Women commit significantly fewer murders than men and are perceived to be less violent. This belief about women’s non-violence reflects the discourses surrounding gender, all of which assume that women possess certain inherent essential characteristics such as passivity and gentleness. When women commit murder the fundamental social structures based on appropriate feminine gendered behaviour are contradicted and subsequently challenged. This article will explore the gendered constructions of women who kill within the criminal justice system. These women are labelled as either mad, bad or a victim, by both the criminal justice system and society, depending on the construction of their crime, their gender and their sexuality. Symbiotic to labelling women who kill in this way is the denial of their agency. That is to say that labelling these women denies the recognition of their ability to make a semi-autonomous decision to act in a particular way. It is submitted that denying the agency of these women raises a number of issues, including, but not limited to, maintaining the current gendered status quo within the criminal law and criminal justice system, and justice both being done, and being seen to be done, for these women and their victims

“Forced-to-penetrate” cases involve a man being forced-to-penetrate, with his penis and without his consent, a woman’s vagina, anus, or mouth. This article presents the first quantitative and qualitative research findings regarding such cases in the UK, exploring aggressive strategies used by women, as reported by 154 men who experienced them. The most frequently used strategies include coercion, taking advantage of men’s intoxication, and the use of force and threats of physical harm. Novel evidence is presented of women combining multiple strategies within the same incident. The article also argues that some of the strategies used by women are particularly “gendered,” with them taking advantage of their roles as women. The findings presented here raise questions for criminal justice professionals working in the area of sexual violence, as well as highlighting the need for future research.

The existing legal definition of rape in England and Wales is gendered, only recognising men as offenders. The law also only recognises as victims of rape those who are penetrated by a penis, either vaginally, anally or orally. This therefore excludes the female perpetrator–male victim paradigm, and more specifically those cases where male victims are ‘forced to penetrate’ female perpetrators. This paper argues that consideration needs to be given to legally recognising and thus labelling forced-to-penetrate cases as rape. Applying a methodology that draws upon the lived experiences of male victims, it is argued that there are significant similarities between compelled-penetration cases and those cases legally recognised as rape, not only because they both involve non-consensual penile penetration, but because there are clear similarities in the aggressive strategies used by perpetrators and the subsequent harms experienced by victims.

Whilst there is a growing body of empirical and theoretical research on men's experiences of sexual violence, particularly when perpetrated by other men (see e.g. Adbullah-Khan, 2008; Walker, Archer, & Davies, 2005), the issue of female-to-male sexual violence, and in particular forced-to-penetrate (FTP) cases, has largely been excluded from the research agenda. This article analyses quantitative and qualitative data on the physical and emotional impacts on men who have been FTP a woman. This data comes from the first empirical study on this issue in the UK. Such cases involve a man being FTP a woman either orally, vaginally, or anally with his penis, and without his consent. The term FTP is used here because women cannot be convicted of rape as principal offenders in the UK. The definitions of rape found in the three legal jurisdictions of the UK (England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland), all require penile penetration of the victim by the perpetrator. Consequently, only men can be convicted of rape as principal offenders, with women as secondary offenders, i.e. accomplices. Where a woman forces a man to penetrate her, she will be charged with a lesser offence, for example in England and Wales this would be 'causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent' (discussed in detail later in the article). Before proceeding, it is worth stating that despite assumptions that a man physically cannot be FTP a woman without his consent, it is, in fact, biologically possible for this to occur. Indeed, research has consistently reported that men can obtain and sustain erections even where they are not sexually aroused and/or are experiencing negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, or terror (Sarrel & Masters, 1982, p. 118). Therefore, sexually responding to a woman's advances or touch "is not necessarily indicative of [a man's] pleasure or consent" (Fisher & Pina, 2013, p. 57). It is possible that such arousal is unwanted and simply reflects a physiological reaction to stimulation.

In this article I explore the ways in which legal language, discourses, and narratives construct new dominant identities for women who kill their children. These identities are those of the 'bad', 'mad', or 'sad' woman. Drawing upon and critiquing statutes, case law, and sentencing remarks from England and Wales, I explore how singular narrative identities emerge for the female defendants concerned. Using examples from selected cases, I highlight how the judiciary interpret legislation, use evidence, and draw upon gender stereotypes in carefully constructing macro-narratives which produce gendered identities for filicidal women, thus nullifying the challenge these women pose to appropriate femininity and the motherhood mandate. Each of the narrative identities discussed deny the agency of the female defendants that they are attached to, albeit in subtly different ways, by denying their ability to make any degree of choice in relation to their filicidal actions. Although such identity construction and agency denial may not always be damaging to these filicidal women per se, its pervasiveness within legal discourse reinforces and reproduces damaging gender stereotypes surrounding women and femininity.