Women at Risk

The lost boys of James Barrie’s Peter Pan or William Golding’s Lord of the Flies relished play, adventure and—sometimes—violence in an escape from society and its trammels. In Renaissance Italy energy, lust and even occasional destructiveness were expected of male youth, even inside the city. Authorities, lay and clerical, thirsted for social discipline, but were still ill equipped institutionally and technologically to impose it. Customary practices like youth groups and ritualized combats, such as “wars of the fists” where Venetian bravoes tussled for possession of a bridge, helped channel the aggressions of young men. On occasion, their violence was even tacitly condoned in order to send messages of larger social import, as when gangs of boys desecrated the corpses of heinous criminals.

For young women it was quite another story. The heady, empowered “girl culture” that now flourishes in the wake of third wave feminism stands in stark contrast...