Feminist Criminology and Queer Theory

• In Event: Roundtable: Strange bedfellows or long-lost lovers? Queer Theory and Critical Criminology

Abstract

This paper addresses relations between feminist criminology and queer theory. I argue that many of the concerns of feminist criminology address the harms of heteronormativity, from pioneering work in relation to sexual and domestic violence to the ways in which women’s prisons and societal treatment of women offenders both seek to entrench normative gender roles for women and are based on a fear of (sexually) deviant women. Given the cross-over of these concerns with those of queer theory, I ask both why feminist criminology has not been historically more queer and what thinking queerly might offer feminist criminologists.

Author

• Tanya Serisier, Birkbeck, University of London