Crime is not something that is ‘natural’, it is a social construct that depends on wider social and historical circumstances. In a natural state, crime cannot exist, it can exist only in the social state, where by common consent it is determined what is good and what is bad, and where everyone must obey the respective definitions. In other words, the concept of crime is a label that society applies, defining behavior that violates the law. It is crucial to understand that crimes are generated by the criminal law that people write. Crime does not exist ‘in nature’, it is ‘invented’ by people.
Criminality is not an ontological phenomenon, but a constructional structure that has a historical and social character. Crime is almost entirely constructed by controlling institutions, which establish norms and assign certain values to actions. One can distinguish several stages in the process of designing deviant manifestations: the presence of many homogeneous facts; awareness of them as a problem (“problematization”); legitimization of the problem (including criminalization); social reaction to the phenomenon-problem (social control); and consequences (results) (Groth & Birnbaum, 1979). It might be helpful to track how one of the ‘modern’ types of crime, such as hate crime, has been constructed. Media, politicians, scientists and the FBI are involved in this process. The role of the political regime in the construction of crime and other social deviations is also crucial.
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The fact of the presence of a “gender gap” in the level of criminal activity is the undoubted truth in criminology. Specifically, men violate the law more often than women, men are involved in more serious and cruel crimes, and they are also more susceptible to relapse. This pattern continues to exist, regardless of the source of information for analysis – be it data on the level of arrest of women and men, reports of victims on the characteristics of the offender, or the actual recognition of the perpetrators themselves (Estrada, Backman & Nilsson, 2016). From a series of studies conducted by scholars, it can be concluded that men have always violated the law more often than women, and gender differences in the level of criminal activity can be traced in any society that would be studied systematically. As illustrated by the research, despite the fact that gender gaps become “narrower” in the case of unimportant crimes, such as crimes against property, men continue to remain “leaders” in terms of criminal activity in all categories of violation of the law, except prostitution. As seen from the above, the overrepresentation of men in criminality is criminological fact, because it received empirical support.
One of the most common myths related to crime is the idea that the victim of rape herself/himself is to blame for the violence – it was her/him who provoked the rapist with her/his appearance and behavior. Groth and Birnbaum (1979) present the results of their empirical studies in the book “Men who rape: the psychology of the offender”, which proves the opposite. The authors emphasize that the motives of the rapist are misunderstood by most people who believe that the offender wants to satisfy his sexual desire with a victim who “behaves defiantly”. The authors believe that rape is not so much an expression of sexual desire as an expression of other, non-sexual needs.
One-third of the criminals with whom the scholars worked were married and had sexual relations with their wives during the attack, and most of the unmarried also had sexual relations with other people (Groth & Birnbaum, 1979). Sociologist Michael Kimmel also notes that the socialization of a man is in the legitimization of violence, since from childhood the cultural stereotypes in the US require the boy to be able to defend his honor in a fight, and a child who does not want to fight is harshly sanctioned for this. The researcher emphasizes that men are taught since childhood that violence is a common form of communication between men, as well as between men and women. Kimmel, referring to the research of anthropologist Peggy Reeves Sundi, notes that for societies with high levels of rape militarism, the ideology of male “steepness” and the lack of closeness between father and children are very common (Kimmel, 2000). In societies in which rape is relatively rare, people typically value the independence of women (people retain the right to separate property after marriage) and children (men participate in their upbringing) (Kimmel, 2000). Put simply, the lower the status of a woman is relative to a man, the higher the level of violence is expected to be in this society.
In addition to everything above, the cross-cultural analysis of Scott Coltrane, based on a sample of representatives of 90 non-industrial societies, shows that the sexual division of labor in childcare interacts with other institutionalized forms of male domination and influences the relative position of women (Coltrane, 1988). The author showed the connection between the elimination of the father from the upbringing of the child and the discrimination of the woman in society, and the misogynistic stereotypes characteristic of the given society.
These myths mentioned above are very difficult to abandon because they are the part of wider social hierarchies and social inequalities. The idea that the woman is to blame for having become the victim of rape mirrors the respective social stereotypes regarding femininity and masculinity. In other words, from Marxist perspective, they are the part of the ‘false consciousness’ that serves the needs of the oppressor.
