Female Sex Offenders Argumentative Analysis

The language used to discuss the types of female sex offenders is important because it shapes people’s perceptions. As a society, our perceptions towards female criminality is already one of minimizing harm done by the crime, and also by disbelief of a woman’s capability of committing crime. However, society also hold double standards in the way it treats men and women, specifically treatment of offenders. Whether intentional or not, crime has been socialized to be a predominately male activity and that those women who participate in criminal activities are even more deviant than male criminals due to the fact that they are not only committing a crime (whose very act is in defiance of social norms) but also defying their gender roles (Gakhal

The way in which female sex offenders are discussed in comparison to male sex offenders is unequal in that there are many factors such as linguistics and reporting that sway the public opinion to become more sympathetic towards female sex offenders. For example, one study mentions a “beauty bias” about female sex offenders, which suggests that there is “a negative correlation between the perceived attractiveness of the female abuser and the perceived psychological harm to the male victim caused by sexual harassment” (Landor & Eisenchlas, 2012). Essentially, the beauty bias states that men who are sexually abused by beautiful women ought to feel lucky rather than victimized. Following the male sex drive discourse, if men can’t decline sex and an attractive woman is actively seeking sex from them, then they are fortunate to have a sexual encounter compared to being rebuffed for sexual activity by an attractive woman. Again, there is a pattern where women’s capability for crime and aggression is minimized, along with the damage done to victims of female offenders. In a study of new headlines in Australia, there were several linguistic mechanisms used to excuse female sex offenders. Landor and Eisenchlas (2012) compiled several new headlines about male and female sex offenders to observe the linguistic differences between how society talks about male versus female sex offenders. One initial thought upon comparing the language of the different headlines is how little words that link to criminality are used when discussing female sex offenders. In the list of male headlines there are 11 out of 15 headlines that mention charges, jail, pedophilia, assault, or crimes while there are only 4 out of the 14 headlines for female sex offenders that mention any of those (Landor & Eisenchlas, 2012). Another linguistic pattern is the bias towards