CYNTHIA JONES, SANDRA HANSMANN, ANNE STACHURA, AND LINDA ENGLISH
One unmistakable aspect of Justified is the presence of tons of violence in every episode. Whether it’s Raylan’s justified shootings of people who just needed killing, the inevitable smacking around of the working girls at Audrey’s, or the perpetual need of everyone to beat up petty criminals (or Raylan), there sure is a lot of violence in rural Kentucky.
Lots of interesting philosophical issues surround the rampant violence in Justified, especially when it comes to the violence that seems gender-specific, like domestic violence and violence against prostitutes. This is not to say that there isn’t ample violence against men in the show. Justified has tons of examples of bad boys shooting each other and shooting officers of the law and vice versa. And of course who could forget the super-creepy Robert Quarles from Detroit who likes to tie up and beat up young men?
While all of this violence is striking, let’s take a look at the violence perpetrated by men and against women.
Violence Against Women
While violence runs rampant in rural Kentucky, the gendered violence in particular stands out. The first episode of Justified has Ava Crowder shooting her husband Bowman in a kind of self-defense after she has spent years as a victim of brutal domestic violence that no one in the family attempts to address. Ava feels her only option is to shoot Bowman, which she does at the dinner table one night while he’s eating his favorite meal (“Ham and yams and cream-styled corn and leftover okra fixed with tomatoes,” Ava tells Raylan). The powers-that-be in the legal system seem to agree that she had little choice as she avoids jail time after pleading to manslaughter, much to the dismay of Bowman’s kin.
Considering what we know about domestic violence in the US, Ava’s violent home life with Bowman is not that unusual. Statistics show that the leading cause of injury for women in the US is domestic or intimate partner violence. Although there is currently a greater awareness of domestic violence as a problem in the US than there was in previous generations, domestic and intimate partner violence are amazingly underreported, even more so in particular communities where people feel it is a “family matter” that shouldn’t concern outsiders. Research shows that only about 20 to 25 percent of physical and sexual assaults on women are ever reported. Domestic violence is clearly a family affair in some ways, however, as men who grow up witnessing abuse are much more likely to be abusive partners and parents.
Some feminist theorists argue that the underreporting of domestic violence and sexual assault shouldn’t be surprising given the patriarchal society in which we live and the huge power discrepancy between men and women. For example, theorists like Catharine MacKinnon argue the inequity of power in most male-female relationships, coupled with entrenched gender stereotypes that encourage violence in men and submission in women, can offer some explanation for the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual assault and the reluctance in reporting them. And culture, religion, and a history of childhood violence can all play a role in underreporting, according to research.
Although Ava’s violent home life may be much more common than most people realize, the reaction of the legal system in her case is also interesting and downright unusual. No one wanted to intervene in Ava’s abuse while Bowman was regularly beating her, yet she seems justified in killing him, both to the audience and to the legal system. Unfortunately, for most victims and survivors of such abuse, the legal system has not historically been on their side. One of the biggest hurdles to appropriately addressing the problems endemic in violence against women in the US is the problem of blame ascription. When a woman is beaten by her partner or sexually assaulted by an acquaintance, many people still wonder: “What did she do to provoke the attack?” It is standard practice for defense attorneys in sexual assault cases to put the victim on trial and question her motives, her behaviors, and her “virtue.” They ask questions and raise doubts regarding the victim’s clothing, the victim’s behaviors, and the number of sexual partners of the rape victim. A similar issue happens in domestic violence and dating violence cases where the “authorities” involved often ask what the victim did to “deserve” such abuse. Even in more extreme cases like Ava’s where her husband beat her and kicked her while pregnant, causing a miscarriage, the number of convictions is disturbingly low. Researchers tell us that victim blaming plays a large role in the low number of convictions for sexual assault and domestic and dating violence.
A perhaps even more disturbing aspect of sexual assault and domestic violence cases arises from how such cases have been historically handled by police departments. Psychologists tell us that although a very small number of women file false reports regarding domestic and partner violence or sexual assault (between 2 and 8 percent, depending upon the study), many of those in law enforcement who are the first point of contact for victims of domestic violence or sexual assault believe the number is much higher (at least 41 percent in a frequently-cited study, although other studies have even higher numbers).
