Our culture, argues award-winning journalist Patricia Pearson, is in denial of women's innate capacity for aggression. When She Was Bad offers a fearless and timely look at female violence, as fascinating and thought-provoking as it is controversial.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
"Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States; more than 80 percent of neonaticides; an equal or greater share of severe physical child abuse; an equal rate of spousal assault; about a quarter of child sexual molestations; and a large proportion of elder abuse... The rate at which infants are murdered by women in the U.S. is higher than the rate at which women are murdered by men." With carefully researched facts, fascinating case histories, and incisive argument, Patricia Pearson succeeds in demolishing the myth that women are not naturally violent. When She Was Bad considers two different issues: (1) how we see violent women--that we either excuse their behavior with a "syndrome defense" such as battered woman syndrome, or else see them as the passive partners of violent men; (2) how we see aggression itself--that we perceive it as physical and blatant, thus missing the ways in which women more commonly use verbal assaults and indirect strategies. Ultimately, Pearson argues, the failure of women to take responsibility for their violent behavior undermines the good that can come from aggressiveness, and sabotages the credibility of female police officers and soldiers.
From The New Yorker
She is a good reporter, and--no doubt in anticipation of conventional feminist objections--she has done the work necessary to back up even her most inflammatory ideas. If Pearson appears a tad gruesome in her eagerness for gender-neutral extermination, her larger crusade, for women's moral equality, is undoubtedly worthwhile.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I miss the innocence, but I also miss the Easter Bunny,
This review is from: When She Was Bad...: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence (Hardcover)
This is a wonderful bit of pop sociology that only a woman could write. If a man dare say what Pearson says here, the feminists would hang him by his word processor. But journalist Pearson, who has a super-fine feel for the politically correct, steers her way through the granite rocks by flatly stating that women are just as violent as men while slyly suggesting that if some people don't think that women have the same capacity for violence, maybe they are buying the "weaker sex" mythology and by extension continuing the subjugation. Let me tell you, this hits home with the Ms. crowd big time. Pearson paints a picture of women and violence that would give Charlie Manson pause, and you get the sense that she has the feminists soberly nodding their heads, "this is true, this is true." Susan Brownmiller, author of Against Our Will, and bona fide feminist icon, even contributes a blurb for Pearson's book, allowing that there was "much to agree...and disagree with," but registers her approval with "...my tilt was definitely in her favor."Mine too. I was actually surprised at the stats Pearson quotes showing the extent of feminine violence. Men too get beaten up (although let's be clear about this, not nearly as often). What I like best about the book is the hope that it is the beginning of an understanding that violence is a human sickness, not confined to one sex, and that psychological violence can be as brutal as physical. The violent evils that women are statistically more capable of-infanticide, crimes against the elderly, the murder of children, etc.-are starkly documented here. The real horror though, that women actually create the violent psychopaths through sexual choice, is a truth that even Pearson is not capable of addressing-yet. It's coming, though. When it is realized that the women who "can't help themselves" when they choose to mate with violent psychopaths in preference to milquetoasts (to use a word Pearson employs) also share responsibility for the violence in human society, then we will have made real progress toward ending the violence. The chapters on women as predators, and women as partners in violent crime, and especially the chapter on women in prison make the book. I always wondered why the prison system couldn't keep the drugs out. This book has the answer: the prison authorities want the drugs in as a means of helping them control the prisoners. Pearson points out that pacifying drugs, like heroin and hashish, are easy to get; non-pacifying drugs like cocaine are not so easy to get. Pearson also makes it clear that violence is, as I said above, a human problem, not confined to one sex; indeed this is her point and a reason for exposing all the female violence that we as a society tend to forget and to downplay. Pearson wants to make sure we don't forget. As I read this book I was reminded of why I seldom read feminist writers or listen to macho AM talk shows: the hard core sexists in their pathological need to hate the opposite sex are so dishonest and so prejudiced that what they say has no informational meaning. Pearson exposes this mentality again and again, sometimes by quoting feminine authors in vacuous support of some female murderess as "courageous" or as someone "justifiably" bent on "righteous" rage. Some (now) purely political words that feminists might want to lose (it occurred to me as I was reading this book): "courage" as in "the courage to heal"; "empowerment," as in shooting her husband was "a liberating act of empowerment" (we all want to be empowered); and especially "liberating." What we need to get liberated from is the nature of sexuality itself, from identifying ourselves, as most people do, primarily as sexual creatures. Sex is the instrument of the evolutionary process, the tool of creatures who eat and are eaten. It was here long before we evolved and it will be here long after we are gone. While reading Pearson's vivid glimpses of women in prison, I was struck by how demoralizing it is to see people with nothing better to do than parade their sexuality, whatever the nature of that sexuality. But worse yet is people like feminist Jane Caputi (quoted in Pearson's book as saying that serial killers act on behalf of all men as henchmen in the subordination of women) who identify themselves primarily in terms of sex, saying they are feminists. Pathetic. I should be a "masculinist" or whatever the male equivalent is. When I was twenty I identified with myself as a "man." I didn't think how much better it would be to identify with myself as a human being. But I was twenty. What's the feminist excuse?
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gender equality means equal responsibility and self-honesty.,
This review is from: When She Was Bad...: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence (Hardcover)
Pearson, an award-winning journalist, presents contemporary social science research that belies the cultural myths of female powerlessness and innocence - blinders society must remove for women to be understood as inherently equal and human, with all the freedoms and responsibilities this entails. The continued myth of feminine mystique and innocence must give way to a recognition of common humanity, with all of our fatal flaws and saving graces. As a counseling psychologist, I welcome the honesty and mutual understanding of which this book and other efforts are social harbingers.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
When she was bad:Violent women and the myth of innocensc,
By A Customer
This review is from: When She Was Bad...: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence (Hardcover)
Patricia Pearson has a gift for bringing to light the mystique of the female murderer. She is an intriguing writer and has brought insight into a very real and difficult topic. When kids in schools kill--everyone assumes that only boys do this kind of mayhem. No one cares that Brenda Spencer or Laurie Denn both shot elementary students up in 1979 and 1988 respectively, or that in 1995, in two separate incidents, two girls stabbed a classmate to death at school. Of course not, girls do not harm others. Pearson shows us in her work that we are masters of denial when it comes to women and violence.
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