at their lowest levels in

four decades. Fights, weapons possession, assaults and violent injuries by and toward girls have been

plunging for at least a decade.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports, based on reports from more than 10,000

police agencies, is the most reliable source on arr ests by sex and age. From 1995 to 2008, according t o the

F.B.I., girls’ arrest rates for violent offenses fe ll by 32 percent, including declines of 27 percent for

aggravated assault, 43 percent for robbery and 63 p ercent for murder. Rates of murder by girls are at their

lowest levels in at least 40 years.

The National Crime Victimization Survey, a detailed annual survey of more than 40,000 Americans by the

Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistic s, is considered the most reliable measure of crime

because it includes offenses not reported to the po lice. From 1993 through 2007, the survey reported

significant declines in rates of victimization of g irls, including all violent crime (down 57 percent) , serious

and misdemeanor assaults (down 53 percent), robbery (down 83 percent) and sex offenses (down 67

percent).

Public health agencies like the National Center for Health Statistics confirm huge declines in murder and

violent assaults of girls. For example, as the numb er of females ages 10 to 19 increased by 3.4 million,

murders of girls fell from 598 in 1990 to 376 in 20 06. Rates of murders of and by adolescent girls are now

at their lowest levels since 1968 — 48 percent belo w rates in 1990 and 45 percent lower than in 1975.

Op-Ed Contributors - The Myth of Mean Girls - NYTim

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1 of 3 4/8/2010 2:36 PM The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Intimate Partner

Violence in the United States survey, its annual In dicators

of School Crime and Safety, the University of Michi gan’s Monitoring the Future survey and the Centers for

Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance all measure girls’ violent offending and victimization.

Virtually without exception, these surveys show maj or drops in fights and other violence, particularly

relationship violence, involving girls over the las t 15 to 20 years. These surveys also indicate that girls are

no more likely to report being in fights, being thr eatened or injured with a weapon, or violently vict imizing

others today than in the first surveys in the 1970s .

These striking improvements in girls’ personal safe ty, including from rape and relationship violence,

directly contradict recent news reports that girls suffer increasing danger from violence by their fem ale and

male peers alike.

There is only one measure that would in any way ind icate that girls’ violence has risen, and it is both

dubious and outdated. F.B.I. reports show assault a rrests of girls under age 18 increased from 6,300 in 1981

to a peak of 16,800 in 1995, then dropped sharply, to 13,300 in 2008. So, at best, claims that girls’ violence

is rising apply to girls of 15 to 25 years ago, not today.

Even by this measure, it’s not girls who have gotte n more violent faster — it’s middle-aged men and wo men,

the age groups of the many authors and commentators disparaging girls. Among women ages 35 to 54,

F.B.I. reports show, felony assault arrests rockete d from 7,100 in 1981 to 28,800 in 2008. Assault arr ests

among middle-aged men also more than doubled, reach ing 100,500 in 2008. In Northampton, the county

seat a few miles from South Hadley, domestic violen ce calls to police more than tripled in the last four

years to nearly 400 in 2009. Why, then, don’t we se e frenzied news reports on “Mean Middle-Agers”?

What’s more, the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention conclud ed

that girls’ supposed “violent crime increase” in th e ’80s and ’90s resulted from new laws and policies

mandating arrests for domestic violence and minor y outh offenses “that in past years may have been

classified as status offenses (e.g., incorrigibilit y)” but “can now result in an assault arrest.” Thus , the Justice

Department found, increased numbers of arrests “are not always related to actual increases in crime.”

This mythical wave of girls’ violence and meanness is, in the end, contradicted by reams of evidence from

almost every available and reliable source. Yet new s media and myriad experts, seemingly eager to

sensationalize every “crisis” among young people, h ave aroused unwarranted worry in the public and pol icy

arenas. The unfortunate result is more punitive tre atment of girls, including arrests and incarceration for

lesser offenses like minor assaults that were treat ed informally in the past, as well as alarmist calls for

restrictions on their Internet use.

Why, in an era when slandering a group of people ba sed on the misdeeds of a few has rightly become taboo,

does it remain acceptable to use isolated incidents to berate modern teenagers, particularly girls, as “mean”

and “violent” and “bullies”? That is, why are we bu llying girls?

Mike Males is senior researcher at the Center on Ju venile and Criminal Justice. Meda-Chesney Lind, a

professor of women’s studies at the University of H awaii, Manoa, is the co-editor of the forthcoming

“Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence.”

This article has been revised to reflect the follow ing correction:

Op-Ed Contributors - The Myth of Mean Girls - NYTim

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2 of 3 4/8/2010 2:36 PM Correction: April 5, 2010

A biographical note accompanying an Op-Ed article o n Friday, about violence by girls, misstated the roles

of the authors in a forthcoming book on gender and violence. Meda-Chesney Lind is a co-editor of the book;

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