Chivalry Is Not Dead

The death penalty is a very controversial topic within our society today because of the biases that it holds.  These biases and double standards are brought into the criminal justice system because of the beliefs that our community has or had in the past.  The LGBTQ community has been one of the many minorities that have been victimized by the criminal justice system and there are multiple ways to explain why including, the chivalry hypothesis and gender roles.

First, I want to explain the psychology of gender roles within out society.  Masculinity can be defined as, “to be strong, ambitious, successful, rational, and emotionally controlled” and the stigma of being a “real man” is still prevalent within our society today (Kimmel, 2000a, 2000b, 2005; Martin, H., & Finn, 2010).  On the other hand, to be feminine is defined as, being “physically attractive, emotionally expressive, nurturing, interested in aesthetics, and concerned with people and relationships (Martin, H., & Finn 2010).  Although women in our society today are trying to fight this stereotype, there is still a large stigma around women being the attractive caregivers.  However, knowing that there has been 1,419 Americans put to death since 1976 (Number of Executions) and only 15 of them being female (Women and the Death Penalty), one can assume that chivalry and gender roles are still apart of our society today. 

The chivalry hypothesis states, “based on the assumptions that society is paternalistic and chivalrous towards females, and therefore the police, prosecutors, judges, parole reviewers, and other decision-makers will be chivalrous, as well” (Zaplin, R. (2008).  Overall, this means that women are treated more mercifully when it comes to committing crimes.  However, if one looks at the history of chivalry, the rules of chivalry only applied to women who were considered “ladies” (Kaeuper).  Since peasant women did not show the stereotypical gender role, they were considered fair game; in an article written by Steven Shatz and Naomi Shatz, they said, “no such disapproval applied to the rape of peasant women” (Shatz, Steven F. and Shatz, Naomi R). 

As discussed above in the Chivalry Hypothesis paragraph, it is proven that women who conform to the normal gender roles are less likely to receive a harsh punishment (Grabe, Maria Elizabeth, K. D. Trager, Melissa Lear, and Jennifer Rauch).  In the book, Queer (In)justice, the authors use two examples of women being sentenced to death, Bernina Mata and Wanda Jean Allen who were both outwardly lesbian.  Bernina Mata was a Latina who killed a white male, while Wanda Jean Allen was an African American butch lesbian who killed her lover.  When looking at race of these women, they are both a minority, which makes it easier for them to be executed because of the racism this system holds.  Second, Mata killed a white man, which is another easy way to get convicted because our society holds white males at a higher level than everyone else.  Third, they were both lesbians; although Mata’s story does not define her as a butch lesbian like Allen’s does, she was placed in the “queer criminal archetype of the homicidal man-hating lesbian” (82).

Since both of these women did not fit the stereotypical gender roles that our society still values, it is easier, as stated above, for our community to treat them with less respect.  I can proudly say, that if these women were white, heterosexual, gender normative women, they would have not been convicted to death and the jury would have been more lenient with them because they would not have given them the appearance of a “man hating lesbian” (53) and images of “black ‘female masculinity’” (85).

The death penalty is a very hard subject to debate because of all the different views that our community has about it.  However, the support for the death penalty has been decreasing significantly since 1976 when it became reinstated in America; because of this decrease, less people have been sentenced to death and executed.  Since there are many different institutions to fight against the death penalty, I don’t believe that’s where the LGBTQ community should help; I believe the queer community should focus on educating.  Not only educating the world about the queer community and how the death penalty affects them, but educating the community on how the inequality of gender roles affects them and how being queer doesn’t make someone a bad person.  In a quote by Emma Goldman who is a Russian Anarchist and feminist, she says, “The most violent element in society is ignorance”.  By educating society, they learn that different is not always bad but is a very beneficial thing to our world.  When people are not educated, they are not open to things that they do not know about because they are scared of the unknown, but when people are educated there is no need to be scared because they know that the unknown is not scary.  I believe that education will help our society move away from the biases within the death penalty and within the other injustices that live in our society.  

Grabe, Maria Elizabeth, K. D. Trager, Melissa Lear, and Jennifer Rauch. "Gender in Crime News: A Case Study Test of the Chivalry Hypothesis." Mass   Communication and Society (2006): 137-63. Print.

Kaeuper, supra note 13, at 290 (citing the writings of Andrew the Chaplain)

Kimmel, M. (2000a). The Gendered society. Cambridge, MA: Oxford Univerisity Press

Kimmel, M. (2000b, January 12).  What about the boys? Keynote speech at the Center     for Research on Women’s 6^th Annual Gender Equity conference, Boston, MA

Kimmel, M. (2005). Manhood in America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Martin, H., & Finn, S. (2010). Masculinity and femininity in the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A.      Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

Number of Executions by State and Region Since 1976. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2015, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/number-executions-state-and-region-1976

Shatz, Steven F. and Shatz, Naomi R., Chivalry is Not Dead: Murder, Gender, and the Death Penalty (February 19, 2011). Univ. of San Francisco Law Research Paper No. 2011-08; Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2012.    

Women and the Death Penalty. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2015, from             http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/women-and-death-penalty

Zaplin, R. (2008). Part 1: Theoretical Perspectives. In Female offenders: Critical perspectives and effective interventions (2nd. ed., pp. 19-20). Boston [etc.: Jones and Bartlett.