England: "Feuerbomben, Straßenraub und Bandenkriege – Was läuft schief mit unseren Mädchen?"

Schon als ich Ende der neunziger Jahre für mein Buch "Sind Frauen bessere Menschen?" recherchierte, konnte man mit etwas Mühe eine in Fachkreisen zunehmende Besorgnis über die rapide wachsende Mädchengewalt feststellen. Nachdem jetzt allem Anschein nach eine Mädchengang in England ein Haus in die Luft jagte, weil es mit einem weiteren Mädchen eine Kontroverse um einen Mann gab, ist diese Besorgnis in der breiten Öffentlichkeit angekommen. "Was this really what feminism was all about?" fragt Melanie Phillips zur Eröffnung eines ausführlichen Artikels in der Daily Mail. Ein Auszug:

For several years, there has been a disturbing rise in the number of girls committing violent crimes at ever younger ages.

Last month, rival girl gangs used snooker balls in socks to batter each other in a mass brawl at a railway station at Shoreham, West Sussex.

In March, a 15-year-old girl was jailed for using a mobile phone to film two drunken teenage male friends beating a man to death in Keighley, West Yorkshire.

Last October, a gang of teenage girls stoned a 72-year-old woman and forced her into a busy road, leaving her with a broken nose and two black eyes.

There has also been a string of murders committed by girls, often sickeningly sadistic.

In 1999, for example, two 15-year-old girls murdered 71-year-old Lily Lilley, binding her mouth so tightly that her false teeth were pushed down her throat and giggling as they wheeled her body through the streets before throwing it into a canal.

In the same year, a girl gang was found guilty of murdering mentally-ill Angela Pearce after torturing her. And so on.

"Gewalt ist männlich, wir alle wissen das", verkündete vor einigen Jahren die radikalfeministische Forscherin, die auch heute noch von Sandra Maischberger gerne in ihre Talkshow eingeladen wird. Manche ideologisierten Wissenschaftler glauben, das männliche Gehirn sei von Natur aus auf Gewalt programmiert, Soziologen wie Dieter Otten schreiben dicke Bücher darüber, wie Frauen Männer angeblich "zivilisieren können". Wie falsch kann man mit solchen als "Tatsachen" verkauften Ansichten liegen? Melanie Phillips führt dazu aus:

On top of all this, however, modern feminism has added an extra and unforeseen twist. Little did those pioneers who fought for equal rights for women dream that one outcome would be equal wrongs by women. Yet that is precisely what has happened.

This is because, like the rest of the equality agenda, modern feminism recast equal rights as "identicality". The notion that men and women behaved differently because they had different expectations and pressures was deemed to be sexist and discriminatory. Equality meant that men and women had to lead identical lives.

At the same time, however, feminism also held that masculinity was a problem. It was men, alone, who were held to be aggressive - crime was presented as intrinsically a male problem - as well as being emotionally illiterate and unfairly hogging the workplace, while women were chained to kitchen sink and family. As a result of the feminist revolution, women have commandeered the freedoms and entitlements of the masculine world - while men themselves have now been largely reduced to sperm banks, walking wallets and occasional au pairs.

Women now claim to be equal breadwinners - but some of them will still go to court to fleece men for everything they have if their marriages break up. Along with this has come an aggressive and self-centred approach to the world which apes the worst caricatures of male behaviour. Whereas men were once associated with one-night stands, now women demand sex without strings and bring children into the world without a father as their "human right".

Told to be assertive, they have interpreted that as being aggressive. Female role models in movies, video games or rap music increasingly glorify violence too. The outcome has been serious confusion among girls about their role in the world and how they should behave.