What are true women not made of? Agency and identities of “violent” women in tabloids in Finland

¹An earlier, different version of this article has been published in Finnish in 2015 in an anthology (in Finnish) about the representation of women as perpetrators of violence in the media (Satu Venäläinen 2015).

Abstract

This article examines how Finnish tabloids portray women who have used violence. The aim is to look at the ways in which violence committed by women is made sense of in relation to culturally shared conceptions and expectations regarding the relations between gender categories and violence. The analysis of the data draws on socio-semiotics and distinguishes modalities as discursive devices that attach meanings and different levels of agency to violent action. By focusing on descriptions of women’s violent agency, the analysis attempts to dissect the ways in which the identities of “feminine women” and “violent women” are dialectically constructed. A recurring theme in the positioning of women in the analyzed news articles is the attachment of deceptiveness to them and their actions. Especially in the reporting of the most sensationalized cases, women as perpetrators of violence are often portrayed in the data as strong agents with an antisocial will to hurt others, and with the capacity to potentially escape being held responsible for their violence. These findings are discussed in relation to the Finnish cultural context and the prevalent discourses on gender, violence, and equality in it.

Keywords:

• Women
• violence
• agency
• modalities
• identity

Notes

¹ An earlier, different version of this article has been published in Finnish in 2015 in an anthology (in Finnish) about the representation of women as perpetrators of violence in the media (Satu Venäläinen 2015).

1. During the following years the case has been followed closely as the suspected wife was convicted of murder in 2010 and then acquitted on appeal in 2011. In 2012 the case was reopened, and she was convicted again in 2013. However, after the latest appeal she was exonerated in 2015. In 2012 the suspect was also sentenced for sex crimes and child abuse. The case has become known among Finns as an infamous ‘Ulvila murder case’ and continues to arouse attention.

2. In 2013 the estimated number of readers of Ilta-Sanomat was 544,000 and Iltalehti 428,000. Only the leading newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, had a higher number of readers (837,000) (MediaAuditFinland 2014).

3. Also according to crime statistics in Finland violent crimes committed by women are significantly rarer than those committed by men; in 2013, 17 percent of the suspects of non-fatal assaults and 13 percent of the suspects of homicides were women (Venla Salmi and Petri Ruuskanen 2014).

4. I have only included the kind of violence that fits the criteria of criminalized violence, i.e., physical violence ranging from assaults to homicides. Not included are cases in which there are both men and women as perpetrators.

5. Obligation, in turn, appears in the data in relation to violence mainly as an implicit duty to avoid doing it, and not as directly linked to it.

6. My conceptualization of ability differs slightly from that of Sulkunen and Törrönen (1997) in that ability in my analysis refers to forces that appear as external to the suspect’s control (and not only to other people’s influence or temporary influences), including also some forms of continuous mental disorders that are portrayed as rendering the suspect unable to control her actions.

7. All the excerpts have been translated from Finnish to English by the author.

8. Name of a town.

9. Unlike other forms of psychopathology, in the data these disorders do not appear to diminish the culpability of the suspect, but rather deepen their appearance as antisocial.

10. Emphasis in the original.

11. The suspect in the Ulvila murder case also received a wound herself in connection with the killing of her husband, and was for a long time portrayed as one of the victims in the case.

12. The figure of a deceiver in the data can also be seen as a variation of a mythological category of a “trickster” described for example by Jack Lule (2011).

13. See e.g., Ruuskanen (2001) for a discussion of how in court women’s claims of being abused are often not heard.