Acting Tough and Causing Scenes: Constructing and Punishing Violent High School Girls.

Upsurges in girls' arrest rates for violence since the 1980s have touched off increasing attention to the phenomenon of violent girls. Perspectives and explanations in this literature range, with some researchers suggesting that contemporary girls are gaining a violent brand of equality with boys by becoming one of the guys and forging their own code of the streets. Others argue that girls' violence stems not from gender parity, but from gender inequalities. Within this perspective, increases in girls' arrests for violence result from the recent intensified policing of girls in intimate contexts such as schools and families. This paper reflects upon these two perspectives by presenting findings from a two year ethnographic study of youth violence, including observations of and interviews with public high school students, staff, and parents. Findings identify a conflicting violent girl discourse. Parents, school staff, and students consistently supported the larger gender equity perspective by noting that girls fight just as often, for the same reasons, and are treated the same as boys. Within their gender equity narratives, however, study participants reveal how violent girls were constructed and treated very differently than violent boys. These data, first, build a bridge between gender parity and inequality perspectives in the girls' violence literature and, second, fill gaps in our knowledge about how girls' violence is policed in everyday school contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]