Femininity In Dissent

by Alison Young

Published 4 October 1990
In "Femininity in Dissent", Alison Young examines the images constructed by the Press of women's political protest. Taking the peace camp at Greenham Common as her example, she analyzes the way in which women protestors are represented as deviant. Arguing that the criminal justice system and the media rely on each other's definitions of deviance, she investigates how those definitions are encoded. In doing so, she utilizes concepts of narrative structure, metaphor, the body, the cultural unconscious, and mental as well as social instability. "Femininity in Dissent" draws on criminology and feminist theory. In articulating cultural forms of regulation and social control, the author provides an analysis of discourse and deviance.