If the interviewing police officer or detective on a case questions the motives, the behaviors, or the virtue of a victim, the likelihood of an arrest or a conviction will surely plummet and the likelihood that a victim will be discouraged from filing future reports will surely be greatly diminished. The all-too-common problem of re-victimization at the hands of law enforcement or the legal system is known to anyone providing direct services to victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Researchers like psychologist Rebecca Campbell suggest that the interrogation tactics employed by police likely play a substantial role in causing investigators to discount victims’ accounts. Sexual assault and domestic violence victims display tendencies like lack of eye contact, confusion over details, and changes in their stories. Police are taught that these sorts of behaviors are indicative of lying in suspects. The problem is, according to Campbell, that these sorts of behaviors are also indicative of trauma and so are to be expected in victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Is there a clear solution to problems like Ava’s that doesn’t involve killing the abuser or perpetrator? Do women need “special” protections under the law? Some feminists tell us that viewing all women as potential victims is probably not doing us any favors either. Victims are to be pitied and require protection by men, in accordance with the rules of a patriarchy. The move from “victim” to “survivor” is an important one in this respect. Empowering women (and men) who have survived abuse requires looking at strengths rather than dwelling on them as victims. Just as the victimization of women through sexual assault and domestic violence is surely not empowering to them, neither is the demeaning of women to the category of victims that need special protection. As many advocates of equal rights policies tell us, “equal” rights for women are not “special” rights, they are rights of equal access and opportunity.
Prostitutes, Whores, and Ladies of the Night
When Ava and Boyd Crowder finally hook up (“Full Commitment”), Ava tells Boyd that she doesn’t want him involved with “whores” or in prostitution. In the following season, Ava kills evil and manipulative Delroy Baker, the pimp in charge of Audrey’s, who keeps the girls strung out on meth and oxy and uses them to rob a money store while he waits in the van (“Loose Ends”). After dumping the body of Crystal (one of the working girls who is killed in the botched armed robbery) in the coal slag, Delroy kills one of the two remaining accomplices and then tries to kill Ellen May, the third and final accomplice. Ellen May runs off to Boyd’s bar and finds Ava, who is determined to protect her despite taunting from Cousin Johnny.
After Ava offs Delroy, shooting him squarely in the chest with a shotgun, she asks Boyd to let her run Audrey’s, which is a significant change from her attitude in the previous season. The reason Ava offers Boyd is that someone needs to look after and protect the women employed at Audrey’s to “keep them girls from getting swallowed up from some other animal.” Perhaps Ava’s history of abuse played a role in her decision as she wants to protect the prostitutes at the whorehouse. We expect that Ava will be less violent with and abusive of the prostitutes in her charge and she is, but the working girls at Audrey’s still seem to get smacked around in pretty much every episode that features a scene at the whorehouse.
Not all prostitutes are women, although most are. We find out in the episode “Guy Walks into a Bar” that Robert Quarles was prostituted by his own heroin-addicted father at a young age to pay for his father’s drug habit. (Quarles’s first kill, he tells his compatriot Wynn Duffy and a young man who is pointing a gun at them, was at age fourteen when Detroit crime boss Theo Tonin gave Quarles a chance at revenge for the years of prostituted abuse by enabling Quarles to kill his father.) Some research puts the percentage of male prostitutes in the US as high as 20, although the numbers usually reported are a bit lower. But all of the prostitutes at Audrey’s are female, even though we know there are male prostitutes somewhere in the general area, as Robert Quarles clearly demonstrates in the third season by picking up a few. There are some striking differences between males and females who become prostitutes, particularly regarding their feelings of powerlessness and the length of time they spend as prostitutes. Unlike their male counterparts, female prostitutes stick with the “profession” far longer and are much more likely to express helplessness in attempting to leave prostitution.
Prostitution raises two important moral questions. The first is whether prostitution can be good for the female prostitutes and the second is whether prostitution in general, historically and currently, is good for women.
To consider the question of whether prostitution can be a good thing for those involved, we need to think about the motivations and causes for prostitution as well as the relevant debate amongst feminists about whether prostitution can be okay if it empowers the women involved or if it always involves demeaning or subservience. Many feminist theorists also address the question of whether a woman can really freely choose to be a prostitute.
In “Get Drew” Cousin Johnny is questioning Teri (his favorite prostitute from Audrey’s) about the possible whereabouts of wayward Ellen May. Johnny asks if Ellen May could be with family or friends or someone who could help her out or someone she could count on. Teri responds simply, “If she had somebody she could count on, I guess she wouldn’t be sucking hillbilly dicks for money, would she?” This one eloquent line sums up the situation of many young girls and women who turn to prostitution as the only way to survive that they perceive as available to them.
