Patricia Pearson, (1997) When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, New York: Viking, ISBN: 0-607-85925-7

Reviewed by Stuart Birks, Massey University, New Zealand

On the jacket, Patricia Pearson is described as a feminist writer. To avoid confusion, it should also have stated that she is prepared to present data which contradict many of feminism’s current assertions. As well, she is prepared to criticise other feminists who have attempted to generate undue sympathy for women.

While the book concentrates on extreme violence, much of what she says can be adapted to refer to more common interaction. Much insight can be gained from shifting one’s perspective away from a prevailing paradigm, and Pearson presents a convincing and more honest alternative. I would recommend it to any man who has suffered in an abusive relationship.

As she herself realises, it is necessary to acknowledge unpleasant truths where they exist. As she suggests in her chapter on women in prisons, we will not solve a problem if we deny its existence or its true nature.

"Our ability to interpret what is really going on is confounded, however, by the advent, in feminist scholarship, of "standpoint epistemology." This research framework holds that history must be told from the standpoint of woman/victim." (p.55)

There are two dimensions which we should be aware of. Firstly that of violence as commonly ascribed to men, and secondly other forms of expression of violent intent. On the former, Pearson presents some alarming information. The rate of women’s physical violence is rapidly rising, especially among the young. "In Canada young women now account for 24 percent of all violent offences in their age group: in the United States, it is 18 percent." (p.32)

She describes women in prison, suggesting that they do not have men’s experience of impersonal hierarchies. This makes them potentially more dangerous as there are fewer accepted ground rules. Hence in England the incidence of violence in women’s prisons is two and a half time higher than in men’s. Women in prison also use different tactics, being more willing to involve guards, frame each other, etc.. This is an example of the other dimension, violence expressed in "indirect aggression":

"... as soon as girls hone their verbal and social skills, at around ten or eleven, they become aggressors of a different kind. They abandon physical aggression, even though their pre-pubescent hormones are still no different than boys', and adopt a new set of tactics: they bully, they name call, they set up and frame fellow kids. They become masters of indirection.

Indirect aggression, as the Finnish psychologist Kaj Bjorkqvist defines it, is 'a kind of social manipulation: the aggressor manipulates others to attack the victim, or, by other means, makes use of the social structure in order to harm the target person, without being personally involved in the attack.'" p.17.

She follows this theme through to describe men being set up, how false claims of abuse can be effective, especially given current police policies on domestic violence, and how women can use their victim status and presumed innocence to avoid detection or get lighter sentences:

"Women can operate the system to their advantage. Donning the feminine mask, they can manipulate the biases of family and community … in order to set men up. If he tries to leave, or fight back, a fateful moment comes when she reaches for the phone, dials 911, and has him arrested on the strength of her word: "Officer, he hit me."(p.142)

On domestic violence she says:

" ... the dynamic of domestic violence is not analogous to two differently weighted boxers in a ring. There are relational strategies and psychological issues at work in an intimate relationship that negate the fact of physical strength. At the heart of the matter lies human will. Which partner - by dint of temperament, personality, life history - has the will to harm the other?" (p.117)

She also points out that the abused partner in an abusive relationship may not be the weaker person. He/she is frequently the stronger, more stable one who is trying to hold things together and help the other to cope with perceived problems. This makes it hard for those familiar with the "victim" model to see themselves as abused.

Pearson discusses women serial killers, who are more numerous than might be imagined. She suggest that they achieve less notoriety because they tend to be "place specific" rather than prowlers. She gives the example of Dorothea Puente who killed eight of her tenants and buried them in her back yard. She covered herself by presenting an image of a dear sweet old lady who took care of people. Even hardened professionals found it hard to see through the pretence. Perhaps people don’t want to believe that women can be nasty and vicious because it destroys a faith in women as motherly and nurturing. That they can both be the former and appear to be the latter is particularly unsettling.

Pearson concludes:

" ... it is increasingly urgent that our culture acknowledge violence as a human, rather than a gendered phenomenon." (p.232)

and:

"Perhaps above all, the denial of women’s aggression profoundly undermines our attempt as a culture to understand violence, to trace its causes and to quell them." (p.243)

This is an important book.

10 February 1998