Our culture believes that women are not naturally aggressive. And yet, every day evidence proves otherwise: women kill their children, their husbands, their lovers, and their lovers' mistresses. Women join their lovers in torture and killings, women are psychopaths, women are terrorists and violent criminals. In this highly provocative book, Patricia Pearson demonstrates over and over again that the idea (ideal?) of female innocence is pure myth. She argues that the two main culprits of the tendency to overlook extreme behaviour in women are feminists who have claimed victimhood for women and male society which finds it impossible to see women as powerful. Weaving the stories of violent women - from Myra Hindley and Rose West, from a mother who smothered eight of her children, from nurses who murdered their infant charges, to husband beaters - with the findings of criminologists, anthropologists and psychiatrists, Patricia Pearson makes a compelling case for redefining the debate about female violence and power.
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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.
About the Author:
Patricia Pearson, award-winning feminist writer and crime journalist is the granddaughter of Lester Pearson, a former Prime Minister of Canada.
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- PublisherRandom House of Canada Ltd
- Publication date1997
- ISBN 10 0394224302
- ISBN 13 9780394224305
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages288
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