Most research reports that over 80 percent of female prostitutes claim they want to leave prostitution, which fits with Teri’s statement. Research also demonstrates that prostitutes are far more likely to be homeless, physically assaulted, sexually assaulted, and murdered than the average woman. All over the world, many female prostitutes come from backgrounds of violence or from families of low socioeconomic status. Given all of these factors, it’s clear that most girls or women who become prostitutes probably didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Media stories about the fabulous lives of a handful of high-priced call girls aside, it’s difficult to imagine that most girls and women who end up as prostitutes had it as a top career choice.
But there is ample evidence that some educated women do seem to choose prostitution, as several well-publicized cases of young women selling their virginity on eBay seem to attest. And some women report that selling their assets through prostitution empowers them and gives them control over their own sexuality and their bodies, and gives them a sense of power over those who buy them. “Sex-positive” feminists such as Carol Queen claim that outlawing prostitution is not the answer and the legal system should instead legalize the role of the prostitute or “sex worker.” But despite the possibility of some (likely a very small number of) women being empowered by working as prostitutes, it still could be argued that selling herself, even if it seems to benefit a young woman financially and psychologically, may not actually be in her best interests, as treating oneself or another as an object, or a sexual object in particular, is dehumanizing and problematic.
Returning to the question of whether prostitution can ever be a good thing for the female prostitutes, it seems that it can be, but in rare circumstances where the woman involved is able to weigh the costs and benefits and doesn’t labor under undue coercion. Given the undeniable harms involved in prostitution globally, however, it is clear that very few girls and women do actually choose to be prostitutes, in any real sense of free choice. So while it may be possible for prostitution to be beneficial for a very small number of women, it is hard to imagine, given current conditions, that prostitution is a good thing for the women involved or for women in general. The prostitutes at Audrey’s certainly don’t seem to be leading empowered lives that they freely chose.
Sexism, Gender, and Violence in Harlan County
An important question to ask, given all of the violence in Justified, is whether violence is higher in men than in women. In other words, do men commit more violent acts? In “Thick as Mud” Raylan kills the sexy nurse who, despite flirting with him, decides to yank out his organs for the black market after he gets in her way. Raylan later tells Ava (“Loose Ends”) that the nurse was the first woman he ever shot. Raylan doesn’t usually chase women professionally, he claims, only because women typically don’t commit the kind of crimes that require the services of a US Marshal, so there isn’t much opportunity to shoot them.
According to recent statistics from the US Department of Justice, men are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than women. In a comprehensive study of murderers and murder victims from 2002, the Department further notes that while men are most often the victims as well as the perpetrators of violent crimes like murder (71 percent of murder victims were male and 90 percent of murderers were male, in cases where the identity of the perpetrator was known), women were far more likely to be victims of murder at the hands of their husbands (81 percent of spousal murder victims were women) or significant others (71 percent of partner murder victims were women).
Although the reasons for this large discrepancy between genders in the commission of violent acts can be debated—whether it’s genetic, hormonal, or a product of environment or culture—it’s pretty clear that men in the US are considerably more violent, measuring violence in terms of physical harm to others, than women.
You don’t have to consider yourself a feminist to recognize that intimate relationships are far more dangerous for women than for men. While it’s obviously the case that men, on average, are larger and stronger than women, on average (Boyd Crowder and Mags Bennett are clearly two exceptions to this generalization), this cannot be the sole reason for this huge violence differential. The reasons suggested thus far, such as victim blaming, misperceptions by police and law enforcement, and tactics of defense attorneys, all play a role in perpetuating violence against women in our society, but undoubtedly there’s more involved. It’s difficult to imagine that the gender inequities are not symptomatic of some larger power inequities, for which we have rather significant evidence.
Violence, Race, and Stereotypes
We might wonder what role race plays in violence in Harlan County as most of the criminals are most definitely white. However, a quick search of demographics of the real-world Harlan County, Kentucky, reveals that more than 95 percent of the people who live there are white and so we should expect to see far more white criminals. Although the residents of Noble’s Holler are involved in their own fair share of crime, manipulation, and violence, Justified does indeed do a decent job of eschewing the “all black men are violent thugs” stereotype. There are a few exceptions, like Clinton Moss and the drug dealer whose car Clinton steals in “For Blood or Money.” (Clinton is Deputy Marshal Rachel Brooks’s brother-in-law who was recently released from jail after killing his wife—Rachel’s sister—in a car crash while he was high.) But even Clinton is a sympathetic character in the end as he committed his crime spree on the day in question because he wanted to see his son on his birthday and bring him a present. And Ellstin Limehouse engages in various types of criminal activity, although he still also manages to be a reasonably sympathetic character, seemingly focused on the survival of his extended family and their community in Noble’s Holler.
