愤怒

Journalist Elizabeth Flock ’08 digs deep into what happens when women use violence to defend themselves.

When the journalist Elizabeth Flock ’08 was still a student at 电子游戏软件, she was sexually assaulted while on a personal trip to Rome with friends. Intimidated by the thought of having to relive the attack while testifying during a criminal case, 她选择不报案. 但随着岁月的流逝, she was haunted by the question of what would have happened if she’d reacted differently during the assault itself. 十多年后, she started searching for stories of women across the globe who had responded to violence with violence. She wanted to know what happened to them after they used violence to defend themselves. 结果是 复仇女神:女人，复仇和正义, a meticulously reported examination of what happened when three women fought back against their abusers. The book received substantial coverage in the 纽约时报 和 《电子游戏正规平台》, which had previously published some of Flock’s preliminary reporting that led to it. 华盛顿邮报, 与此同时, praised Flock for withholding judgment about her subjects, finding that “her work is richer and more troubling because of it.” We recently sat down with Flock to discuss her new book.

You write of the agonizing process of deciding whether to report your own sexual assault. What factors influenced your decision not to report it?

I didn’t report my sexual assault to the Italian police because I could imagine what would happen. I thought I would just re-traumatize myself and potentially go through a really horrifying trial.

One study found that women who claimed at trial that they’d used violence only in self-defense were twice as likely as men to be convicted of crimes. The disparity was even starker for women of color.

这些制度是针对女性建立的. The criminal justice system is so broken in so many ways. And I think women know deep down that if they fight back, they’re up against that. And then if you do fight back, you’re criminalized for it. 这就是电子游戏正规平台结果. Overwhelmingly, women take plea deals and go to prison after fighting back against abusers.

The women in your book come from very disparate backgrounds. 其中一人在阿拉巴马州杀死了强奸她的人, 另一位是叙利亚的自由战士, and another organized a gang to violently respond to domestic violence in India. Given that so few women fight back, what led your subjects to make a different choice?

They all told me similar things: “I just didn’t want to die. I just wanted to protect myself or my community.“是的, 它们非常不同, but they are living in the same kinds of challenging scenarios, 他们是双重脆弱的. They’re women 和y’re poor in Alabama and can’t afford better legal representation. Or they’re poor 和y’re Kurdish, a people who have been oppressed for generations. Or they’re poor 和y’re low-caste, and so they don’t get justice for multiple reasons. Women who fight back in many cases are women who have nothing to lose.

All of the women you write about start to make choices that complicate the morality of their narratives. For instance, Brittany, the woman in Alabama, was arrested for arson while still on trial for murder.

在我自己的故事里, 我很被动, and I wanted to understand what it looked like when women were more active. 当然, 任何优秀的记者都知道, 你追踪的时间越长, 它变得越复杂. 和所有的治安维持者, there’s a moment where you’re cheering them on 和n all of a sudden you’re saying, “嘿, this might not be quite as clean as I thought.” For each of the narratives, there was a clear moment when things shifted. 这些是为正义而战的女性, 和y are also really flawed humans like the rest of us, 情况真的很复杂. That’s why it’s important to follow these things long-term, 因为如果不是, 你只是得到了一个快照.

There are abundant examples from fiction of women seeking violent revenge, like in the movie 杀死比尔 和希腊史诗 美狄亚. What has made these stories so appealing through the centuries?

I think we’re drawn to these stories because we want to be them. It’s partly because so many women have experienced some kind of violation and wished that they fought back. Heroes interest us because they’re extraordinary people, but anti-heroes interest us because they’re extraordinary yet also complicated like all of us. You add in the layer of sexual or domestic abuse, and I think it’s no wonder that women are interested in these stories, 不管它是 杀死比尔 or 龙纹身的女孩. It’s been an obsession of ours since the beginning of time, as far as I can tell. ◽

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