When She Was Bad: Violent Women & the Myth of Innocence

Rating:
Summary: Violent women
Review: An exceptionally well written book on a topic that gets too little attention. The author discusses the various manners in which women exhibit violent behaviour, and how society has come to view violent women differently than violent men. Violence is for the most part a learned trait, one that, while in most cases not as destructive as is the case with men, women are equally capable of resorting to. This book is definitely not an anti-woman tract, but is simply a statement of undeniable fact.

Rating:
Summary: Violent women
Review: An exceptionally well written book on a topic that gets too little attention. The author discusses the various manners in which women exhibit violent behaviour, and how society has come to view violent women differently than violent men. Violence is for the most part a learned trait, one that, while in most cases not as destructive as is the case with men, women are equally capable of resorting to. This book is definitely not an anti-woman tract, but is simply a statement of undeniable fact.

Rating:
Summary: When she was bad:Violent women and the myth of innocensc
Review: Hi.. I am posting this review to point out that there is another book by the same author, which appears to me to contain a great deal of overlapping material with this book but is titled WHEN SHE WAS BAD: How Women Get Away With Murder. It seems, from a glance, that the latter is a reformulation of this earlier book. Both are available here at Amazon. This book, however, stirred up a little controversy in Crime writing communities when it appeared because of it's failure to adequately point out that the types of violence committed by women, and that result in murder, are produced by vastly different motivations than those committed by men. While this book does a great job of shocking the reader into admitting that Women can be as brutal as men, I just don't feel it takes into account all the great work being done by those former FBI guys John Douglas and Robert Ressler that points to an overwhelming sexual motive for Male multiple homicides which we commonly call Serial Killing. This sexual compulsion motivation just does not appear as commonly in female Homicide. Thus, taking the FBI to task, for not recognizing women as killers is kinda silly since they rarely have the jurisdiction to deal with the majority of female killers. This book equates the female types of Multiple Homicides (Angel of Mercy deaths for example) with "Serial Killing" not seeming to notice that this term has been traditionally applied to only certain types of Murder. To the authors' and editor's credit they got me thinking about whether or not we need a NEW Term for Multiple Homicide.

Since there are not many books that deal exlcusively with Homicidal Women, this is one for the reference shelf. However, I intend to check out the other book I mentioned in my first line to see if the author corrected some of the oversights in this edition and if she expounded upon some of the areas she touched on here. If this stuff fascinates you, Michael Newton has a book on the subject too but it pretty much just catalogs the Female murderers. Even so, a listing like that can be useful since reading it cover to cover will indirectly tell you all you need to know about the types of Murders women commit. He has many titles and I am sure Amazon has it.

Rating:
Summary: Controversial look at the types of violences women employ
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: You mean it's _not_ all my fault?
Review: The reviewer below is correct: any man who wrote this book would be hung (and it surely wouldn't be by his "word processor," unless his word processor is below his waist.) The author clearly documents the myth of female non-violence; in some ways they're a _lot_ worse than men, and this is something that self-deluded feminists are going to have to come to grips with. Closing one's eyes and blaming one's problems on other people helps neither men or women. Liberal feminist beliefs, such as Men are Demon Males, when enshined in law, have created havoc in society. The facts are that there are just as many Demon Females.

Rating:
Summary: An Eye Opener
Review: This is a very good collection of facts to have on hand. It makes for good reading too. Pearson's main point is that crime won't be well understood until the myth of female innocence is depotentiated. Excellent chapters on female criminality including women who give birth and then kill, women who kill their children later, women who kill family members, nurses who kill, predatory women, women who batter their (male or female) mates, female serial killers, and so on. Excellent accounts of how women use their femininity to avoid prosecution, or to become the preferred perpetrator, who gets first shot at copping for a lesser charge.

There is a later edition of this book with the subtitle: How women get away with murder, or something close to that. I have no idea how different the two books are.

Rating:
Summary: I miss the innocence, but I also miss the Easter Bunny
Review: 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?

Rating:
Summary: I miss the innocence, but I also miss the Easter Bunny
Review: 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?