Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA.
Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA.
J Interpers Violence. 2021 Jul;36(13-14):6859-6882. doi: 10.1177/0886260518821459. Epub 2019 Jan 2.
The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which general strain and masculinity theories combine to offer explanations for why and how some offenders commit fatal attacks against persons who are homeless. Specifically, the authors ask, how does "strained masculinity" explain why and how offenders commit fatal bias attacks of violence against homeless persons? The authors conceptualize hegemonic masculinity as a positively valued goal that men continuously work to achieve or demonstrate and theorize that bias crime offenders use violence against persons who are homeless as a way to address challenges or strains in their pursuit of hegemonic masculinity. To overcome issues with official bias crime data, the current study utilizes data on anti-homeless homicides from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), which is an open-source database with information on incident-, offender-, and victim-level characteristics of bias homicides. The authors rely on a homicide narrative approach to conduct in-depth analyses of anti-homeless homicide events to assess how these fatal transactions situationally unfold. Three categories related to strained masculinity emerged from a thematic analysis of anti-homeless homicide narratives. In particular, men engaged in acts of violence against the homeless as responses to challenges to masculinity and to pursue hegemonic masculinity through alternative avenues, including violence as a "sport" and violence used to reclaim control of public spaces. Overall, findings demonstrate the utility of a strained masculinity framework for explaining anti-homeless homicides and contribute to the important task of integrating criminological and sociological theories for explaining incidents of bias crime.
本研究旨在探讨一般紧张理论和男子气概理论如何结合，解释为什么以及如何一些罪犯会对无家可归者实施致命攻击。具体来说，作者们提出了以下问题：“紧张的男子气概”如何解释为什么以及如何罪犯会对无家可归者实施致命的偏见暴力攻击？作者将霸权男子气概概念化为一个男性不断努力实现或展示的积极价值目标，并从理论上推断，偏见犯罪者使用暴力攻击无家可归者是为了应对他们追求霸权男子气概过程中的挑战或紧张。为了克服官方偏见犯罪数据的问题，本研究利用了美国极端犯罪数据库（ECDB）中有关反无家可归者凶杀案的数据，该数据库是一个开源数据库，包含了偏见凶杀案在事件、罪犯和受害者层面的特征信息。作者依赖于凶杀叙事方法对反无家可归者凶杀事件进行深入分析，以评估这些致命交易的情况是如何展开的。通过对反无家可归者凶杀案叙事的主题分析，出现了与紧张的男子气概相关的三个类别。特别是，男性对无家可归者实施暴力行为是对男子气概的挑战的回应，也是通过其他途径追求霸权男子气概的回应，包括将暴力视为“运动”和将暴力用于夺回公共空间的控制权。总体而言，研究结果表明，紧张的男子气概框架在解释反无家可归者凶杀案方面具有实用性，并有助于完成将犯罪学和社会学理论结合起来解释偏见犯罪事件的重要任务。
