Jody Miller, an Associate Professor at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, set out to provide an analysis of violence against young women in urban communities. Her study considers the perspectives of the youth on violence and gender and documents, in gripping and often harrowing detail, the circumstances and patterns of behaviors. It also attempts to analyze the ideas that both young girls and boys use to explain their behavior.
Getting Played is a carefully crafted study that used multiple methodologies and a comparative research design. The study collected data from various sources: in-depth interviews with young African Americans in disadvantaged St. Louis neighborhoods, surveys with these youths, and supplemental information on the characteristics of the neighborhoods.
The study is comparative in two ways: First, the study interviewed both young women and young men about their perceptions of and exposure to violence against young women. Interviews with females and males allow for gender based comparisons, which provided an opportunity to examine similarities and differences across gender in the respondents' ideologies about gender and their interpretations of incidents of violence against women.
Second, the study included both female and male youths, who were engaged in ongoing serious delinquency as well as youths from the same communities who were not.
Miller studied African American youths because she wanted to fill a vacuum in the literature that tends to overlook adolescent girls (young African American women in particular), especially those living in highly distressed urban neighborhoods. There is increasing evidence that these women suffer higher risks of victimization than young men and Miller senses a growing need to understand how disadvantaged urban settings increase the likelihood of victimization. She wants to address the tendency among criminologists to study minority youths as promoters of criminal conduct (gang participation, drug sales, and violence) rather than victims. She also wants to address the bias in the literature that favors the victimization of whites.
The study used purposive sampling: it identified youths both at risk and involved in delinquent activities who resided at disadvantaged St. Lois neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were characterized by intense racial segregation, social isolation, limited resources, concentrated poverty, and high crime rates. The participants were recruited with the help of organizations working with at-risk groups and two alternative public high schools.
35 young women and 40 young men were interviewed for the study. They ranged from ages 12 to 19 with a mean age of around 16 for both groups. The interviews, which began in the spring of 1999 and completed in the spring of 2000, were voluntary and the participants were given $20 for their participation. Data collection started with the administration of a detailed survey, and youths were then asked to participate in audiotaped interviews that were completed in a day.
Because the sampling strategy was purposive, the study does not yield findings that are broadly generalizable. The strategy produced a pool of participants, most of whom had been expelled from school and were interviewed at the alternative schools considered the last resort before termination of their participation in the St. Louis public school district.
The strategy also prevented the study from gaining access to a comparative group of youths in the same neighborhoods who were thriving academically and socially. The author's networks gave her access to at-risk and delinquent youths, but not youths from mainstream schools who were not allowed by their administrators to take part in the research. All of those interviewed were currently attending school and the sample failed to include those who had dropped out of school or were incarcerated.
The study found four dimensions of school-based sexual and gender harassment. First, such harassments are a complex and regular feature of girls' experiences in school. Youths described a variety of forms of harassment that include name-calling, sexual comments, sexual rumors, and sexualized touching, groping and grabbing, that youths had to endure everyday.
Second, harassment caused multiple problems for women. Those were unable to challenge the harassers faced continuing mistreatment which led to derogatory labeling which in turn leads to social isolation, taunting and peer rejection.
Third, young women employed a range of tactics to deal with school-based harassment that seldom addressed the problem effectively. Young women who chose to ignore young men's behavior created the impression that they tolerated such behavior. Young women who avoided their harassers limited their interaction with peers and their participation in public life. This strategy was not available in school where young girls could not escape harassment. Girls who stood up for themselves also risked inciting more vicious mistreatment.
Finally, youths described school personnel as indifferent to the harassment they were experiencing who did not take a proactive approach to the problem. Young girls fended for themselves without the support of peers or school personnel and end up in trouble themselves when they use verbal or physical strategies to defend themselves. School-based sexual harassment was linked to neighborhood dynamics. Many of the sexual rumors at school were grounded in actual or perceived sexual interactions within youths' neighborhoods. Young men sometimes used school-based sexual harassment to test girls' receptivity or their ability to stand up for themselves.
Chapter 4 detailed the nature and situational contexts of sexual coercion and assault against young women. Much of the violence took place at unsupervised gatherings of young people where alcohol and drug use were widespread. These contexts made young women more vulnerable to sexual mistreatment but also increased the likelihood that they would be viewed as either willing participants or deserving victims.
Miller also goes on to look into dating violence. Dating violence was also widespread although some young women also engaged in violence in their relationships. While youths frowned upon male-on-female dating violence, they cited instances that justified young men's violence and blamed the female victim. Male-initiated partner violence was a serious problem in some youths' relationships. While some young women encouraged their friends to leave violent relationships, victim-blaming and non-intervention were often the norm.
Miller ends her book with recommendations that spring from the responses given by the participants. She recommends steps to improving the neighborhood to make them safer, and increasing the institutional accountability (introducing neighborhood policing, or schools should adopt policies conducive to the students' educational and emotional well-being). Apart from institutional reforms, Miller also recommends stabilizing community agencies and facilitating relationships with caring adults. Miller speaks of providing the young girls with someone they can talk to--other than their parents--who can keep conversations private. Finally, she suggests changing gender ideologies and challenging gender inequality. She suggests two ways that this can be done. First she recommends building solidarity among young women. Here, Miller wants to erase victim-blaming and the fatalistic attitudes that women develop over their fate. Second, she suggests challenging street masculinities and bridging the gender divide by providing intellectual and emotional training for young men.
Miller's recommendations--ending poverty and stopping sexism--may sound familiar to anyone who has looked into the issues covered by her study. Her recommendations may not be new, but this may be because the problems raised in her study are deeply entrenched concerns that require persistent attention. Ending both poverty and sexism are age-old issues and do not lend themselves to quick solutions.
Nevertheless, Getting Played is still an important study. Miller listens to young women and men to demonstrate the inextricable link between poverty and gendered violence. Here at last is a study of African American youths, in their own words, telling of the difficulties they face in negotiating sexual harassment and violence on a daily basis.
Miller masterfully weaves academic studies into the youths' narratives and seamlessly apprises the reader of the state of the literature on issues that are raised in the study. This technique instantly validated the youths' stories even as the same stories validate the existing literature.
Miller's book is an indispensable, if sometimes harrowing, addition to the literature on gendered violence. She succeeds in filling a yawning gap in our understanding of violence experienced by young African American living in distressed urban communities. Her study is a departure from scholarly accounts--including her own previous work--that study the effect of disadvantaged communities on youths' participation in criminal activities. Getting Played looks at how these economic conditions feed into their victimizations instead. Hopefully, this book inspires more studies that can allow us to better understand and address the relationship between urban inequality and gendered violence.