While the pilot episode appears to have a blatant instance of racial violence when Boyd Crowder blows up a church in a black neighborhood, we get the feeling that Boyd isn’t at all serious about the white supremacist dribble he is spewing in the episode. And after Boyd is shot in the first episode, his conversion to Christianity ends the pretense of substantial racial hatred.
There are a few amusing scenes that involve racial issues, like in the opening episode when Chief Deputy Mullen sends Deputy Brooks to speak with Pastor Fandi, the leader of a black congregation whose church Boyd Crowder blew up, presumably because Deputy Brooks is black, or when the same pastor chides Raylan for assuming that he likes Peter Tosh because he’s black and has a Jamaican accent. And in “Piece of Mind” there is a spirited exchange between Limehouse and the three deputy marshals wherein he refers to Givens and Gutterson as “crackers” and calls Deputy Brooks “Little Sister” while chastising her for working for the man. She responds with appropriate threats and posturing in return, which only seems to make Limehouse more interested in her. But other than the clear separation between the black inhabitants of Noble’s Holler and the rest of Harlan County, these scenes do not portray weighty racial tensions.
To its credit, Justified does not represent stereotypical views of race in a significant way. Possibly the strongest female character in the show is Deputy Marshal Rachel Brooks. But she’s also the only recurring black female character. She is rather distinct from the stereotypes of black women and women in general as she is smart, competent, professional, and reasonably unemotional. We also don’t really see women of color working at Audrey’s. Justified is striking in that it doesn’t stereotype women of color or portray them as inferior, although it does demonstrate weakness in women in other ways. Mags Bennett despite embodying a rather fierce matriarch in Season Two, ends her life in a decidedly stereotypical “female” manner, by poisoning herself, after the death of two of her sons. Aunt Helen and Ava Crowder are both shotgun-toting women to be reckoned with, although both are clearly traditional females in their support of their men. And both of their men, Arlo and Boyd, go sideways for revenge when Helen and Ava are shot by Dickie Bennett. We can’t help but wonder, however, whether Boyd and Arlo are upset because of the harm to the women themselves or are upset because the use and abuse of their women reflects poorly on them as men.
Many of the theorists involved in what is referred to as “third wave feminism” discuss the interplay of race, poverty, and gender and criticize the feminists who came before them for silencing the voices of women of color and disregarding their experiences. Although sexism and patriarchy are in some ways universal, bell hooks, as a third wave feminist, argues that women of color have been marginalized in the feminist movement, as the oppression of women of color and the oppression of poor women are significantly different than the oppression of the middle class white women who typify the feminist movement in the US.
Oppression is necessarily social and it should not be considered separately from race and class, hooks argues. There seems to be evidence of this in Justified. Consider the working girls at Audrey’s and the challenges they face. Their choices are significantly restricted by the combination of gender, class, and lack of education. Consider also the situation of the black residents of Harlan County who isolate themselves in Noble’s Holler as they are isolated by others.
This isolation, together with the destruction of the black congregation’s church in the first episode of the series demonstrate what feminist theorist Peggy McIntosh identifies as one of the invisible privileges of whiteness, the taken-for-granted assumption that wherever a white person moves, she or he can be reasonably sure that their neighbors will be friendly or at least neutral towards her. McIntosh likens the unacknowledged advantages of being in the dominant majority group to carrying around an invisible backpack equipped with everything one needs to feel comfortable at all times while participating in public life. She distinguishes between elements of the backpack that should be available to all—like, for example, the ability to trust that one’s neighbors will be friendly or at least neutral (and not blow up your church)—from those that (admittedly unwittingly) empower a specific group to dominate others in society, a condition that is demeaning to every member of said society. While Justified mostly manages to avoid problematic racial stereotypes, it also subtly demonstrates the separation bell hooks discusses.
The Moral of the Story
And so in the end, what can we conclude about gender and violence in Justified?
Apparently, rural Kentucky is really violent, and not a particularly safe place to be a prostitute.
In addition, despite several strong female characters and the matriarchy of the Bennett clan in Season Two, patriarchy is alive and well in Harlan County, bringing with it the violence and oppression of women we are told to expect from men. But this doesn’t mean that the male gender is inherently or necessarily violent (the peaceful nonviolent approaches of men like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi spring to mind) or that the female gender is doomed to subservience and domination.
Deputy U.S. Marshal Rachel Brooks, Ava Crowder, Aunt Helen, and Mags Bennett in particular give us hope, although three of the four of these women are involved in significant nefarious activities in Harlan County, including killing a few men. But then so are pretty much all of the men we root for in Justified too.